Dmitry Nizyaev

The classical course of harmony is based on a strictly four-voice texture, and this has a deep justification. The fact is that all music as a whole - both texture, and form, and the laws of constructing a melody, and all conceivable means of emotional coloring - comes from the laws of human speech, its intonations. Everything in music comes from the human voice. And human voices are divided - almost conditionally - into four registers in height. These are soprano, alto (or "mezzo" in vocal terminology), tenor and bass. All countless varieties of human timbres are only special cases of these four groups. There are simply male and female timbres, and there are high and low among both - these are the four groups. And, strange as it may seem, four voices - different voices- this is exactly the optimal amount necessary for voicing all the harmonies existing in the harmony. Coincidence? God knows... One way or another, let's take it for granted: Four votes is the foundation.

Any texture, no matter how complicated and cumbersome you create it, will essentially be a four-voice, all other voices will inevitably duplicate the roles of the main four. Interesting reference: The timbres of the instruments also fit perfectly into the four-part scheme. Even the ranges of notes available to them are practically the same as the ranges of human voices. Namely, in string group: the role of soprano is played by the violin, mezzo - alto, tenor - cello, bass - double bass, of course. In the woodwind group, in the same order are: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon. For brass: trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba. I am listing all of this for a reason. You can now safely replace the timbres of one group with another without worrying about the pitch range, without rewriting melodies. You can easily transfer the music for a string quartet to the same wind quartet, and the music will not suffer, since the roles of voices, the structures of their melodies, technical limitations, emotional coloring - correspond to each other just like human voices.

So, the first rule: we will do everything in four voices. Secondly, since we are not pursuing the goals of arrangement, but only studying the interaction of consonances (just as mathematics does not mean physical apples or boxes by numbers, but operates with numbers in general), then we do not need any tools. Or rather, anyone who can produce four notes at the same time will do, by default - the piano. In addition, for the sake of purity and transparency of our thinking, we will write examples and exercises in the so-called "harmonic" texture, that is, vertical "pillars", chords. Well, except that from time to time it will be possible to give a more developed textural example to show that the law under study is valid even in such conditions. Rule Three: Harmony exercises or illustrations are written on a piano (i.e. double) musical staff, and the voices are distributed equally among the lines: on the top - soprano and alto, on the bottom - tenor and bass. The spelling of the stems under these conditions differs from the traditional one: regardless of the position of the note head, the stem is always directed upwards for the soprano and tenor, and always downwards for the rest. So that the voices in your eyes are not confused. Fourth: if we need to name a polyphonic consonance with words, the notes are listed from bottom to top with an indication of the sign (even if it is in the key), agreed? Fifthly - this is VERY important - never substitute, say, C-sharp for D-flat in harmony, even though this is the same key. Firstly, these notes do have different meanings (they refer to different keys, have different gravity, etc.), and secondly, despite the generally accepted opinion, they actually even have different pitches! If we start talking about tempered and natural tuning (I don’t know yet if this will happen), then you will see that C-sharp and D-flat are completely different notes, there is nothing in common. So let's agree for now: such a substitution of one sign for another can happen only "for a reason", and not at will. This is called "anharmonism" - we will have such a topic in the future. Well, let's start praying...

STEPS

All patterns studied by harmony are absolutely exactly repeated in any key, they simply do not depend on the name of the tonic. Therefore, in order to express this or that consideration, suitable for any key, we cannot use the names of notes. For convenience, the scale of any key is supplied with numbers that replace the names of notes, and these conditional numbers are called steps. That is, the very first, main sound of the scale - no matter what note it is and what mode it is - becomes the first step, then the count goes up to the seventh step (in C major, for example, it is "si"), after which follows first again. Step numbers will be represented by Roman numerals "I - VII". And if we find that, for example, between D and F (II and IV degrees of C major) there is an interval of a minor third, then you can be sure that the same interval will be between the II and IV degrees of any major, no matter how impossible the signs are neither turned out to be at the key. Convenient, isn't it?

sobriety

We already know that a triad is a combination of three notes arranged in thirds. To make you feel at ease among the triads, I advise you to practice building triads from arbitrary notes both up and down. Moreover, it would be nice to be able to do this just instantly, combining three methods: press them on the keys (even on imaginary ones), sing them in order to memorize their color, and sing them silently, in the imagination. This is how an "inner ear" is brought up, which will help you to have sounding music right in your head, continue working right on the street, and in addition, it will give you the opportunity, which is hardly available to anyone, to “lead”, “sing”, track in your mind several melodic lines at once (after all, you won’t cover more than one melody at a time with your voice!).

