CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM 
 
 The Cf,rne;7-ie Corpors,tion 
 
 MUSIC 
 
iv.1- 448X93""" """"■"•" '^"""^ 
 
 3 1924 022 264 349 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022264349 
 
The Music Story Series 
 
 Edited by 
 
 FREDERICK J. CROWEST. 
 
 The 
 Story of Musical Form 
 
trbe ^usic Storg Serfcs. 
 
 3/6 net per Volume. 
 
 Already published in this Series. 
 
 THE STORY OF ORATORIO. By Annie Patterson, 
 
 B.A., Mas. Doc. With Illustrations. 
 THE STORY OF NOTATION. By C. F. Abdy 
 
 Williams, M.A., Mus. Bac. With Illustrations. 
 THE STORY OF THE ORGAN. By C. F. Abdy 
 
 Williams, M.A., Mus. Bac. With Illustrations. 
 THE STORY OF CHAMBER MUSIC. By N. 
 
 KiLBURN, Mus. Bac. With Illustrations. 
 THE STORY OF THE VIOLIN. By Paul Stobving. 
 
 With Illustrations. 
 THE STORY OF THE HARP. By W. H. Grattan- 
 
 Flood, Mus. Doc. With Illustrations. 
 THE STORY OF ORGAN MUSIC. By C. F. Abdv 
 
 Williams, M.A., Mus. Bac. With Illustrations. 
 THE STORY OF ENGLISH MUSIC (1604-1904)- 
 
 MUSICIANS' COMPANY LECTURES. 
 THE STORY OF MINSTRELSY. By Edmondstoune 
 
 Duncan. With Illustrations. 
 
 This Series, in superior leather bindings, may be had 
 on application to the Publishers. 
 
 [all rights reserved.] 
 
'/h/fu>,n A^y//:. //„../7..-Jl; 
 
The Story of 
 
 Musical Form 
 
 BY 
 
 Clarence Lucas 
 
 London 
 The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd, 
 
 New York : Charles Scribner's Sons 
 1908 
 
 :5&a^ 
 
 M 
 
Preface. 
 
 This book is not a text-book. It is intended for any 
 cultured reader who takes an interest in good music. 
 At the same time I must add that a work of this 
 nature would have been of great help to me when I 
 was a young student of music. Text-books contain 
 such a mass of detail that it is next to impossible for 
 the beginner to get any conception whatsoever of the 
 general principles of the art of composition. He 
 plods up the rocky slopes of Pa;rnassus, catching at 
 every ledge, bruised with falls, foot-sore and weary, 
 to be rewarded with a vision of the " antres vast and 
 deserts idle " only when he has scaled the heights and 
 reached the top. These pages give a brief description 
 of the paths that lead to this desirable summit ; but 
 do not imagine, casual reader, that the perusal of this 
 book will make you a composer. At best, it is but a 
 captive balloon from which you can snatch a bird's- 
 eye view of the panorama nearest you. The wings of 
 the eagle alone can soar into the blue. 
 
 My aim throughout is to explain the principles of 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 form, rather than the form itself; to show that some 
 form or system is necessary for the fullest expression 
 of the thought and emotion of the composer ; to point 
 out that the great composers mould the forms to suit 
 the nature of their utterances. 
 
 A word of explanation is necessary to excuse the 
 seeming pedantry of giving the source of so many of 
 the quotations that are put in merely to enrich the 
 text. It has been my experience to meet with a quota- 
 tion that I have valued more than the text of the 
 author who has used it, and it has caused me much 
 trouble to trace it. To save my readers this worry, 
 I have given as many sources of the excerpts from 
 other authors as I could. But my text is continuous ; 
 the reader need not refer to the foot-notes for elucida- 
 tion of that of which I write. When no authority is 
 quoted, I alone am responsible for the theory advanced 
 or the statement made. And my judgment is the cul- 
 minative result of many years' studentship and travel 
 in France, Italy, and Germany; a Professorship of 
 Musical Composition and History in the United States ; 
 a varied experience as composer, conductor, and author 
 in England, It is therefore not surprising if some of 
 these chapters are not so clear to the reader as they 
 appear to be to me. I have done my best to make 
 my language as untechnical as possible, but at the 
 
 vi 
 
Preface 
 
 same time I am conscious of the difficulty a specialist 
 has in gauging the elementary knowledge the non- 
 specialist reader has of the subject with which the 
 writer is supposed to be familiar. 
 
 If this volume is as well received by those who elect 
 to review it, and finds as great favour with the musical 
 and general public as have the preceding nine volumes 
 in the valuable and attractive "Music Story Series," 
 one of the chief objects of its author will have been 
 attained. 
 
 CLARENCE LUCAS. 
 
 New York, 
 October 1908. 
 
Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 NECESSITY FOR FORM IN MUSIC. 
 
 PACE 
 
 Conrormity in variety — Monotony — Scientific value of musical 
 form — Plan of a musical work and landscape garden — Unfold- 
 ing of musical faculty — Beethoven and Shakespeare — Thought 
 and emotion — Selection of appropriate form . . . i 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 RHYTHMS. 
 
 Structure and rhythms— Primitive rhythmical forms — Rhythmical 
 sense of savages — Spencer and Darwin — Grammatical and 
 oratorical accents — The bar line — Various time signatures — 
 Spain and China — Rhythmical sounds pleasing to infants . 1 1 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 MELODY AND SCALE. 
 
 Savage melody devoid of harmonic sense, or tonality — Inexact 
 intervals — Evolution of scale — The seven-tone and five-tone 
 scales — Chinese, Jewish, Arabian, Egyptian, Greek, Indian, 
 and Japanese scales — Confusion — Our simple scale . . 23 
 
 ix 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TONIC AND DOMINANT. 
 
 FACE 
 
 Arabians fixed no Tonic — Gregorian modes — Plato's ideal state — 
 Greek musical system too limited — Chromatic scale — Com- 
 positions beginning out of the key — Liszt and Beethoven — 
 Popular songs of the day — Minor and major — Tonic and 
 relative minors — All branches of music inter-related . . 36 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CADENCES. 
 
 Various ways of ending — Hackneyed cadences — Harmonic progres- 
 sion — Proportion and balance — Function of cadences — Un- 
 trained ear unreliable — "Perfect" and "plagal" cadences — 
 Imperfect cadence — Modern methods — Berlioz and Strauss — 
 Variety in cadence . . . . -44 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PHRASES AND SENTENCES. 
 
 Poetry of sound — Recitative — Irregular rhythms of Japanese tune 
 — Schubert's serenade — Fugue subjects should be phrases — 
 Symphonic works — Lyrical, dramatic, epic styles — Composers 
 at variance vifith theorists — Universal language of music — Leit- 
 motive . . . . . . . -59 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 COUNTERPOINT. 
 
 FAGS 
 
 Origin — Organum and fauxbourdon — Counterpoint and Gothic 
 architecture — Eleventh century counterpoint — Golden age — 
 Bach — Trend of modern music — The obligato — Too great 
 complexity defeats its own ends — Species of counterpoint — 
 Modem examples of counterpoint — Old Church composers — 
 English composers — Croft — Necessity for breadth of culture . 67 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 IMITATION, CANON, AND FUGUE. 
 
 Composers of contrapuntal epoch — Too great attention to external 
 merits — The subjective and objective — Dodecachordon-— 
 Palestrina to Handel — Imitation and imitative passages^— 
 Flower of counterpoint is fiigue — Fugal style and structured- 
 Fugue and cadences — Bach's violin sonatas — His organ fugues 
 — Mozart's wonderful skill — Modern oratorio and fugue — Tl^e 
 fiigue and modern expression . . . ■ V 82 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EQUAL TEMPERAMENT. 
 
 Overtones and tone colour — Natural harmonics — Many past systems 
 — Meantone system — Auditory nerves of the future — What is 
 equal temperament ? — Its opponents — Enharmonic changes — 
 Brass instruments — Ratios of vibrations — Bach's "Well- 
 tempered Clavichord" — Rameau . . . -95 
 xi 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 HARMONY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Definition — Difference between harmony and counterpoint — Com- 
 plex counterpoint and simple harmony — Of Italian origin — 
 Emancipation of harmony — Chopin's harmony — Grieg — 
 Wagner — Monotony and restlessness — Theories of harmony — 
 Necessity for rules . . . . ■ .109 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PURITY OF STYLE. 
 
 Vague thing to describe — Avoidance of glaring contrasts — Mixtures 
 of national styles — Obvious only to the cultured — ^Juxtaposition 
 of incongruities — ^Jumble of antique, mediaeval, and modern 
 — Music and architecture — Exaggerated style — Performers' 
 embellishments . . . . . .125 
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 
 SONG FORM. 
 
 Simple hymn tunes — Principles of Form — Old composers' standards 
 — Modern departure from — Waste of time to count bars — Nevf 
 composers always take liberties — "Dangerous innovations" 
 of Haydn — Wagner a classic of the fiiture — Short composi- 
 tions— Strophic— Folk-songs — ^Art-song — Binary and Ternary 
 forms — Maximum of good effect .... 134 
 
 xii 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 VARIATION FORMS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Not so frequent now — Many varieties of — Great value of — Old 
 music more contrapuntal — Modern more harmonic — Thematic 
 development the principal function of variation forms — Oldest 
 form of variation — Purcell and Bach . ■ I47 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 RONDO AND SONATA FORMS. 
 
 Example in miniature — Few rondos regular — Composer tries to 
 conceal the plan — Structure of sonata form — With Haydn 
 and Mozart clear and balanced — Beethoven's expansion and 
 free treatment — Monotony of tonality — Fine effect by Grieg 
 — Old sonatas — Liszt's sonata — Harmony important to-day . 157 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 True and false ideals — Ruskin, Tolstoy, and others — Music im- 
 palpable — Sensuous charm — Rembrandt — Emerson's simile — 
 Fabrication of fiction — Fallacious theories — Experience and 
 "unfolding of faculty" . . . .171 
 
 Appendix A. — List of Forms in Compositions . . .181 
 
 Appendix B. — Bibliography . . . .217 
 
 Index ........ 223 
 
 xiii 
 
List of Illustrations. 
 
 FACE 
 
 Photogravure Portrait of William Croft, 
 
 Mus. Doc, OxON Frontispiece 
 
 Carved Stone Flute made by the Natives of 
 
 Vancouver's Island 14 
 
 Portrait of Sir Edward Elgar .... 20 
 
 Portrait of Richard Wagner 64 
 
 Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, the Reputed 
 
 Birthplace of Counterpoint .... 69 
 
 Arthur Sullivan Monument, Embankment 
 
 Gardens, London 75 
 
 OLE Bull with his Gasparo da Salo Violin . 100 
 
 Duke of Chandos Chapel, Edgware, near 
 
 London 117 
 
 Beethoven Monument in Central Park, New 
 
 York 122 
 
The 
 Story of Musical Form. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 NECESSITY FOR FORM IN MUSIC. 
 
 Conformity in variety — Monotony — Scientific value of musical form — 
 Plan of a musical work and landscape garden — Unfolding of 
 musical faculty — Beethoven and Shakespeare — Thought and 
 emotion — Selection of appropriate form. 
 
 The most ignorant and inattentive listener can hardly 
 sit through the performance of an opera, an oratorio, 
 or a symphony without noticing that the music occa- 
 sionally changes from loud to soft and from slow to 
 fast. A thousand details escape him altogether, and 
 he would describe the music as tuneless. His first 
 impression, then, would be an elementary 
 
 idea of outline or form. Before he can get , _, 
 
 for Form 
 a clear idea of form, the many and varied 
 
 themes or tunes must be familiar to his ear ; he 
 
 must not only recognize each tune as it appears, but 
 
 I B 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 he must also bear in mind the order in which the tunes 
 appear, and the different keys in which they occur. 
 This is difficult, for along with the perception of the 
 particular often goes the non-recognition of the 
 general. 
 
 The form of a great temple is easily seen from a 
 remote hill ; but he who studies the details of a facade, 
 column, and ornament, standing in the shadow of a 
 lofty wall, must exert himself mentally if he wishes his 
 imagination to build up for him a picture of the whole. 
 James Fergusson,^ by a long study of photographs of 
 the Erechtheum at Athens, discovered various slip- 
 joints and other evidences of change of plan on the 
 part of the builders which the most observant pilgrim 
 to the Acropolis might overlook. Likewise, a study 
 of the printed score of a great musical work will reveal 
 details that even the wonderful ear of a musician can 
 with difficulty hear. 
 
 If our most ignorant and inattentive listener be- 
 comes attentive, he will notice that all symphonies are 
 
 more or less alike in their structure, how- 
 ConfoMnity , ^, .-^ . 
 
 , _ ever much they may differ m subiect-matter 
 
 of Stfuctare , , ., „ .„ ■" 
 
 and detail. He will not believe that this 
 
 conformity of structure is purely accidental; nor can 
 
 he think that the great as well as the lesser composers 
 
 1 James Fergusson, Handbook of Architecture. 
 
 2 
 
Unity in Variety 
 
 have merely followed the examples of their prede- 
 cessors. Why this conformity in variety? Why not 
 have a "Rondo" symphony of four or five or more 
 rondos ? Why not an " Adagio " symphony consisting 
 of several slow movements ? Because the result would 
 be unbearably monotonous, and Horace^ long ago told 
 us that a poem, designed to delight our minds, must 
 sink to the bottom if it ever so little dips below the 
 surface. 
 
 Composers make use of form in order to avoid 
 monotony, and also for the sake yf rlpariif-jcj l7>^.■r» 
 gives unity in variety. JUmty without variety is mono- 
 lout u nity is diffu se a j u^^^ j^^ gi ^ p.. 
 ' When 1 "was a boy I had abundant 
 opportunities of hearing [the music of] that great old 
 master, Sebastian Bach. I remember perfectly well 
 the intense satisfaction and delight which I had in 
 listening, by the hour together, to Bach's Fugues. It 
 is a pleasure which remains with me, I am glad to 
 think; but of late years I have tried to find out the 
 why and the wherefore, and it has often occurred to 
 me that the pleasure derived from musical compositions 
 of this kind is essentially of the same nature as that 
 which is derived from pursuits which are commonly 
 
 1 Q. Hotatii Flacci, De ArtePoetica Liber, 377-78. 
 * T. H. Huxley, Science and Art and Education. 
 
 3 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 regarded as purely intellectual. I mean, that the 
 source of pleasure is exactly the same as in most of 
 my problems in morphology, — that you have the theme 
 in one of the old master's works followed out in all its 
 endless variations, always appearing and always re- 
 minding you of unity in variety." 
 
 That a high priest of science, as Huxley was, should 
 
 so testify to the scientific value of musical form is 
 
 enough to make one conclude that form is 
 
 I ic j.jjg chief source of interest in a musical 
 
 -.. . . work. That conclusion is erroneous. Form 
 
 Musical 
 
 p IS the servant; ideas are the master. The 
 
 function of form the servant is to help ideas 
 the master to a better expression. It is quite possible 
 that Professor Huxley found more to interest him in the 
 musical ideas expressed in Bach's fugue form than he 
 imagined. It was form, however, which made the 
 musical ideas clear to him. Omitting musical ideas, 
 it is not difficult to construct a fugue more perfect in 
 balance and symmetry of form than many of Bach's 
 fugues are. 
 
