The Nature of Harmony and Metre (1853)

Brief summary:

• Hegelian terminology and style (dialectic logic --> musical structures)

• Highly original idea, especially on the relatively neglected subject of meter

• A response to 1) the intellectual feasts that being held in the houses of natural science; 2) the near disappearance of speculative music theory during the 1800s

• An almost perfect correlation of aurally oriented musical space with a visually oriented physical space

• To invest musical ideas with the attributes of the physical images and metaphors

• I: octave [unity]

• I-II: (perfect) fifth [opposition]

• III: (major) third [union of opposition]

• Having a dominant (active); being a dominant (passive)

• Thus, 1) Dominant and subdominant; 2) Major and minor triads

• Minor: an oppositional meaning, but not an oppositional structure.  "We hear a positive effect in the negative."

• "Twin generator" version of the minor triad (Harrison 1994, 229)

• Modal theory, "minor-major" key, not an alternative major scale, but as a separate entity

Influence:

• Oettingen, and Riemann

• Carl Friedrich Weitzmann, and Cyrill Kistler --> treatment of chromatic music

Digest of Daniel Harrison's Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music: A Renewed Dualist Theory and an Account of Its Precedents.

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