Fundamentals of Harmony

From the Foreword: "Over the years the study of Harmony has accumulated and subsequently has become encumbered with a considerable number of minutiae in the form of rules, restrictions and cliches that have but little relevance to the creative problems confronting the composer of today. These venerable academic teachings, many of which bear only a distant relationship to the actual music of any period, can cause the conscientious student to be burdened with something akin to the sin of supererogation, often hindering rather than stimulating creative enterprise. Yet, they do represent well certain facets of a neatly packaged combinatorial system which is the wellspring of all musical composition, regardless of style or period....Therefore, in keeping with the artistically venturesome spirit of the present day it seems more relevant to look at Harmony in its relationship first to actual practical music and, secondly, to the broad creative availabilities of this all-encompassing and pregnant combinatorial system. Thus, the present volume is intended more to serve as a sort of 'launching pad' whereby the young composer will give wings to his musical ideas rather than to provide him with a catechism of outdated and all too often inhibiting theories. Thus, some matters are touched upon only lightly while still others are presented in a sequence that knowledgable connoisseurs of Harmony textbooks may not normally expect. This book is meant merely to serve as a beginning for the inquisitive and questioning student. The music of the masters is his source of enlightenment. To this end, and again for a beginning, he is urged to take as his constant companion during these studies Johann Sebastian Bach's 371 Four-Part Chorales. Herein is to be found one of the most technically sophisticated and artistically superlative exercises in harmonic organization of all time up to the present."