Arnold Schoenberg · section 4 of 30

The Method of Teaching Harmony

The material of instruction in musical composition is usually divided into three fields: harmony, counterpoint, and form. They are then defined as follows:

Harmony: The study of combinations of simultaneous tones (chords) and their capacity to connect with one another, with regard to their architectural, melodic, and rhythmic values and relative weights.

Counterpoint: The study of the art of voice leading with regard to motivic combination (and perhaps of “contrapuntal forms”).

Form: A plan for the construction and development of musical ideas.

This division has the great advantage of allowing separate consideration of the factors whose interaction constitutes the technique of musical composition. But the need to develop each field independently produces too great a separation. The parts thus lose their relationships with one another, that affinity which should bring them together again for their common principal purpose: harmony and counterpoint have forgotten that, together with the study of form, they must constitute instruction in composition. And the pupil, who should have learned harmonic thinking and invention through harmony and polyphonic thinking and invention through counterpoint, faces unaided the task of combining the separate things he has learned and making them useful for the principal purpose. Here too, therefore—as in all human undertakings—a middle course must be chosen; the question is what considerations should determine it.

It will certainly make things easier for both teacher and pupil if everything presented is so clearly connected that one thing grows out of another. This requires, above all, limiting ourselves to the subject matter, which must be freed from everything more remotely connected with it. In our case, then, in the study of harmony, it will certainly be useful to derive the nature of chord connections solely from the nature of the chords, excluding rhythmic and melodic matters and the like. For the complexity that would arise if every possibility of harmonic function were combined with every possibility of rhythm and motivic treatment would probably be as impossible for the teacher to survey as for the pupil. Nevertheless, even at the lowest level one will occasionally have to give directions whose usefulness will only be realized at a higher one. After all, this is to be preliminary study for instruction in composition. But one may give only directions that can truly serve the principal purpose, and must categorically avoid those whose execution is irrelevant to that purpose; execution that develops skills existing only as ends in themselves, merely because they follow from the system.

In this sense all harmony textbooks that follow the old thoroughbass method and require the pupil to write out parts over figured basses are unsuitable; for from this he learns only voice leading, which, to a limited extent, might be a secondary task of harmony instruction. The expectation that he will thereby acquire a feeling for good chord progressions on his own is at most as justified as the expectation that he will acquire it by studying masterpieces, where these progressions and better ones also occur. Here, then, the pupil’s talent is relied upon—which is indeed the best course, especially when the teacher is unable to act consistently upon the pupil’s awareness, upon his conscious knowledge and ability, by conscious means. In any case it is clear that this practices only a secondary matter, not the main one. It is also wrong suddenly to confront a pupil, who for the longest time has merely written out parts over chord progressions for whose effect someone else is responsible, with the task of harmonizing chorales: that is, of producing chord progressions for whose effect he himself is responsible, something that has neither been explained nor practiced. Gifted pupils certainly manage this fairly well, for through hearing and memory they generally bring with them, from the music they have absorbed, a certain sense of the value of harmonic progressions; the teacher therefore has little more to do than correct small unevennesses, weaknesses, and monotonies. But the less gifted pupil, or one whose gifts lie elsewhere, is helpless with directions concerned only with voice leading, and never learns to design a musical setting whose harmonic construction works through logical consistency.

Realizing a thoroughbass may once have been valuable, when the keyboard player still had the task of accompanying from figured basses. Teaching it today, when no musician needs it any longer, is as time-consuming as it is purposeless, prevents attention to more important things, and above all fails to make the pupil independent. To fulfill the principal purpose of harmony instruction—to connect chords, in accordance with their properties, into progressions whose effect suits the particular task—requires little art of voice leading. The small amount concerning forbidden parallels, the treatment of dissonance, and the like is learned without much difficulty. Moreover, counterpoint and the study of form deal far more suitably with the development of voices, which is inconceivable without motivic work. For the purposes of connecting chords, scarcely more is needed than to avoid unmelodic movement, whereas that familiar sort of melody-making spoils taste and produces false notions of composing.

