In North America, there has been a growing tendency in recent years to include pop-rock examples in undergraduate tonal-harmony classes. Recent textbooks by Turek (2007), Clendinning and Marvin (2011), Roig-Francolí (2011), and Laitz (2012) all feature excerpts from the pop-rock repertory. 1 At the Society for Music Theory’s annual meeting in Minneapo- lis in 2011, a panel was convened specifically to discuss the pros and cons of studying classi- cal, as opposed to popular, music in the theory classroom. 2 This trend undoubtedly stems from an attempt to make the subject matter more palatable to today’s students, whose musical backgrounds are increasingly oriented toward pop-rock. Yet by incorporating pop-rock music into the classical harmony classroom, teachers come face to face with some of the fundamen- tal differences between the harmonic idioms of these two styles. 3 Tonal-harmony teachers use pop-rock examples to illustrate not just theoretical concepts dealing specifically with harmony, but a wide array of ideas. For instance, in looking just at one of the above-cited textbooks, Clendinning and Marvin (2011), we find U2’s ‘Miracle Drug’ demonstrat- ing simple meter (30) and Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ introducing key signatures (55); these songs prepare the way for later har- monic examples, such as Elvis Presley’s ‘Love Me Tender’ and its major II triad (at ‘love me sweet’) functioning as a secondary dominant to V (408). In all these cases, pop-rock songs simply substi- tute for what would have been classical excerpts in older textbooks. Pop-rock music can also serve as a theoretical topic in and of itself, add- ing to the total amount of material for professors to teach. Clendinning and Marvin, in addition to peppering their entire text with pop-rock exam- ples, devote a whole chapter to ‘Popular Music’, with sections on extended and altered chords, pentatonic scales, and popular-song phrase structure, among other issues. Theory teachers have long recognized the dif- ferences between classical and jazz harmony, as evidenced by jazz commonly having its own separate textbooks and classes. Acknowledge- ment of the analogous differences between classical and pop-rock harmony (London 1990: 112; Stephenson 2002: 101) presents us with a significant methodological dilemma: assuming we continue to incorporate pop-rock music in the classical harmony classroom and do not give it its own separate course, 4 the question becomes whether we should use pop-rock ex- cerpts only to the extent that they can serve as illustrations of classical idioms, or instead en- gage pop-rock music on its own terms. If we choose the latter option, and endeavor to move beyond a treatment of pop-rock music that is 91 Deinitions of ‘Chord’ in the Teaching of Tonal Harmony christopher doll 1 Of these books, Roig-Francolí’s and Clendinning and Marvin’s contain the largest number of pop-rock examples, using them throughout their texts. This trend was foreshadowed by textbooks such as Sorce (1995). 2 This panel was entitled ‘The Great Theory Debate: Be It Resolved...Common Practice Period Repertoire No Longer Speaks to our Students; It’s Time to Fire a Cannon at the Canon’. 3 Ken Stephenson (2001: 110-11) has pointed out the sometimes uneasy combination of classical and pop-rock pedagogical examples in his review of the irst edition of Miguel Roig-Francolí’s textbook Harmony in Context (2003). On pop-rock music and theory pedagogy, see Adler (1973), Capuzzo (2009), Casanova López (2008), Collaros (2001), Covach, Clendinning, and Smith (2012), Fankhauser and Snodgrass (2007), Folse (2004), Gauldin (1990), Maclachlan (2011), Repp (2010), Rosenberg (2010), Salley (2011). On North American tonal- harmony pedagogy, and North American harmonic theory generally, see Thompson (1980). Benitez (1999) discusses the pedagogical potential of The Beatles’ music in the context of post-tonal theory. 4 Undoubtedly, schools exist at which classes on rock harmony, distinct from classical harmony, are taught (e.g., Berklee College of Music). But these would be isolated exceptions to the national trend. dutch journal of music theory, volume 18, number 2 (2013)