Hello to my old friends here.
As a jazz and rock musician, one of my interests is the historical development of harmony, how the rich contrasts in chords came about, which give post-Renaissance Western music, including popular styles as well as classical, such emotional and dramatic richness. This in contrast to the more generalized emotional states of earlier music, where the various modes produce a more airy feeling and states of repose - not absolutely and always, but much more so when compared with later music.
It became clear to me that the addition to chords of the third note of the scale was the key factor in this change, and I wanted to trace how this happened. For instance, how a typical root chord of one and five was transformed by the addition of the third, making it one, three and five. I tried a few tomes on harmony but they were too specialized and technical for me to wade through.
So I went to Wikipedia but couldn't find anything on it. A lot of description of harmony and some of how it came about, but nothing about the addition of the third. So I tried Encyclopedia Britannica Online and there it was, a lengthy and meaty story of how harmony developed in the 16th and 17th centuries, written by an expert, with the third given its proper importance. Including that it was originally thought of as a dissonance, not a harmony, quite interesting. And also very interesting was the statement that along with the development of harmony came the forward impetus, or goal, of music, building toward a resolution and end, in contrast to earlier music, which seemingly just IS, peacefully, rather than having a notable forward impetus.
The moral for me is that Wikipedia is no substitute for a real encyclopedia written by experts. Often Wikipedia is very technical, too technical for a layman to understand, but I now think that maybe some of this is talented amateurs showing off their knowledge when they may not have a large enough grasp of their subject matter to make it both really knowledgeable
AND understandable by an educated layman. As Britannica was in this case.
For me, this was an important thing to learn.
As a jazz and rock musician, one of my interests is the historical development of harmony, how the rich contrasts in chords came about, which give post-Renaissance Western music, including popular styles as well as classical, such emotional and dramatic richness. This in contrast to the more generalized emotional states of earlier music, where the various modes produce a more airy feeling and states of repose - not absolutely and always, but much more so when compared with later music.
It became clear to me that the addition to chords of the third note of the scale was the key factor in this change, and I wanted to trace how this happened. For instance, how a typical root chord of one and five was transformed by the addition of the third, making it one, three and five. I tried a few tomes on harmony but they were too specialized and technical for me to wade through.
So I went to Wikipedia but couldn't find anything on it. A lot of description of harmony and some of how it came about, but nothing about the addition of the third. So I tried Encyclopedia Britannica Online and there it was, a lengthy and meaty story of how harmony developed in the 16th and 17th centuries, written by an expert, with the third given its proper importance. Including that it was originally thought of as a dissonance, not a harmony, quite interesting. And also very interesting was the statement that along with the development of harmony came the forward impetus, or goal, of music, building toward a resolution and end, in contrast to earlier music, which seemingly just IS, peacefully, rather than having a notable forward impetus.
The moral for me is that Wikipedia is no substitute for a real encyclopedia written by experts. Often Wikipedia is very technical, too technical for a layman to understand, but I now think that maybe some of this is talented amateurs showing off their knowledge when they may not have a large enough grasp of their subject matter to make it both really knowledgeable
AND understandable by an educated layman. As Britannica was in this case.
For me, this was an important thing to learn.
It has been a very long time since you last posted. Hope you are doing well.
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