 It is no more trouble to plan a musical work than a 
 landscape garden. There is a path here, a row of 
 trees there, a mass of shrubs in the foreground, and a 
 hedge around the orchard, — all conforming to a well- 
 designed and balanced scheme. Considered as a de- 
 
 4 
 
Poetry of Nature 
 
 sign, and without atmospheric effects, our trees, path, 
 shrubs, and hedges are of no interest. You must see 
 your park when the sun hangs a luminous saffron cloud 
 behind the Scotch firs, when the long shadows of 
 evening creep towards you and the lanes lose them- 
 selves in dusky distance. Return to it when the 
 summer stars sparkle above you and the moon "tips 
 with silver all these fruit-tree tops";^ wander through 
 it in October when the leaves fall from the sapless 
 branches, — "bare, ruined choires where late the sweet 
 birds sang";2 visit it at Yuletide, when stalk and stem 
 are veiled in hoar-frost and snow; come in spring-time, 
 after the warm rain of April has awakened the buds 
 and blossoms from their winter sleep. 
 
 Are there not an indescribable beauty and a variety 
 of beauty that are independent of the plan ? Does the 
 plan, in fact, add any charm to the landscape ? It may 
 or it may not ; but if the eye could not take in a 
 panorama, and had to get an impression as best it 
 could through a narrow slit moving across the line of 
 vision, only allowing a small section of the landscape 
 to be seen at a time, it is certain that each picture 
 would destroy the preceding picture, leaving nothing 
 but a confusion of images on the mind, unless the 
 
 ^ Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc. 2. 
 ^ Ibid., Sonnet Ixxiii. 
 
 5 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 designer had judiciously repeated at more or less 
 regular intervals those pictures he wished the mind of 
 the observer to retain. Now, it is plainly impossible 
 to get a bird's-eye view of a symphony as of a land- 
 scape or a cathedral. We only see a little of the tone 
 picture at a time. No sooner is one sound born than 
 it dies into silence, making room for the next. And 
 the necessity for design and balance is nowhere more 
 imperative than in music, where all is so fleeting and 
 impalpable, — mere vibrations of the tympanic mem- 
 brane : — 
 
 "Like the snowfall in the river, 
 A moment white, then melts for ever; 
 Or like the borealis race. 
 That flit ere you can point the place ; 
 Or like the rainbow's lovely form, 
 Evanishing amid the storm.'" 
 
 Imagine the impression of chaos an hour of hap- 
 hazard melody, endless harmonic changes, and varying 
 rhythms would make on us. Now, Beethoven's gth 
 Symphony at its first performance lasted one hour and 
 five minutes.* Form and structural ingenuity alone 
 shape such a vast conglomeration of sound into a 
 musical whole. Without form, Beethoven's chords 
 
 ' Robert Burns, "Tam O'Shanter." 
 ' The Harmonicon, London, March 12, 1825. 
 6 
 
Unfolding of Faculty 
 
 and phrases would no more resemble a symphony than 
 a mound of stone, brick, and mortar could be called a 
 cathedral. Herbert Spencer says : — 
 
 "You have, perhaps, in the course of your life, had 
 some musical culture; and can recall the stages 
 through which you have passed. In early 
 
 days a symphony was a mystery; and you 
 
 Faculty 
 were somewhat puzzled to find others ap- 
 plauding it. An unfolding of musical faculty that 
 went on slowly through succeeding years, brought 
 some appreciation; and now these complex musical 
 combinations which once gave you little or no pleasure 
 give you more pleasure than any others. Remembering 
 all this, you suspect that your indifference to certain 
 still more involved musical combinations may arise 
 from incapacity in you, and not from faults in them."^ 
 
 " Unfolding of musical faculty" means that the 
 listener more and more understands the thought and 
 feeling of the composer. This is a slow process which 
 cannot be encompassed at a sitting by the study of an 
 analytical programme. Any student, without an "un- 
 folding of musical faculty," can clearly understand the 
 form of a composition in a few hours; but Plato's 
 assertion 2 that there is a deeper harmony as there is a 
 
 ^ Herbert Spencer, The Sttidy of Sociology, chap. vi. 
 ' Plato, The Republic (Jowett's), bk. vii. 
 
 7 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 deeper astronomy, — a harmony not for the ear, is as 
 true to-day as it was twenty-four centuries ago. 
 
 Spencer has elsewhere pointed out^ that the chief 
 function of the brain is feeling, not intellect; the 
 greater the brain the more feeling. It is the fashion 
 to place that which is commonly called intellect on a 
 higher plane than that which is commonly called 
 feeling ; but feeling, in the most comprehensive sense 
 of the word, has always reigned supreme. No change 
 of dynasty can take place till human nature is other 
 than it is. Students of music often get no farther 
 than the form, which has been invented, instead of 
 seeking first variety and contrast of those emotions 
 which have been the birthright of the human heart 
 since time immemorial. It is wrong to approach a 
 work of art in the spirit of an anatomist about to 
 dissect. 
 
 Morphology, the science of forms in organisms, is 
 of little value in the study of music, compared with 
 physiology, the important science of the function of 
 these forms. It is worse than useless to emulate 
 Jedekiah Buxton, the prodigious calculator, who died 
 in 1774. He was seen to be deeply interested in a 
 performance of King Lear; but when asked for an 
 opinion on the play, replied by giving the exact number 
 ' Herbert Spencer, Feeling versus Intellect. 
 8 
 
Thought and Emotion 
 
 of words and syllables that Garrick the actor had 
 spoken. Shakespeare himself could not have done 
 that. Neither could Beethoven have told the number 
 of bars in any of his symphonies; nor the number of 
 bars in any one movement ; nor the number of bars in 
 any division or in any theme in the movement. The 
 composer's only care is that the transition from one 
 emotion to another shall be natural and in a manner 
 most likely to awaken the same emotions in the hearer. 
 Now, as all thought takes its rise in the emotions, it 
 follows that that which stirs the emotions must stimu- 
 late the thought centres, and the mingled emotions 
 and thoughts which music quickens will differ in each 
 hearer in so much as his intellect and temperament 
 differ from those of the composer. As the proportion- 
 ate amount of intellect and feeling varies in every 
 composer, it is not surprising that forms are continually 
 changing. Certain forms having arisen, they develop, 
 mature, and decay ; whilst new forms take their places. 
 On the other hand, hope, longing, awe, fear, dread, 
 devotion, anger, hate, scorn, love, tenderness, pity, 
 surprise, amazement, content, gaiety, mirth are at least 
 as old as humanity, — " the same yesterday, to-day, and 
 for ever." 
 
 The value of a musical work is not in its form ; but 
 the value of a musical work is enormously enhanced by 
 
 9 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 the selection on the part of the composer of that form 
 best adapted to the clear and forcible expression of the 
 ideas contained in the work. 
 
 Each composer goes his own way like a sailor on 
 the restless tide of passion. They all learn naviga- 
 tion; and one sails west, another to the orient; one 
 explores the legendary seas of the silent north, another 
 basks in the sunny south ; but they all, — the fantastic 
 and the sombre, the 'tragic and the gay, — all fashion 
 their works on some model of Form. 
 
 lo 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 RHYTHMS. 
 
 Stractuie and rhythms — Primitive rhythmical forms — Rhythmical sense 
 of savages — Spencer and Darwin — Grammatical and oratorical 
 accents — The bar line — Various time signatures — Spain and China 
 — Rhythmical sounds pleasing to infants. 
 
 Before we can understand the form of an extended 
 
 musical work it is necessary to study the structure, 
 
 the rhythms, and the varying emotions of 
 
 each movement or section of the work ; 
 
 and 
 and to get a clear understandmg of a p. . 
 
 movement, the themes and phrases must 
 
 be studied in detail. To the beginning, therefore, let 
 
 us go. 
 
 The poet, the sculptor, and the painter began by 
 copying and describing familiar forms ; but the pre- 
 historic architect had only the grim necessity of finding 
 shelter from the winter's snow and the summer's 
 thunderstorm to prompt him to build. Nature fur- 
 nished no model for that early homestead. 
 
 Likewise, the earliest musician, whose name and 
 II 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 nation are unrecorded in the dateless past, heard no- 
 thing in the forest or the sea to suggest even the 
 most primitive rhythmical forms to him. The ono- 
 matopoetic imitation of the sighing of the wind in the 
 reeds and the murmur of the brook, or the crowing of 
 the cock, the bark of the dog and the neigh of the 
 horse may have had some influence over the primordial 
 musical instincts, but it is far more probable that 
 "when the morning stars sang together "^ our chatter- 
 ing ancestors found pleasure in the regular and mono- 
 tonous clashing of stones or dry bones. 
 
 ■" Job xxxviii. 7. 
 
 uryrr.-TK 
 
 '7/1 A "«i "' " '«, 1 — 
 
 a^^e^ 
 
 '^--'-^'"^'^ 
 
 12 
 
Rhythmical Instinct 
 
 Rhythm, however, is not tangible and solid like a 
 granite axe or a flint arrow-head. The caves of 
 Dordogne^ furnish rude sketches of reindeer, and the 
 mythology of Iceland perpetuates the deeds of fabulous 
 heroes; 2 but the clash and strumming of the corybantic 
 Paderewski of eld died into silence at their noisy birth. 
 They cannot live again. And though it is probable 
 that we can never find anything to prove that pre- 
 historic man had an instinct for rhythm, there is 
 abundant evidence to show that savage races have a 
 marked rhythmical sense. Wallaschek^ quotes Burchell, 
 Wood, Thunberg, Stevens, Galton, Lenz, and other 
 travellers in various parts of Africa, America, Asia, 
 whose observations indicate that the time sense is one 
 of the earliest instincts of the human mind. 
 
 Herbert Spencer speaks of a tribe of cannibals 
 "whose chorus in preparation for a feast of human 
 flesh is a kind of rhythmical roaring."* Darwin states 
 that even insfects and some spiders emit rhythmical 
 sounds."^ Children and the musically uncultured of 
 civilized races are susceptible only to music that is 
 
 1 British Museum, London; Prehistoric Room, Case T. 
 
 2 Tegner, Fridthjofs Saga. 
 
 2 Wallaschek, Primitive Music; London, 1893. 
 
 * Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology, Chap. ii. 
 
 » Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, Part III. Chap. xix. 
 
 13 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 strongly rhythmical. The stimulating effect of military 
 music to soldiers on the march is due to the power of 
 rhythm and accent; and the universal popularity of 
 dancing is rooted in .our inchoate instinct for rhythm. 
 
 CARVED STONE FLUTE MADE BY THE NATIVES OF VANCOUVER S ISLAND. 
 
 (In the Author's possession.) 
 
 Plato says, " rhythm and harmony find their way into 
 the secret places of the soul, on which they mightily 
 fasten. "1 The unhappy king in his Pomfret dungeon 
 compares rhythm in music to a well-ordered life — 
 
 1 Plato, The Republic (Jowett's), iii. 
 14 
 
Bar Line 
 
 "Music do I hear? 
 Ha, ha, keep time: How sour sweet music is 
 When time is broke, and no proportion kept; 
 So is it in the music of men's lives."' 
 
 Rhythm in music, as in poetry, consists of regular, 
 recurring accents. In poetry the rhythm is indicated 
 by the position of the accented words and 
 syllables. In music the rhythm is marked, 
 first by the position of the bar lines, and 
 secondly by the number and length of the notes be- 
 tween the bar lines. The rhythm, or regular accentua- 
 tion, which results from the position of the bar liiie, 
 is called the Grammatical Accent. The occasional 
 accent irregularly placed on other notes which would 
 otherwise be unaccented, is called the Oratorical 
 Accent. The student is referred to Pauer^ for defini- 
 tions of these technical names of musical metre: — 
 Trochee, Iambic, Spondee, Bacchic, Cretic, Antibacchic, 
 Molossus, Tribrach. 
 
 Composers not only place bar lines throughout a 
 composition, but they also add a time signature in the 
 first bar to indicate how many beats each bar is to 
 have. The necessity for a time signature will at once 
 
 ' Shakespeare, Richard II., Act v. Sc. S- 
 * Ernest Pauer, Musical Forms. 
 
 IS 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 be apparent if we try to play this passage without a 
 time signature: — 
 
 The rhythm is not clearly indicated by the bar alone. 
 If the time signature is 3/4 there will be three accents 
 in the bar, thus: — 
 
 the first accent being strong, and the second and third 
 weaker. 
 
 If the time signature is 6/8 there will be two almost 
 equal accents in the bar, thus : — 
 
 The reason why there are only two accents in these 
 bars and not six is that 6/8 is a compound rhythm, 
 while 3/4 is a simple rhythm. 
 
 Compound time is a term applied to a bar that can 
 be sub-divided into two or more smaller bars. 
 
 The time signatures most commonly used are : — 
 
 (a) " common time," which is marked 4/4 or C 
 {6) 3/4; W2/4; (^)6/8. 
 16 
 
Time Signatures 
 
 Of these it is unnecessary to give examples. The less 
 used time signatures are: — 
 
 (f or 2/2 (alia breve)— Schubert, Symphony in C, first move- 
 ment. 
 3/2 - Wagner, Die Meisfersinger, Intro., Act iii. 
 
 6/4 - - ScimmiLrm, Paradise and ike Peri, No. 1$. 
 9/4 - Wagner, Parsifal, Prelude. 
 
 2/8 Berlioz, Faust, Chanson de Brander. 
 
 3/8 - Rossini, William Tell, No. i. 
 
 9/8 Beethoven, Sonata op log. 
 
 9/16 „ „ op. III. 
 
 12/16 -■ - „ „ op. 119. 
 
 In Bach's works are to be found, in addition to all 
 these time signatures mentioned above, the following 
 unusual time signatures : — 
 
 2 & 2 - Sonata for violin and clavier. 
 
 12/8 Prelude V., vol ii. of the 48 Preludes and Fugues. 
 
 6/16 - Fugue in D. 
 
 24/16 Toccata and Fugue in G minor. 
 
 16/32 Clavier Fantasia. 
 
 C & t) (double common)^Partita VI. 
 
 Composers occasionally employ two or more rhythms 
 at once. Examples may be found in the following 
 works: — 
 
 2/4 and 6/8 together — Berlioz, Faust, Chorus of Soldiers and 
 Students. 
 
 17 c 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 6/4 and 6/8 together- -Berlioz, L'enfance du Christ. 
 9/8 and 3/4 „ „ „ „ 
 
 24/16 and 3/4 Bach, Prelude XV. 
 
 12/8 and 3/4 together „ Cantata 102. 
 3/4 and 9/8 „ „ „ 24. 
 
 In Mozart's Don Juan is to be found an example of 
 a German dance (3/8), a Gavotte (2/4), and a Minuet 
 (3/4), to be performed simultaneously. 
 
