Harmony in Musicianship

In a piece by Bartok called Music for Strings, Percusion and Celest.

Bartok builds the tension up at the beginning of the piece with chromaticism in the melody. This gives it a lack of direction. There are overlapping melodies that are almost identical to the ones in Nosferatu (1922 F. W Murnau.) I think Bernard the composer must have listened to this piece by Bartok a few times as it does sound identical. The tension in this piece rises when the dynamics start to get louder and the range of pitch extends. It sounds like 'Bambi' in some areas and a lot like Shostakovich. Can't say exactly but you know. There is some serious vunerability at the end of the piece; achieved through the use of high solo chromatic pitches on the violin. Many other composers do this from Damien Rice to Prokofiev. The conjunct movement connotes stillness and reflection. Someone said restlessness was a thing in there. If I had the piece I would do the proper thing and back up my thinkings with technical observations.

Nosferatu and the film 'Psycho' use the same melodic style as this dude named Bartok. Contextually this is all very Central European: Bartok was himself Hungarian and the piece was premiered in Switzerland. The piece's entire melody only comes together at the end of the film, so we only hear little fractions of it until it finally comes together at the end. IS this reminiscent of john Williams in a way? Well in E.T. we only hear the entire melody when they're flying, that's why it is so memorable. you could say this piece is fugal etc, and it does go through all of the 12 pitch classes (semitones if you like) via a circle of fifths just like Schoenburg and Webern.

Okay, now onto proper harmony. Is a chord made up or two notes? No, dumbass, that's an interval. Chords have to be three notes or more so you can establish a kind of colour in it. To get a basic triad: you get your tonic, add either 4 / 3 semitones up and then either 3 / 4 semitones to get your 'traditional triad.' Since then, atonality has allowed us to establish 12 different triads rather than just the major and minor triad, making 2 different chords btw. There are 28 different 4 note chords if you didn't know that.

Let's brush up on the 20th Century stuff then.

20th Century Stuff on atonal harmony

There are three different approaches to harmony in the 20th Century.

1. Free atonal approach: This is where the voice leading is preserved.
2. Colonistic... Sorry I mean Colouristic approach: This is were the colour of the chord is what matters. Impressionists love this kind of thing, especially Debussy.
3. Static Harmony (?)

Let's have a look at Janet Schmafelt, composed by, the legend that it is, Alban Berg, kick it.

Anyway, it's an atonal piano sonata; only one thing though: there are cadences in the key of B major and a sense of key at some varying points. Before bar 4, we have no sense of key centre, thus making berg great because he fools our anticipations. We have no idea that there is going to be a cadence, and when there is, it's a typical V - I cadence. The voice is still the lead in this making this music fit harmony number one best. In bars 5, 6 and 7 there is rising atonality. This gives it underdeveloped characteristics. In the piece that we studied before where Schoenburg includes 11 of the 12 semitones in just one bar, like Prokoiev does in Romeo und Juliet, the voice leads. Just like when a rise in a 6th in traditionally tonal music leads to a decent to a fifth to sound more complete, atonal music does in a different way. Notice in popular music that there are always rises of 6ths at the peak of a melody so they can fall down again.

There is a tendancy to use all of the 12 semitones in atonal music. i don't know if it's just our ears or that it's a load of balls, but that's how it is. Atonal music also has it's rules. The notes are not selected at random, they are part of a sequence. Schoenburg and Webern both use two intervals between three notes as a recurring theme in their music, e.g a rise in a semitone and a drop by a major 3rd. This is what they use. This system has 12 different possibilities with 3 notes concerning how many different intervals you could have in a chord. I'm not prepared to go into serialism for dummies at this point, so if you are reading this and you don't know what I'm saying, my greatest apologies.

To get a note row (serialist terminology. Try going to wikipedia if you do not understand. Ahh whatever, alright it's a row of 12 notes making a melody that never repeat the same pitch) you may want to split the 12 notes into four; giving you four sets of three notes. Right, we have have the same intervals for each of these pitches. To make this (and to make it easy); start with C, add a semitone to C sharp, add another semitone to get D. Okay, that's now called Trichord No. 1. Onto the next. Simply go to D sharp instead of D to get trichord no. 3. Trichord No. 4 is going to be E, then 4 is F, 5 equals F sharp. We are now up to trichord 6 which is as the pattern goes is going to be G. Wrong. We've already had this interval in trichord 5, if you invert the leap from the C sharp to the F sharp downwards, it will go to G. So for number 6, we will go to D instead of C sharp. Trichord 6 is thus C, D, D sharp. 7 equals C, D, E etc. If you repeat yourself, you've gotta start from the beginning.