THYG 584 Transformational Theories of Harmony
Traditional Roman numeral analysis often falls short when analyzing chromatic music. By immersing students in "transformational thinking," this course provides tools to understand harmonic passages that evade the logic of traditional syntax. At its core, transformational theory places analytical emphasis on the relationships between musical objects rather than on the objects themselves; instead of asking "What are x and y?" it asks "How do we get from x to y?" By thematicizing musical gestures, the theory encourages us to analyze music as a living entity rather than a static score, and its versatile methods allow us to analyze music of any style. Students will study the theory's foundational concepts (generalized interval systems and transformational networks), as well as one of its most successful subfields (neo-Reimannian theory), all in the service of analyzing harmony that resists the traditional harmonic syntactical model (i.e. T-P-D-T). Examples of music covered include music by Beethoven, Chopin, Coltrane, Elfman, Horner, Liszt, Poulenc, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schubert, and Wolf, among others.