Harmony (German: Harmonielehre, or "Theory of Harmony") is a book published in 1906 by Heinrich Schenker. It is the first installment of Schenker's three-volume treatise on music theory entitled New Musical Theories and Fantasies; the others are Counterpoint and Free Composition. Schenker's name did not appear on the original edition of the work – the author was listed simply as "an artist".
Harmony, which was Schenker's first major book-length theoretical writing, is notable for defining the theoretical agenda that Schenker was to carry out over the subsequent three decades. Schenker makes a careful distinction between the theories of harmony (which for Schenker is concerned with relations among scale-steps) and counterpoint (which deals only with voice leading); he argues that other theorists have confusingly mixed these two concepts. He introduces the principle of repetition, which gives rise to the concept of the motive. Schenker also strongly hints about the ways in which large spans of music can be understood as elaborations of simple structures; this idea is perhaps the most characteristic feature of his mature theory. Finally, he discusses the relationship between music and Nature, which would also be a recurring theme throughout his career.
The work also contains the type of polemical writing that was to characterize most of Schenker's output. In Harmony, Schenker expresses his dissatisfaction with the state of music theory and music pedagogy in his time, and, by making frequent references and comparisons to other theorists, argues at length that his own ideas are superior. He would repeat this procedure in his later writings, often adding virulent commentary about the social and political situation of early 20th century Europe.
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In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. As a compositional technique, counterpoint is found in many musical styles including Medieval music, gamelan, and the music of West Africa. Within the context of Western classical music, counterpoint refers to the texture of polyphony, which developed during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance and is found in much of the common practice period, especially in the Baroque. The term originates from the Latin punctus contra punctum meaning "point against point", i.e. "note against note".
Johann Georg Albrechtsberger was an Austrian composer, organist, and music theorist, and one of the teachers of Ludwig van Beethoven. He was friendly with Haydn and Mozart.
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day, where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another. More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. "The repertory of atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in novel combinations, as well as by the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments".
Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. The Oxford Companion to Music describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation ; the second is learning scholars views on music from antiquity to the present; the third a sub-topic of musicology that "seeks to define processes and general principles in music". The musicological approach to theory differs from music analysis "in that it takes as its starting-point not the individual work or performance but the fundamental materials from which it is built."
Heinrich Schenker was a music theorist, music critic, teacher, pianist, and composer. He is best known for his approach to musical analysis, now usually called Schenkerian analysis.
Schenkerian analysis is a method of analyzing tonal music, based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935). The goal is to demonstrate the organic coherence of the work by showing how it relates to an abstracted deep structure, the Ursatz. This primal structure is roughly the same for any tonal work, but a Schenkerian analysis shows how, in an individual case, that structure develops into a unique work at the "foreground", the level of the score itself. A key theoretical concept is "tonal space". The intervals between the notes of the tonic triad in the background form a tonal space that is filled with passing and neighbour tones, producing new triads and new tonal spaces that are open for further elaborations until the "surface" of the work is reached.
Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is called the tonic. The root of the tonic chord forms the name given to the key; so in the key of C major, the note C is both the tonic of the scale and the root of the tonic chord. Simple folk music songs often start and end with the tonic note. The most common use of the term "is to designate the arrangement of musical phenomena around a referential tonic in European music from about 1600 to about 1910". Contemporary classical music from 1910 to the 2000s may practice or avoid any sort of tonality—but harmony in almost all Western popular music remains tonal. Harmony in jazz includes many but not all tonal characteristics of the European common practice period, sometimes known as "classical music".
François-Joseph Fétis was a Belgian musicologist, composer, teacher, and one of the most influential music critics of the 19th century. His enormous compilation of biographical data in the Biographie universelle des musiciens remains an important source of information today.
In music, function is a term used to denote the relationship of a chord or a scale degree to a tonal centre. Two main theories of tonal functions exist today:
Karl Wilhelm Julius Hugo Riemann was a German music theorist and composer.
Voice leading is the linear progression of individual melodic lines and their interaction with one another to create harmonies, typically in accordance with the principles of common-practice harmony and counterpoint.
Felix Salzer was an Austrian-American music theorist, musicologist and pedagogue. He was one of the principal followers of Heinrich Schenker, and did much to refine and explain Schenkerian analysis after Schenker's death.
In music theory, prolongation is the process in tonal music through which a pitch, interval, or consonant triad is able to govern spans of music when not physically sounding. It is a central principle in the music-analytic methodology of Schenkerian analysis, conceived by Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker.
In music, consecutive fifths, or parallel fifths, are progressions in which the interval of a perfect fifth is followed by a different perfect fifth between the same two musical parts : for example, from C to D in one part along with G to A in a higher part. Octave displacement is irrelevant to this aspect of musical grammar; for example, parallel twelfths are equivalent to parallel fifths.
Counterpoint is the second volume of Heinrich Schenker's New Musical Theories and Fantasies. It is divided into two "Books", the first published in 1910, and the second in 1922.
Free Composition is a treatise by Heinrich Schenker, and possibly Schenker's best known work. The third volume of New Musical Theories and Fantasies, it was first published posthumously by Universal Edition in Vienna in 1935. A second German edition by Oswald Jonas appeared in Vienna in 1956. The American translation by Ernst Oster was published by Longman, New York and London, in 1979.
In Schenkerian theory, a scale-step is a triad that is perceived as an organizing force for a passage of music. In Harmony, Schenker gives the following example and asserts that
our ear will connect the first tone, G, with the B on the first quarter of measure 1 as the third of G.
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Likewise, it will connect that G with the D on the first quarter of measure 2 as its fifth. Our ear will establish this connection instinctively, but nonetheless in accordance with the demands of Nature. In an analogous way, it will link that first G with the C and E of the second half of measure 1 and thus form the concept of another triad. For our ear will miss no opportunity to hear such triads, no matter how far in the background of our consciousness this conception may lie hidden and no matter whether in the plan of the composition it is overshadowed by far more obvious and important relationships.
In music, klang is a term sometimes used to translate the German Klang, a highly polysemic word. Technically, the term denotes any periodic sound, especially as opposed to simple periodic sounds. In the German lay usage, it may mean "sound" or "tone", "musical tone", "note", or "timbre"; a chord of three notes is called a Dreiklang, etc.
Sylvan (Sholom) Kalib is an American music theorist, musicologist, cantor, conductor, pedagogue and composer. His primary work falls broadly into two categories: 1) Schenkerian music theory and 2) the musical tradition of the Eastern European synagogue.
This is a glossary of Schenkerian analysis, a method of musical analysis of tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935). The method is discussed in the concerned article and no attempt is made here to summarize it. Similarly, the entries below whenever possible link to other articles where the concepts are described with more details, and the definitions are kept here to a minimum.
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