Workshop 88 mini-test

1. Why does C after G7 mean something different from an isolated C chord?

2. How can repetition change a chord from a temporary deviation into a stable region?

3. What is harmonic foreshadowing?

4. What does it mean for a harmony to become thematic?

5. How can omission work after a progression has been established?

6. What is retrospective harmonic reinterpretation?

7. Why can repeated dissonance eventually feel stable?

8. What are local and global tonic memory?

9. How can a future tonic be prepared before an actual modulation?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 88?

Answers

1. Because the listener retains the dominant's unresolved expectation, so C is heard as fulfillment of remembered tension rather than merely as an independent sonority.
2. Duration, repetition, cadences, melody, and recurrent bass emphasis can gradually overwrite the earlier interpretation, making the chord feel like current home instead of a passing departure.
3. Introducing a pitch, chord, progression, or tonal region earlier in a subordinate role so that when it becomes structurally important later, the listener has already encountered it.
4. A harmonic progression or characteristic sonority recurs recognizably enough to function like a motif or leitmotif, carrying associations from its earlier appearances.
5. Once the listener has learned the pattern, a later performance can omit an expected chord or resolution and rely on memory to imply it, creating space or surprise.
6. A later event—especially a cadence or final tonic—changes how earlier ambiguous harmony is understood, even though the earlier notes themselves did not change.
7. Repetition establishes the dissonance as part of the music's normal language, reducing its demand for immediate resolution; the listener adapts to the new harmonic norm.
8. The current section may establish a local tonic, while the original key remains remembered as global home; their competition creates powerful modulation and return effects.
9. Use the future tonic or its characteristic pitches earlier as chromatic mediants, borrowed colors, upper structures, passing tones, or temporary tonicizations before later confirming it as the actual center.
10. Harmony exists not only in the notes currently sounding but in the listener's accumulated expectations and associations from everything already heard.

The central lesson of Workshop 88 is:

A chord does not disappear when you release the keys. Once the listener remembers it, you can continue composing with that chord even while it is silent.