 In E. A. MacDowell's Hexentane, op. 17 No. 2, there 
 is a pleasing and ingenious combination of 3/8 and 3/4. 
 It is true the 3/4 time is not indicated in the signature, 
 but the effect of the left-hand part of the brilliant piano 
 solo, which is here given in a simplified form, is that 
 of a 3/4 rhythm : — 
 
 MACDCWELL. 
 
 The student is referred to Spohr's symphony " Die 
 Weihe der Tone " for some peculiar time signatures. 
 
 In all these ex- 
 amples the rhythms 
 are simple or com- 
 
 18 
 
 C'-*<x-<r 
 
Unusual Rhythms 
 
 pound forms of 2, 3, or 4. Rhythms of 2 or 4 might 
 be represented to the eye by angles, and rhythms of 
 3 by curves. 
 
 In rare instances the composer finds it necessary to 
 avail himself of rhythms that cannot be compounded of 
 2, 3, or4:— 
 
 S/4 - Chopin, Sonata in C minor. 
 
 7/4 - Elgar, Caractacus, Lament. 
 
 5/8 - „ The Dreain of Gerontious. 
 
 7/8 - Lucas, Pastorale for organ, op. 31, No. 2. 
 
 The 5/4 is the most frequently employed of these 
 wyvern rhythms. The insinuating movement in Tschai- 
 kowsky's *' Path^tique" symphony is a popular example 
 of 5/4. Alice C. Fletcher, whose Study of Omaha 
 Indian Music (North America) has been published by 
 
 JkL;^£L 
 
 
 #t<i;*M»*^«"^"- 
 
 (m 
 
 19 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard 
 University, gives examples of native songs in 5/4 
 rhythms ; and A. M. Chinnaswami Mudaliyar's Oriental 
 Music, published in Madras, also contains examples of 
 native melodies in 5/4 rhythms, showing that this 
 rhythm is sometimes the product of musical instinct. 
 But it is probable that art and a search for novelty, 
 rather than instinct, were responsible for Rimsky- 
 Korsakow's 11/4 rhythm. 
 
 BIMSKY-KORSAKOW. 
 
 Sir Edward Elgar informs me that as a boy he 
 wrote pieces in 11/4 and 13/4 rhythms. 
 
 ao 
 
' Hiited''] 
 
 [42 Uakei- Slrccl, Luudon. 
 
 SIR EDWARD ELGAR. 
 
Weakening the Rhythm 
 
 Composers sometimes weaken the rhythm or elimi- 
 nate it altogether when they wish to avoid all taint of 
 human passion in their religious works. Many masses 
 of Palestrina are notable examples of the subordination 
 of rhythm. In Wagner's religious drama, Parsifal, 
 the sacramental theme is so constructed that it is im- 
 possible for the listener to feel any rhythmic pulse 
 in it. 
 
 Motto feiito. WAGNER. 
 
 Rhythm is the life, the heart-beat of music. Through 
 it the various temperaments of composers of different 
 nationalities are easily discernible. Compare the 
 rhythms of Rossini's William. Tell with those of 
 Wagner's Die Meistersinger. The vivacity of the 
 Italian and the massiveness of the German are ex- 
 pressed by rhythms alone. The folk-songs of romantic 
 Spain are almost always in rhythms of 3 or 6; while 
 the prosaic Chinaman employs the squarer 2 and 4 
 rhythms. 
 
 The capacious and sensitive brain of a great com- 
 poser could not be limited in its expression to the 
 simple rhythms of primitive man. The following tune, 
 which is a complete musical expression of the savages 
 
 21 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 of Brazil, I transcribed from the singing of an engineer 
 who had spent many months on the banks of the 
 Amazon : — 
 
 What an abyss separates the dull brains of the bar- 
 barians who delight in bellowing this phrase for hours 
 from the intellect that conceived the rhythms of 
 Schumann's Manfred overture ! 
 
 Darwin says it is impossible to give a reason for 
 this liking for melody and rhythm. It is inborn as our 
 sense of taste and smell is. Our earliest impressions 
 are through the senses, and a rhythmical sound pleases 
 the infant that an irregular noise would frighten. 
 "The sensations and ideas thus excited in us by 
 music, or expressed by the cadences of oratory, appear 
 from their vagueness, yet depth, like mental reversions 
 to the emotions and thoughts of a long-past age."' 
 
 ' Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, Part III. Chap. xix. 
 
 22 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 MELODY AND SCALE. 
 
 Savage melody devoid of harmonic sense, or tonality — Inexact intervals 
 — Evolution of scale — The seven-tone and five-tone scales — 
 Chinese, Jewish, Arabian, Egyptian, Greek, Indian, and Japanese 
 scales — Confusion — Our simple scale. 
 
 A MELODY cannot be defined otherwise than as a suc- 
 cession of notes. The more we study primitive and 
 savage melody the more amazed we become 
 at the curious and hideous successions of """ '^* 
 
 notes that constituted the melodies of all „ , . 
 
 Melody 
 nations before the dawn of Harmony. It 
 
 is almost impossible for any one with a modern 
 harmonic sense to form an idea of the intervals em- 
 ployed by the lowly aboriginal to voice his outburst of 
 fervour. Darwin ^ and Spencer ^ disagree as to the 
 cause of the outburst, and speculative theory is a very 
 untrustworthy guide. 
 
 ' Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, Part III. chap. xix. 
 ' Herbert Spencer, The Origin and Function of Music. 
 
 23 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 In our modern system melody is only a part of a 
 very complex whole. Our system is instrumental in 
 character, and can only exist so long as all the many 
 notes that are sounded together conform to the laws of 
 harmony, which alone make this highly artificial 
 complexity agreeable to our ears. Music that is devoid 
 of interesting melody is unworthy the name of music. 
 Yet the simplest of melodies would be unsatisfactory 
 to the least cultured hearer to-day if this melody was 
 not constructed on our modern scale, — in other words, 
 if it was not adaptable to an accompaniment of modern 
 harmony. Now the savage had no harmonic sense ; 
 the melody was the complete whole in itself. 
 
 Doubtless the intonation of the earliest melodies very 
 much resembled the noisy crowing of 
 
 "The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn."' 
 
 The intervals were seldom exact, and the notes all 
 merged into a sliding scale. The aroma of savage 
 melodies evaporates when they are transcribed in our 
 precise notation. 
 
 The poetic musical humour of the phrase in the 
 picturesque " Danse Macabre,"^ gives but a very 
 
 ' Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act iii. sc. i. 
 
 ^ C. Saint-Saens, "Danse Macabre", Poime Symphonique, op. 40. 
 24 
 
Primitive Melody 
 
 gentle suggestion of the raucous shriek of the familiar 
 barnyard fowl. 
 
 Parry 1 believes there is sufficient evidence to prove 
 that the intervals of the fourth down and the fifth up 
 were the two earliest intervals. For the purposes of 
 the Story of Musical Form it is enough that melody 
 began somewhere somehow. 
 
 When the anthropophagous precursors of Beethoven 
 had developed sufficient intellect to conceive of some 
 
 ' Sir Hubert Parry, The Art of Music, chap. II. 
 
 SIGNATURE OF CAMILLB SAINT-SAENS. 
 
 25 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 other interval than the fourth down and the fifth up, 
 
 then the scale began its expansion. To the evolution 
 
 of our scale, which has not existed during 
 Evolution ^ , , , . , 
 
 , _ J two centuries, many obsolete and incomplete 
 
 scales have contributed. So long as there 
 
 was no harmonic system to fix the relation of one note 
 
 to another in a chord, and of one chord to another 
 
 chord, the scale was subject to the caprice of all sorts 
 
 of melodic ingenuity. It can easily be explained on 
 
 physiological grounds why the intervals of the fourth 
 
 down and the fifth up should be the first to be chosen. 
 
 The sympathetic vibrations between the over-tones in 
 
 common to these notes and the tonic is the scientific 
 
 reason.' But science cannot tell why in very early 
 
 civilization two scales, one pentatonic, or five-toned, 
 
 and the other heptatonic, or ^seven-toned, came to be 
 
 used. Parry 2 points out that the seven-tone system 
 
 lends itself more readily to the addition of semitones, 
 
 and has consequently proved capable of a higher 
 
 development than the five-tone system. 
 
 It is impossible to say which is the older system. 
 
 We have the testimony of a Chinese Prince Lu, who 
 
 wrote a treatise 300 years before the current era, that 
 
 the Emperor Huang Ti, in the year B.C. 2697, ordered 
 
 ' John Tyndall, "On Sound," Lecture viii. 
 ^ Sir Hubert Parry, The Art of Music, chap. II. 
 26 
 
Ancient Egypt 
 
 twelve bells to agree with the twelve liis and the 
 five-tones.i The ancient Greeks had the seven-tone 
 scale which they formed from two over- 
 lapping- tetrachords, or scales of four Seven- one 
 notes, each tetrachord containing a semi- 
 tone. As the Greeks* are supposed to have learned 
 their system from the Egyptians, it is natural to 
 believe that the still more ancient Egyptian scale was 
 a tetrachord containing a semitone. 
 
 The British Museum authorities permitted me to 
 make a most careful examination of an old bronze flute 
 of ancient Egypt. ' A brass reproduction of this antique 
 instrument made on my most exact measurements 
 gives a five-tone scale unlike any five notes of our 
 scale. Starting with the lowest note, which is slightly 
 above A flat (and space of the treble clef), the second 
 note is very slightly lower than B flat, the third note is 
 B, the fourth note is a little above C, and the fifth note 
 sharper than D. 
 
 With the music of the ancient Jews we are not 
 concerned. The stream of melody which flowed 
 through Jewish channels is not the river that has 
 
 ' J. A. van Aalst, Chinese Music; Shanghai, 1884. 
 2 Herodotus, Book II. "Euterpe," Iviii. and Ixxix. 
 ' The British Museum, London, 4th Egyptian Room, Case A, No. 
 12,742. 
 
 27 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 descended to us. When Miriam ^ triumphed gloriously 
 because the horse and the rider were thrown into the 
 
 sea, it is possible that the fleeing Israelites 
 Tcwisli 
 
 „ . sans: their new sonsf unto the Lord in the 
 
 Music ° ,. . f . ^ 
 
 melodic manner of their Egyptian pursuers. 
 
 Seven became a very distinguished number among 
 the Jews. 
 
 Another branch of the Semitic race, the Arabians, 
 who were very nearly related to the Jews, had the 
 seven-tone scale. The Arabs conquered the Persians, 
 from whom they learned much concerning musical art. 
 They sedulously applied mathematics to their system of 
 music, but stopped short of fixing a tonic and the 
 relation of the other notes of the scale to the tonic. 
 Nevertheless, music among the Arabs reached a higher 
 state of development than it had ever done before in 
 the world's history.^ 
 
 When Zaryab the musician came from the East to 
 Spain, which country was at that time (about 750 
 A.D.') an Arabian dominion, "the Khalif Abderrahman 
 rode forth to meet him in honour. The College of 
 Music in Cordova was sustained by ample govern- 
 
 ' Exodus, chap. xv. 21. 
 
 ' Helmholtz, The Sensations of Tone, Part III. chap. xiv. 
 * Morerj, Le Grand Diclionaire Historique, iSme ed. ; Amsterdam, 
 1740. 
 
 28 
 
Mediaeval Confusion 
 
 ment patronage, and produced many illustrious pro- 
 fessors." ^ 
 
 The Arabs translated the philosophy and learned the 
 musical system of the Greeks. They perfected rhyme 
 in poetry, and sent troubadors and minstrels all over 
 Europe, giving an enormous impetus to popular music. 
 
 Retracing our steps some hundreds of years, we find 
 that the Church in Italy was beginning to use four 
 scales, which St. Ambrose is traditionally accredited 
 with having adapted from the Dorian, Phrygian, 
 Lydian, and Mixo-lydian scales of ancient Greece. 
 
 About the year 590 a.d. Pope Gregory set these 
 "authentic" scales in order and added four "plagal" 
 scales, which again correspond with the Greek Hypo- 
 dorian, Hypo-phrygian, Hypo-lydian, and Hypo-mixo- 
 lydian. Later the system was extended by the addition 
 of the ^olian, Ionian, Hypo-aeolian, and Hypo-ionian 
 scales.* 
 
 In the course of time the secular music of the people 
 borrowed effects from the church modes, and the church 
 composers made use of popular tunes in their religious 
 works, and the confusion of scales became very great. 
 With the development and practice of the art of 
 
 ^ J. W. Draper, TAe Intellectual Development of Europe, vol. ii. 
 chap. ii. 
 
 * Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, " Gregorian Modes. " 
 
 29 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 counterpoint, which is the art of combining two or 
 
 more melodies, it was found necessary to fix some 
 
 definite scale for the composer's use ; for 
 
 certain intervals which were harmonious 
 
 in one scale were discordant in another. 
 
 So long as melody alone was all there was to be 
 
 considered it mattered little how the octave was broken 
 
 up into the smaller intervals of the scale. 
 
 But the whole fabric of our modern harmony falls to 
 
 pieces and becomes as harsh as the Pythagorian third, 
 
 and the interval from G sharp up to E flat 
 
 "* of the Mesotonic system, if our octave is 
 
 Xcmpcra- . 
 
 „ „ , not divided mto twelve equal semitones, 
 ment Scale 
 
 This division of the octave is called "equal 
 
 temperament," and the melodies of all the composers 
 
 of our day are written for the intervals of the "equal 
 
 temperament " scale. 
 
 If we turn for a moment to those nations which did 
 not get beyond the primitive melody music of the 
 Greeks, we will soon feel how much richer in melodic 
 resources our equally divided twelve semitone scale is 
 than are all the fanciful and ingenious scales that differ 
 from our system. 
 
 The modern Indian system has 72 scales divided into 
 two groups of 36, each of these groups being subdivided 
 into six divisions. Every scale consists of two tetra- 
 
 30 
 
Oriental Scales 
 
 chords of four notes each. None of the first 36 scales 
 has an F sharp, and none of the second contains an 
 F natural. All the scales beg-in and end on 
 
 T AS 
 
 C, and the various scales are distinguished 
 by chromatic alterations of the notes D, 
 E, A, B, which have a bewildering array of sharps, 
 double sharps, flats, and double flats, when transcribed 
 in Western notation. The lower note of the upper 
 tetrachord is always G, there being no G sharp or G 
 flat in Indian music, according to a recent treatise by a 
 native of India.^ 
 
 The solo allotted to the English horn in the first scene 
 of the third act of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde has a 
 kind of superficial resemblance to a typical Indian 
 melody. It is without harmony or counterpoint; the 
 rhythm is irreigular; the intervals are often peculiar, 
 leaving the impression of no definite tonality. But 
 Wagner's melody is written in the European chromatic 
 scale. There is no Indian mode containing all the in- 
 tervals required to express this tune. It is evident that 
 on their strongest point, melodic resource, the 72 
 Indian scales are not so rich as our one chromatic scale 
 is, to say nothing of our harmonic, contrapuntal, and 
 orchestral possibilities. 
 
 In Japan we find another example of arrested develop- 
 ^ A. M. Chinnaswami Mudaliyar, Oriental Music ; Madras, 1892. 
 
