Free The complete idiot's guide to classical music by Robert Sherman, Philip Seldon, Naixin He

came into favor, composers were exploring such highly secular topics as love, sex, and politics.
Enriching Your Soul—and the Melody
    It may seem obvious to say that a chord produces a richer sound than a single note, but adding supporting notes to a melody, or setting one tune against another, enriches the texture of a musical work. Harmony adds depth to music just as perspective adds depth to a painting, and indeed, for the past millennium, composers and artists have both been constantly experimenting with ways to enhance the three-dimensionality of their work.
     
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      Important Things to Know
Harmony is essential to the character of an instrumental piece. In vocal music, the lyrics in and of themselves can convey the emotional intent of the composer. In the absence of words, the music itself must establish the emotional mood. Consonant harmonies produce a lyrical, soothing, or romantic effect. Dissonant harmonies create tension, evoking agitation or uncertainty. Of course, consonance and dissonance are much in the ear of the listener: One man’s music is another’s mayhem.
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      Bet You Didn’t Know
Most audiences today revel in the melodic invention of Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” but a Boston critic was less impressed in 1904. “The faun must have had a terrible afternoon,” wrote Louis Elson, “for the poor beast avoided all trace of soothing melody until the audience began to share his sorrows.” Another performance the following year took critic Elson back to his aisle seat, but he was still underwhelmed, writing “There are moments when Debussy’s suffering Faun seems to need a veterinary surgeon.”
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    Even when mood setting is not the intent, harmony enriches the melodic substance of a work, it expands the sounds, points up the low and high points of themes, adds richness and a wide variety to the tonal spectrum.
Scaling New Heights with Musical Keys
    A scale—from the Italian “scala,” or stairway—is a progression of single notes, and like a staircase, the steps work equally well going up or down. A key is simply the name given to the notes of the scale, depending on where it starts and stops. If A is the base or “keynote,” and the rest of the scale functions in relation to it, it’s an A Major (or minor) scale, the notes progressing through B, C, D, E, F, G and back to A an octave (a span of eight notes) above.
    Since the space relationships are the same whether the key is A, F, or anything else, the letters are sometimes replaced by syllables familiar to all crossword puzzle or Sound of Music fans. As Maria so aptly taught the kids, the keynote is “do” (as in “a female deer”), the one above that “re” (as in a “drop of golden sun”), and so on up through “mi,” “fa,” “sol,” “la,” “ti,” and back to “do” again.
    The best visual representation of this is the piano keyboard. The white keys are arranged in a seven-note sequence repeated throughout the keyboard. Within that octave are five black keys, in sequences of two and three, meaning that there are 12 tones in all, each one a half-step away from its neighbor. Because there are not twelve letters between A and G, the term “sharp” or “flat” is used to indicate that the note is one half-step up or down from the base note. A sharp is denoted by a “#” and a flat by a “ .” Thus the first black note in the sequence of two would be a C-sharp if it’s a halftone up from the basic key of C, but the same note would be a D-flat if it’s a halftone down from the basic key of D.
    A score is a written piece of music. In writing music, a measure is a rhythmic division of music marked on the score as the distance between two vertical lines. The vertical line is referred to as a bar. The key signature is indicated by noting the appropriate sharps and flats on the left side of the ruled lines on the score.

     
    A scale using all 12 tones (the seven