well?

Eh? Sounds like you're asking for a course in

a) acoustics, or
b) evolutionary psychology ...

What sort of a 'why' are you asking for, JFRB?

nick

Totally boooorrrrring if everyone played/sang the same thing all the time.

Because it is better than being at war.

Are you asking why and how music developed from the simple melodies that the ancients might have used to the ruled and regulated Bach style of chorale harmony that we are asked to produce in theory papers? If so it is an interesting question but would take several large books to answer. Please elaborate.

One theory is that gothic architecture helped with its development, ie: stupidly long resonances made it possible to hear more than one note at the same time, and then people went - ooh err missus that sounds interesting maybe we should try and do that deliberately. Certainly the two things did occur at roughly[1] the same time.


[1] Roughly from a physicist's point of view anyway!

Maybe at some point someone decided that it would be more fun to combine several musical sounds, but only if they sounded like they went together well

I remember from music classes in GCSE and sixth form, that (apparently) harmony, as the most advanced aspect of Western music, is not given such priority in other 'non-Western' musical traditions. Indian and Indonesian music, for example, stresses melody as the most important musical element, while a lot of the traditional music originating in Africa places the greatest emphasis on rhythm. So the advancement of harmony, as it has progressed over the last thousand years, should be considered an ideal of 'Western high-art music'.

denmark

thanks for all the replys.

I was wondering both how we got harmony and why its needed.

I would guess that an important reason that harmony developed in Europe was that notation was invented here, and this made it easier to invent and coordinate multiple vocal lines.