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harmonic_analysis_rant.md

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Openness of harmonic analysis

Harmonic analysis is a creative reductionism and not a mechanical operation. There's no single valid harmonic analysis. Different scholars perform harmonic analyses differently, and disagreements arise everywhere:

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  • can root be missing/implied, eg. use V7 in place of viio?
  • are we overgeneralize Roman numerals as functional analysis labels in ambiguous cases?
  • what to do with quartal chords? pic source
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See "On the relative openness of syntax" in Mark Gotham's paper

As a single example, below are three different analyses of the beginning of Beethoven's op. 2 no. 1 mov. 1 (🎥 audio on YouTube):

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And how it's annotated in William E. Caplin's book:

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Literature