The DoveSong iUniversity

Learning from the World's Greatest Harmonic Tradition

The Greatest Composer of them All - J.S. Bach

The European Classical Music Tradition

As the 21st Century dawns, a new classical music based on concord and the harmonic laws of nature is emerging. In the Harmony Division, we study the great works of the European harmonic tradition, a repertoire that was created by some of our greatest minds, and then was polluted during the 20th century with the discords of the so-called innovations of "atonality" and serial music. It's back to the basics now, and time to discover what the greatest music in this tradition actually was, and how we can learn from it.

Five Composers

Five Periods of Composition Represented by Five Composers

In the 45 years that I have devoted to discovering the great works of the European classical music tradition, I have narrowed the work of the Harmony Division to five composers and their respective periods of influence:

1 - The great composers of Renaissance sacred music - Victoria, Palestrina, Josquin, Morales, Guerero, Gallus, Lassus... A very, very important harmonic music tradition!
2 - J.S. Bach - The greatest of all composers - The master of counterpoint and harmony
3 - Beethoven - The master of the great Romantic Era: his predecessors Mozart and Haydn and the other great composers of the 19th century.
4 - Wagner - The still-misunderstood master of music drama.
5 - César Franck - The angelic music of France's greatest composer and the work of his students has been in near-complete hibernation during the reign of destructive discords provided by the twentieth century and is awaiting its 21st-century rebirth --- when this healing music will be desperately needed.

My Choices For the Top Five Western Composers

Guy Ropartz: A Truly Forgotten Great Composer