You have already been told that there are four types of triads: major, minor, augmented and diminished. But these are just words, names. But are these words associated in your mind with coloring? What emotions does the word "reduced" evoke in you? This is where your inner ear is at your service, and you feel a relative "minority" (due to the abundance of small thirds) and a cutting "live" dissonance (a diminished fifth). As a result - a sad, aching, full of pain, and at the same time reeking of oriental exotic coloring. You have also been told what a fret is. We already know that if you "select" for work among absolutely identical semitones several, located in a certain way on the keyboard, then the concept of tonic appears, gravity appears, in a word, unequal relationships between the selected notes. Fret - this is the whole set of gravity, stability of a certain set of sounds. We now introduce a new term - "diatonic". This is something like a coordinate system within which all events take place. That is, we are dealing with only seven keys out of twelve in each octave, and the remaining five do not seem to exist for us. These seven keys are the diatonic scale, the diatonic scale, the current coordinate system for key and mode data, is that clear? Any sound that does not belong to this scale is no longer considered "diatonic", but "chromatic" (in a given key). And now back to our triads. From theory lessons, you know that a major triad consists of a major and minor third, right? But it's out of tune. But within the diatonic of the same C-major, the combination of the steps of the mode and their gravity comes to the fore, while the intervals between them lose all interest. For example, the major triad from the note "fa" really consists of a large (fa-la) and small (la-do) thirds, and this still does not say anything, this is a faceless and uncolored definition. And if we press the triad "fa - do - la", then it will turn out to be consisting of a fifth and a sixth, and will not fit this definition! But in terms of the key of C major, our triad takes on meaning: this is a subdominant triad, regardless of the location of the notes inside it. The characters and desires of each note become noticeable in it.

"Fa" - quite firmly on his feet, but not averse to go to "mi". Because "fa" is prima, the main sound of the chord, and if it is resolved in "mi" - it will become just a third of a new chord - and it's more pleasant for anyone to be the first guy in the village than small fry in the town! "La" - the sound is unstable and indecisive, although he smiles. Judge for yourself: "la" is not a leader here either, and after resolution, nothing better shines for him than to be farthest from the tonic. However, "la" is still a major, major third, so it radiates optimism. "Before" is a completely different matter. She is above all, she the right way, she will have to become a queen (that is, a tonic) and at the same time she won’t have to lift a finger. "Do" will remain in its place, and honor and respect will come to her themselves. Here is the event "fa-la-do... mi-sol-do" for you, containing a lot of emotions and adventures at once. You can guess that in conditions of a different key, when the F major triad is on a different level, each of its notes will have completely different colors and emotions, weigh differently. Let's make such a conclusion - it's still not enough to know how this or that chord is built! The most interesting thing with this chord will happen only in the key. And from the point of view of harmony, any triad should be called not major or minor - this is not the main thing now - but a triad of one degree or another, or one or another functional group. Moreover, it can be built not only by thirds, do you agree?

Now let's just see what triads we have in major and minor. I do not think that this should be memorized, it will be remembered gradually by itself; just follow. To do this, we take the natural (that is, the main, unchanged) major scale, and from each step we measure the triad. We shouldn't care whether there are large or small thirds, we should only measure steps through one, remaining in this diatonic, okay?

And so on. Having built everything that is possible, we will get the following list for the major: I degree-major; II - minor; III - minor; IV - major; V - major; VI - minor; VII - reduced. And for the minor: I step - minor; II - reduced; III - major; IV - minor; V - minor; VI - major; VII - major.

To summarize: in both modes, the triads of the main steps (I, IV, V) coincide with the main mode. The mediant and submediant (III, VI) have the opposite mode. The triads of the introductory steps (these are II and VII, adjacent to the tonic) just need to be remembered, they do not fit into the symmetrical scheme. So that you do not have to return to the question of where and what triads are located in the key, practice:

1. Find the tonic from the triad (for example, the triad "B-flat - D - F, major: in what keys can it be found; what is the tonic if this triad is the VI degree? Or III-rd? Or IV-th?").
2. Build triads of any steps in any key. For a while! Tips: build triads for now in classical form as learned in music theory lessons. Do not invent any appeals yet. So far, the task is to find out what notes a chord consists of, and the location of the notes, even in what octave, is still unimportant. Secondly, try not to get too used to C-major, try to work in any keys. It depends on your flexibility and independence from the number of key signs in general whether you will be able to apply at least something in life. No information in your head should be stored in the form of note names. Otherwise, knowing that "C-Mi-Sol" is a major triad, you do not recognize the same triad in the notes "A-flat - C-E-flat", understand? Be more versatile! In the next lesson, when you are already clicking these steps and triads like nuts, we will learn how to connect them together and try to color some melody with them.

