Mussorgsky “Pictures at an Exhibition”: A Closer Look at Harmony and Tonality

Description

Students often struggle with the concepts of harmony and tonality. This booklet contains “user-friendly” explanations of basic concepts, such as how we define what is a “close” and “distant” tonal relationship, with activities that exemplify this concept at work in Pictures. Through a variety of activities your students will gain a sound grasp of the way in which tonal relationships function from both a structural and programmatic perspective in Pictures.

Pictures is episodic in effect not only because of the interesting choice and arrangement of keys that we explore in the first part of the booklet. We also encounter a wide variety of harmonic styles within this one work. In the second part of the booklet we explore a few important harmonic concepts. We consider, for example, how harmony (“the way in which a composer uses chords”)  defines key. Against this backdrop we move on to consider how cadential closure, diatonicism vs. chromaticism and the way in which Mussorgsky handles modulation all have a role to play in relation to the programme.