Skip to content
Skip to main content

About this free course

OU short courses

Share this free course

Discovering music through listening
Discovering music through listening

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

1.3 Coming home

Within each major or minor key, an individual chord, designated as the ‘home’ chord, orients the listener. Harmony can be analogous to a journey and leaving and returning ‘home’ is an important concept underpinning harmonic progression. We are aware when we move away and return to the ‘home’ chord. This concept underpins many musical genres and we will explore one example of this now, using the final moments of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Activity 3

Listen to the end of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The extract will stop just before the final ‘home’ chord is sounded. Immediately after the extract has finished, try to hum the pitch upon which the ‘home’ chord is built. The single pitch indicates where the harmonic progression was leading to. Your instincts will most likely lead you to the correct pitch: don’t feel that you need to employ technical expertise or analysis here!

Active content not displayed. This content requires JavaScript to be enabled.
Audio 26: Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, final section
Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

Discussion

Now listen to the end of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony again, this time with the final ‘home’ pitch sounded.

Active content not displayed. This content requires JavaScript to be enabled.
Audio 27: Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, final section
Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

Did you hum the correct note? You may be surprised to find that you hummed the correct pitch, even if you feel you know very little about classical music and have not heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony before. This is because certain harmonic progressions in Western music of many genres are used so extensively that they become ‘hard wired’ in our subconscious, and we recognise them even though we have not consciously studied them. You will quickly notice when musicians deviate from these well-established patterns – the music may surprise you, or sound ‘wrong’.

Activity 4

A photograph from the film Amadeus
Figure 2 Actor Tom Hulce pictured as Mozart in the 1984 film Amadeus

Here’s an example of composed music which doesn’t follow the established harmonic progressions at its conclusion. Make a note of the track timing at the point where the music goes ‘wrong’.

Active content not displayed. This content requires JavaScript to be enabled.
Audio 28: Mozart, A Musical Joke, Presto, 03:20–03:50
Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

Discussion

Mozart intentionally disobeyed established harmonic progressions in this piece, called ‘A Musical Joke’. At the very end of the clip (c.00:22) the music did not return ‘home’, and therefore sounded incorrect, and as though the musicians had played the wrong notes!