The colorfulness of musical harmony

1. Strengthening the colorfulness of musical harmony in works written on fairy-tale and fantastic plots.
2. Mosaic of colors and sounds in "Procession of Sea Wonders" from the opera "Sadko" by N. Rimsky-Korsakov.
3. Is it always harmonious musical harmony. What is disharmony? The reasons for its occurrence.

Music material:

1. “Procession of sea wonders”, “The appearance of swans and their magical transformation in girls”, “Dance of golden-finned and silver-scaled fish” from the opera “Sadko” by N. Rimsky-Korsakov (hearing).

Characteristics of activities:

1. Learn by characteristics(harmony) music of individual outstanding composers (N. Rimsky-Korsakov).
2. Establish associations between artistic images music and visual arts.
3. Watch the development of one image in music.
4. Talk about the brightness of musical images in music.

Harmony, touching the secrets human soul, she herself learned to be many-sided, changeable, fluid. A variety of expressions became available to her - portrait and landscape characteristics, colors and color combinations. Harmony has penetrated into the "soul" of even inanimate objects - trees and clouds, seas and lakes, fresh flowers and fallen leaves; she became the spokesman for these hitherto silent "inhabitants" of the world.

Harmony has reached an extraordinary brilliance in works written on fairy-tale and fantastic plots.

We have already addressed the fabulous musical images, which is one of the most beautiful aspects of musical art. They also talked about the great musical storyteller, such as N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, who created a whole gallery of bizarre fairy tale characters, images, landscapes. Their captivating emotional impact is associated with many features of musical means - the colorfulness of harmonies and timbres, the expressiveness of rhythms and melodies.

From the epic about Sadko

Fairy tales, legends, legends of different peoples of the world keep the names of their outstanding musicians. Yes, in Ancient Russia for several centuries, epics were composed about the Novgorod gusli Sadko. One of them stated:

In glorious Novegrad
How was Sadko the merchant, a rich guest.
And before Sadok had no property:
Some were guselki yarovchatye.
The fame of him flowed like a river through Veliky Novgorod:
They called Sadka in the golden-domed boyar towers,
In merchant mansions white stone.
He will play, start a chant -
Everyone listens to the harpist, they won’t listen enough ...

Sadko decided to sail to distant seas - to see enough of unseen miracles, to visit countries unheard of and to sing the glory of Lord Veliky Novgorod there.

And he said to the rich merchants of Novgorod: “If I had a gold treasury and a good warrior, I would not sit in Novy-gorod. I would not live in the old way - on duty. I wouldn't feast day and night, I wouldn't feast. My beads-ships would run, the blue seas would go around. I would buy pearls and semi-precious stones in the distant lands and build churches of God with golden domes in Novy-Gorod. Then the glory of Novgorod would spread across the distant seas, across the expanses of the earth.

The arrogant merchants got angry, could not stand the reproach: “It is not for you to reproach us, it is not for you to teach us. You are a simple hussler, not a trading guest. They laughed at him and drove him away. Sadko was saddened, went to the shore of Ilmen Lake, struck the sonorous strings and sang a twisted song:

Oh, you dark oak tree!
Step aside, give me a path.

Ilmen-lake heard a wondrous song, stirred up. A flock of swans emerged. They turned into red girls. With amazing skill, the composer draws a fantastic picture: accompanied by grace notes (a grace note is one of the types of small melodic vocal and instrumental decorations) of flutes, like a bird's chirping, the melodious melody of swan girls.

Hearing: Scene "The appearance of the swans and their magical transformation into girls"

The beautiful Volkhova, the daughter of the Tsar of the Sea, came ashore: “Your song has flown to the deep bottom of Lake Ilmen. Your wonderful songs filled my heart. For the song and for the game, Volkhov promised a marvelous garden of wonderful fish - golden feathers. "Throw a net, catch them, you will be rich and happy ..."

From the depths of the lake rises sea ​​king and orders the daughters to return home. Instantly turning into swans and ducks, the maidens disappear.