 31 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 ment, another instance of what Western music might 
 have been had equal temperament not risen, like a sun 
 obliterating all the lights that flickered in the darkness 
 and discord of the Middle Ages. 
 
 The following melody is a characteristic Japanese 
 popular air.^ This is a succession of notes, and is 
 
 therefore theoretically a melody. But it can be satis- 
 factory only to those ears which are devoid of our sense 
 of harmony. This melody could not be harmonized in 
 a manner natural or agreeable to occidental musicians. 
 It could be harmonized in A minor for the first fourteen 
 bars or more, but the last note could not possibly be 
 part of any tonic chord. 
 
 ' Y. Nagai and K. Kobatake, Japanese Popular Music; Osaka, 
 1893. 
 
 32 
 
Chinese Peculiarities 
 
 The Chinese have a grotesque theory of music full ot 
 fantastic symbolism concerning- the relations between 
 the sun and moon and the earth, with the five elements. 
 They employ the perfect fifth, but all the other intervals 
 of their scale are too sharp for Western ears. They are 
 even perverse enough to adhere to their system though 
 it gives them a sharp octave.^ The effect of such a 
 system cannot but be ruinous to the Chinese ear. On 
 the other hand, it may be that it is the absence of a 
 musical ear which has permitted such a system to attain 
 so venerable an age. 
 
 It is a remarkable peculiarity of the Buddhistic service, 
 that although the chanters '* utter the same words and 
 follow the same rhythm, still each sings in the key 
 most convenient to his own voice." ^ It is stated that 
 when an American missionary began his labours at 
 Shanghai the singing of the Chinese congregation was 
 a "pandemonium of discord." This he attempted to 
 remedy by having a dozen concertinas play the tune 
 in unison.^ Twelve concertinas and a roomful of 
 bawling Celestials would put out of action the formid- 
 able engines of sound that King David called for in his 
 service of praise.* The facetious Artemus Ward could 
 
 1 Sir Hubert Parry, The Art of Music. * Psalm cl. 
 
 ^ J. A. van Aalst, Chinese Music; Shanghai, 1884. 
 ^ The Chinese Recorder; Shanghai, 1903. 
 
 33 D 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 here find a congenial theme for one of his orthographical 
 whimsicalities,^ 
 
 Yet the Chinese annals say: — " Music hath the power 
 of making heaven descend upon earth. "^ Our concep- 
 tion of Oriental music must be erroneous. How can 
 we reconcile the enthusiasm of Chinese writers with our 
 ideas of Chinese practice ? We are told that Confucius, 
 who in the year B.C. 255 heard the tune "Ta Shao," 
 which was then 1600 years old, was so profoundly 
 moved that for three months "he did not know the 
 taste of meat." ^ 
 
 How can we accept the theories of our learned anti- 
 quarians on the nature of ancient Greek scales, if the 
 quarter tones of which Epictetus* writes are to be 
 found in those scales that served as the basis of the 
 Georgian modes, which do not contain quarter tones 
 as we understand the term ? 
 
 In the foregoing paragraphs it will be seen that 
 melody and scale are sometimes referred to as if they 
 were one and the same thing. A melody, it is true, is 
 a succession of notes, as is also a scale. But a scale 
 
 ' Artemus Ward, Little Patti, 
 
 ^ Quoted by Darwin, The Descent of Man, Part III. chap, xix. 
 ^ J. A. van Aalst, Chinese Music; Shanghai, 1884. 
 ' Epictetus, Encheiridion (T. W. Rolleston's translation), bk. i., 
 chap, i., par. 3. 
 
 34 
 
Subtleties of Acoustics 
 
 must be a progression from one note to the next note, 
 continuously descending or continuously ascending; 
 whereas a melody may progress in skips from any 
 note to any note up or down the scale and back again 
 as the fancy of the composer prompts. In the next 
 chapter will be found descriptions of our present-day 
 scales. 
 
 At first the student may wonder how there came to 
 be so many scales in the past ; later, when the study of 
 acoustics reveals to him the subtleties of 
 harmonics, with their unlimited possibilities 
 for scale building, he will be astonished at 
 the paucity of the old tonal systems; and 
 finally, when he learns the simplicity and practical 
 utility of our tempered scale, he will be amazed that 
 the great brains which designed the Parthenon, con- 
 ceived the Venus of Milo, catalogued the stars, and 
 invented geometry had not stumbled on it as a matter 
 of course. 
 
 35 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TONIC AND DOMINANT. 
 
 Arabians fixed no Tonic — Gregorian modes — Plato's ideal state — Greek 
 musical system too limited — Chromatic scale — Compositions begin- 
 ning out of the key — Liszt and Beethoven — Popular songs of the 
 day — Minor and major — Tonic and relative minors — All branches 
 of music inter-related. 
 
 We have observed that the Arabians did not get as far 
 as fixing a Tonic, and the relation of the other notes in 
 the scale to the Tonic. But the peoples of Europe, who 
 had felt the stimulus of Arabian rhyme and romance, in- 
 stinctively formed a scale that carried with it a feeling 
 of defined tonality, and the relation of the secondary 
 notes of the scale to the principal note or Tonic. And 
 this scale, which contained the possibilities of Counter- 
 point and Harmony, persisted, in spite of the efforts of a 
 notoriously conservative Church to establish and per- 
 petuate the Gregorian modes. ^ But the Gregorian 
 modes to-day, as a means of musical expression, are 
 
 1 See Edict of Pope John XII., 1322 a.d. 
 36 
 
Gregorian Modes 
 
 deader than Latin is as a literary vehicle. Occa- 
 sionally in the remoteness of a sombre cathedral a little 
 of this old world music is impressive by reason of its 
 uncouth simplicity. To the archaeologist these modes 
 are wonderfully interesting. Like footprints on the 
 sands of Time, they guide us through the fading vista 
 of the past. They are the high-water mark of the tides 
 of human emotion in bygone days. The effect of these 
 modes is hardly what it was before the adoption of the 
 equal temperament, on which system all key-board 
 instruments are now tuned. Some idea of these modes 
 can be formed, however, by playing the following scales 
 on the white keys of the pianoforte. ^ 
 
 No. Mode. 
 
 Compass. 
 
 Tonic. 
 
 Dominant. 
 
 I. — Dorian 
 
 D toD 
 
 .. D 
 
 .., A 
 
 2. — Hypo-dorian 
 
 A to A 
 
 .. D 
 
 ... F 
 
 3-— Phrygian 
 
 E to E 
 
 .. E 
 
 .. C 
 
 4.— Hypo-phrygian 
 
 BtoB 
 
 .. E 
 
 .. A 
 
 5. — Lydian 
 
 FtoF 
 
 .. F 
 
 .. c 
 
 6. — Hypo-lydian 
 
 C to C 
 
 .. F 
 
 .. A 
 
 7. — Mixo-lydian 
 
 GtoG 
 
 .. G 
 
 .. D 
 
 8. — Hypo-mixo-lydian ... 
 
 DtoD 
 
 .. G 
 
 .. C 
 
 9. — yEolian 
 
 A to A 
 
 .. A 
 
 .. E 
 
 10. — Hypo-aeolian 
 
 EtoE 
 
 .. A 
 
 .. C 
 
 II. — Ionian 
 
 C toC 
 
 .. C 
 
 .. G 
 
 12. — Hypo-ionian 
 
 G toG 
 
 .. C 
 
 .. E 
 
 ' Gtoveh Dictionary of Music and Musicians, " Gregorian Modes." 
 
 37 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 The names of the notes of the Ionian scale tally with 
 those of our C major scale ; the difference, of course, is 
 in the tuning, or distance from one note to another. 
 The Lydian scale almost corresponds with our scale of 
 F major. If these 5th and nth Gregorian modes were 
 the same as the Greek Lydian and Ionian scales, it is 
 strange that Plato should have banished them from his 
 ideal State. ^ 
 
 The Grecian standard of beauty in sculpture and 
 architecture is the one above all others the most highly 
 esteemed in our day; why should our musical tastes 
 differ so widely from the Greek ? 
 
 The reason in all probability is that the possibilities 
 of the Greek musical system were too limited to develop 
 the Grecian musical mind and ear. The germ of music 
 took root, shot forth branches, and burst into flower 
 only when the ground was prepared by the more and 
 more nearly approaching tempered scale. 
 
 Modern music recognises three scales only, — the 
 major, the minor, and the chromatic. The chromatic 
 scale, which consists of the twelve equal intervals into 
 which the octave is divided, has no tonic or dominant. 
 It belongs to no key. It is merely the raw material, 
 so to speak, from which the major and minor scales 
 
 1 Plato (Jowett), The Republic, Book iii. 
 38 
 
Major Scale 
 
 are manufactured. The major scale is constructed 
 thus : — 
 
 The Tonic, a rise of a whole tone to the second 
 degree, a rise of a whole tone to the third degree, a 
 rise of a half tone to the fourth degree, a rise of a whole 
 tone to the fifth degree, a rise of a whole tone to the 
 sixth degree, a rise of a whole tone to the seventh 
 degree, and a rise of a half tone to the octave of the 
 key-note. These notes so found constitute the major 
 scale whether played ascending or descending. All of 
 these notes are to be found in the triads of the Tonic, 
 the Dominant, and the Sub-dominant. A triad is a 
 chord of three different notes consisting of the intervals 
 of the third and fifth above and together with the note 
 that gives its name to the triad. The triad on C, for 
 instance, is C, E, G; the triad on F is F, A, C; the 
 G triad is G, B, D. 
 
 The Tonic is the name given to the first note in any 
 scale. Any composition which begins and ends with 
 the triads of any particular scale is said to be in that 
 scale ; and the first note of that scale is the Tonic of 
 that particular composition. For example, Liszt's 
 Symphonic Poem " Les Preludes" begins and ends 
 with the triad of C. This work is therefore said to be 
 in the key of C, though for the most part the composi- 
 tion is in every key but C. Occasionally composers 
 
 39 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 begin with chords that are out of the key of the move- 
 ment that is about to follow. 
 
 This does not lessen the importance of the Tonic. 
 Beethoven, to the great perturbation of his critics, 
 began the introduction to the first movement of his 
 first symphony with the chord of the Dominant of F. 
 The second chord is apparently the Tonic of F. If 
 Beethoven had stopped at the second chord we would 
 have said that the composition was in the key of F. 
 But Beethoven at once goes to C, remains in C, and 
 ends in C. We therefore say that that movement is in 
 C ; in other words, that C is the Tonic. 
 
 Now a composition containing nothing but chords of 
 the Tonic would drive the hearer to distraction, and 
 entitle the composer to maintenance for life in the 
 national lunatic asylum. 
 
 The chord or triad on the fifth degree or note of a 
 scale is called the Dominant. This note, with its triad, 
 is only secondary in importance to the Tonic. It is 
 possible to construct simple compositions on these two 
 chords alone. With the addition of the triad on the 
 fourth degree of the scale, the Sub-Dominant, the 
 composer's field of action is very much widened. 
 Thousands of the popular ballads and dances of our 
 day make no greater harmonic demands than the triads 
 of the Tonic, Dominant, and Sub-dominant. 
 
 40 
 
Minor Scale 
 
 The chord of the Dominant usually contains an 
 additional note, the interval of the seventh from the 
 Dominant. This chord is then not called a triad, but 
 a chord of the seventh. The chord of the seventh, 
 which is formed by adding- another third to the triad on 
 the Dominant, is the familiar chord of the Dominant 
 seventh. 
 
 The Tonic, Dominant, and Sub-dominant are the 
 primary degrees of the scale ; the remaining degrees 
 are called secondary. The second degree of the scale 
 is called the Super^tonic; the third is the Mediant; the 
 sixth degree is the Sub-mediant, — the Mediant that is a 
 third below (sub — ) the Tonic. The seventh degree is 
 the characteristic leading-note or leading-tone. Com- 
 posers introduce secondary triads into their composi- 
 tions for the sake of variety ; but it is the primary triads 
 that establish the tonality of a composition. 
 
 If we start from the Sub-mediant of any major scale 
 and rise a whole tone to the second degree, then rise 
 a half tone to the third degree, a whole tone to the 
 fourth degree, a whole tone to the fifth degree, a half 
 tone to the sixth degree, a tone and a half to the 
 seventh degree, and a half tone from the seventh degree 
 to the octave of the note from which we started, we get 
 a minor scale. The minor scale that starts from the 
 Sub-mediant of a major scale is called the Relative 
 
 41 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 minor of that major. The minor scale that starts from 
 the Tonic of a major scale is called the Tonic minor of 
 that major. The following examples will make this 
 clear : — 
 
 A- j J J J ,1 J ^' f r J 
 
 A is the scale of C major; B is the scale of A minor, 
 the relative minor of C major; Cis the scale of C minor, 
 the tonic minor of C major. It will be noticed in 
 passing that the relative minor scale has the same 
 signature as the major scale of which the minor scale's 
 Tonic is the major scale's Sub-mediant. That is why 
 they are said to be related. The signature of the tonic 
 minor scale is the same as that of the major scale of 
 which its tonic is the major scale's Sub-mediant, — viz., 
 the signature of C minor is also the signature of E flat 
 major, because C is the Sub-mediant of E flat. 
 
 There are two forms of the minor scale, the Har- 
 monic and the Melodic. The Harmonic minor scale 
 consists only of those notes that are found in the triads 
 
 42 
 
Diminished Seventh 
 
 of the Tonic, Dominant, and Sub-dominant. That scale 
 has an interval of a tone and a half between its sixth 
 and seventh degrees. When the sixth and seventh 
 degrees come in succession in a melodic progression 
 composers frequently raise the sixth degree by half a 
 tone or lower the seventh degree by half a tone in order 
 to avoid the awkward interval of a tone and a half, 
 called the interval of an augmented second. 
 
 This modified scale is called the Melodic minor scale. 
 The triads of the minor scale are classified into primary 
 and secondary, as those of the major scale are. From 
 the minor scale music gets one of its most beautiful 
 chords, the diminished seventh, which consists of the 
 intervals of the third, fifth, and seventh added to the 
 leading-note. Thus the chord of the diminished seventh 
 in A minor is made of the notes G sharp, B, D, F. 
 
 This incursion into the realm of Harmony is as 
 imperative here as it is tedious. All branches of musical 
 theory are so closely inter-related that it is impossible 
 to touch one without disturbing the others. If the 
 student desires further elucidation on the subject-matter 
 of this chapter he must seek it in a treatise on Harmony. 
 For the purposes of the Story of Form enough has been 
 said to help the reader to an understanding of the terms 
 employed in the subsequent pages of this book. 
 
 43 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 CADENCES. 
 
 Various ways of ending — Hackneyed cadences — Harmonic progression 
 — Proportion and balance— Function of cadences — Untrained ear 
 unreliable — "Perfect" and "plagal" cadences — Imperfect cadence 
 — Modern methods — Berlioz and Strauss — Variety in cadence. 
 
