Alberto E. Colla, Trattato di armonia moderna e contemporanea, 2 voll. (vol. 1: Le simmetriche terre promesse; vol. 2: Le armoniche terre promesse); Marco Quagliarini, Costruire la musica

Abstract

The two volumes presented here (A. E. Colla, Trattato di armonia moderna e contemporanea and M. Quagliarini, Costruire la musica) are part of a current trend of renewal in harmony and composition treatises in Italy. Colla addresses post-tonal harmony in an innovative way by showing harmonic-compositional techniques developed from the 20th century to the present day; specifically, he devotes his two volumes to "harmonic partials" (secondary frequencies emitted together with a main frequency) and various forms of symmetry. In his book, Quagliarini introduces a compositional method based on the construction of chords and how to tie them together to build coherent structures of increasing size. Both volumes relate concepts that are pecualir to musical syntax to extra-musical elements.