Volkhov fulfilled her promise. All the city people gathered on Novgorodskaya Square. Here are the poor, and rich merchants, and passerby kaliks, singing divine chants, and buffoons, amusing the people with jokes and dances. The composer paints the life of a medieval city juicy and vividly. It seems that there is no place for anything unreal. But no. Fantasy comes into its own again when Sadko goes fishing for goldfish. Volkhova's voice is heard, repeating her promise: "Throw a net, you will catch them ..."

And now the fish are caught, and immediately they turn into bars of gold. “Wonderful miracle, marvelous wonder,” the people are surprised, having just showered ridicule on Sadko.

The composer creates a miracle: against the background of trills of woodwinds, strings and piano, loud voices of copper are heard. Ringing beats of bells, a triangle, cymbals, passages of harps - all this sparkles, shimmers, glistens, exact real gold.

Hearing: Aria Sadko "The Month of Golden Horns" (fragment)

Sadko won the dispute with the merchants, now all the goods belong to him, he is rich and goes on a trip.

For twelve years, Sadko has been traveling around the world with his squad. But, he feels, the hour of reckoning has come: a ship has stood in the middle of the sea. By lot, they threw Sadko into the sea as a tribute to the Sea King, and the ship went its own way.

Sea bottom. Volkhova's father decided to marry her to Sadko, arranged a magnificent celebration. Sadko magnifies the Sea Tsar, then follows the procession of sea miracles, the dance of rivers and streams, the dance of golden-finned and silver-scaled fish, and, finally, the general dance, in which all the guests participate, Sadko with Volkhova and the Sea Tsar himself.

Hearing: "Dance of gold-finned and silver-scaled fish"

Hearing: "Procession of the Wonders of the Sea"

The sea raged, a storm broke out on it, sinking, breaking ships ... In the midst of fun, Starchishche appears - a mighty hero. He stops the dance, commands the Underwater Kingdom to disappear, sea ​​princess- turn into a river, and Sadko - return to Novgorod.

"Procession of the Wonders of the Sea" from N. Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "Sadko" is one of the examples of the extraordinary brilliance of harmony. drawing Magic world underwater kingdom - mysterious, invisible to people, the composer chooses such chords that emphasize the atmosphere of mystery, romance, fabulous beauty.

The fragment is called "Procession of the Miracles of the Sea", that is, it indicates the moment of movement. At the same time, the movement of "miracles" is flexible, fluid, slow. This is not the open element of the sea - these are its unknown depths, not warmed by the human gaze.

Smoothly gliding before the eyes of their master, the "wonders of the sea" seem to add up a colorful musical mosaic. By the end of the "Procession ..." the movement calms down and freezes, as if taking away the last splashes of water. For a short time, the music freezes in the picture of boundless fabulous beauty created by it.

Concluding the conversation about harmony, let's try to answer one more question: is musical harmony always harmonious? After all, music that moves away from harmonious sounding, refusing light and peace, itself becomes different. When conveying human sorrows and suffering, tense melodies and jerky rhythms appear in it.

Should music be like this? Is not joy and tranquility the purpose of this art?

Music becomes disharmonic (disharmony is a violation of harmony) only because it is disharmonic real life, in which not everything is only light and peace, in which anxiety, pain, and loss always remain.

But this disharmony is not tantamount to chaos (chaos is disorder, confusion), because music retains all the highest that art carries in itself - the desire for light, the nobility of design, the expressiveness of musical means. Finally, it retains the main thing that is inherent in genuine art - its mercy, boundless love for everything it touches. And where there is this love, out of opposites, out of doubts and questions, the highest harmony always arises.

This harmony is the true soul of art, its beauty and truth.

Questions and tasks:

1. What image is created by harmony in the "Procession of the Miracles of the Sea" from the opera "Sadko" by N. Rimsky-Korsakov?
2. Is musical harmony always harmonious? Explain your answer.
3. Name the harmonious and disharmonious, in your opinion, phenomena of the surrounding life.
4. What content is capable of expressing musical harmony?

The presentation used illustrations by Gennady Spirin for the fairy tale "Sadko".

