Harmony

In my previous blog post, I discussed the folk knowledge of convention: of what sounds right to our ears based on our society's music culture. An important part of our culture, is, of course, homophony, or the musical texture in which the various parts in a song support each other and create chords. The most common example of homophony is found in hymns.

Treble Clef

In the musical excerpt above, you can see two sets of notes: those written above the words, and those written below the words. When all of the notes sounds together, you hear a melody (the main tune of the song) and a harmony (the supporting notes of the chord). This past week, I taught my friend Joe how to sing the harmony to some well-known hymns.

Bass Clef

This is Joe. He plays the violin.

Now he can sing the bass part.

Joe plays the violin, which is written in the treble clef. Music for the bass part of a hymn is written in the bass clef. In order to teach Joe to sing the bass part, I had to help him hear it. So I played the bass part on my cello, and he sang along.

Teaching Joe to hear and sing the bass line brought me back to about seventh grade, when I learned to sing in harmony. In my family, we started to attend ward choir practice when we reached the ripe old age of twelve. Well, at choir practice, they sorted us into one of four sections: soprano, alto, tenor, or bass. I didn’t really know anything about singing, except that the soprano and alto sections were for women. The only problem for me was that I couldn’t hear the part the tenors and basses were supposed to sing. So I had to learn to hear the manly tenor and bass parts by playing them over and over and over again on the piano. Eventually, I got to the point where I could recognize the patterns in the intervals and follow the music well enough to be a man. I mean to be in the manly section of the choir.

Having the experience of passing this folk knowledge on made me feel a connection with the collective consciousness of humanity. One of my favorite scriptures is from D&C 64:33, in which the Lord counsels: "Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great." So much of what we have has been founded on the work of those who have gone before. Something as simple as singing a harmonization of a hymn came to us after centuries of musical aesthetic development. Who knows what foundations we are laying as we continue to pass on these traditions and practices from person to person, and from generation to generation?