Chord (music)
Appearance
- "A chord is by no means an agglomeration of intervals. It is a new unit which, although dependent on the formative power of the single interval, is felt as being self-existent and as giving to the constituent intervals meanings and functions which they otherwise would not have."
- Paul Hindemith (1952: 72). A Composer's World. Cambridge, Mass.
- Seated one day at the organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.
I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then,
But I struck one chord of music
Like the sound of a great Amen.- Adelaide Anne Procter, Lost Chord. (As set to music, 5th line reads, "I know not what I was playing.").
- [ Tonality is] the special meaning [functions] that chords receive through their relationship to a fundamental sonority, the tonic triad.
- Hugo Riemann, cited in Gurlitt, W. (1950). "Hugo Riemann (1849-1919)".