SUMMARY on the theory of music "The idea of ​​musical harmony" Contents 1. Harmony in the surrounding world 2. The role of harmony in music 3. Chords 4. Consonances and dissonances Conclusion Literature 1. Harmony in the surrounding world What do we usually mean by the word "harmony"? What phenomena around us are characterized by this word? We are talking about the harmony of the universe, meaning the beauty and perfection of the world (a field of scientific, natural and philosophical); we use the word "harmony" in connection with a person's personality (harmonious nature), characterizing his spiritual inner integrity (ethico-psychological area); and finally, we call a work of art harmonious - poetry, prose, paintings, films, etc. - if we feel naturalness in them. organicity, harmony (this is an artistic and aesthetic area). The philosophical and aesthetic concept of harmony was developed with ancient times.

Among the Greeks, it was reflected in the myths about space and chaos, about Harmony.

In the V-IV centuries. BC e. the first evidence of the use of the word "harmony" in a special musical-theoretical sense is also noted. In Philolaus and Plato, “harmony” is the octave scale (a kind of octave), which was conceived as a combination of fourths and fifths. Aristoxenus called "harmony" one of the three - enharmonic - genera of melos. In all these different areas, with the word "harmony" we have an idea of ​​the coherence of the whole and the parts, beauty, in short - that reasonable proportionality of the beginnings, which is the basis of everything perfect in life and art.

Music is no exception here: harmonica, harmony in a broad artistic and aesthetic sense characterizes every significant piece of music, the author's style. 2.

The role of harmony in music

Music is multi-valued, but behind the multiplicity of its meanings lies the unchanging... Over time, the concept of harmony has changed. In artistic practice (and especially if the composer writes for symphony... Therefore, sixth chords are usually used in the middle of musical constructions... Over the past three centuries, this chord has become extremely widespread...

Conclusion Probably, the contradictory nature of harmony has become the reason that musical harmony is almost entirely built on opposites.

Light major and sad minor are opposite; consonance, with its consonant sound, opposes dissonance with its angular tension - such is the eternally tense, dynamic and changeable world of musical harmony.

In fact, harmony in a piece of music expresses aspirations and suffering, dreams and hopes, anxieties and thoughts - everything that human life is full of. The root ability of musical harmony is in the ability to transmit various shades human feelings, sometimes directly opposite.

After all, harmony at all times relied on modes, different in their expressive meaning. Already ancient Greek philosophers argued about the nature of the impact of musical modes, recognizing that a change in even one sound within a mode leads to the opposite assessment of its expressiveness. And it really is. Major and minor triads differ only in one sound, but they sound completely different. The world of human feelings, everything high and low, beautiful and ugly that is in the human soul, everything is reflected in the art of music.

The appeal to this figurative sphere led to the fact that musical harmony discovered in itself inexhaustible artistic riches, a variety of expressive means and techniques. Truly, the world of the human soul is an inexhaustible treasury of all kinds of miracles that you will not find anywhere else. In music addressed to human feelings, an unprecedented flourishing has reached not only the juxtaposition of major and minor, capable of expressing a change of moods and images, but also dissonant harmonies that convey the roughness of appearance and character, contradictions inner peace human, conflicts and clashes between people.

Harmony always arises from opposites and contradictions where there is love. After all, harmony is the true soul of art, its beauty and truth. Literature 1. Kholopov Yu. N. Harmony. Theoretical course, M 1988. 2. Harmony: Theoretical course: Textbook. - St. Petersburg: Publishing house "Lan", 2003 544 ill. - (Textbooks for universities.

Special literature). 3. A book about music: Popular essays. / Comp. G. Golovinsky, M. Reuterstern - M.; Publishing house of the Soviet. Composer, 1988 4. T.B. Romanov Music, inaudible music, inaudible in music and science.

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Music is an integral part of our lives and accompanies almost everywhere - it sounds on TV and radio, in theater and cinema. Taste preferences of people in this matter are different. Someone loves the classics, and someone - hard Rock or pop directions, or a diverse combination of them.

Harmony as a science

In any matter there is such a thing as harmony. Many works have been written on this topic in different time periods. The main associations that arise with this word are calmness, peace. It can be traced literally in all spheres of human life, philosophical foundations universe.

Many cultural and religious principles of various peoples of the world praise and consider it the basis of human life. Harmony with oneself fills life with meaning and creates favorable conditions for its development and maintaining ties with other people.

Music and harmony

The harmony in music is no exception. The well-coordinated sound of instruments in an orchestra or group, pleasant to the ear motives that you want to sing and listen to over and over again ... The combination of many notes, tones and keys also includes this concept. There is even a whole science that answers the question of what musical harmony is.

