The Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis
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The idea of describing phrase components as functional areas developed over a period of about 250 years. In the oldest sources introducing this concept, what we refer to as the predominant, or dominant-preparation, area was called the "subdominant area,' since the subdominant chord was often found there.

The terms "tonic," "dominant," and "subdominant," referring to chords built on the first, fifth, and fourth degrees of the scale, first appeared in the theoretical writings of Jean-Philippe Rameau in the mid-eighteenth century, but these terms refer primarily to chords rather than functions. In the mid-nineteenth century, Hugo Riemann developed a theory that tonal music is organized by balancing two opposing functional areas-one controlled by the dominant triad a perfect fifth above the tonic scale degree and the other by the subdominant triad a perfect fifth below the tonic scale degree. Riemann's was a "function" theory, whereby ii and IV, for example, were viewed as functionally equivalent. In his analytical system, tonic-function harmonies were labeled T, dominant-function were D, and subdominant S.