Lesson 17: Introduction to Harmonic Function

[athinaios-]

You, Jacob Gran and Dr. Brellochs are the three youtube sources that are helping me the most.
Thank you very much sir.
I appreciate your time and effort to create these videos.

[lucy]

Thank you so much for this series! I have been following each video. I’m learning music composition so the in depth explanations on all fundamental theory topics is really useful. The examples are great and well explained!

[antonioplazasanz]

Brillante. Todos los vídeos me parecen extraordinarios. ¡Felicidades!

[Dkgogvxz-np]

I always comment when I finish every lectures for making sure I have studied surely. Studying with utube is not easy to focus because there are lots of interesting things. But still here so many people are supplying such nice quality videos. Always thank you professor! :)

[akbarkazimakis]

Thank you so much Professor Monahan. I am an aspiring pianist and I cannot express how grateful I am for these lectures. Learning harmony has proven very useful in analyzing and memorizing music, especially since my performance oriented teacher does not give me much instruction in theory.

[henryopitz]

This is so brilliant. Thank you! I've learnt so much from these videos. (using real life classical music examples really really helps understanding the concepts)!

[SilloniusAeldarian]

i'm abselutely grateful to find this series ! thank you professor!

[praddeeshm]

I love ur videos ❤. Tons of knowledge 🎉

[steverox]

Wonderful lessons series... of a great help. Thank you Mr.Seth Monahan. Love from India ♥

[albrin]

Thank you Professor! very enlightening!

[caterscarrots]

I am thinking of writing a humorous sounding Presto piece. Mozart is the composer of inspiration for this piece. This is what I hear from Mozart in my head when I compose something inspired by him:

Go with the flow. Don't worry about breaking the rules, you can always fix them later. Just get down your main melodic and bass ideas and then fix it if need be.

I know you can get across humor melodically(dynamics, sudden absence, fast notes), and I do that whenever I aim for a humorous sound.

And I know of a few harmonic ways to get across humor. The easiest way is through a deceptive resolution. Another way I know of harmonically getting across humor relies partly on melodic motion, that being undermining a cadence in a way, like for example, doing a diminuendo into another theme right as the cadence ends, or in some other way, using melodic motion that suggests that things aren't done, despite the harmony suggesting otherwise.

Is there anything else I can do besides these approaches I have mentioned to get across a humorous feel while having the piece stay Mozartian in nature?

[brettwaxdeck]

Minor error: Doesn't the third bar of the Mendelssohn example begin with a I64 rather than a V7 as you labeled it. This doesn't really matter, of course, because it's a dominant function, but I want you to see I'm paying attention. [Smiley face.] Anyway, I'm crazy about your course so far!!! I started two days ago and I've made it to video 18 already because I can't stop watching. This is as good as working through a weighty book like Tonal Harmony. I'm a concert pianist who studied harmony at Princeton, Yale and NEC. But I still felt I didn't have things firmly down in my mind. You are tremendously clear and concise. And this will be very helpful to my playing and deeper feeling of music. -Brett

[caterscarrots]

I was wondering, would you say that it's an apt analogy to compare overlapping functional cycles to overlapping melodic phrases? Because this is what I say in my music theory book after showing an example in Mozart of overlapping functional cycles:

This is very common for the ending tonic of one functional cycle to be the starting tonic of the next functional cycle, a harmonic elision if you want to think about it that way. An elision is where 2 melodic phrases overlap seamlessly. Similarly, the overlapping functional cycles can be thought of as a harmonic elision.

[tdtrecordsmusic]

selling that big 18 in a big way
makes me wonder if there was a push back from the pupils... or if its just that our hyper ad-focussed world established the precedent

[alijafari]

Hello Dr. Monahan, I believe the exception that you pointed out early in the video, occurs at about 15:27, at the beginning of the second measure of the Bach chorale that you have shown as an example of overlapping functional cycles, because the IV6/5 chord doesn't belong to the Big 18.

By the way, thank you very much for making these videos, they're fantastic.

[trombonetimo]

I count 6 dominant chords in the Big 18, yet writing 6 or VI or 5 in the quiz yielded me wrong answers. Is your test Flawed? Or am I flawed? Seth we demand answers.

[amirrezaghamari]

thank you . your courses are very helpfull

[waynegram]

Was Beethoven the first composer to start a phrase on the Predominant chords or other chords not on the Tonic? Most Composers from 1800 to 1900 started phrases not on the tonic chords?

[nicolaslg]

According to my notes, what gives the predominant chords their sound is that the contain the fourth degree of the scale. What do you think?

[solanine]

Is there a reason why the inverted vi chord and IV6/4 do not have their usual functions? If I am to write a progression with these inverted chords, would their functions be lost, weakened, or is this just because of convention?