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Foreword

This text is primarily designed to serve as a textbook for a college-level music theory fundamentals course. However, it also has the flexibility to serve equally well for a typical core curriculum college-level Music Theory I or Harmony I course.

Our goal is to deliver sufficient information to enable the student to be able to evaluate and analyze select music from the literature as quickly as is practical. Secondly, we seek to provide sufficient instruction to enable a student to begin writing music as quickly as is practical.

In order to develop a complete argument, it is important that the student understand that this text “assumes a blank slate.” No prior knowledge on the part of the student is assumed.

In order to give Instructors greater flexibility we have intentionally provided content that may exceed the course objectives in some institutions. We anticipate that instructors may want to adjust the material in the text to match their current course content, or adjust their courses to make use of all of the content in this text.