How would you go about harmonizing the following melody?
Without actually doing so, look at the following example and make a list of all the things you would need to do to harmonize this melody.
In no particular order, you would need to determine:
To this point in the course, we have discussed each of these, but you have spent most of your assignments analyzing existing examples rather than creating your own music. Fortunately, you can now combine all the tools that we have studied to begin creating your own music. We will begin by establishing our guidelines for part-writing–rules and structures that are used to create a relatively basic chorale structure.
The term part-writing can imply many things depending on its context, but for our purposes, this will be our first attempt to combine the fundamentals of melody (counterpoint) and harmony (voice-leading from circle-of-fifths progressions) into functional music using diatonic tonality.
By applying the various rules and techniques that we have studied thus far, we can:
Units 10 and 11 will help you solidify this process, beginning with a demonstration of the fundamentals of part-writing using only our basic knowledge, then exploring the stylistic errors of four-part chorale writing, and finally fully applying part-writing in a chorale style.
We will be referring to this handout, Part-Writing Error Checklist and Guide, for the next two units, so you may want to print this out or open it in a separate window.
Before we begin, I would like to address a question that I have received many times from students. Why do we study part-writing, particularly in a strict style that is not performed regularly by modern musicians?
There are many answers for this, but there is one in particular that I think justifies the study of this in this course. Part-writing is the simplest way to study how voice-leading creates harmony. Even though most of its rules are archaic, and a modern student’s ear is not nearly as offended by certain style characteristics (e.g. parallel perfect fifths), this is the most straightforward way to study every aspect of how music functions: voice-leading, chord progressions, voicing chords, chordal structure, tendency tones, melodic construction, and every other aspect of how music functions.
We could attempt to focus on only one style of modern music–whether pop, jazz, classical, or otherwise–but because each is fully developed, complex language, you would still need to learn basic harmonic movement before beginning to write in that style. And because each of these musics has its roots in diatonic harmony, an understanding of basic chorale style part-writing will allow you to study and analyze all of these styles, rather than focusing your studies into only one area and being ignorant of the others.
In short, you may never use this directly, but a knowledge and understanding of these basic tenets will greatly enhance your ability to function as a musician, regardless of your career path.
Let’s try to harmonize the simple melody below with one harmony per pitch.
To harmonize a melody in a four-part chorale style, you should:
The first steps in harmonizing any melody should involve:
Please do not be afraid of failing! Your first attempts will likely sound clunky and unconvincing. This is a normal and important part of the learning process, so rather than be disappointed, try focusing on the parts that you do not like, and then analyze them for errors. You should be able to use the analytical tools that you have developed thus far to find mistakes, and then you can correct those. Iteration is key.
With a four note melody such as this, we have little room for development, so it is easiest to stick with a simple idea. For example, the melody ends on the tonic, so this eliminates a half cadence. The penultimate note is the seventh scale degree, so this eliminates a plagal cadence, leaving us with either an authentic cadence or a deceptive cadence.
To keep this simple, let’s choose a perfect authentic cadence. This locks in the bass line for our last two notes, because we know that a PAC has a root position V and I chords at the end of the phrase. It is hopefully clear that the first pitch should start on the tonic chord to establish the key in our ear, which leaves only the second chord undetermined.
Because the chord that follows our undetermined chord is a dominant chord, it makes sense to use a pre-dominant chord, and the A in the melody would allow for either a ii chord or a IV chord. (If you are struggling to remember the standard diatonic chord progressions, please refer to Refer to Unit 7a.)Let’s choose an inverted ii chord to provide some variety.
You now can refer to the handout to see if we met some basic criteria:
We are now ready to add inner voices, and we can use our voicing and doubling rules from Unit 6b to establish a first chord.
And lastly, we can create the alto and tenor lines while observing the melodic guidelines from the handout.
Leading to…
Of note, you may have tried to jump to a D for the first beat of the second measure in the tenor line, but this creates an unnecessarily disjunct tenor part. As we studied in Unit 6b, the chordal fifth can be ommitted on a seventh chord if the root is doubled.
Therefore, if we use only the tools that we have developed thus far in the course, we can already create a simple four-part chorale.