harmony

In music, the sounding together of notes to produce a chord. Although the term suggests a pleasant or agreeable sound, it is applied to any combination of notes and the chord can therefore be consonant or dissonant. The term also refers to the progression (flow) of chords in a piece of music and the way they relate to each other.

An important contributor to the theory of harmony was Jean-Philippe Rameau. In his Traité de l'harmonie/Treatise on Harmony (1722), he put forward a system of chord classification on which later methods of harmony have been based.

Harmony

Borough in Butler County, western Pennsylvania, 40 km/25 mi north of Pittsburgh, on Connoquenessing Creek; population (1990) 1,100.

Harmony is situated next to the borough of Zelienople (population 4,200); its proprietor, Baron Dettmar Basse, sold a portion of it in 1805 to George Rapp, who set up the first of his American collectivist religious communities there. The Rappites later moved on to New Harmony, in Indiana. They left behind them a cemetery and ‘Father Rapp's Seat’, a hilltop rock that their leader used for meditative purposes. Zelienople and Harmony are in a clay and coal-producing area that also is noted for its resorts.