Swimming is recommended in children to promote harmonic development in all of the body districts.
"I don't think electronic notes, which characteristically have a lot of foundation and little harmonic development, make the right sort of sound," Mr. Mander said.
When it was new, this work was like a lightning bolt for fans of Minimalism who had seen the biggest stars of the movement (Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Steve Reich) retain the notion that repetition and gradual harmonic development were the essential hallmarks of this nascent style.
The score moved ahead by addition and subtraction of the group's sections and voices, with little harmonic development; it revealed the sonic character of the full orchestra for only a few moments.
The personable and passionate Voxare players — Emily Ondracek and Galina Zhdanova, violinists; Erik Peterson, violist; and Adrian Daurov, cellist — took turns introducing the works played on Friday, some of which certainly had Minimalist hallmarks: rhythmic ostinatos, repetition and slow harmonic development.
For more than four centuries Western music had thrived on harmonic development, and here is was – gone!
"Often the sounds are sampled from existing stops with strong basic tones but little harmonic development," he said.
Heterophony, a traditional style of Arabic, Thai, and of course, Japanese music, has a fundamental horizontal drive without the traditional Western tonal and vertical harmonic development.
The pivotal chapter in "Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions" is entitled "Chernomor to Kashchey: Harmonic Sorcery"; it drastically revises the standard narrative of harmonic developments in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
