Music 15100
Harmony and
Voice-Leading I

Lawrence Zbikowski
University of Chicago
Department of Music
Autumn Quarter 2007
MWF, 10:30—11:20
Goodspeed Hall 402

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	Week 1
	Week 2
	Week 3
	Week 4
	Exam 1
	Week 5
	Week 6
	Week 7
	Exam 2
	Week 8
	Week 9
	Week 10
	Final Exam

This course begins the three-quarter sequence of harmony and voice-leading courses for students who have some background in music and who are familiar with musical notation. The course will focus on things necessary for an adequate comprehension of tonal music. These include a review of music fundamentals (including chord structure and rhythm), an introduction to two-part counterpoint, an overview of tonal syntax, and an initial consideration of the four-part harmonization of melodies and basses. The course is accompanied by two skills sections: one focuses on the piano keyboard, the other on aural skills.

Erin Sullivan [esull@uchicago.edu]
Fusun Koksal [koksalf@uchicago.edu]

Week 1 (9/24—9/28)

Assigned material

Introduction to the course; diagnostic exams in aural and keyboard skills; review of fundamentals (especially musical intervals).

Assigned material

The structure of major scales, and an introduction to first-species counterpoint; rules and procedures for first-species counterpoint; types of non-harmonic tones.

Assigned material

First-species counterpoint continued; the structure of minor scales, and an introduction to phrase structure in tonal music; chord structure (triads) and rhythmic notation.

We spent most of our time, on 10/8, in the verdant woodlands of first-species counterpoint. Beginning with examples of successful counterpoint exercises from the class (part of the homework returned today), we discussed what made the examples successful. This led to a review of counterpoint rules, which I acknowledged could get quite dense (occupying a significant chunk of Hyer’s Manual for Species Counterpoint). I was on the point of venturing into a multimedia extravaganza to show how the complex could be made simple (through my summary of the rules of counterpoint) when I found that my laptop and the projector would not cooperate with each other. But now that you’re here you can visit the pages on your own.

In the last few moments of class I reviewed a few points about intervals, and introduced a handy-dandy way of thinking about the structure of intervallic space (at least where pitch classes are concerned): the pitch-class clock face. More fun with music theory will follow.

Assigned material

Minor scales, first-species counterpoint, and phrase structure.

EXAM 1, Friday, 10/19.

Review materials are now available for the exam.

Week 5 (10/22—10/26)

Assigned material

Week 6 (10/29—11/2)

Assigned material

Tonal cadences (including the V⁷-I cadence); four-part writing, harmonic inversion, and the basics of seventh chords.

We began on 11/2 by singing, in four parts (SATB), a major scale harmonized in seventh chords. Although fairly handy for singing, the arrangement made talking about the properties of the chords a bit obscure, so I rewrote them on one staff as stacked thirds. I noted that this arrangement could be thought of as consisting of a triad plus a seventh: the triads are already familiar friends, it is really only the sevenths that are new. We discovered four types of seventh chords occurred over the pitches of a major scale, each reckoned in terms of triad + seventh (which I give here together with the common name of the seventh chord): MM (“major seventh”), mm (“minor seventh”), Mm (“dominant seventh”), and md (“half-diminished seventh”). There’s only one other type of seventh chord that occurs regularly in tonal music (which is typically associated with minor mode, and again reckoned in terms of triad + seventh): the dd, or “fully diminished” seventh chord.

Two other aspects of seventh chords rounded out my introduction. First, where each particular type of seventh chord occurs in major. MM sevenths occur on I and IV; mm sevenths on ii, iii, and vi. Both the Mm and the md are unique: the former occurs only on V, the latter only on vii. Given one of these chords, then, one can uniquely identify the key to which it belongs. Second, there was the matter of inversions (and the typical figured bass symbols for these). There are three inversions of seventh chords, each of which is associated with a particular figured bass symbol: first inversion (“6/5”) has the third of the chord in the bass; second inversion (“4/3”) has the fifth of the chord in the bass; and third inversion (“4/2” or simply “2”), which has the seventh of the chord in the bass. In the latter part of class we broke into small groups to complete portions of a worksheet on seventh chords, which replicates the homework assigned for Monday.

Week 7 (11/5—11/9)

Assigned material

Continuation of work with second-species counterpoint and tonal cadences.

EXAM 2, Friday, 11/9.

Review materials are now available.

Unit III

Week 8 (11/12—11/16)

Assigned material

An introduction to figured bass; outer-voice counterpoint using chordal inversions; four-part writing over the phrase.

N.B.: Class will not meet 11/16—this class will be made up on 11/30.

Week 9 (11/19 -11/23)

Assigned material

Week 10 (11/26—11/30)

Resolution of inverted seventh chords.

Assigned material

FINAL EXAM: Monday, 12/3, 10:30—12:30. Review materials will be available shortly before the exam.

Policies:

Late assignments are not accepted for grade.

Grades

Grades will be determined on the basis of the three exams [40%] (Exam 1: 10%; Exam 2: 10%; Final Exam: 20%), homework assignments [40%], and performance in skills sections [20%]. (Note that the percentages given are approximate.)

Homework Assignments

There will be four homework assignments in each unit, for a total of twelve assignments.