￥Music has a phenomenal power to move, transport, and delight us. Across numerous styles and forms—from the iconic masterpieces of the classical tradition to genres such as jazz, rock, pop, and folk—great music expresses the inexpressible, speaks across time and cultures, and galvanizes audiences across the world. And the more we understand about music, the more we appreciate it, and a knowledge of music theory is the best place to start.

 

Music may be the most abstract of the arts, as its sonic language is a spectrum of tones, but it has a highly organized structure, a structure that allows for both its form and its meaning. In fact, the great expressive capacity of music and its ability to captivate us and to deeply communicate is rooted in its organized structure and how that structure is used creatively by composers, as well as by performers.