Tonal Harmony

Rating:
Summary: Not helpful to a serious musician
Review: This book represents everything that is wrong in music theory education. This book approaches music as an abstract entity even though it provides many examples and exercises. It tries to compartmentalize different aspects of music, like harmony, melody, rhythm and form. I don't think it's the authors' fault entirely.

This is a book on tonal harmony. It has become the standard textbook for music theory in the United States. This is extremely misguided since it will give the student an extremely incomplete understanding of how music works. For example, counterpoint is not taught in this book. Counterpoint has been considered essential for the serious musician for the past 500 years. All the different aspects of music mentioned above are wholly intertwined. Any approach that seperates them misses the point.

This book also puts too much emphasis on harmony as a vertical phenomenon. Most people experience music as a horizontal phenonmenon and I haave found that approaches to music theory that treats music as such has had much more success. This goes back to why counterpoint is so essential in music theory. Learning harmony through an approach that pays attention to how melody, rhythm, and counterpoint affect harmony is the most honest and least troublesome way of learning how music works.

This may explain why many have had trouble with this book(I had for 5 years). You'll know how to name things such as chords and form after completing this book, but it won't help you understand how a piece works. It focuses more on nomenclature than on syntax and function.

There are a slew of books that will give the music student a more complete picture of theory. Most importantly, these more integrated methods will give better tools to understand the music they may be performing and/or studying. These books include Leo Kraft's Gradus, Aldwell and Schachter's Harmony and Voice Leading, Horton and Ritchey's Harmony Through Melody, Siegmeiter's Harmony and Melody, and to a lesser extent Forte's Tonal Harmony in Concept and Practice.

I am an active conductor and I feel I have a much stronger grasp of music after having been taught a more honest and comprehensive way of studying music and this was only after years of deprogramming what I had learned through the Kostka and Payne. I am still struggling with this issue. If you're serious about music, DO NOT GET THIS BOOK!