Notes are the “atoms” of music and thus, of any music theory. A note is the written representation of a tone. It represents the tone’s pitch and rhythmic value. The pitch of a note corresponds to the frequency of a tone. The rhythmic value of a note corresponds to the duration of a tone. Both will be explained in the following chapters.
This part of the book will explain notes and how to read scores. The most important aspects of notation, not only those which are important for learning harmony but also many others, will be briefly explained. This should be enough for a reader to be able to read all scores given in this book, including the complete scores given in chapter Complete harmony analyses.
However, notation is a comprehensive subject and separate books exist which are dedicated to it. For instance, ornaments are not explained in this book. Proper execution of ornaments is a theme by itself, especially since ornaments from the baroque period are different from the ones belonging to the later period (even worse, some of them look the same but are executed differently). Also, the pedal markings in piano music are not explained. In fact, pedal markings are stripped off from the scores in this book so that more space is available for annotating harmony.