# Russian Harmony



## Dont (Oct 3, 2010)

Hello everyone,
I'm afraid this might not be the place for this but I need your help.
I've been studying french harmony for 3 years now. But this year I need to study russian harmony. Normally its not so difficult to find books. However I'm on a dead end here.

I need to find the full name of the book by *Druskin* or *Sposobin* or *Alekseyev* and if possible written in cyrillic too.

As far as I know, russian harmony is using the same principles as german harmony but I'm not sure. French harmony is definitely very different though. And for some reason I like it more.

I hope some of you have some information on these books.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Go buy Rimsky-Korsakov's "Practical Manual on Harmony." Probably hard to find, but that should do the trick. Or would his "Principles of Orchestration" count?


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## Dont (Oct 3, 2010)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Go buy Rimsky-Korsakov's "Practical Manual on Harmony." Probably hard to find, but that should do the trick. Or would his "Principles of Orchestration" count?


Thank you very much. At least now I have a book that I can buy. I only need harmony books. Especially ones that I specified. If you know places where I can ask them: Russian sites, music theory forums, I don't know... That would be very helpful.

I'll buy this book though, thank you.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

You really would? I've never read it. All I know is... you probably want something straight from Them is all, the Golden Age Russian Composers.


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

Russian harmony? French harmony?

These are very vague terms. Debussy's harmonic language is miles away from Rameau's, much like Balakirev, Scriabin and Stravinsky would have many differences in their implentation of harmony.

Maybe you could explain a bit more about what you mean? I thought that Western/European harmony evolved mostly in tandem, with any new harmonic trends being disseminated throughout the continent. Most of the differences between musical cultures seems to stem from composers drawing from their regional folk music and applying it to the overarching European tradition.

My advice would be to just complete harmonic analyses of a wide range of Russian composers works.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

At least some of Igor Sposobin's books seem to be on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=Sposobin&x=0&y=0

They are:

Способин, Игорь

Музыкальная форма - Musical Form
Учебник гармонии - Textbook of Harmony
Элементарная теория музыки - Elementary Theory of Music

And he wrote a few more btw.

For some reason the search gets a bit more problematic with Druskin (Друскин, Михаил) - probably a less popular author, and especially with Alekseyev (Алексеев) because it is such a common Russian surname. So I did not go too deep into those searches but it appears that soft copies of all of these books in Russian could be easily found on the Internet. At least Sposobin's books certainly are. For instance, the search terms such as these "способин элементарная теория музыки" in google will return you quite a few useful results.

Hope this helps.


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## MJTTOMB (Dec 16, 2007)

Argus said:


> Russian harmony? French harmony?
> 
> These are very vague terms. Debussy's harmonic language is miles away from Rameau's, much like Balakirev, Scriabin and Stravinsky would have many differences in their implentation of harmony.
> 
> ...


Precisely this.

I could give you a pretty detailed description of Scriabin's harmonic systems, as I had to write a 20-some page thesis paper on his harmonic and rhythmic constructs, but i highly doubt that's what you're looking for. I have a feeling you're more interested in studying Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, and their peers.


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## Dont (Oct 3, 2010)

Serge said:


> At least some of Igor Sposobin's books seem to be on Amazon:
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=Sposobin&x=0&y=0
> 
> ...


Serge, Thank you. You've given me exactly what I want. And I'm very happy 

The book I was looking for was this:
View attachment 1246

And I found it.
It turns out the writer's name wasn't druskin. My teacher wrote it wrong.

Also I found another harmony book of sposobin which is really good(not the elementary one).

This books are invaluable to me. Also I know that you wasted some time on it. I can't thank you enough. That phrase you wrote helped me find every book that I want :tiphat:

And it turns out there lots of great books about music in russian. I wish I understood all of them.


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## Dont (Oct 3, 2010)

Argus said:


> Russian harmony? French harmony?
> 
> These are very vague terms. Debussy's harmonic language is miles away from Rameau's, much like Balakirev, Scriabin and Stravinsky would have many differences in their implentation of harmony.
> 
> ...


You are right. To master Russian Harmony you need to study all composers individually. However by studying russian harmony I just meant the system.

As far as I know there are lots of schools in harmony. Mainly; French, German, Russian, English... -Also American system is very different which jazz musicians use-

Their main difference is how they use codes and some rules. I had some problems adapting french to russian but I started to get used to it. So in terms of study I don't think it would be vague to call them only russian, french harmony etc.

Also for analysis I think Reimann's coding system is the best (which is very complicated to me).


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

You are very welcome! Glad I was able to help.


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## maxepotter (Nov 3, 2010)

I do agree with your opinions, it's really a good and flexible job.Very well said, thanks for sharing.

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## MaestroMallard (Jul 30, 2015)

Try these references out: 
McQuere, Gordon D., (ed.) Russian Theoretical Thought in Music. Vol. 10 of Russian Music Studies. Malcolm Hamrick Brown, Series Editor. Michigan: UMI Research, 1983.
Taruskin, Richard. On Russian Music. Berkley: University of California Press, 2009.
Bass, Richard. “Prokofiev’s Technique of Chromatic Displacement.” Music Analysis, 7/2 (July 1988): 197-214. 
Maes, Francis. A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 

And Rimsky-Korsakov...he was a great theorist and orchestrator.


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