CHAPTER 2 (PART 2)
STATIC AND DYNAMIC HARMONY
Dynamic Harmony
The function of dynamic harmony is to provide a sense of moving forward, the change of status between static and dynamic harmony is critical in enabling the ear to follow the musical syntax.
Rather than an oscillation between chords, dynamic harmony is made up of a succession of strong chord progressions. As roots of chords can exist on seven possible scale steps: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII each individual root has 6 possible roots to move to (ignoring octaves). Consequently, roots may rise or fall a 2nd, rise or fall a 3rd, rise or fall a 4th.
Dynamic harmony is made up almost exclusively of three of the six possible types of root progression. These will be referred to as the three strong chord progressions and will be labelled alpha, beta and gamma (α, β and γ) progressions, as follows:
α - root progression by rising 4th (or falling 5th)
( e.g. V - I, I - IV etc.)
β - root progression by falling 3rd (or rising 6th)
( e.g. I - VI, VI - IV etc. )
γ - root progression by rising 2nd (or falling 7th)
(e.g. I - II, IV - V etc. )
The reversals of these progressions: α', β' and γ' are weak and are generally (but not completely) avoided in dynamic harmony.
It will be observed that this classification groups together root progressions which do not involve exactly similar intervals. For instance the root progression β could involve a descent of a major or minor third depending on which chords are involved and whether the tonality is major or minor. In practice, both major and minor descending third progressions are frequent whereas both major and minor ascending third progressions are infrequent so that this classification adequately describes the behaviour of root progressions. This is because the behaviour of root progressions is primarily a diatonic and not a chromatic phenomenon. Chromatic harmony serves primarily to decorate rather than create structure. For further discussion on root progressions please refer to the Thesis section on this site.
The α chord progression is by far the strongest and most frequently used progression in dynamic harmony and when used to make the move from V to I at the end of a phrase it forms the perfect cadence. Of the other two progressions, the β progression is generally more common than the γ progression, in most compositions.
Whilst the primary triads IV and V are the most common chords used in forming static patterns, in a piece in one key, there is only one dynamic pattern that can be formed (starting and ending in chord I) with these chords, as follows:
Consequently, the secondary triads are used to extend the range of possible dynamic patterns. Chords II and VI are most useful for this purpose. Following are some common (non-modulating) patterns, starting and ending on the tonic:
The following example clearly shows the use of α and γ chord progressions. Even though the texture of the music is contrapuntal, and the writing is in two parts, the dynamic harmony is nevertheless much in evidence.
This polarisation of chord progressions appears to have taken place gradually from around 1600 to around 1700 and is easily seen at the end of this period in the music of Bach and his contemporaries. Static and Dynamic harmony patterns however can be seen in music before that period but not with the same degree of polarisation.
The full book contains a further example here from Bach containing chords which are presented in different inversions.
The inversions weaken the feeling of moving forward. The chord progressions which have the strongest sense of moving forward tend to be those where the chords are all presented in root position and composers tend to use the strongest chord progressions at the position in the structure where the strongest sense of movement is required.
Techniques for strengthening progressions can be seen in the following example from Brahms:
This example deploys α and β progressions. The chords in bars 19, 21 and 22 are all dominant 7th chords since they all take on an added 7th and, in case of bar 21, the minor third is raised to form a major third. Clearly all of these dominant 7ths chords do not indicate rapid modulations to new key centres. New key centres have to be established by the presence of static harmony in the new key. The function here is just to strengthen the harmonic movement and to add variety and interest to the harmony. No modulation is intended or heard. Bars 107 to 114 of Brandenburg Concerto No 2. could be examined at this point. Here a whole series of 7 dominant 7th chords (using six α and two β progressions) are used to form a very strong chord progressions prior to the final recapitulation of the main theme. They are preceded by a tonic chord and end with a tonic chord and therefore no modulation occurs in this example. This very strong sequence is used to alert the user to the imminent end of the movement. This Final Dynamic Episode thus has a formal or structural function as well as its normal syntactic function.
The full text includes an example of dynamic harmony which contains a succession of seven α progressions starting and ending in the tonic chord. The reader is referred to demo number 2 which animates a similar example.
Ver 2.3.