She describes and studies certain rules and patterns of matching notes in different styles and keys in from a technical and compositional point of view. Their consonance determines the logical sequence. There are several areas in which the definition of "harmony in music" applies:

• Musical mode.
• Style.
• Accordica.
• Individual specificity of author's works.

It reveals and denotes a peculiar relationship and interconnection of various rather specific musical and artistic elements and combinations inherent in music.

With all the simultaneous sincerity, eccentricity, classical construction of the works, they are connected by the highest logic of the combination of sounds. It helps various compositions to speak and convey the author's message to listeners. Without such a high degree of organization and compliance with many rules, laws and concepts, numerous world musical masterpieces would not have been born.

History of the musical concept

Music has been around for a long time. People have been studying sounds and their combination since ancient times. Although the concept itself was somewhat different from the modern one. It contained a deeper philosophical meaning. Therefore, harmony in music was considered as a combination of music and the Universe, cosmic harmony, which should coincide with human soul. There was even a juxtaposition of music and architecture as its static manifestation, in which harmony and coherence of forms, materials and all elements also reigned.

Music in its various manifestations is a peculiar way of modeling the world, a way of life that famous and not so famous musicians and composers saw in their own way and tried to embody. It is worth noting that the creation and study of music and its laws is directly related to human speech, its logic, sequence, purity, frequency and intonation.

The chronology of the study of this concept dates back to Ancient Rome, China, and is gradually gaining momentum in its expansion. The study of the concepts of sound, intervals, keys, mode, modalities is also connected with this. The greatest study and development of the concept of harmony appeared in the Middle Ages, in the middle of the 16th century, and develops to modern musical and scientific discoveries. As new ones are opened musical instruments the form of development from a monophonic sound combination to polyphonic music became more complicated. And the term "harmony in music" also underwent changes.

Properties of harmony

Notes are transformed into sounds, then tones, chords appear, a work is born. A person who does not study carefully music device, it is rather difficult to determine the degree of combination of all elements. Listening to the perception of the melody and motive. Tragic, romantic, comedy genre of works ... Through the close connection of sounds, the mood, emotional experiences of the characters or the author, who is going through everything, are conveyed.

For a long time, cinema was accompanied only by music played by musicians, conveying messages through it and revealing the additional possibilities of actors who worked only with the help of facial expressions. In this vein, we can safely say that the harmony of the soul is music in any of its manifestations.

Manifestation of harmony

If we talk about its manifestations, then they are built on opposites and close connections of a number of elements. They seem to repeat human nature, in which there is so much coherence and disagreement at the same time. This is what gives musical harmony such inconsistency, complete interconnection and addition of sounds, tones, chords and modes.

Harmony in the environment

What do we usually mean by the word "harmony"? What phenomena around us are characterized by this word? We are talking about the harmony of the universe, meaning the beauty and perfection of the world (a field of scientific, natural and philosophical); we use the word "harmony" in connection with a person's personality (harmonious nature), characterizing his spiritual inner integrity (ethico-psychological area); and finally, we call a work of art harmonious - poetry, prose, paintings, films, etc. - if we feel naturalness in them. organicity, harmony (this is an artistic and aesthetic area).

The philosophical and aesthetic concept of harmony has been developed since ancient times. Among the Greeks, it was reflected in the myths about space and chaos, about Harmony. In the V-IV centuries. BC e. the first evidence of the use of the word "harmony" in a special musical-theoretical sense is also noted. In Philolaus and Plato, “harmony” is the octave scale (a kind of octave), which was conceived as a combination of fourths and fifths. Aristoxenus called "harmony" one of the three - enharmonic - genera of melos.

In all these different areas, with the word "harmony" we have an idea of ​​the coherence of the whole and the parts, beauty, in short - that reasonable proportionality of the beginnings, which is the basis of everything perfect in life and art. Music is no exception here: harmonica, harmony in a broad artistic and aesthetic sense characterizes every significant piece of music, the author's style.