 Cadence in music means an end. In music, as in 
 poetry, there are various ways of ending. The direc- 
 tions in some of the old-fashioned reading books that 
 for a comma the reader must count one, for a colon 
 three, for a semi-colon two, and for a full stop four, 
 are scarcely less ridiculous than the formulae for 
 compounding cadences that doctors of musical theory 
 usually tabulate in their tonal pharmacopoeias. An 
 eminent English composer says : — 
 
 " It looks as though the treatises were meant to 
 teach people to make music at so much a yard ; for a 
 man who really has something to say in music which he 
 feels naturally is only hampered and worried with every 
 extra direction of the kind, which tells him to put in so 
 much that cannot possibly mean anything because it is 
 everybody's property. "^ 
 
 ' Sir Hubert Parry, Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 
 "Cadences." 
 
 44 
 
Cadences 
 
 Harmonic 
 Progression 
 
 It stands to reason that it is impossible to classify 
 every harmonic progression that will serve as a cadence. 
 Each composer tries to get a new ending for 
 his phrases, sentences, and compositions. 
 Even if it was possible to invent new har- 
 monic progressions on every occasion, cadences would 
 still resolve themselves into two distinct classes, those 
 which are completely satisfactory as ends, and those 
 which require a continuation of the musical phrase to 
 finish the sentence. 
 
 Those cadences which are final should be called 
 perfect, though the name perfect is usually applied to a 
 certain fixed progression that is not always a final 
 cadence. Those cadences which demand a continuation 
 should be called imperfect. An ending that is final in 
 one place may only be a momentary pause in another 
 environment. In the following hymn from Gluck's 
 Iphigenie in Tauris a perfect or full cadence is to be 
 found at the beginning of the fourth measure. 
 
 This phrase is not satisfactory alone, maugre the 
 45 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 perfect end. The reason is that the musical idea is not 
 completed. If we take the line — 
 
 "Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,"' 
 
 we get a sentence containing a definite idea. Yet this 
 
 sentence, though parsable, is hardly more satisfactory 
 
 than the hymn. In both instances we expect more ; 
 
 our sense of proportion and balance is not contented. 
 
 One line of a poem and one phrase of a composition 
 
 may be interesting as studies, as a foot and a hand are 
 
 to draughtsmen, but a work of art must present the 
 
 unmutilated figure in its perfection. Our sense of 
 
 balance, founded on experience in this case, would 
 
 prevent us from delighting in the physical beauty of a 
 
 one-eyed Cyclops.* 
 
 Now the function of cadences is to indicate the ends 
 
 of the sections or phrases of which a musical sentence 
 
 is made. When the requisite number of 
 
 „ , phrases have been put together, and the 
 
 Cadences •. o 
 
 judgment of the composer tells him it is 
 
 time to stop, there are many ways of ending. As no 
 
 composer has yet found an agreeable way of finishing 
 
 with a chord that is not a tonic chord for the time 
 
 1 E. A. Poe, "The Raven." 
 '■* Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 46 
 
Perfect Cadence 
 
 being, it has become a rule that a final cadence must 
 end with the chord of the tonic in its root position. As 
 by far the greater number of final cadences in all 
 musical works consist of a tonic chord preceded by a 
 chord of the dominant, it has come to pass that a 
 cadence consisting of a chord of the dominant followed 
 by a chord of the tonic in its root position, is called a 
 perfect or full cadence. Examples can be found in the 
 works of the great composers of this perfect cadence 
 on every beat or accent of the measure. Instinct is the 
 only rule that has told them when and where the end 
 should be. Everything is regular, and nothing is wrong 
 that sounds right. It cannot be too emphatically 
 stated, however, that the untrained ear of the tyro is 
 an altogether unreliable guide. An effect is unquestion- 
 ably good if the wonderfully fine ear of a great composer 
 sanctions it. But the beginner may be pleased with 
 trite and vapid progressions that are detestable to the 
 mind that has experienced "an unfolding of musical 
 faculty. "1 On the other hand, it is possible for the 
 possessor of a discriminating ear and a good judgment 
 to stretch a shapely phrase on the Procrustean^ bed of 
 classical cadence in his quest of classical perfection. 
 Zeal and judgment are often antagonistic. Zeal for 
 
 ' Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology, chap. vi. 
 ^ Lempri^re's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 47 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 judgment is the only means the composer has to develop 
 an unerring instinct for cadences. 
 
 The following final cadences differ from each other in 
 every respect except that they all end with the tonic 
 chord in the root position. The first one has been 
 adopted unaltered in melody by Mozart in numberless 
 instances, as well as in the harmonic progression which 
 is common property. 
 
 1. GLUCK, 
 
 Air in "Alceste". 
 
 y-y '* F "t J y. 
 
 tv . ;i I J I : 
 
 — 1 b 
 
 2. CHOPIN. 
 
 Mazurka, Op.34,N94. 
 
 5^>i. r 1 
 
 i 
 
 -j ; 
 
 
 fff=mi 
 
 
 Tk — 
 
 |fefe# 
 
 uT" •' 
 
 
 48 
 
Plagal Cadence 
 
 3. LISZT. 
 
 Song, Thou who from thy realms . 
 
 ULM^UULLUUJJ 
 
 4. GRIEG. 
 
 Song, Du bist der Junge Lena . 
 
 5. SCHUMANN. 
 
 Noveletten,Op.21jN9 6. 
 
 There is another form of perfect cadence that was 
 formerly more in vogue than it is at present. It consists 
 of the progression from the sub-dominant to the tonic, 
 and is known as the Plagal cadence. It survives in the 
 "Amen" with which it is the conventional practice to 
 end hymns in the English church service. Composers 
 rarely employ it to-day in its bald simplicity. They 
 
 49 E 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 vary it by adding other notes and by inverting it. The 
 cadence then loses its austere character and can hardly 
 be called Plagal. The example from Grieg (No. 4, 
 p. 49) is more like a Plagal than a Perfect cadence, 
 though it is neither. The two examples here given are 
 from the works of widely different schools and epochs : — 
 Bach's chorale in a kind of modified Phrygian mode, 
 and the final harmonies of Wagner's last music drama. 
 
 BACH. 
 
 
 Chorale 150 .(Edition Peters), 
 
 !§ '' °^ ' " 
 
 r^ 
 
 'ii #•' it^ : 
 
 _ff8 
 
 W-S-+K- 
 
 J J J J 
 
 
 _o 
 
 -*» 
 
 ^^:=» 
 
 '1 ^ '' f 1 F-J 
 
 'i' r fj 
 
 bs ' 
 
 
 WAGJJER. 
 
 "Parsifal:* 
 
 When the tonic chord is major the preceding sub- 
 dominant is usually major, but a minor sub-dominant 
 followed by a major tonic is not uncommon. It was 
 formerly the custom to end minor compositions with 
 
 5° 
 
Ending in the Major 
 
 the "tierce de Picardie," a tonic chord with its 3rd 
 made major by means of an accidental. The Bach 
 chorale quoted above is an example of the employment 
 of this cadence. 
 
 If a movement in a minor key ends with a Plagal 
 cadence the chord of the sub-dominant is almost invari- 
 ably minor. A major sub-dominant followed by a 
 minor tonic is very rare. The Siciliana in Mascagni's 
 Cavalleria Rusiicana is most effectively concluded with 
 the unusual cadence, quoted in the following page : — 
 
 I <i NAU/r-U CAnt^'^-^ 
 
 
 ■ ^ ' j ^P 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 51 
 
Story of Musical Forna 
 
 MASCAGNl. 
 
 Aht 
 
 "Cavallerla Rostioana'.' 
 
 A fine treatment of the Plagal cadence is to be found 
 at the end of the 12th number of Beethoven's Missa 
 Solemnis. Chopin ends one of his most fascinating and 
 haunting melodies, the Etude in E major op. 10 No. 3, 
 with the Plagal cadence. 
 
 The reversed perfect cadence, a progression from the 
 tonic or some other degree of the scale to an end on the 
 dominant, is called an imperfect cadence or half-close. 
 The distinctive feature of the half-close is the ending 
 on the dominant. In these appended examples of the 
 imperfect cadence or half-close it will be seen that the 
 dominant is preceded by the tonic in the first quotation 
 only. 
 
 1. BIZET. Suite "L'Arlesiennel' 
 
 Adagio, 
 
 52 
 
Deceptive Cadences 
 
 2. BEETHOVEN, 
 
 Allegro con brio. 
 
 'Symphony, V. 
 
 3. SCHUBERT. 
 
 4. SAINT- SAENS. 
 
 Sonata in A minor. 
 
 " Samson et Dalila.' 
 
 Interrupted or deceptive cadences are those termina- 
 tions of a phrase which unexpectedly go to some other 
 degree of the scale than the expected tonic. The 
 detractors of Wagner waxed wroth at the variety of 
 
 S3 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 deceptive cadences the aggressive reformer hurled at 
 their ears. Yet the deceptive cadence, or as some call 
 it, the interrupted cadence, is no new thing. It is to 
 be found frequently in the works of the earliest com- 
 posers. In the classical period from Bach to Beethoven, 
 the commonest, in fact almost the only form of deceptive 
 cadence employed was the progression from the domin- 
 ant to the sub-mediant. 
 
 Since the advent of Wagner in particular, as well as 
 of other modern composers, it is ordinary practice to 
 quit the dominant for any harmonic destination what- 
 soever. The three subjoined quotations will suffice. 
 The example from Brahms' 3rd symphony is the usual 
 form of a deceptive cadence, a progression from the 
 dominant to the sub-mediant. 
 
 1. BRAHMS.. Symphony In P,N93. 
 
 Andante. 
 
 Z. HUMPERDINCK. 
 
 l,r r 1 
 
 '"Hans 
 
 elund 
 
 Gretd'.' 
 
 1 r vT 
 
 1, 1^^.^- 
 
 
 — rfl — r-F 
 
 P|0 . 
 
 etc. 
 rrt- 
 
 -^ Hi |i. k^ 
 
 ''f 1- ' 
 
 ^j^^^' 
 
 ^ 
 
 — > 
 
 54 
 
Feminine Endings 
 
 "The Apostles'.' 
 
 Composers frequently put the perfect, Plagal, im- 
 perfect, and deceptive cadences on an unchanging bass 
 note. This note is either the tonic or the dominant. 
 There is no reason why other notes than the tonic and 
 dominant should not be used, provided the composer 
 finds a way of making them agreeable to the ear. In 
 phrases that have feminine endings Beethoven frequently 
 
 J^tuJivi:/^ IdiJtu. 
 
 ^/f^i dCd^ ^^^^^./^^^^(^r^^'^-*^^?*^'' ' 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 sounds the tonic bass under the dominant harmony in 
 his perfect cadences. A feminine ending in music is 
 rhythmically identical with a feminine termination in 
 poetry — it is a weak accent following a strong. The 
 line 
 
 " Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December," 
 
 contains two feminine endings, "remember" and 
 "December." The strong accent falls on the second 
 syllables, which are followed by weak third syllables. 
 
 The following example shows the employment of 
 dominant harmony on a tonic bass in a perfect cadence 
 with a feminine ending. 
 
 BEETHOVEN. 
 
 'Sonata for Violin and P!ano,Op.47. 
 
 « Andante. 
 
 ii-j J. J =i 
 
 =p^ 
 
 fm^^ 
 
 i."._N ^ II 
 
 
 
 w^=^ 
 
 
 '^ '' ^ riJ ' 
 
 n-^ 
 
 s%— J 
 
 N===^ 
 
 No progression is called a cadence unless it ends a 
 phrase. The four progressions from tonic to dominant 
 in the Bizet quotation on page 52 are not four half- 
 closes. It is only the fourth that is cadential ; the 
 others do not end phrases. 
 
 Schumann, who did many daring things as an 
 harmonic innovator, ends the first of his Dichterliehe 
 
 56 
 
Strauss and Modernity 
 
 songg with a dominant seventh chord. This is not 
 unsatisfactory if it is followed by the next song, as the 
 composer intended. The third of Berlioz's " Les nuits 
 d'6t6" song cycle, op. 7, ends with the triad on the, 
 dominant. The result is by no means unsuitable to 
 Thdophile Gautier's poem. The boldness of Berlioz 
 has be6n out-Schumanned in our day by the reckless 
 Richard Strauss. In the works of this greatest of 
 living composers (1908) are to be found many remark- 
 able cadences. The song "Wenn," op. 31, and the 
 symphonic poem, "Thus spake Zoroaster," have char- 
 acteristic Strauss ends. To the song the composer has 
 added the ironical footnote : — " If this end is disagree- 
 able to the musicians of the nineteenth century, let 
 them transpose it." The chord of B major high above 
 the low bass note C is fittingly enigmatical as an end to 
 the sayings of Zoroaster, though the outraged classical 
 purists would gladly dedicate Strauss and his nefarious 
 scores to the sole object of the Zoroastrian religion of 
 ancient Persia, — Fire ! ^ 
 
 If variety in cadence is desired, the sanest and most 
 satisfactory procedure is to elaborate the harmonies 
 and unsettle the tonality immediately before ending 
 with a perfect cadence. The effect of the return to the 
 dominant and tonic will be startling, dull, common- 
 ' Herodotus, bk. iii., Thalia xvi, 
 
 57 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 place, or delightful, according to the skill with which 
 the composer comes to the surface again after his 
 plunge into the fathomless sea of harmony. The 
 surprisingly beautiful example of this stratagem quoted 
 herewith will serve as a refreshing cadence to this too 
 lengthy chapter. 
 
 VERDI. 
 
 "Requiein"(Offertorio)., 
 
 1 fl |I,,L rriiS-f-V-1 
 
 1 f Yf p J 
 
 1 J [ 1 11, — ^ — V1 
 
 II JlJ -ISi 
 
 ^ 
 
 <W^^-tfi=^B 
 
 iii^ 
 
 E^4J=; = ±f4^ 
 
 3dfeO 
 
 £ 
 
 
 ''f Vr \ 
 
 1* * 1,3 tVt{>vd, " 
 
 ,,. f?r 
 
 • 
 
 '^^'.-i-i^-^ 
 
 llxTh^ 
 
 ^m¥f=^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 E 
 
 58 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PHRASES AND SENTENCES. 
 
 Poetry of sound — Recitative— Irregular rhythms of Japanese tune- 
 Schubert's serenade— Fugue subjects should be phrases— Sym- 
 phonic works— Lyrical, dramatic, epic styles — Composers at 
 variance with theorists — Universal language of music — Leit- 
 motive. 
 
 In Chapter III. a melody is described as a succession 
 
 of notes. It is manifestly impossible to construct a 
 
 musical composition that is not a succession 
 
 of notes. Yet musicians frequently speak e o y a 
 - ... J -J r » J Succession 
 
 of a composition as devoid of melody, 
 r . . , . ^ , . , of Notes 
 
 It IS evident, therefore, that the word 
 
 melody has a specific as well as a generic meaning. 
 It is this restricted sense of the word that we must 
 now consider. 
 
 Music is a language from which, with very rare 
 exceptions, prose is eliminated. In the old forms of 
 recitative, happily extinct, a form of musical expression 
 akin to prose was frequently employed. With these 
 antiquated successions of notes that are without form, 
 
 59 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 and void of melodic beauty, we are not concerned. 
 
