Harmony and musical Analysis 1

(Daniele Sabaino Ingrid Pustijana)

First module:
(Daniele Sabaino)
The course aims to provide students with the basics of theory and practice of functional harmony.
Course topics: Chord definition. Triads and their use on scale degrees. Root position and inversions.
Seventh chords and their types. Concepts of consonance and dissonance. Secondary dominants and
tonicization of scale degrees. Suspensions and other melodic phenomena. Altered chords. Harmonic
functions. Voice leading. Cadences. Form construction through cadence succession. The expansion of
tonal space (sequences and modulations).

Basic bibliography:
W. PISTON, Harmony, revised edition, New York, Norton & Co., 1948;
D. ZANETTOVICH, Appunti per il corso di armonia principale, vol. 1, Milano, Sonzogno, 1985
2
.

As in the CFU-system lesson attendance is integral to the training, students not attending classes must
arrange further readings with the teacher.


Second module:
(Ingrid Pustijanac)

The course will focus on methodological tools for analyzing classical musical form, using concepts primarily
proposed in the 18
th
century texts of Formenlehre, further supplemented by principles developed by Arnold
Schoenberg and his students (in particular, Erwin Ratz). Basic components of form, such as proposition,
motiv, Gestalt, and bigger thematic relationships to form will be examined, as well as ideas of framing,
fragmentation, and intensification, and we will attempt to understand what constitutes tight-knit versus
loose structure. Techniques of variation, development, and variation within development will also be
looked at.
Some emphasis will be given to the formal structures in the piano music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

The scores of works chosen for analysis will be distributed during the course; among the extracts are the
following literature:
A. SCHNBERG, Elementi di composizione musicale, revisione di G. Strang e L. Stein, trad. italiana di G.
Manzoni, Milano, Suvini Zerboni, 1969;
E. RATZ, Einfhrung in die musikalische Formenlehre: ber Formprinzipien in den Inventionen und Fugen
J.S. Bachs und ihre Bedeutung fr die Kompositionstechnik Beethovens, Wien, Universal Edition, 1973;
E. RATZ, Analysis and Hermeneutics, and Their Significance for the Interpretation of Beethoven, Music
Analysis, 3/3, 1984, pp. 243-254;
C. DAHLHAUS, Phrase et priode. Contribution une thorie de la syntaxe musicale, Analyse musicale,
13/4, 1988, pp. 37-44;
W. CAPLIN, Classical form: a theory of formal functions for the instrumental music of Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven, New York-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998.