Schoenberg's Harmonielehre

[Carter, p 13:]

• connect chords with an ear to their individualities, to
• arrange them in such progressions

as will produce an effect suitable for the task at hand;

and to achieve this aim, not much skill in voice leading is required.

The little that is necessary

to deal with forbidden parallels, dissonances, and the like

can be mastered rather easily.

Besides,

courses in counterpoint and form

deal in a much more appropriate way with

the construction of parts,

which is really inconceivable without motivic activity,

whereas

for chord connection

not much more is required than

to avoid unmelodic voice leading.

 

On the other hand,

the "melodizing" so commonly encountered

• ruins the pupil’s taste and
• evokes in him false notions concerning composition.

 

Therefore, I prefer the older method, which from the outset required the pupil to determine the sequence of chords himself.

I start with simple phrases whose purposes grow along with the pupil’s skill, from the simplest cadences, through modulation, to some exercises in applying the skills acquired.

This procedure has the advantage that from the very beginning the pupil is himself, [Carter p 15:] in a certain sense, composing.

These phrases

which, guided by the instructions, he sketches out himself

can lay the foundation

upon which his harmonic sense of form can develop.

They will be put together at first without any pretense at "effect"; the pupil’s aims can become more ambitious as the means at his command increase.

Thus he learns

not merely
• to understand the means,
but also
• to apply them correctly.

As soon as possible a definite purpose will be given to each assignment: to establish, to express the key - i.e.

the cadence; and then the contrary: to leave the key - i.e.

modulation.

To the latter I devote the utmost care; for in modulation as in the cadence, the architectonic, the structural functions of harmony, of chord connection, are indeed most intensively expressed.

Here, also, I go back to older methods, in that I do not allow the abrupt modulation that is found in most harmony texts, where to modulate means simply to juxtapose a few unprepared, modulatory chords.

On the contrary, it will be our aim to modulate gradually, to prepare the modulation and make it evolve, so as to form the basis for motivic development.

Analysis of masterworks shows that modulation (say that from the principal theme to the secondary) occurs almost exclusively in this manner; and, since the teacher’s task can only be to impart the technique of the masters to the pupil and to stimulate him thereby wherever possible to go on to composing on his own, every other purely theoretical method is then clearly irrelevant.

We can pass over the question whether such modulations as Richter recommends could ever form the basis for motivic development.

It is certainly doubtful.

It is probable that, in such abrupt modulations, these, the only modulatory chords recommended (dominant 7th or diminished 7th chords), would be much too artless and primitive.

A piece in which such an intense harmonic crisis is manifest surely needs richer and more complex means of modulation.

For my part, I have tried to show as many different means for modulation as possible and to demonstrate, or at least indicate, the wealth of possible combinations.

Again, the first exercises in modulation aim merely at the quickest and simplest solution of the problem; but with every newly mastered means the aim must be extended accordingly.

If, for example, the deceptive cadence is being used, it should guard the final cadence against the monotony of a repetition, yet assure the final cadence the heightened intensity of this repetition.

Thus the pupil learns from the outset to use the means at his command to the greatest possible advantage, that is to say, he learns to exploit his means fully and not to use more of them than necessary.

Here we are teaching composition, as far as it can go in a harmony course.

Yet it should surely go that far.

 

 

I have omitted harmonic analyses in this book, because I consider them superfluous here.

Were the pupil able to extract from the musical literature what he needs for composing, then no one would have to teach harmony.

And it is [Carter p 16:] indeed possible to learn everything this way.

I myself have never formally studied harmony and am therefore one of the many who prove that possibility.

But most pupils do need instruction; and I say: if you do teach, then say all that can possibly be said.

Generally, though, analysis is more a test the author uses for the correctness of his theory than an advantage for the pupil.

I do not deny that it would benefit the pupil to account for the harmonic procedure in masterworks.

But to do this the way it should be done, i.e.

by examining
• the harmonic structure of an entire work and
• the significance of
  • the individual chords and
  • chord progressions,

would be impossible within the limits of a harmony course.

Yet, anything else is relatively pointless.

Those usual analyses which show through what keys a theme modulates, or more correctly, show how many chords, however foreign to the key they may seem, a musical idea can contain without its leaving the key - this is to show something which it is not necessary to show.

For whenever the pupil has the means to do it himself, he will understand it so much better, just by doing it, than he could by analysis - that is, he will understand the harmonic aspect of music.

The balanced relation of motives to harmony, rhythmic elaboration, in short, what really pertains to composition, if it indeed can be explained at all, does not belong in a harmony course.

The pupil is again being shown what is unessential! And I cannot understand how he is ever to grasp the essential if the unessential is always given first place in his study.

 

 

In general I do not intend to name individual methods and engage in polemics against them.

I will confine myself to explaining things as I understand them.

Only when I begin what I believe to be a new interpretation do I find it necessary first to refute the older, usual one.

The same reason that leads me to this new interpretation frees me from the obligation to specify which of the ideas presented I consider new.

As a musician who did not collect his knowledge by reading, but who may rather characterize what he offers as the results of his own thought about his experiences in teaching and composing, I presumably have the right not to be fettered by the citation of sources customary in scholarly works.

Such unfruitful and time-wasting labor may be left to those individuals whose ties to the living art are weaker than their ties to the theoretical.

Instead, I would rather just acknowledge my obvious debt to the existing systems for many ideas.

How many ideas and which ones I no longer know.

Because of the way I have assimilated them, it has long since escaped my power to be so specific.

But I must say, it is mostly to bad books and wrong ideas, which forced me to think and find out what is right, that I owe the best of this book.

Other things came of their own accord from my working through the traditional system.

Everything, however, is based on a steady contemplation of art, hence, is firsthand.

I think that some of the ideas presented here can lay claim to novelty, and that others may to some extent depart from the familiar at least in their precision of statement or in the breadth of perspective afforded by the presentation.

I shall gladly renounce the reputation fro novelty, however, if I may then be spared the chore of wading through the most important harmony texts.

 

 

I should like this book to be, wherever possible, a textbook, thus to serve practical ends: that is, to give the pupil a dependable method for his training.

But I cannot on that account forego the opportunity to make known my views, through an occasional hypothesis, on more complex relationships - on the similarities and relationships between artistic creation and other human activities, on the connections between the natural world outside ourselves and the participating or observing subject.

To repeat: what is said in this regard is not to be considered theory, but rather a more or less detailed comparison, in which it is not as important that it holds in every respect as that it gives rise to psychological and physical exploration.

It is possible that this book will therefore be a little hard for the ordinary musician to grasp, since even today he still does not like to exert himself in thinking.

Possibly it is a book just for the advanced student or for teachers.

In that case I should be sorry, for I should have liked it above all to be of use to beginners.

But I cannot change the way things are, and so I must wait.

I hope, however, that it will not be too late for the ideas I have to offer when the average musician reaches the point where one may write for him, too, in a manner other than "abridged", other than in untearable picture-book style.

Updated: 1999.6.5, 2002.1.23