 The poetry of sound is the basis of music. A beautiful 
 
 sound and a euphonious word, as well as 
 
 „ 1, a picturesque idea, are oftentimes called 
 
 Sonnd . . . . 
 
 poetic; but poetry m music, in the com- 
 prehensive sense of the term, implies proportion 
 and balance. The description of a melody at the 
 beginning of Chapter III. is the baldest of prose ; the 
 thoughts expressed are not beautiful, there is no appeal 
 to the imagination or the emotions, and the words do 
 not divide themselves into phrases of rhythmical simi- 
 larity and balanced proportion. Milton's lines on 
 music, by reason of their fanciful expressions, their 
 rhythm and rhyme, their flood of emotional beauty, are 
 of the highest poetic value : — 
 
 " And ever, against eating cares. 
 Lap me in soft Lydian airs. 
 Married to immortal verse. 
 Such as the meeting soul may pierce, 
 In notes with many a winding bout 
 Of linked sweetness long drawn out, 
 With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, 
 The melting voice through mazes running. 
 Untwisting all the chains that tie 
 The hidden soul of harmony."' 
 
 ' Milton, " L' Allegro." 
 60 
 
Schubert Melody 
 
 The Japanese melody quoted on page 32 not only 
 concludes unsatisfactorily without a tonic, but the lack 
 of cohesion due to the uneven length and irregular 
 rhythms of the phrases is woefully apparent to the 
 occidental ear. The melody of Schubert's " Serenade," 
 like Milton's poem, is made up of a number of phrases 
 that balance each other and bear a family likeness in 
 rhythm and in contour. 
 
 These four bars — 
 
 SCHUBERT. 
 
 Moderato. 
 
 are the half of the sentence which the next four 
 complete : — 
 
 It is by no means necessary that every sentence should 
 consist of a balanced number of four-bar phrases. In 
 this same song Schubert has a sentence of twelve bars, 
 consisting of a four-bar phrase and a two-bar phrase 
 balanced by another four-bar phrase and a second two- 
 bar phrase. 
 
 61 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 The normal musical sentence should consist of at 
 least two balanced phrases, the last one of which ends 
 with a perfect cadence. A melody may contain a 
 number of sentences, but it is difficult to maintain a 
 continuity of idea if too many full cadences are intro- 
 duced. In fugal compositions the subjects are rarely 
 sentences. As that kind of composition avoids points 
 of repose altogether, it is necessary that a characteristic 
 fugue subject should be a phrase only. The following 
 fugue subjects are neither sentences nor melodies ; they 
 are phrases ; — 
 
 LISZT. 
 
 "Sonata"for Piano. 
 
 CHERUBINI. 
 
 "Requiem" Mass. 
 
 62 
 
Phrases and '.' Leit-motive." 
 
 FERGOLESI. 
 
 " ,-©-• 5 1^ 
 
 J r 
 
 "Stabat Mater'.' 
 1 ^ 1 
 
 LUCAS. 
 
 
 ■^ I 1 1 — r — ' 
 
 Prekde and Fugue, Op.38. 
 
 In symphonic works also it is not unusual to find 
 
 themes that could not pass muster as complete 
 
 melodies if removed from the work in which 
 
 they are found. Haydn and Mozart, it is '^'"^°"*^ 
 
 Vv or&s 
 true, usually come to a full stop and end one 
 
 theme before introducing another, but the maturer 
 
 Beethoven and all composers since his day endeavour 
 
 to avoid these halts in their steady march to the final 
 
 cadence. This is secured by the employment of phrases 
 
 rather than complete sentences, and by ending their 
 
 complete sentences with deceptive cadences. 
 
 The leading theme, the " leit-motive " of the historical 
 
 Wagner controversy,^ is a phrase. None of Wagner's 
 
 leit-motives a're ^_^ 
 
 complete sentences. 
 If they were, it is 
 impossible to be- 
 lieve that this giant 
 of harmonic skill 
 
 ' Henry T. Finck, Wagntr and his Works; New York, 1893. 
 63 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 could have so woven them into the warp and woof of 
 his colossal works. The theme that Berlioz introduces 
 in all the movements of his " Symphonie Fantastique " 
 is a phrase merely. 
 
 In small musical works, songs, dances, and the 
 ordinary drawing-room solo, the phrase takes a subor- 
 dinate position as part of the usual chain of sentences 
 and melodies. It must not be taken for granted that 
 these Beethovenish and Wagnerian themes are un- 
 melodious because they cannot be catalogued as 
 melodies — that is to say, complete sentences. When 
 musicians speak of Wagner's works as full of melody, 
 they mean an endless flow of overlapping and combined 
 phrases. If the reader should unearth some of the 
 forgotten tirades against Wagner's works, he will read 
 that these same works are devoid of melody. And so 
 they are devoid of frequent sentences made up of a 
 number of balanced phrases. The wise critic will see 
 that a song and a short solo require sentences and 
 complete melodies ; that the fugue and the music-drama 
 offer a better scope for phrases; that the symphonic 
 method can successfully employ both melodies and 
 phrases. 
 
 Ti'he lyrical, the dramatic, and the epic styles in 
 poetry have their most suitable rhythms and forms; 
 so have musical styles. 
 
 64 
 
RICHARD WAGNER, 
 
Vague Terminology 
 
 A subtle instinct for the appropriate, an instinct 
 which no man can teach, is the tribunal before which 
 all cadences must stand. There is no other areopagus. 
 The practice of the great composers is seldom in strict 
 conformity with the edicts of the theorists. To the 
 artist the quaint precept from the Koran is a more 
 acceptable law: — 
 
 " Let not thy hand be tied up to thy neck; neither open it 
 with an unbounded expansion, lest thou become worthy of 
 reprehension."' 
 
 Much confusion has resulted from the lack of pre- 
 cision of musical terminology. The universal language 
 of music has been written about and ex- 
 plained by authors of so many nationalities 
 
 , . , . . ,. Langoage 
 
 that most of the words m use m connection , ,„ , 
 
 of Music 
 with music acquire a different shade of 
 
 meaning in each different country. Melody is one of 
 these words; rhythm is another. "•The word rhythm 
 is not only used in speaking of beats in a bar; its 
 more correct and appropriate employment is to indicate 
 the regular recurrence of the cadences. Bearing this 
 in mind, the student- will have no difficulty in under- 
 standing the expressions, four-bar rhythm and eight- 
 bar rhythm, when he meets with them. 
 
 ' The Alcoran of Mohammed (Sale's translation), chap. xvii. 
 65 F 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 There can, of course, be no rhythm of cadences 
 unless the phrases that end with these cadences are 
 symmetrically balanced. 
 
 In the fugal and leading-thematical styles the rhythms 
 cannot be cadential when balanced phrases are avoided. 
 The rhythms there are due to bar rhythms and the 
 accents. 
 
 66 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 COUNTERPOINT. 
 
 Origin — Organum and fauxbourdon — Counterpoint and Gothic archi- 
 tecture — Eleventh century counterpoint — Golden age — Bach — 
 Trend of modern music — The obligato — Too great complexity 
 defeats its own end — Species of counterpoint — Modern examples 
 of counterpoint — Old Church composers — English composers — 
 Croft — Necessity for breadth of culture. 
 
 Where and when Counterpoint began are matters of 
 
 conjecture. It is unimportant, moreover, though the 
 
 fancy likes to picture a romantic origin for 
 
 art forms. We are willing to accept the 
 
 ... . 1 »T Counter- 
 
 guesses of the historians quoted by Nau- 
 
 manni that Paris was the cradle of counter- 
 point. Certain it is that when the Organum and the 
 Fauxbourdon, the harbingers of counterpoint, first made 
 ttiemselves felt in the musical world, Paris was the 
 centre of European culture. Here, then, on the banks 
 of the Seine, let us date the birth of counterpoint a 
 thousand years ago. This epoch also witnessed the 
 
 1 Emil Naumann, The History of Music. 
 67 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 beginnings of an architectural style comparable to the 
 contrapuntal in music, — the Gothic. The venerable 
 cathedral of Notre Dame still stands in sculptured 
 stone, a monument of the Gothic builders in the days 
 long gone; but the Gothic music of the early contra- 
 puntists has perished. In feudal times a noble's home 
 was at once a castle and a place of safety, with moats 
 and grim embattled walls. Builders neglected the 
 austere Norman architecture, however, when it was no 
 longer necessary to provide refuges from danger. And 
 with the enlightenment of the people and progress of 
 education a music voicing the many moods and passions 
 of a more complex life has banished the mediaeval 
 counterpoint that sufficed the simple-minded congre- 
 Golden gations of the eleventh century. It must 
 Age of not for a moment be supposed that the 
 Contra- music of this period can rank with contem- 
 puntal porary Gothic architecture : the golden age 
 
 Music of contrapuntal music was not until the 
 
 eighteenth century. In the year 1750 Johann Sebastian 
 Bach, by whom all the science and art of his predeces- 
 sors was carried to incomparable heights, was laid to 
 rest. Since Bach's day counterpoint has abdicated the 
 throne and is now only a citizen in the democracy of 
 music. Melody, harmony, dynamic effects, variety of 
 rhythms, orchestral colour, have more to do with the 
 
 68 
 
NOTKE DAME CATHEDRAL, PARIS. THE REPUTED BIRTHPLACE OF COUNTERPOINT. 
 
 69 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 nature of modern music than counterpoint has. The 
 archaic counterpoint of early days was uninfluenced by 
 the harmonies that the tempered scale has made possible. 
 It lacks colour and passion. It is the child of the cold 
 grey stone cathedral; and it needs the echoes of the 
 high-arched root, the shadowy distance of the long 
 drawn aisle, the Latin liturgy, — everything, in fact, that 
 tends to separate the humble devotee from the sanctity 
 of the priest. The trend of music has ever been towards 
 expression: it no longer separates. The music we 
 esteem to-day is that which makes the most direct 
 appeal to our emotions. From this modern art counter- 
 point is not excluded, but it is not the counterpoint of 
 our forefathers that composers now employ. 
 
 Counterpoint is the art of combining two or more 
 melodies (or themes, phrases). The hymn from Gluck's 
 Iphigenie in Tauris, quoted on page 45, is not contra- 
 puntal. The only interesting melodic phrase is in the 
 soprano, the chords under these notes being merely the 
 accompanying harmony. We hear these chords as a 
 whole, and ignore the tune which each separate part 
 would make if played alone. If we turn to the chorale 
 by Bach on page 50, we will notice that the tenor notes 
 in the second bar are quite different in time value from 
 the single note in the soprano. The effect of this tenor 
 phrase is contrapuntal, in as much as our attention is 
 
 70 
 
Melody and Counterpoint 
 
 called to another phrase combined with the phrase in 
 the soprano. Whenever the accompaniments of a melody 
 are so constructed that they stand out clear and distinct 
 from the melody as independent melodies themselves, 
 the effect is contrapuntal to the hearer. A familiar use 
 of free counterpoint is in an obligato to a song-. Some 
 of the finest counterpoint, however, is so smoothly 
 written and of such complexity that the ordinary un- 
 cultured ear cannot distinguish any theme or sense in 
 such a babel of conflicting voices, each one clamouring 
 for the attention. To an uneducated ear the melodic, 
 harmonic, and emotional beauty of Bach's unapproach- 
 ably perfect fugue in C sharp minor. No. 4 of the 
 "48," is lost in the maze of the five-voiced counter- 
 point. The simplest song or dance in balanced four- 
 bar phrases seems richer in melody. 
 
 It does not require much attention for the listener to 
 notice that when Wagner, in the second half of the 
 Tannhduser march, repeats the principal theme of the 
 first part he elaborates the bass, giving it a melodic 
 importance that it did not have in the first part. In the 
 first part the bass is only an unobtrusive part of the 
 harmonies that accompany the all-important melody. 
 In the second part the shorter note value and the con- 
 tinuity of the melodic flow of notes in the bass make the 
 bass almost equal in importance to the theme. In other 
 
 71 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 words, the bass in the second part is a counterpoint to 
 the melody; the bass is contrapuntal. The example A 
 shows the first two phrases that together make half of 
 the first sentence of this march. B is the same half 
 sentence with the contrapuntal bass. 
 
 There are several species of counterpoint classified in 
 treatises. As exercises the systematic study of these 
 
 72 
 
Various Counterpoints 
 
 species is of value, but the only counterpoint that 
 
 modern composers make any extensive use of is the 
 
 species known as florid counterpoint. This 
 
 species of counterpoint is easily distinguish- P®"*^ ° 
 , , , . . , . ... Counter- 
 
 able by its notes of unequal length, by tied and 
 
 dotted notes, and by rests. The counterpoint 
 in the Tannhduser example B is not florid ; it is of the 
 third species. Space forbids an explanation of the five 
 species of counterpoint, of which florid is the last. A 
 treatise on counterpoint would fill a large volume. 
 Nothing but the briefest description of what counter- 
 point is can be outlined here. 
 
 In addition to this simple counterpoint, of which all 
 the examples quoted in this chapter are instances, there 
 is also double counterpoint. Double counter- 
 point is the art of so constructing a contra- _, 
 
 . Counter- 
 
 puntal passage that it can be sounded either 
 
 over or under the theme it is intended to 
 accompany. The art of double counterpoint has fallen 
 into disuse in these days of harmony and orchestral 
 colour. Not only in the works of Bach, but in almost 
 all fugues, double counterpoint is more or less in 
 evidence. In the fugue in Cherubini's Requiem Mass 
 in C minor, of which a phrase is quoted on page 62, 
 we find an excellent example of triple counterpoint. 
 The three themes are so constructed that each one 
 
 73 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 in turn may appear above, below, or between the 
 other tw§. 
 
 Sir Arthpr Sullivan sometimes lent considerable zest 
 to the movements in his humorous operettas by causing 
 two themes which had previously been heard separately 
 to be heard together. An amusing instance of this 
 procedure is to be found in the third number of the 
 second act of the Pirates of Penzance. The Sergeant's 
 song, "When the foeman bares his steel," is followed 
 by Mabel's solo, " Go, ye heroes, go to glory." Later 
 on in the same scene the two melodies are combined 
 thus : — 
 
 ■ When the foe-iiiaiibaTestals3teeI,Tk«ui-ta- la, taran .ta-ral We un- 
 Jj. . _8- . 3 „— 8 ^^^ 3^ 
 
 com - lar-ta 
 
 ble feel. 
 
 Ta.ran 
 
 ta. ta! 
 
 Andne 
 
 With an orchestral accompaniment and a chorus of 
 girls this counterpoint is very effective on the stage. 
 Sullivan employs this same contrapuntal device in the 
 
 74 
 
Humour of Counterpoint 
 
 chorus, "Now glory 
 to the God who 
 breaks" in The 
 Martyr of Antioch. 
 In both these ex- 
 amples the com- 
 poser has been care- 
 ful to give each 
 theme a character- 
 istic and contrasting 
 rhythm. The trip- 
 lets of Mabel's song 
 are easily distin- 
 guishable from the 
 angular rhythm of the 
 Sergeant's phrases. 
 Sullivan had too fine 
 a sense of the fitness 
 of things to employ 
 any but the least 
 complex counter- 
 point in his spark- 
 ling operettas. 
 
