THYG 587 Post-Tonal Harmony
The goal of this course is to develop an understanding of post-tonal harmony. This will be done in three steps. First, the notion of consonance and dissonance will be reviewed according to contemporary praxis. The old duality will become more of a sliding scale between opposites. Second, different viewpoints on the concept of dissonant prolongation will be discussed. The problematic issues in particular will receive attention. Finally, by combining the renewed concept of consonance with the idea of prolongation, a new strategy for post-tonal harmony emerges. These theoretical topics will be applied to music examples throughout the course. Among others, there will be music by Unsuk Chin, Donatoni, Haas, Lindberg, Messiaen, Schönberg, Scriabin, and Knussen.