Music and the sensuality of harmony

MUSIC AND THE SENSUALITY OF HARMONY (COURSE)

Grant McLachlan, lecturer, South African College of Music, University of Cape Town

Monday 19–Wednesday 21 January  3.00 pm  COURSE FEES R345; Staff and students R173

We all know that major keys are the ‘happy’ keys, and give us a sense of well-being. The major third is what gives the major chord its character. Yet in the music of Medieval Europe the major third is avoided at all costs. We explore why this is and why this seductive interval took the music world by storm at the start of the Renaissance period.

The Baroque period saw the growth and establishment of modern harmony as we know and use it now. We explore how the development of different tuning systems struggled to keep up with the more adventurous harmonic experiments of composers from Monteverdi to Bach, as well as the importance of the role that Johann Sebastian Bach played in the way we use harmony in the twenty-first century.

The growth of jazz in the early twentieth century gave a new meaning to the sensuality of harmony, and the more serious composers took these innovations on board. Composers such as Gershwin straddled the two genres, while composers like Rachmaninov and Poulenc explored new areas of musical seductiveness.

Lecture titles

1. The seductive interval: the major third
2. The Baroque period and the birth of modern harmony
3. Harmony in the 20th and 21st century: a new seductiveness

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