740-129 Music Techniques 1-2

For non-BMus students, permission of Dean or 740-139 Discovering Music 1-2.

Students will be expected to have attained a sound understanding of chord function and harmonic principles within the Western musical tradition; and to be able to recognise and write fluent four-part harmonic textures, demonstrating their understanding of chord function.

A study of fundamental harmonic techniques and textures within the Western musical tradition, with particular emphasis on chord function and voice-leading techniques. Candidates will commence the course by consolidating principles of writing in four-part vocal and keyboard styles within a basic underlying I-V-I tonal plan, and progress onto the use of seventh chords, approach chords, applied dominants, the cadential 6/4, chords of prolongation, sequential progressions and tonicisations. Chords will be grouped for discussion according to their function and the course will unfold in an accumulative manner.

Students will continue to develop the their inner hearing to the point where there is no gulf between reading notated music and the experience of the music itself. To this end, students will be required to sight sing diatonic melodies featuring any interval, aurally identify all qualities of triad and the dominant seventh in any inversion, and all other seventh chords in root position, and perform rhythms featuring changing metre and polyrhythms.

Weekly music notation assignments (30%) · regular aural tests (30%) · two hour end-of-semester examination (30%) · listening test (10%). Note: A pass must be obtained in each section of the assessment.

• Edward Aldwell & Carl Schachter, Harmony and Voice Leading. 3rd edn, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.