 In the overture 
 to Die Meister- 
 sinser Wagner has 
 
 ARTHUR SULLIVAN MONUMENT, EMBANKMENT 
 GARDENS, LONDON. 
 
 75 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 most felicitously combined three themes that have each 
 been treated separately before they are heard simul- 
 taneously. This is one of the finest specimens of 
 modern counterpoint extant. Examples A, B, and C 
 are the first few" bars of the themes which are after- 
 wards so skilfully and delightfully combined in ex- 
 ample D, 
 A. WAGNER. 
 
 #f^ J J; 
 
 J 1 11 
 
 1 J J U j 1 
 
 IJS: ffla 
 
 IK- M 1 m 1 
 
 ^^=hh 
 
 ^^^^iJ- 
 
 S p ' 3 >i 
 
 ^f^i^= 
 
 J J 1 
 
 Irr rr 1 
 
 J. J^jTJ-JI 
 
 Jt J '^ii J-l a S i l l f m i j4j g i ^f 
 
 c 
 
 /IJ p 
 
 n -P^J .^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 r rr 
 
 '^/^ ^^ 
 
 i^R- 
 
 r^L^A - i J' 
 
 ^ 
 
 76 
 
 5f 
 
Complexities of Counterpoint 
 
 «tft 
 
 This complexity is not difficult to follow when the 
 
 themes are known. The theme C, in notes of double 
 
 length, is the upper melody, and is therefore the easiest 
 
 to be distinguished. The theme A is in the bass, which 
 
 is the next easiest part for the ear to hear; while theme 
 
 B is ingeniously written in notes of half the time value 
 
 of those that first announced it, giving it a rhythmical 
 
 contrast to the themes A and C. 
 
 The old church composers of the eighteenth century 
 
 thought less about clarity. They wrote for a public 
 
 familiar with contrapuntal devices, and they 
 
 , . . . . • Old 
 
 frequently let mgenuity outstrip mspiration. 
 
 Much of their eight-part counterpoint is so Composers 
 closely interwoven that the ear cannot 
 follow the melody of each voice : too great a com- 
 plexity defeats its own ends. At a distance from the 
 
 77 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 eye a fine piece of silk looks less complicated than a few 
 twisted strands of rope seem. And Wagner's compara- 
 tively simple combination of three themes sounds richer 
 and more complex than that music which is composed 
 of a very great number of themes so closely fitted that 
 the ear cannot separate one from the other. It must 
 never be forgotten when judging, and possibly con- 
 demning, the old church composers that they were 
 invariably imbued with a progressive spirit, and that 
 they made use of the utmost resources of the imper- 
 fectly developed art of their day. In Thomas Tallis 
 and William Bryde the old English poly- 
 *' '^ phonic school had two great masters of the 
 
 ,, , art second only to the Italian Palestrina. 
 
 Music ^ 
 
 These two contrapuntists were neither 
 
 equalled by any German of their times nor surpassed 
 
 by the Netherlanders. The influence of Tallis was so 
 
 great that when he, by way of experiment or for the 
 
 sake of variety, composed a simple service in a Doric 
 
 mode, his followers accepted this as a model for church 
 
 services. And so it came to pass that for a long time 
 
 the English church service was most orthodoxly dull 
 
 and gloomy. Orlando Gibbons restored the polyphonic 
 
 style to the service, and made it bright and melodious 
 
 withal. Purcell, probably the greatest musical genius 
 
 of whom England can boast, was somewhat under the 
 
 78 
 
Anthems of Croft 
 
 French influence^ in his services. His greatness must 
 be sought elsewhere in those forms which allow greater 
 play of imagination and dramatic expression. 
 
 Unquestionably the finest examples of the English 
 Church service date from the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century. In 1727, exactly one 
 hundred years before the death of Beet- 
 hoven, and in the same year that the earth of West- 
 minster Abbey closed over the remains of Newton, a 
 humbler grave in the north aisle of the same old edifice 
 received the ashes of William Croft. Croft could not 
 soar among the stars with Beethoven nor think among 
 them with Newton, but he nevertheless wrote the finest 
 Te Deunt and Jubilate to be found in the English 
 service. In these, and in his anthems "Cry aloud and 
 shout " and ' ' God is gone up with a merry noise " — to 
 mention only two of his many excellent choral works — 
 we find masterly workmanship, fine feeling, and a 
 breadth and power exactly proportioned to the form 
 and dimension of the work. The successors of Croft 
 have been too frequently orthodox and conservative. 
 Like the followers of Tallis, they heed the manner of 
 the past, and do not attempt to enrich the service from 
 the new resources of music. There are notable excep- 
 tions, though many of these exceptions are weakly 
 1 Sir John Stainer, "Service," Grmie\ Dictionary, y 
 79 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 sentimental rather than strongly modern. But those 
 cloistered music-makers, whose little world is bounded 
 by the organ-loft and the echoing nave, remind me of a 
 Californian orange which, though hanging from a 
 living tree, had become fixed while green between a 
 barbed wire and a rough-hewn post. And though it 
 was kissed by the golden sun and wooed by the soft 
 Pacific wind, it could not expand into a rounded fruit. 
 Schumann is credited with saying that his development 
 began when he got it into his head that there were 
 other countries than Germany in the world. And it is 
 doubtless good for a little man from Ulm, Rouen, or 
 Durham, when expatiating in the turmoil of Chicago 
 on the glories of his cathedral music, to be shocked 
 with the question, "Where is Durham?" There are 
 other worlds ot music than the one in which we 
 move. Explore them. It cannot be denied that 
 much of the old music is too contrapuntal. Counter- 
 point had then but recently reached maturity, and 
 composers revelled in their new-found art. The 
 melodic school of Italy neglected everything for the 
 sake of pretty tunes. When the sonata form was 
 new, Mozart put many compositions on paper that 
 are of the slightest possible musical value except as 
 excellent examples of balanced sonata form. When 
 the history of our times is written, it will be stated that 
 
 80 
 
Importance of Counterpoint 
 
 the composers of the latter part of the nineteenth and 
 the early part of the twentieth centuries too frequently 
 neglected balance of form, contrapuntal skill, and 
 thematic development for the sensuous charm of rich 
 harmonies and brilliant orchestration. In every age 
 there are a few great minds which, like rocks in an 
 impetuous torrent, are unmoved by the passing fashions 
 of the day. The water wears the stone, it is true, and 
 the spirit of the age in which a composer lives sets its 
 mark upon him;^ but the works of the great men, 
 which are written for all time, are always perfect 
 organisms. No one member is stunted for the sake 
 of another over-developed and exaggerated limb. 
 
 Counterpoint must for ever take its place as one of 
 the most important factors in the upbuilding of a great 
 musical work, though it is improbable that it will ever 
 regain the position of supreme importance which it held 
 in the eighteenth century. 
 
 ' Goethe, Maxims and Rejections. 
 
 8i 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 IMITATION, CANON, AND FUGUE. 
 
 Composers of contrapuntal epoch — Too great attention to external 
 merit — The subjective and objective — Dodecachordon — Palestrina 
 to Handel — Imitation and imitative passages — Flower of counter- 
 point is fugue — Fugal style and structure — Fugue and cadences — 
 Bach's violin sonatas — His organ fugues — Mozart's wonderful skill 
 — Modern oratorio and fugue — The fugue and modern expression. 
 
 The academical spirit of the eighteenth century in 
 letters was tersely expressed by Voltaire' in his 
 strictures on the blank verse of Shake- 
 Composers speare :— " If you remove the labour, you 
 
 remove the merit." The composers of the 
 Contrapun- 
 . _ . contrapuntal epoch m music were imbued 
 
 with the same esteem for the external signs 
 of workmanship. Now these external merits are but 
 the trappings and the jewels of the spirit of the poem 
 or the song. The music of Dante's marvellous three- 
 rhymed Divine Comedy is the sweeter for the cadence 
 
 ' Voltaire, Preface to translation of Shakespeare's fulius Casari. 
 83 
 
Objective and Subjective 
 
 of its rhyme, but Dante's crown of unfading glory rests 
 on a more firm foundation than the jingle of his lines. 
 Bach's fugues are also marvels of constructive skill, 
 though the amazing complexity of the forgotten mathe- 
 matics in sound of the Netherland composers would 
 oust them from their foremost rank if external labour 
 was the touchstone of merit. The purity of style and 
 perfect rhymes of Voltaire's plays have not prevented 
 this wittiest 1 of all authors from ignominious neglect 
 by the world of play-goers. Rhyme in poetry and form 
 in music are largely products of the objective factor in 
 the brain, that is to say, the intellectual faculties, which 
 faculties can be directed by the will. The character, 
 spirit, soul, call it what you will — it is usually called 
 the inspiration of the poem or the composition's 
 the product of the subjective factor of the brain. 
 This subjective factor is not under the control of the 
 will. 
 
 It is seen in children, who, acting under its sugges- 
 tions, imagine themselves soldiers, kings, ladies at 
 court, or in any other capacity, according to the 
 impressions they have received — impressions which the 
 subjective factor of the brain indelibly preserves, 
 prompting the will to the performance of the scenes 
 
 ' John Morley, Voltaire, ehap. iiii 
 83 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 it remembers in a sub-conscious way. In a hypnotic 
 trance the mind is susceptible to suggestion to an 
 abnormal degree. It is this subjective factor, which 
 never forgets, that makes musical prodigies. It is 
 this that characterizes genius. With the development 
 of the intellectual faculties the child more and more 
 loses the suggestions of the subjective factor and 
 becomes the ordinary so-called intellectual adult. A 
 highly developed intellect that will not interfere with 
 the suggestions of a richly-stored sub-conscious memory 
 is the distinguishing mark of the great composers and 
 poets. It is a combination seldom found. 
 
 Among the old contrapuntists the intellectual factor 
 often seriously interferes with the suggestive factor. 
 Henricus Glareanus, in his Dodecachordon, 
 published in 1547, tells us that it required 
 two men to compose a piece of music — one 
 to invent the tune, and another to write the counter- 
 point. It is evident that the objective and subjective 
 were not combined in the mind of any composer with 
 whom Glareanus was acquainted. Yet the old author 
 was shrewd enough to say that it might be possible to 
 combine the two functions of melodist and contrapuntist 
 in one person. 
 
 In 1547 Palestrina was a young student in Rome; in 
 1658 Purcell was born in London; in 1685, within a 
 
 84 
 
Imitation and Canon 
 
 few days and a few miles of each other, Bach and 
 Handel were born in Saxony. The speculative theory 
 of Glareanus was not rash, though it may have been 
 novel in his day. Falestrina, Purcell, Bach, and 
 Handel, and an hundred excellent composers, from 
 the birth of Falestrina to the death of Handel, are 
 irrefutable evidence that the function of a melodist 
 and a contrapuntist can be combined in the self- 
 same mind. 
 
 One of the earliest forms of contrapuntal ingenuity 
 is imitation. Imitation is a term that is not very 
 precise in its definition. Sometimes only 
 the rhythm is imitated, and frequently the 
 imitating melody varies considerably from the part 
 imitated. If the imitation is note for note the same 
 as the melody it is called a Canon. The subjoined 
 example is a canon in the octave : — 
 
 DAHLILA. SAINT-SAENS. 
 
 Imitation 
 
 8S 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Canons can be written with the imitating- part begin- 
 ning at any interval from the melody as well as from 
 the octave. The imitating part will then not be note 
 for note as the melody, as it is in canons in the octave 
 and the unison. If the canon or the imitation is in the 
 tenth, for instance, every note of the imitating part 
 will lie a tenth above the notes of the melody that are 
 being imitated. It is usual to reckon intervals upwards. 
 This will explain why a canon that begins on G with 
 the imitating part starting on the E under the G is 
 called a canon in the sixth. No account is taken of the 
 second voice entering below the first. In the ascending 
 scale E is a sixth above G, therefore it is called a canon 
 in the sixth. 
 
 There are also canons in several voices, canons on 
 several subjects, canons in which the imitating part is 
 inverted; that is to say, upside down; canons in which 
 the imitating part is in notes of shorter or longer time 
 
 86 
 
Musical Canons 
 
 Imitative 
 Passages 
 
 value than the notes of the leading melody; in fact 
 there seems to be no end to the mathematical pos- 
 sibilities of imitation. The reason why it 
 is dead as an art form to-day is that it 
 makes such a great demand on the ordinary 
 intellectual faculties of the brain that the more sensitive 
 and rarer sub-conscious factor is overwhelmed and 
 silenced. The bright lance of inspiration is shattered 
 by the leaden mace of reflection. 
 
 Here and there in the works of modern composers 
 are to be found musical examples of imitative passages. 
 The seventh number of Sir Alexander Mackenzie's 
 Jason contains a melodious vocal canon; Schumann's 
 Etudes symphoniques for piano abound in imitative 
 passages. One of the most genial of the many sportive, 
 half-humorous pages that Beethoven wrote is the imi- 
 tation in the octave between the clarinet and bassoon 
 in the first movement of the fourth symphony. 
 
 BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Clarinet. 
 
 This is strict imitation, and is therefore a canon of 
 eight bars length. The last movement of Caesar 
 
 87 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Francis's sonata in A for piano and violin is one of 
 the most beautiful imitative movements in existence. 
 
 Bach, of course, did everything. In his Goldhurg 
 variations there are canons in the unison, second, third, 
 fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, octave, and ninth. Of 
 these the example in the interval of the fifth is in 
 contrary motion. These canons are not haunting in 
 their emotional beauty. The subjective factor in Bach's 
 brain was recuperating for the creation of one of his 
 profoundly felt and tenderly expressive choral master- 
 pieces when his incessantly active mind vented its 
 energy in these constructive problems. 
 
 The seeker for external perfection of canonic skill is 
 referred to the masterly feat of A. A. Klengel, whose 
 forty-eight canons and fugues in all keys are monu- 
 ments of patient thought and elaboration. 
 
 Counterpoint is the plant of which fugue is the flower 
 in its full perfection. Counterpoint can go no farther 
 
 than the production of a fine fugue. The 
 Fugfuc 
 
 fugue contams simple and double counter- 
 point, imitation, canon, as well as its own characteristic 
 form. A fugue is a composition in which a certain 
 phrase called the subject is announced and discussed 
 by a number of voices in turn, separately and simul- 
 taneously, according to the elaborate but not rigid 
 rules of fugue. 
 
 88 
 
Fugue Construction 
 
 A typical fugue might be constructed as follows : — 
 First comes the exposition, which is made thus : — 
 A short characteristic phrase is announced by the 
 soprano part in the tonic; the alto gives the answer, 
 which consists of, the subject in the dominant instead 
 of in the tonic. The tenor now announces the subject 
 again in the tonic, and is followed by the bass with the 
 answer in the dominant. The soprano, alto, and tenor 
 having entered in turn with the characteristic phrase, 
 continue with free counterpoint until the end of the 
 subject in the bass. When the bass enters there will 
 therefore be foun^j^pices sounding at once, each one 
 with an independent counterpoint. 
 
