兩種理論都在讓-菲利普·拉莫 ( Jean-Philippe Rameau)的理論中找到了靈感的一部分,首先是拉莫1722年的《和聲學基本原理》(Traité d'harmonie)。 [8] 即使和聲功能的概念在1893年之前還沒有被正式命名為「和聲功能」,但它也可以被證明存在於該日期之前的許多和聲理論中,無論是顯性的還是暗含的。 音樂中該術語的早期用法(不一定是此處所所指的含義,或僅是沾點兒邊兒)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改良版的里曼理論[14],三個功能用字母T、D、S表記,分別指主、屬、下屬。大調用大寫字母(T、D、S),小調用小寫字母(t、d、s)。原則上每種功能都能用三種和弦實現,不只是功能對應音級的三和弦,還有上下三度處的和弦,可另加字母表示。附加P(或p)表示平行(德語Parallel,英語relative)和弦——例如Tp表示主大和弦的平行小和弦(如a小和弦之於C大和弦),tP表示主小和弦的平行大和弦(如♭E大和弦之於c小和弦)等。另一種和弦附加G或g(德語Gegenparallelklang或Gegenklang,反平行),比如tG即是主小和弦的反平行大和弦(如♭A大和弦之於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. [德語]
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書號978-0-521-82073-8 。
Riemann, Hugo: Vereinfachte Harmonielehre, oder die Lehre von den tonalen Funktionen der Akkorde (1893). ASIN:B0017UOATO。