An Eightfold Taxonomy of Harmonic Progressions, and Its Application to Triads Related by Major Third and Their Significance in Recent Screen Music

Abstract

A hybridization of two recent innovations in music theory—a focus on the progression of two triads as a unitary analytical object, and a component-wise formation of a set of equivalence classes—brings together under one conceptual and labeling system eight different approaches to the classification of harmonic progression. A holistic adoption of these eight approaches, each already preexisting within music scholarship in some partial or complete form, affords precise and gradated statements regarding the styles, associative meanings, and hermeneutics of music for recent multimedia. To that end, this article pays particular attention to progressions of like-moded triads a major third apart, as demonstrated through analyses of music for the television series Bridgerton and the movie Ex Machina.