Very cool! I laughed when you realized you had to toss the circle of fifths. I suspected that was coming due to an experience of my own. In a college Music Th

Very cool! I laughed when you realized you had to toss the circle of fifths. I suspected that was coming due to an experience of my own. In a college Music Theory I course, we had to choose and analyze a piece of orchestral music; the only rule was that it had to be from before 1900. I chose Anitra’s Dance, since I’ve always liked Grieg and knew it well. In short, it took me a fair amount of guesswork, some reading up on Romantic techniques, and a hell of a lot of colored pencils to mark it up. It looked like a Lisa Frank notebook cover. When I presented my work to the prof, she said two things. First, she was pleased that I’d gone beyond what the course had taught us in order to figure out how to analyze it. Second, that she’s changing her rule and disallowing romantic composers for that exercise from then on. It was interesting to discover that the piece has so much going on harmonically, because it doesn’t sound like it’s doing anything particularly weird.