music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

, 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 Voice leading (or part writing) is the linear progression of individual melodic lines ( voices or parts) and their interaction with one another to create harmonies, typically in accordance with the principles of common-practice harmony and counte ...

Illustrative example

Lines with parallel harmony can be viewed as a series of chords 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 ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' ( L. 86), known in English as ''Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun'', is a symphonic poem for orchestra by Claude Debussy, approximately 10 minutes in duration. It was composed in 1894 and first performed ...

'' (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 ensembl ...

'' (1899), '' La Mer'' (1905), ''

La cathédrale engloutie "La cathédrale engloutie" (The Sunken Cathedral) is a prelude written by the French composer Claude Debussy for solo piano. It was published in 1910 as the tenth prelude in Debussy's first of two volumes of twelve piano preludes each. It is cha ...

'', "

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'' Suite No. 2 (1913), "Menuet" from ''

Le Tombeau de Couperin ''Le Tombeau de Couperin'' (''The Couperin's Grave'') is a suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1914 and 1917. The piece is in six movements, based on those of a traditional Baroque suite. Each movement is dedicated to the mem ...

'' *

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 ''The Rite of Spring''. Full name: ''The Rite of Spring: Pictures from Pagan Russia in Two Parts'' (french: Le Sacre du printemps: tableaux de la Russie païenne en deux parties) (french: Le Sacre du printemps, link=no) is a ballet and orchestral ...

'' (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 ''Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds "Pierrot lunaire"'' ("Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's 'Pierrot lunaire), commonly known simply as ''Pierrot lunaire'', Op. 21 ("Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight"), is a me ...

'', "Columbine" (1914) *

William Schuman William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910February 15, 1992) was an American composer and arts administrator. Life Schuman was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, son of Samuel and Rachel Schuman. He was named after the 27th U.S. ...

'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 A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone, is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, and it is considered the most dissonant when sounded harmonically. It is defined as the interval between two adjacent no ...

, 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 Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...

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 workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pro ...

s 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