两种理论都在让-菲利普·拉莫 ( Jean-Philippe Rameau)的理论中找到了灵感的一部分,首先是拉莫1722年的《和声学基本原理》(Traité d'harmonie)。 [8] 即使和声功能的概念在1893年之前还没有被正式命名为“和声功能”,但它也可以被证明存在于该日期之前的许多和声理论中,无论是显性的还是暗含的。 音乐中该术语的早期用法(不一定是此处所所指的含义,或仅是沾点儿边儿)包括1844年Fétis的《Traitécomplet de lathéorie et de la pratique de l'harmonie》、1855年Durutte的《 Esthétique musicale 》 以及1862年Loquin的( 《Notions élémentaires d'harmonie moderne》 等。 [9]
Diether de la Motte改良版的里曼理论[14],三个功能用字母T、D、S表记,分别指主、属、下属。大调用大写字母(T、D、S),小调用小写字母(t、d、s)。原则上每种功能都能用三种和弦实现,不只是功能对应音级的三和弦,还有上下三度处的和弦,可另加字母表示。附加P(或p)表示平行(德语Parallel,英语relative)和弦——例如Tp表示主大和弦的平行小和弦(如a小和弦之于C大和弦),tP表示主小和弦的平行大和弦(如♭E大和弦之于c小和弦)等。另一种和弦附加G或g(德语Gegenparallelklang或Gegenklang,反平行),比如tG即是主小和弦的反平行大和弦(如♭A大和弦之于c小和弦)。
"It was Riemann who coined the term 'function' in Vereinfachte Harmonielehre (1893) to describe relations between the dominant and subdominant harmonies and the referential tonic: he borrowed the word from mathematics, where it was used to designate the correlation of two variables, an 'argument' and a 'value'". Brian Hyer, "Tonality", Grove Music Online, doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.28102.
Hugo Riemann, Handbuch der Harmonielehre, 6th edn, Leipzig, Breitkopf und Härtel, 1917, p. 214. See A. Rehding, Hugo Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought, p. 51.
Robert E. Wason, Viennese Harmonic Theory from Albrecthsberger to Schenker and Schoenberg (Ann Arbor, London, 1985) ISBN978-0-8357-1586-7, pp. xi-xiii and passim.
Arnold Schoenberg, Structural Functions of Harmony, Williams and Norgate, 1954; Revised edition edited by Leonard Stein, Ernest Benn, 1969. Paperback edition, London, Faber and Faber, 1983. ISBN978-0-571-13000-9.
Matthew Shirlaw, The Theory of Harmony, London, Novello, [1917], p. 116, writes that "In the course of the second, third, and fourth books of the Traité, [...] Rameau throws out a number of observations respecting the nature and functions of chords, which raise questions of the utmost importance for the theory of harmony". See also p. 201 (about harmonic functions in Rameau's Génération harmonique).
Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans, Les conceptions fonctionnelles de l'harmonie de J.-Ph. Rameau, Fr. J. Fétis, S. Sechter et H. Riemann, Master Degree Thesis, Catholic University of Louvain, 1989, p. 3.
M. Hauptmann, Die Natur der Harmonik und der Metrik, Leipzig, 1853. Hauptmann saw the tonic chord as the expression of unity, its relation to the dominant and the subdominant as embodying an opposition to unity, and their synthesis in the return to the tonic. See David Kopp, Chromatic Transformations in Nineteenth-Century Music, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 52.
Dahlhaus, Carl (1990). "A Guide to the Terminology of German Harmony", Studies in the Origin of Harmonic Tonality, trans. Gjerdingen, Robert O. (1990). Princeton University Press. ISBN978-0-691-09135-8.
Hermann Grabner, Die Funktionstheorie Hugo Riemanns und ihre Bedeutung für die praktische Analyse, Munich 1923, and Handbuch der funktionellen Harmonielehre, Berlin 1944. ISBN978-3-7649-2112-5.
Vincent d'Indy, Cours de composition musicale, Paris, Durand, 1903, cited from the 6th edition, 1912, p. 116:
il n'y a qu' un seul accord, l'Accord parfait, seul consonnant, parce que, seul il donne la sensation de repos ou d'équilibre;
l'Accord se manifeste sous deux aspects différents, l'aspect majeur et l'aspect mineur, suivant qu'il est engendré du grave à l'aigu ou de l'aigu au grave.
l'Accord est susceptible de revêtir trois fonctions tonales différentes, suivant qu'il est Tonique, Dominante ou Sous-dominante.
Translated (with some adaptation) in Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Music and Discourse. Toward a Semiology of Music, C. Abbate transl., Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990, p. 224. Nattiez (or his translator, the quotation is not in the French edition) removed d'Indy's dualist idea according to which the chords are built from a major and a minor thirds, the major chord from bottom to top, the minor chord the other way around.
Eytan Agmon, "Functional Harmony Revisited: A Prototype-Theoretic Approach", Music Theory Spectrum 17/2 (Autumn 1995), pp. 202-203.
Imig, Renate (1970). System der Funktionsbezeichnung in den Harmonielehren seit Hugo Riemann. Düsseldorf: Gesellschaft zur Förderung der systematischen Musikwissenschaft. [德语]
Rehding, Alexander: Hugo Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought (New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism). Cambridge University Press (2003). 。 ISBN978-0-521-82073-8书号978-0-521-82073-8 。
Riemann, Hugo: Vereinfachte Harmonielehre, oder die Lehre von den tonalen Funktionen der Akkorde (1893). ASIN:B0017UOATO。