Harmony Exercises

It must have been the late hours of the night. As such, it took me about half an hour just to complete one question from the harmony exercise that I am to work on. It was considered slow because that question merely consisted of four bars and seven notes.

The question required me to add the alto and tenor parts to the given soprano and bass parts. The challenge was that I have to make sure I observe all the various rules when I add in the required parts.

Some of the rules are:
- Avoid overlapping between consecutive chords.
- In using V-VI, the 3rd of VI should be doubled.
- The leading-note should rise to the tonic in the progressions V-I and V-VI

The challenge for me was to check through to make sure that no parts are moving in parallel perfect 5ths and octaves in consecutive chords. Thank goodness that my music theory tutor has taught me a systematic method to check through for this.

The next challenge was to work towards committing these rules to my memory.

Anyway, I shall continue tomorrow with the rest of the questions in the exercise.

***
Questions for the day are: How did these rules come about? Who came up with them? When? Do these rule help to enhance the quality of a piece of musical compostion or do they stifle?