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I asked some classical music people once if there was a history of harmony. Someone retorted that the modern concept of harmony was an inadequate way of underst
by decasia 2y ago
I asked some classical music people once if there was a history of harmony. Someone retorted that the modern concept of harmony was an inadequate way of understanding counterpoint, and that the primary concept should be voice leading, not vertical harmony. I suppose it makes sense — that our categories of musical analysis have histories, and it can be misleading to apply them out of context (as the rest of this thread is commenting).
But I still wish someone would write a history about "what kinds of harmonies do people think sound good/melodious/interesting, and which do they consider bad/ugly/weird/useless at a given moment." Or if that history already exists, I wish I knew how to find it.
- wrs 2y agoLeonard Bernstein‘s Harvard lectures have some of this. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuQqHfLobLUIzDiIGrtE41KvQ-EKBXlol&si=GjOLZsWwnyCGudOd https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuQqHfLobLUIzDiIGrtE41KvQ...
- spacechild1 2y ago"Harmonielehre" by Dieter de la Motte is an excellent book that does exactly this. He explicitely points out that harmony must always be understood and analyzed in context. "Kontrapunkt", his book on counterpoint, follows the same principle and is just as good. I think/hope there are English translations.
- ofalkaed 2y agoA great deal has been written on this but the vast bulk requires a solid understanding of theory, Cambridge's History of Western Music Theory gives a lifetimes worth of material to study on this topic.
- giraffe_lady 2y agoYou also need to locate such a project in place as well. There isn't just one music history, each culture has its own. They've only begun to somewhat converge in the last couple centuries, but there are at least dozens of distinct, independent musical traditions with at least a thousand years of continuous development.
- jdietrich 2y agoFrom a jazz musician's perspective, classical theorists tend to confuse the map with the territory. Classical theory is (at least historically) often prescriptive rather than descriptive, which tends to cause some friction when applied to music outside of that idiom.