"A self-contained and comprehensive college textbook, this new work provides the basis for both the one-year course in elementary harmony and the two-year course which includes advanced harmony. A new and more effective approach to this traditional music discipline has long been needed. Accordingly, Professor Forte has provided students of music with a fresh treatment of bases of harmony--one which will lead to a more effective understanding of tonal music. Tradition has by no means been minimized, but many fresh ideas replace older (and, sometimes, inadequate) ones. For example: more comprehensive ideas of harmonic structure, a schema of modulatory progression, and an uncomplicated, learnable system of chord classification are presented here for the first time. The chapters dealing with modulation and melodic structure and development shed new light on those areas. Each section is brief, well-defined, and amply illustrated with musical examples. Emphasis is placed upon composition and analysis. These essential experiences give the general music student a firm foundation in the understanding of harmony--the how as well as the why, the underlying concepts as well as the techniques for manipulating specific materials." --Dust jacket flap.

An exploration of musical harmony from its ancient fundamentals to its most complex modern progressions, addressing how and why it resonates emotionally and spiritually in the individual. W. A. Mathieu, an accomplished author and recording artist, presents a way of learning music that reconnects modern-day musicians with the source from which music was originally generated. As the author states, "The rules of music--including counterpoint and harmony--were not formed in our brains but in the resonance chambers of our bodies." His theory of music reconciles the ancient harmonic system of just intonation with the modern system of twelve-tone temperament. Saying that the way we think music is far from the way we do music, Mathieu explains why certain combinations of sounds are experienced by the listener as harmonious. His prose often resembles the rhythms and cadences of music itself, and his many musical examples allow readers to discover their own musical responses.