Music Analysis & Style Composition 2

2.5 credits

This course provides an introduction to harmony and counterpoint, with a primary focus on how these musical elements behave and interact in music of the European “common practice” period (ca. 1770–1900). The course begins with species counterpoint exercises in which students examine relationships between melodies, bass lines, and underlying harmonic progressions. After an overview of phrase-level forms, the bulk of the course explores the harmonic syntax of this music, primarily through the lens of harmonic function. The aim throughout is for students to hear, recognize, and reproduce the most idiomatic progressions that composers used within a single key—and to master the syntactic rules that undergird these progressions.