Held By

Sound · Coupling · Resonance · Strain · Bearing · Melody · Music

Carries To

Musical Resolution · Harmonic Drift

Harmony

Harmony names the coupling condition through which simultaneously sounding tones become readable as tension or rest. Where Resonance names difference coupled through a shared carrying pattern, harmony names that resonance made musical: tones that sound together and bear a relation between them that is readable as tense or settled.

Dissonance is strain held within harmonic coupling. Consonance is strain reduced to a holdable form. Neither is simply pleasant or unpleasant; both are structural conditions of how tones couple and what they bear.

Places

Harmony places the coupling condition through which simultaneously sounding tones become readable as tension or rest.

Holds

Harmony is held by Sound, Coupling, Resonance, Strain, Bearing, and Melody. Tones must be available as sound and carried as melody before they can couple vertically into harmony — simultaneity alone does not produce harmonic relation.

Pairs

No lateral pair is required at this placement. Sound/Noise holds the broader audible contrast; Harmony names sound coupled through resonance into readable tension or rest.

Traces

Nests

Harmony nests within the music domain as the vertical coupling condition — the structural ground of tension and rest. Musical form, resolution, and counterpoint all nest within or against harmonic structure.

Reads

Harmony becomes recognisable where simultaneously sounding tones hold a relation that is readable as tension or rest — where the coupling is stable enough to be heard as the same condition, and strained enough to bear movement toward or away from resolution.

It is read where a chord holds bearing, where dissonance marks strain that bears toward resolution, and where consonance marks strain reduced enough to hold.

Carries