In music, parallel harmony, also known as harmonic parallelism, harmonic planing or parallel voice leading, is the parallel movement of two or more melodies (see voice leading).

Illustrative example

Lines with parallel harmony can be viewed as a series of

chord Chord may refer to: * Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously ** Guitar chord a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning * Chord (geometry), a line segment joining two points on a curve * Chord ( ...

s with the same intervallic structure. Parallel means that each note within the chord rises or falls by the same interval.

Examples from works

Feuilles mortes Dead Leaves diatonic planing

Prominent examples include: *

Claude Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...

's '' Beau soir'' (1880), '' Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' (1894), ''

Nocturnes A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night. History The term ''nocturne'' (from French ''nocturne'' 'of the night') was first applied to musical pieces in the 18th century, when it indicated an ensemble ...

'' (1899), '' La Mer'' (1905), '' La cathédrale engloutie'', "

Voiles Voiles is a composition by Claude Debussy for solo piano from 1909. It is the second piece in a set of twelve préludes published in 1910. The title may be translated as either ''veils'' or ''sails''; both meanings can be connected to the musical ...

", " Feuilles mortes" *

Maurice Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In ...

's ''

Daphnis and Chloë ''Daphnis and Chloe'' ( el, Δάφνις καὶ Χλόη, ''Daphnis kai Chloē'') is an ancient Greek novel written in the Roman Empire, the only known work of the second-century AD Greek novelist and romance writer Longus. Setting and styl ...

'' Suite No. 2 (1913), "Menuet" from '' Le Tombeau de Couperin'' *

Erik Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an und ...

's ''

Le Fils des étoiles ''Le Fils des étoiles'' (''The Son of the Stars'') is an incidental music score composed in December 1891 by Erik Satie to accompany a three-act poetic drama of the same name by Joséphin Péladan. It is a key work of Satie's "Rosicrucian" pe ...

(1892) *

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...

's '' The Rite of Spring'' (1913) *

Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...

's music features abundant planing *

Richard Strauss Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wag ...

's '' Elektra'' (1909) *

Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...

's '' Pierrot lunaire'', "Columbine" (1914) * William Schuman's ''Three Score Set for Piano'' (1944) *

John Williams John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932)Nylund, Rob (15 November 2022)Classic Connection review ''WBOI'' ("For the second time this year, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic honored American composer, conductor, and arranger John Williams, who wa ...

's "Rebel Fanfare" from ''

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop-culture Cultural impact of S ...

'' In the Schuman example (''Three Score Set for Piano''), the inversions of the chords suggest a bichordal effect.Kliewer, Vernon (1975). "Melody: Linear Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music", ''Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music'', pp. 332–333. Wittlich, Gary (ed.). Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. . In the example on the top right, we see a series of quartal chords in parallel motion, in which the intervallic relationship between each consecutive chord member, in this case a minor second, is consistent. Each note in the chord falls by one semitone in each step, from F, B, and E in the first chord to D, G, and C in the last.

Usage in electronic music

Parallel harmony is frequently used in

house music House is a music genre characterized by a repetitive Four on the floor (music), four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 120 beats per minute. It was created by Disc jockey, DJs and music producers from Chicago metropolitan area, Chicago' ...

and other electronic music genres. Historically, this resulted from producers sampling chords from soul or jazz and then playing them at different pitches, or using "chord memory" feature from classic polyphonic

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

s. Modern digital audio workstations offer similar chord-generating tools for achieving parallel harmony.

References

{{Impressionist music , state=autocollapse Harmony

Illustrative example

Examples from works

Usage in electronic music

See also

References