A word harmony comes from either a Greek ἁρμονία harmonía meaning "a fastening or join". A construct of harmony dates when far back when Pythagoras.

A few traditions of music performance, composition, and theory have specific rules of harmony. These system come typically held to become according to the natural properties like Pythagorean tuning's low whole total ratios ("harmoniousness" existence inherent inside the ratios either perceptually or even even in themselves) or harmonics and resonances ("harmoniousness" being inherent in a quality of healthy), sustaining the permissible pitches & harmonies gaining their beauty or even simplicity from either their closeness to people properties.

Although virtually all harmony fall out following of 2 or other notes existence sounded at the same time, these are imaginable to produce harmony by using merely of these melodic line. There are several pieces from either a baroque period for solo string instruments for example, in which chords may be uncommon, however which nevertheless convey the fully feel of harmony.

For lot of the history of western classical music, including the common practice period, the conventions & system of harmony were strictly enforced, typically per controlling influence of the Roman Catholic Church, while folk music and non-Western music too developed typically widely different notions of harmony. Religious music was controlled per churches in the Baroqueness & Definitive periods, & music which experienced harmonies considered as well unmusical were frowned upon. Still, there was a general trend from either the authoritative time to the 20th century in western classical music for harmony to turn into other advanced, using composers breaking numbers of of the conventions which were another time considered "rules".

Carl Dahlhaus (1990) distinguishes between coordinate & subordinate harmony. Subordinate harmony is the hierarchical tonality or tonal harmony well known in todays world, when coordinate harmony is the older Medieval and Renaissance tonalité ancienne, "the term is meant to signify that sonorities are linked one after the other without giving rise to the impression of a goal-directed development. A first chord forms a "progression" with a second chord, and a second with a third. But the earlier chord progression is independent of the later one and vice versa." Coordinate harmony follows straight (adjacent) relationships like than indirect when within subordinate. Interval cycles create proportionate harmonies, like oftentimes in the music of Alban Berg, George Perle, Arnold Schoenberg, Béla Bartók, and Edgard Varèse's Density 21.5.

Harmony could likewise exist when distinguished as centrifugal or even centripetal harmony, harmony which leads out of or even to the tonic, severally. For instance, music of the classical era is most typically centrifugal, when a ragtime progression is centripetal. (van 500 Merwe 1989)

Together Tonality and Chord (music) contain much tools in harmony.