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I'd like to know in what period/year chords were invented and by whom.

Did musicians like Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven think in chords to harmonize their melodies or did chords only emerge in the 1900s?

note: this is a secondary question to my question Why aren't chords written in classical sheet music? one of the commenters said that chords weren't invented during that time, which was very surprising for me to hear. so I want to know when they were invented.

Richard
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    The comment in the other question is that chord ***names*** hadn’t been invented. Chords being played and heard likely dates back at least to Ancient Greece. If you count only two notes as a chord, then the aulos was used to play two note chords as early as 5000 years ago! – Todd Wilcox Aug 21 '18 at 02:39
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    As others have mentioned, it depends on your definition of "chord". Certainly chorales were full of what we would consider chords, but the were treated as a collection of "voices", each leading to its own resolution. That's why they had such strict rules regarding intervallic movement. – ScottM Aug 21 '18 at 07:03

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It depends on how you define "chords," but I assume you mean "tertian sonorities" like triads and seventh chords.

If so, the music theorist Johannes Lippius discussed the "harmonic triad" in his Synopsis musicae novae (Synopsis of New Music) in 1612. In a quote from this article:

The concept of triadic generation and invertibility, so clearly and firmly established by Johannes Lippius in 1610 and again in 1612, constitutes a milestone in the history of harmonic theory.

In that same article, the author makes a case that Ramos de Pareja preceded Lippius. In his Musica practica of 1482, Ramos discussed fixing the intonation of thirds and sixths in order to create triadic structures.

Richard
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  • hmm, in my last question, @alephzero said that chords weren't invented in the Baroque period. but according to you it seems they were. –  Aug 20 '18 at 19:13
  • So I assume (until someone tells me different) that Bach, for example, knew every little thing there is to know about chords when composing his music. –  Aug 20 '18 at 19:36
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    Don't misquote me. I said **the modern concept of chord notation** wasn't invented in the Baroque period. Well, actually it *was* invented *during* the Baroque period, and first published in a book written by Rameau in 1744 - and that book was widely considered to be avant-garde nonsense when it first appeared in print! Bach and his contemporaries certainly didn't think of "chord progressions" in the sense of "C Em F G7" or whatever - that notation was non-existent at the time. –  Aug 20 '18 at 21:34
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    … If you want to know how Bach and his contemporaries *did* think of chords, read the relevant chapters of C P E Bach's "True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments" (C P E was one of J S Bach's sons). FWIW this thread https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/27308/iii9-i-progression-in-bach?rq=1 is a good example of several people (including Walter Piston, who ought to have known better IMO) making a complete hash of analysing something that is really very simple to understand, by trying to explain it using "modern" chord theory, which is *not* the way its composer thought about it!. –  Aug 20 '18 at 21:42
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    @foreyez While I don't think that Bach thought about melodic lines in terms of harmony either, it's also true that he tends to adhere to many of the rules of harmony without thinking about it. If you want to really feel like you understand the subject, I would suggest that you consider following alephzero's advice about reading CPE Bach, and form your own opinions after doing so. – BobRodes Aug 21 '18 at 20:50
  • Actually, Gioseffo Zarlino described triads as the basis of harmony in his _Institutioni Harmoniche_ in 1558. But triads had arguably been part of musical practice since the time of Dufay (ca 1400- 1474). – Scott Wallace Aug 22 '18 at 18:27
  • @user19146 I assume the above comment by the mysterious numbered user is referring to [Treatise on Harmony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Philippe_Rameau#Treatise_on_Harmony,_1722) from 1722? In any case, thanks to this comment I just discovered a really interesting composer, so cool – Some_Guy Sep 03 '18 at 13:19
  • @foreyez yes chords were certainly known in the Baroque period. It was normal to write a bass line to be used as the notation of the chords. Examples: If the key signature was two sharps and the bass note was a D, the keyboard player was supposed to play a D major chord. If the key signature was one flat and the bass note a D, the chord to be played was supposed to be D minor. If something else was supposed to be played there was a figure, a number, under the bass note indicating what kind of chord to play. And regarding Bach: Yes no doubt that Bach's knowledge of chords was thorough. – Lars Peter Schultz May 09 '19 at 22:27
  • @LarsPeterSchultz what you said conflicts with the third comment. I think thorough bass/rule of the octave was the main thing back then. –  May 09 '19 at 22:47
  • @foreyez I don't know what you mean by "bass/rule of the octave". Anyway what I wrote is correct. Find a sonata by Händel written for violin and piano. Today it is often published with a full written out piano part. But Händel only wrote a bass line with figures, a socalled "figured bass". Then it is up to the piano player to invent the right hand based on that. If a publisher has printed a right hand written out it is only one possible way to play it. But since many keyboard players in our time can not invent the right hand based on a figured bass they need an edition where it is written out. – Lars Peter Schultz May 09 '19 at 22:55