Skip to content

Choose a Chapter | Purchase the eBook | Podcasts | Online Listening Lab

Prelude Listening to Music Today
1 Melody: Musical Line
2 Rhythm and Meter: Musical Time
3 Harmony: Musical Space
4 The Organization of Musical Sounds
5 Musical Texture
6 Musical Form
7 Musical Expression: Tempo and Dynamics
8 Voices and Musical Instrument Families
9 Western Musical Instruments
10 Musical Ensembles
11 Style and Function of Music in Society
12 The Culture of the Middle Ages
13 Medieval Music
14 The Renaissance Spirit
15 Renaissance Sacred Music
16 Renaissance Secular Music
17 The Baroque Spirit
18 Vocal Music of the Baroque
19 Orchestral Music of the Baroque
20 Baroque Keyboard Music
21 The Classical Spirit
22 The Development of Classical Forms
23 The Classical Symphony
24 The Classical Concerto and Sonata
25 Classical Opera
26 The Spirit of Romanticism
27 The Romantic Miniature
28 Romantic Program Music
29 Romantic Opera
30 The Late Romantics
31 America's Emerging Musical Voice
32 The Impressionist Era
33 Main Currents in Early-Twentieth-Century Music
34 Early-Twentieth-Century Innovators
35 Nationalism and Music
36 Ragtime, Blues, and Jazz
37 New Directions
38 Contemporary Composers Look to World Music
39 Music for the Stage and Screen
40 The Many Voices of Rock
41 Some Current Trends

Chapter 3: Harmony: Musical Space

Study Plan

Reduce Text Size Increase Text Size Email Print Page
"We have learned to express the more delicate nuances of feeling by penetrating more deeply into the mysteries of harmony." —ROBERT SCHUMANN

Key Points

  • Harmony describes the vertical events in music.
  • A chord is the simultaneous sounding of three or more pitches; chords are built from a particular scale, or sequence of pitches.
  • The most common chord in Western music is a triad, which has three notes built on alternate pitches of a scale.
  • Most Western music is based on major or minor scales, from which melody and harmony are derived.
  • The tonic is the central tone around which a melody and its harmonies are built; this principle of organization is called tonality.
  • Dissonance is created by an unstable, or discordant, harmony, while consonance occurs with the resolution of dissonance, producing a concordant sound.

Section Menu

Norton Gradebook

Instructors now have an easy way to collect students’ online quizzes with the Norton Gradebook without flooding their inboxes with e-mails.

Students can track their online quiz scores by setting up their own Student Gradebook.