Modern Harmony

The study of Modern Harmony is the keystone to composing music in today’s challenging world. With the old rules and traditions from the 19th century gone, and the advent of world music, pop music, jazz, and electronica, the palette available for the contemporary composer is very vast. At the same time we are expected to write fluidly in “floating” or “extended” tonalities for serious and commercial music markets.

But unfortunately this material is not being taught adequately in today’s universities and conservatories. The young composers of today have only the slightest knowledge of 20th century composition procedures or the vast orchestral (much less the chamber music) repertoire from the last 100 years.

Vincent Persichetti wanted to change this sorry state of affairs, so in 1961 he wrote his seminal book 20th Century Harmony; it remains as important and timely now as it was then.

This book uses his concepts as its center with my annotated score excerpts to help illustrate the many various points.

347 pages with 100 different score excerpts with examples from the film, symphonic, chamber, jazz, and pop worlds.

A Dropbox link to all audio of the scores is included on page 2.