harmony and execution

[dlj]

I am just starting to explore the world of harmony and it has been said that knowing harmony helps interpretation. How does knowledge of harmony affect how you execute a piece of music? How does the movement through the different harmonies change the dynamics, where accents occur, etc? I know few pieces so could you explain using the following pieces; Hall of the Mountain King, Morning Mood - Grieg , Prelude in C WTC Book 1 - Bach, Prelude in G minor Op 23 no 5 - Rachmaninoff. Thanks

[m19834]

Well, I wish I could give an entirely complete and comprehensive perspective on the subject, but I'm still learning about harmony myself, and everything that is involved with it.  Funnily enough, most of it is somehow based on the fundamentals of intervals, scales and chords, which are also the bare bones of what an entire piece of music is built from, and all of music itself.  I would venture to guess that one reason you haven't gotten a response yet is because your question is actually huge, to the nature of the size of the entire body of music in the world.  

Consider the fact that most theory books, attempting to explain what harmony is and how it behaves, start with intervals, scales and chords, going on to expound on that for pages after pages ... and then volumes after volumes.  And, even though most books will start out with the same sorts of things, and perhaps even strive to illuminate the same basic concepts within the following pages as any other book, there are loads of different books on the subject, and loads of editions of those books, because somewhere along the lines it gets somehow tricky to explain and tricky to understand.  In an aim to try to cover all of the necessary concepts (that are built on the basic intervals, scales and chords), most University and Conservatory curriculum will include at least two years of required theory, eventually there will be specialized classes on subjects like counterpoint so as to better understand how it all works.  And, that won't even cover it all.

All of that being said, as Horowitz put it, even a scale has a melody (and chords/harmony are built on scales).  Within a scale, each tone has its particular role to play, and some of those tones, in context of the scale, serve as more stable tones (like tonic), while some of them serve as "tendency" tones (like the leading tone).  To put it simply (though it's not a satisfying answer, in my opinion, until you hear and understand it more fully for yourself (which involves further study)), if you know that the leading tone is "supposed" to go to tonic, you can feel/hear that when performing and it will mean something to you that actually can't be put into words, but expressed only through music.  

Basically, when it comes to harmony, a piece of music is some kind of story (sometimes long, sometimes short) on where you start, how/where you travel to, and how you do (or do not) get back to where you started.  Everything in between the first and last establishment of harmony is part of the adventure in what makes music what it is.  After the harmonic journey, even if you arrive back home, you will feel as though you have gone somewhere and the last tone will never give you the same feeling/impression as did the first (even if they are the same note).  

Unfortunately, that's the best that I feel I can do for now.

[ramseytheii]

I am just starting to explore the world of harmony and it has been said that knowing harmony helps interpretation. How does knowledge of harmony affect how you execute a piece of music? How does the movement through the different harmonies change the dynamics, where accents occur, etc?

If you have to ask, you'll never know...

Walter Ramsey