Excerpt from Practical Harmony on a French Basis, Vol. 1
The author has endeavored to prepare a text-book on harmony, based on the principles of the most eminent French theorists and composers, which shall enable the student to analyze with ease and clearness the most complex musical compositions of the modern school, and which shall also stimulate the musical instincts of those who are endowed with the gift for composition.
It is justly urged against the average text-book on harmony, that it is either too elementary or too scientific. If too elementary, it leaves the pupil uninformed regarding much that he will meet in the works of the masters, and it usually contains detail which fatigues and discourages. If, on the other hand, the book sets out with details of the laws of acoustics, it appeals more to the mathematician than to the musician: the theoretical is developed at the expense of the practical, and neither artistic intelligence nor musical sentiment is quickened. Whatever may be proved by such mathematical calculation, it has little or nothing to do with aesthetics which is constantly changing. Our modern musical system is based on what is both natural and artificial; it has been accepted, and our musical habits, so to speak, and much that we call musical instinct, are the result. New musical effects come, we suspect, as a spontaneous discovery, rather than as a result of patient scientific investigation. For this reason, in all matters having to do with the artistic and the aesthetic, practice should precede theory.
The study of harmony can be made, and should be made, not a drudgery, but a delight; and the French methods have been chosen as a basis for this book, because they present theories in an attractive, as well as in a practical manner.
The Frenchman is instinctively an artist. The beautiful appeals to him irresistibly, and his feeling for the narrow line that separates the commonplace from the purely artistic is sensitively keen.
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