The role of harmony in music

Since ancient times, the harmony of music has been associated with the harmony of the cosmos, and, as the philosopher I.A. Gerasimov, music also carried a certain philosophical meaning. only one who was in tune with the cosmic tone through his music could be considered a true musician

The question why exactly music was considered as something denoting the connection between the earthly and heavenly, the cosmic order and the earthly world, requires an appeal to the concept of harmony. The very concept of harmony requires some additional interpretation in this connection. Despite the fact that harmony from a technical point of view is traditionally associated primarily with music, the concept itself is much broader. When mentioning the harmony of the world, it means its order and a certain perfect structure, a structure characterized primarily by its spatial arrangement. The concept of harmony thus extends to spatial figures. This is also evident from the presence of numerous references to architectural harmony. The reversibility of the concept of harmony is also reflected in the characterization of architecture as silent, frozen music. For all the metaphorical nature of these definitions, they reflect a quite recognizable and concrete combination and replacement of spatial and temporal characteristics. The geometric perception of sound is known, for example, enclosed in an ornament, characteristic of ancient east or Pythagorean geometric images of harmonic sounds, which is only an illustration of the stability of the noted connection.

Music is a special type of modeling of the world, where it is considered as a perfect system. The latter distinguishes it from other ideas about the myth. Music is multi-valued, but behind the multiplicity of its meanings lies the unchanging framework of musical syntax, described by mathematical structures. Already in this duality, music is similar to both the world and science, speaking the clear language of mathematics, but trying to embrace the diversity of the changing world.

Musical harmony is one of the most harmoniously organized phenomena. The abstractness of sound needs an over-concentrated logic - otherwise the music would not say anything to people. One look at modal and tonal systems, for example, can reveal to scientists from different areas possible models of harmonious organization, where instincts and aspirations of tones are born in an infinite acoustic environment, permeated with the human creative spirit.

The ability of musical art to predict is amazing greatest achievements scientific thought. But no less amazing is the ability musical theory: appearing with a natural delay, she steps steadily into her line on the basis of predicted scientific booms in order to master them in the developed musical-theoretical systems

The concept of harmony in music dates back approximately 2500 years. The concept of harmony, traditional for us (and the corresponding interpretation of the most important compositional and technical discipline) as the science of chords in the major-minor tonal system, developed mainly by the beginning of the 18th century.

Let's turn to ancient Greek mythology. Harmony was the daughter of Ares, the god of war and discord, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. That is why the combination of insidious and destructive power and the all-encompassing power of eternal youth, life and love is the basis of balance and peace, personified by Harmony. And harmony in music almost never appears in its finished form, but on the contrary, it is achieved in development, struggle, formation.

The Pythagoreans very deeply and with infinite perseverance understood musical harmony as consonance, and consonance - necessarily as a quart, fifth and octave in comparison with the fundamental tone. Some people also declared duodecima, that is, the combination of an octave and a fifth, or even two octaves, to be consonant. Basically, however, it was the fourth, fifth and octave that appeared everywhere, first of all, as consonances. This was an inexorable requirement of ancient hearing, which clearly and very stubbornly, in the first place, considered the quart, fifth and octave to be consonances, and we must reckon with this requirement as an irrefutable historical fact.

Subsequently, the concept of harmony retained its semantic basis ("logos"), however, specific ideas about harmony as a pitch coherence were dictated by the relevant for this historical era music by evaluation criteria. With the development of polyphonic music, harmony was divided into “simple” (monophonic) and “composite” (polyphonic; in the treatise of the English theorist W. Odington “The Sum of the Theory of Music”, early 14th century); later, harmony began to be interpreted as the doctrine of chords and their connections (in J. Tsarlino, 1558, - the theory of the chord, major and minor, major or minor in all modes; in M. Mersenne, 1636--1637, - the ideas of world harmony, the role of the bass as the foundation of harmony, the discovery of the phenomenon of overtones in the composition of musical sound).

Sound in music is the initial element, the core from which a piece of music is born. But the arbitrary order of sounds cannot be called a work of art, that is, the presence of the original elements is not beauty. Music, real music, begins only when its sounds are organized according to the laws of harmony - the natural laws that a piece of music inevitably obeys. I want to note that this art is important not only in music, but also in any other field. Having learned harmony, you can easily apply it both in ordinary life and in magic.

The presence of harmony is palpable in any work. In its highest, harmonious manifestations, it acts as a continuously streaming light, in which, undoubtedly, there is a reflection of unearthly, divine harmony. The flow of music carries the stamp of sublime peace and balance. This does not mean, of course, that they lack dramatic development, the hot pulse of life is not felt. Absolutely serene states rarely occur in music.

The science of harmony in the new sense of the word, as the science of chords and their successions, essentially begins with the theoretical works of Rameau.

