TWENTIETH- - Synapse Music

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INTRODUCTION
Harmonic Progression
and Tonality
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the decline of the tonal system.
which had been an important organizing factor in music since the early Baroque. In its
place carne not a new system but a splintering, a multiplicity of solutions to the problems
of harmonic progression and tonal ity. At the most general level, music is either tonal or not
tonal (usually termed atonal), but various approaches may be taken in both of those categories.
As we shall see, even the tonal music of the twentieth century was of a new sort,
onc without a standardized vocabu lary of harmonic progressions.
TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO HARMONIC PROGRESSION
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The beginnings of triadic tonality can be found in music composed many years before the beginning
of the tonal era. Through evolutionary processes (influenced by voice-leading conventions
and the nature of musical acoustics), certain chord successions became standard
cadential formulas long before tonal harmony came i_nto being and even longer before the
development of the theory of chord roots. Chief among these was the progression that would
later be analyzed as a V- I cadence, but other cadences, such as IV- I, vii°6--I, and iv6--V, were
also used. As the langoage of tonality developed, the V- I progression became the prototype
of the normative hannonic progression. as seen in the diatonic circle-of-5ths progression:
I- IV-viio-iii-vi- ii- V-I
or
i- iv-VlI-I1I- VI- jj O-V-i