I therefore prefer the older method, which from the outset required the pupil to determine the succession of chords himself. I begin with simple settings whose purpose grows with the means available, moving from the simplest cadences through modulation to a few practical applications in exercises. This has the advantage that, in a certain sense, the pupil composes for himself from the very beginning. These settings, which he designs himself under the guidance of the instructions, can form the basis for developing a sense of harmonic form. At first they are made without any demand for effect; the demands increase with the means placed at his disposal. Thus he learns not merely to understand the means but to apply them correctly. As soon as possible, the exercises are given a purpose: establishing and expressing the key, the cadence; then its opposite, leaving the key, modulation. I give this area of work the greatest attention, for here, as in the cadence, the architectural, constructive aspect of harmonizing, of connecting chords, finds its most intense expression. Here too I return to older methods, by not letting modulation take place in jerks, as it does in most harmony textbooks through the use of a few modulating chords abruptly inserted. Instead, the aim is for the modulation to occur gradually, to prepare and develop itself, thus forming the foundation for motivic development. Analysis of works of art shows that modulation—for instance, from the principal theme to the subordinate section—is conducted almost exclusively in this way. Since the teacher’s task can only be to transmit the technique of the masters to the pupil and, if possible, thereby to stimulate independent further creation, it is clear that any other, purely theoretical method is unsuitable. Let it remain an open question whether such sudden modulations as Richter recommends could ever form the basis for motivic development at all. In any event this is doubtful; what is probable, however, is that in so rapid a modulation these modulating means, recommended to the exclusion of all others—the dominant seventh chord or the diminished seventh chord—would be far too artless and primitive; that a passage displaying so intense a harmonic turning force would probably require richer and more varied means of modulation. On the other hand, I have tried to show as many means of modulation as possible and to work through the combinations of their possible uses, or at least to give pointers toward doing so. In the modulation exercises too, at first only the quickest and simplest solution to the task is sought; but with every new resource made available, the purpose must expand. If, for example, a deceptive cadence is used, it should save the cadence from the monotony of a repetition while securing for it the intensifying effect of that repetition. In this way the pupil learns from the outset to achieve the greatest effect with the means employed, thus to use those means fully and to employ no more than are necessary. This is instruction in composition as far as it is possible within harmony instruction, but that is precisely how far one must go.

I have refrained from including harmonic analyses in this book, since I consider them superfluous. If the pupil were able to extract from examples in the musical literature what he needs for composing, there would be no need to teach harmony. And it is indeed possible to learn everything in this way. I myself have never studied harmony, and am therefore one of the many who provide evidence of this. But the majority of pupils need instruction, and here one must say: if instruction is to be given, let it be given in such a way that everything that can be said is said. Analysis, however, is usually more a test the author makes of the correctness of his theory than a benefit to the pupil. I do not deny that it benefits the pupil to account for the course of the harmony in masterpieces. But to do so in the necessary way—namely, to examine the harmonic construction of an entire work and the relative weights of chords and chord progressions—is in any case impossible within the scope of a harmony textbook. Everything else is relatively purposeless. These analyses usually show through which keys a theme modulates, or, more correctly, how many chords, however foreign they may appear, can occur within an idea without the key being abandoned; there is no need to show this. For if the pupil is given the means to do it himself, that alone already enables him to understand it much better than he could through analysis—the harmonic aspect, that is. But the proportionate relationship of motives to harmony, the development of rhythm—in a word, what is properly compositional about it—does not belong in harmony instruction, if it can be explained at all. Thus once again he is shown the inessential! And I cannot understand how he is ever to grasp the essential when the inessential is always presented to him as the main thing.

In general I do not intend to argue against particular methods named individually, and shall confine myself to explaining things as I have come to recognize them as correct. Only where I begin an exposition that I believe to be new am I compelled first to refute the older, customary one. The same reason that prompts me to do this also requires me not to point out specifically which of the ideas presented I consider new. As a musician who has not pieced his knowledge together from reading, but may describe what he presents as the results of reflection upon his experience of teaching and composing, I am surely entitled to dispense with the source references customary in scholarly works. Let someone whose relationship to what is alive in art is weaker than his relationship to theory undertake such time-consuming and unfruitful labor. I prefer to acknowledge that I plainly owe many stimuli to existing systems. How many, and which ones, I no longer know today, since the way I have worked them over has long since put this beyond my control. But this must be said: I owe the best of what is in this book mostly to bad books and false ideas, which forced me to think about what was right. Other things emerged of themselves from working through the system of presentation. Yet everything is a view of art, and as such is immediate. I believe that some of the ideas presented here may claim novelty, while others, at least through their precise presentation or one that opens wide perspectives, may differ somewhat from those known hitherto. But I will gladly forgo the fame of novelty if in exchange I may spare myself the task of eating my way through the most important harmony textbooks.

This book would like, if possible, to be a textbook and thus to serve practical purposes: that is, to give the pupil a reliable method of practicing. Yet for that reason I cannot forgo occasionally using a hypothesis to open perspectives on relationships of a more complex nature: on the similarities and connections between artistic creation and other human activities, and on the reciprocal relationships between what nature provides outside us and the acting or observing subject. I repeat: what is said in this regard is not intended to be taken as theory, but as a more or less fully developed comparison, for which it matters less that it be accurate in every respect than that it prompt a look around in psychology or physics. It is possible that this will make the book somewhat difficult to grasp for the ordinary musician, who even today still dislikes strenuous thought. It is possible that it is perhaps only a book for advanced students or for teachers. I should regret that, for I would above all have liked to help the youngest with it. But I can change nothing about it and must wait. Yet I hope the time for the thoughts I had to express will not already have passed when the average musician has finally come far enough for one to be allowed to write for him in a manner other than “concise,” or as though writing an indestructible picture book.