In the works of Rameau, there is a clear tendency towards a natural-scientific explanation of musical phenomena. He seeks to derive the laws of music from a single foundation given by nature. This is the "sounding body" - a sound that includes a number of partial tones. “There is nothing more natural,” Rameau writes, “than what directly comes from tone” (136, p. 64). Rameau recognizes the principle of harmony as the basic sound (fundamental bass), from which intervals and chords are derived. He also determines the connections of consonances in harmony, the relationship of keys. The chord is conceived by Rameau as an acoustic and functional unity. He deduces the main, normative for his time consonant triads from three intervals contained in a series of overtones: a pure fifth, a major and a minor third. The reference fifth interval can be divided into two thirds in various ways, which gives major and minor triads, and thus two modes - major and minor (134, p. 33). Rameau recognizes the chord built by thirds as the main type of chord. Others are regarded as his conversions. This brought an unprecedented order to the understanding of harmonic phenomena. From the so-called triple proportion, Rameau derives the fifth ratios of three triads. He revealed, in essence, the functional nature of harmonic connections, classified harmonic sequences and cadences. They found that the process musical development controlled harmoniously.

Correctly capturing the truly characteristic classical music the dependence of melody on harmonic logic, Rameau one-sidedly absolutized this position, not wanting to notice and take into account in his theory the dynamic role of melody, which alone could endow the classically balanced model of harmony proposed by him with genuine movement. It is in the one-sidedness of Rameau, who faced the no less one-sided position of J.-J. Rousseau, who affirmed the primacy of melody, is the cause of the famous dispute between Rameau and Rousseau.

Musical theory operates with the word "harmony" in a strictly defined sense.

Harmony refers to one of the main aspects musical language associated with the unification of sounds in simultaneity (so to speak, with a vertical "cut" of the musical fabric), and the unification of consonances with each other (horizontal "cut"). Harmony is a complex area of ​​musical expression, it combines many elements of musical speech - melody, rhythm, governs the laws of development of the work.

In order to compose for oneself the initial, most general idea about harmony, let's start with case study, recalling the theme of Grieg's play "Housesickness". Let's listen to it, paying special attention to the consonances that make up the accompaniment.

First of all, we note that all consonances are different: both in their composition (in some there are three different sounds, in others four), and in the quality of the sound, the impression made - from soft, rather calm (first), "strong ”, stable (second, last) to the most intense, unstable (third, sixth, seventh) with a large number of intermediate shades in between. Such different consonances give a rich coloring to the melodic voice, giving it such emotional nuances that it does not possess by itself.

We will find further that the harmonies, although separated by pauses, are closely interconnected with each other, one naturally passes into the other. Any arbitrary permutation will break this connection, break the natural sound of the music.

Let us pay attention to one more feature of harmony in this example. The melody without accompaniment breaks up into four separate phrases, their similarity serves to divide the melody. And the accompaniment, built on different consonances, moreover, sequentially interconnected, as if arising from one another, masks this similarity, removes the effect of “verbatim” repetition, and as a result, we perceive the whole theme as a single, renewing and developing. Finally, only in the unity of the melody and accompaniment do we get a clear idea of ​​the completeness of the theme: after a series of rather tense chords, a calmer final one creates a feeling of the end of the musical thought. Moreover, this feeling is much more distinct and weighty in comparison with the feeling that the ending of only one melody produces.

Thus, in this one example, it is obvious how diverse and essential the role of harmony in a piece of music is. From our brief analysis it is clear that two sides are equally important in harmony - the emerging sound combinations and their connection with each other.

So, harmony is a certain system of vertical combinations of sounds into consonances and a system of communication of these consonances with each other.

The term "harmony" in relation to music originated in Ancient Greece and meant certain ratios of sounds. And since the music of those times was monophonic, these natural relationships were derived from the melody - from the succession of sounds one after another (that is, in terms of melodic intervals). Over time, the concept of harmony has changed. This happened with the development of polyphony, with the appearance of not one, but several voices, when the question arose about their consistency in simultaneous sounding.

Music of the 20th century developed a slightly different concept of harmony, with which considerable difficulties are associated in its theoretical understanding and, accordingly, is one of the most important special problems of the modern doctrine of harmony.

At the same time, the perception of a particular chord as harmony (that is, consonance) or as a set of unrelated sounds depends on the musical experience of the listener. Thus, to an unprepared listener, the harmony of the music of the 20th century may seem like a chaotic set of sounds taken in simultaneity.

Let's take a closer look at the means of harmony, considering first the properties of individual consonances, and then the logic of their combinations.