Best book available to study chords and their makeup...

[n3wman918]

Hey all. I've recently become very interested, if not, obsessed with how chords and chord progressions are done in many classical works. Although, I can follow simple chord progressions, I am by no means good at it. I was wondering if anyone can recommend a Bible-like chord book? Something that goes into every kind of detail pertaining to chords. I'd like to eventually be able to look at a piece of music and know what it is I'm looking at with precision and relative speed. I hope this makes sense and if not, I apologize. Thank you.

[haydnseeker]

Any harmony textbook will cover roughly the following:

• Major, minor, augmented and diminished triads
• Chord connection and voice-leading rules
• Root position and inversions
• Major and minor scale functions
• Cadences
• Non-chord tones
• Dominant, diminished and secondary 7ths
• Secondary dominants
• Types of modulation
• Neapolitan and augmented 6th chords
• Chromatically altered chords
• 9th, 11th & 13th chords

These are all you need for any music from 1700 to late 19th century.  An understanding of the function of harmony is more important than an actual catalogue of chords.

The following are standard texts that I've learned from:

• Tonal Harmony: With an Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music, by Stefan Kosta & Dorothy Payne (McGraw-Hill).  I found this particularly good for learning to analyse compositions harmonically.  You'll need fluent score reading including C clefs to follow some of the examples though.
• Harmony, by Walter Piston, revised by Mark DeVoto (Norton or Gollancz).  This also concludes with an introduction to 20th century styles

[oxy60]

Don't forget Roger Sessions!

[Bob]

For identification I've found the best thing was to work on things myself.  Even triads alone... That can go a long way.  Triads, all inversion, any key and thing V/V stuff that wouldn't always appear (like D# dominant 7).