 At the end oT this»e!?|)osition there will be an episode, 
 which is a passage of a few bars in which the subject 
 is absent. Episodes usually contain phrases that re- 
 semble parts of the exposition, though the subject itself 
 is omitted. 
 
 During this episode, and during the counter-exposition 
 which follows this episode, one or more of the four 
 voices, either instrumental or vocal, will 
 
 become silent. This allows the voice that „ 
 
 Exposition 
 has dropped out to enter with effect when 
 
 it is its turn to state the subject or answer in the 
 counter-exposition. In the counter-exposition the com- 
 poser contrives that the voices enter in a different 
 1 89 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 order than in the exposition. The voices that had the 
 subject in the first part will now have the answer in the 
 second part. At the end of the counter-exposition there 
 is a longer episode, followed by a free treatment of the 
 subject as the fancy of the composer suggests. Other 
 keys than the tonic and dominant are here introduced, 
 and the subject is heard in its entirety or in fragments 
 with new harmonic accompaniments, inverted, aug- 
 mented, and diminished. The last third of the fugue 
 consists of the stretto and the final episode. In the 
 stretto the subject is treated to canonical imitation 
 ■frhich brings the entry of the imitating voice each time 
 nearer the imitated notes of the subject. Few fugues 
 contain all these treatments. «Some fugues have no 
 counter-exposition, some have no stretto. Some fugues 
 have more than one subject; some have a counter-subject 
 which accompanies the subject every time it appears. 
 
 The fugue avoids full cadences. If one should 
 appear the subject will enter at the same time and 
 continue the movement. It is not difficult to distin- 
 guish a fugue from a canon. In a canon every note 
 in the leading voice is imitated by every note in the 
 imitation that follows it like a slanting shadow to the 
 end. In a fugue a short subject is heard here and 
 there in a number of voices that make no attempt to 
 imitate each other. 
 
 90 
 
Various Bach Fugues 
 
 Bach was at once the greatest scientist, as well as 
 the greatest artist in fugues, that the world has yet 
 seen. He bound himself in the most unyielding of 
 fetters and moved with the freedom of an acrobat. 
 
 For the solo violin, with its exceedingly narrow limits 
 of harmony and double notes, he wrote fugues, pre- 
 ludes, chaconnes, with a rhapsodical fire 
 and brilliancy that compel the applause of Bach s 
 
 the concert room to-day when the master „ ' 
 
 . . . Etc. 
 
 of the violm appears who can do them 
 
 justice. The stiff forms are masked in ornament, like 
 
 steel armour damaskeened in purple and gold. The. 
 
 first of organists in his day, and the acknowledged 
 
 king of all contemporary and subsequent composers 
 
 for his favourite instrument, he has bequeathed the 
 
 world such a legacy of organ fugues that the musician 
 
 hardly knows whether the quantity or the quality is the 
 
 more amazing. 
 
 With every decade greater organs are constructed. 
 
 But the mightiest organ has not yet found the limit 
 
 to the breadth and grandeur of Bach's organ fugues. 
 
 For the clavier, which had its exit with the entrance 
 
 of the modern piano, Bach has been lavish of all kinds 
 
 of fugues. His Art of Fugue, a book written to show 
 
 what can be done with a theme, is unquestionably dry 
 
 and technical. In the famous Well-Tempered Clavicord, 
 
 91 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 which Bach wrote to help forward the then imperfectly 
 understood equal temperament, he has put some of the 
 most beautiful of his musical utterances. Humour, 
 pathos, dignity, and power are all to be found in these 
 unapproached and unapproachable fugues. They are 
 like the wild flowers that spring from the arid soil of 
 the stony wayside. The vine and tendril and bloom of 
 melody clasp and cloak the gnarled trunk of counter- 
 point. 
 
 Among all the singers, romancers, colourists, and 
 wooers of Penelope to-day there are none who can 
 bend the contrapuntal bow of this Ulysses of music. ^ 
 
 Mozart has deftly combined the fugue and the sonata 
 forms in his overture to The Magic Flute, and in the 
 
 last movement of the great C major sym- 
 mozarts phony, which his contemporary admirers 
 
 surnamed "The Jupiter." With such re- 
 
 _ markable skill are these two forms so welded 
 
 Forms 
 
 that it would be impossible to find the seam 
 
 if the cadences of the sonata form did not interrupt the 
 
 flight of the fugue. They resemble the architecture of 
 
 the Incas, of which Prescott tells us that the stones were 
 
 so neatly fitted that the eye might not detect the join it 
 
 the fluting was removed. ^ 
 
 1 Homer, Odyssey, bk. xxi. 
 ^ Prescott, Conquest of Peru, bk. i. chap. v. 
 92 
 
No Modern Fugues 
 
 The fugue has not been modernized. It is difficult to 
 
 introduce it in modern works without a glaring mixture 
 
 of old and new styles. The fugue at the 
 
 end of Beethoven's Mount of Olives is less in- ^ 
 
 , , -^ Oratorio 
 
 spired than the majestic "Hallelujah " chorus 
 
 which precedes it. It is more formal and old fashioned 
 in style, as well as a laboured product of the intel- 
 lectual faculties rather than a spontaneous creation of 
 Beethoven's genius. Half a century after the produc- 
 tion of the Mount of Olives, the most popular, possibly 
 the finest oratorio since the days of Bach and Handel, 
 Mendelssohn's Elijah, was given to the world. Mendels- 
 sohn in his instrumental pieces has caught a good deal 
 of the infection of Weber's romantic spirit. In his 
 choral works the influence of the older classical com- 
 posers is more noticeable. The fugue had long ceased 
 to be an essential feature in instrumental composi- 
 tions, though church music and those choral works 
 which are founded on biblical stories remained, and still 
 remain, far behind instrumental works in modernity of 
 style. Yet the fugal style plays a very subordinate 
 part in the Elijah. 
 
 Twenty years after Elijah saw the light of day Wagner 
 produced his Die Meister singer. The introduction to 
 the third act of this most perfect and magnificent of all 
 comedy operas may some day be referred to by the 
 
 93 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 future historian as the germ of the fugue renascence. 
 The theme which begins the introduction — a phrase 
 that could do admirably for a fugue subject — is taken 
 up in turn by four voices, instrumental voices, as in the 
 exposition of a fugue. The difference is in the keys in 
 which the voices enter, and in the richness of the modern 
 harmonies which these combined voices produce. 
 
 A fugue containing all the interesting devices of struc- 
 ture of the classical fugue combined with modern 
 harmony, and expressing the emotion of the romantic 
 spirit in music, has not yet appeared. Wagner's 
 poetical reverie is not a fugue. And the fugues of 
 Wagner's contemporary, Josef Rheinberger, are modern 
 only because they are new. Like the cathedral now 
 abuilding in Liverpool, and the recently completed 
 St. Patrick's, New York, they are but excellent copies 
 and comminglings of styles long since defunct. 
 
 94 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EQUAL TEMPERAMENT. 
 
 Overtones and tone colour — Natural harmonics — Many past systems — 
 Meantone system — Auditory nerves of the future — What is equal 
 temperament ? — Its opponents — Enharmonic changes — Brass instru- 
 ments — Ratios of vibrations — Bach's " vfell-tempered clavicord" — 
 Rameau. 
 
 When a string, rod, bell, disc, or column of air is 
 set in vibration, we not only hear the fundamental tone 
 which is the result of the regular vibrations Funda- 
 of the entire rod, string, bell, disc, or mental 
 
 column of air, but along with this funda- Tone 
 
 mental tone are sounding a number of overtones, which 
 overtones are the result of the vibrations in segments 
 of the string or other vibrating medium which in its 
 entirety produces the fundamental tone. These over- 
 tones are far less plainly heard than the fundamental 
 tone. In fact the untrained ear is often unable to 
 distinguish them at all. If they were not there, however, 
 it would be difficult to distinguish one from another 
 among the sounds of the piano, the violin, the voice, 
 
 95 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 the flute, and other instruments. All fundamental tones 
 are more or less alike. The difference in tone colour is 
 due to the prominence or weakness of certain overtones 
 sounding along with the fundamental tone. Though 
 certain overtones are more distinctly heard in sounds of 
 some instruments than in others, the actual overtones 
 which accompany a fundamental tone are always the 
 same, except in those cases, such as stopped, conical, 
 and cylindrical pipes, which have been constructed for 
 special purposes. 
 
 It is only necessary to transpose the following series 
 of overtones, with the fundamental, into all keys to 
 find the natural overtones for every fundamental. 
 
 1 3 3,4 5 6 7 8- 9 10 S ^ 'jCi ^ 'j 
 
 The piano cannot sound these intervals which belong to 
 the untempered scale only, Nos. 7, 11, 13, and 14 being 
 much flatter than the tempered notes, and all the rest 
 of the series, with the exception of the octaves of the 
 fundamental, being very slightly sharp or flat. Refer- 
 ence has been made to the Egyptian, Chinese, Japanese, 
 Greek, Persian, Arabian, and Gregorian scales. It is 
 manifestly impossible within the narrow covers of this 
 volume even to outline the structure of these scales. 
 
 96 
 
Natural Harmonics 
 
 It will be necessary, nevertheless, to digress a moment 
 
 from our story in order to examine the structure of the 
 
 tempered scale, which is the cause of the wonderful 
 
 development of modern harmony. 
 
 If we study the intervals in the series of overtones, 
 
 or harmonics as some call them, we find octaves, fifths, 
 
 fourths, major and minor thirds, whole tones, 
 
 and half tones. At first glance it looks as if *' °°^^ 
 
 the half tone, also called semi-tone, was the ._ 
 
 ,, . , . , , . r. Harmonics 
 
 smallest mterval m the natural series. But 
 
 if we accept these intervals furnished by nature and 
 
 attempt to fill in the intervals greater than a semi-tone 
 
 with whole tones and half tones found by using the 
 
 natural fourths and fifths as a standard measure, we 
 
 will find that nature gives a very great number of 
 
 exceedingly small intervals between each semi-tone. 
 
 For instance, if we accept the 5th harmonic E as the E 
 
 of our scale, we find it to be out of tune by a very small 
 
 interval, called a comma, with the E that we get when 
 
 we tune up four perfect fifths from the fundamental C 
 
 that gave us the E. The two E's in the following 
 
 example differ from each other in vibration in the ratio 
 
 ofSotoSi. E 
 
 E 
 
 97 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Again, if we tune up three major thirds from C, 
 thus : — C to E, E to G sharp, G sharp to B sharp, 
 we will find that B sharp is a little sharper than the 
 C which is the perfect octave above the C the thirds 
 start from. 
 
 Let us start from C and tune up in perfect fifths till 
 we come to B sharp: — 
 
 C— G— D— A— E— B— F sharp— C sharp— G sharp— 
 D sharp — A sharp — E sharp — B sharp. 
 
 Now let us return to the same C and tune down in 
 perfect fifths till we come to D double flat: — 
 
 C— F— B flat— E flat— A flat— D flat— G flat— C flat 
 — F flat— B double flat— E double flat— A double flat— 
 D double flat. 
 
 If we will now bring our B sharp down in perfect 
 octaves and our D double flat up in perfect octaves, we 
 will find that B sharp is much sharper than C, and that 
 D double flat is much flatter than C. Throughout the 
 whole series C sharp will diff'er from D flat, D sharp 
 from E flat, F sharp from G flat, G sharp from A flat, 
 and A sharp from B flat. 
 
 If we continue our circle of fifths, or rather spiral of 
 fifths, for we always get farther and farther away from 
 our starting place, we will find that our triple sharps 
 and flats, our four, five, six, seven, eight, or more, 
 sharps or flats still give us new intervals. We will 
 
 98 
 
Mesotonic System 
 
 discover that nature furnishes at least twelve intervals 
 in a semi-tone. 
 
 The student, who up to the present fondly believed 
 that the scale as he hears it on his piano or organ has 
 always been as it is, may now begin to understand why 
 so many tonal systems existed in the past. It is not 
 too much to say that, considering the almost unlimited 
 possibilities of the natural harmonics, it is remarkable 
 that there have been so few systems ! 
 
 The most important system before the modern Equal 
 
 Temperament was the Meantone, or Mesotonic, system. 
 
 For this tuning all the works of Handel, the 
 
 choral and organ works of Bach, and all the KT^antone of 
 
 music of Bach's predecessors as far back as *!,° °°"^ 
 
 T . System 
 
 the sixteenth century were written. It has 
 
 certain unquestionable advantages, the most important 
 of which is the smoothness of the concords, due to the 
 intervals more nearly approaching the natural notes of 
 the series of overtones. The fatal weakness of this 
 system is that only the major scales and harmonies of 
 the keys of B flat, F, C, G, D, A, and the minor scales 
 and harmonies of G, D, A, are in tune. When any key 
 appeared that required G sharp instead of A flat, or E 
 flat instead of D sharp, to mention only two of the 
 defects of the meantone system, the result was intoler- 
 able. It is plain that composers were very much 
 
 99 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 limited in their choice of keys and in their modulations. 
 This lack of freedom in modulation necessarily had an 
 important influence on the form of the composition, as 
 we shall see in a subsequent chapter. 
 
 To make the meantone tuning, or any other tuning 
 but the equal temperament system, capable of employ- 
 ment in the production of all the mysteries and mazes of 
 modern harmonies, while theoretically practical, is 
 practically impossible. Any system that requires more 
 than twelve sounds in an octave — that is to say, intervals 
 smaller than the half-tone, is doomed to failure in the 
 present condition of the human ear. It is idle to 
 speculate as to what superfineness of perception 
 evolution has in store for the auditory nerves in the 
 coming centuries. 
 
 Several eminent scientists, even as late as the end of 
 
 the nineteenth century, have expressed dissatisfaction 
 
 with the equal temperament system. The 
 
 ** musician, however, can smilingly point to 
 
 " the harmonies of Wagner's Tristan und 
 
 „ Isolde as an absurdly overwhelming refu- 
 
 oystem 
 
 tation of the charges brought against equal 
 
 temperament by Helmholtz's Sensations of Tone. It is 
 to this great work. Sensations of Tone, nevertheless, 
 that the student must go for explanations of sympa- 
 thetic vibration, differential and summational tones, as 
 
 lOO 
 
OLE BULL WITH HIS GASPAKO DA SALO VIOLIN. 
 
 (From a picture in the possession of the late Auguste Wiihelnij.) 
 
Equal Temperament 
 
 well as a profoundly learned and lucid explanation of 
 the different tonal systems. 
 
 Equal temperament takes the perfect octave as found 
 in the natural series of harmonics, and divides it into 
 twelve semi-tones — thirteen, if the last note, the octave 
 of the first note, is counted. The interval between 
 these half tones is made equal in every case. 
 
 Some of the intervals in the natural harmonic series 
 are sharpened, some are flattened. D flat and C sharp, 
 E flat and D sharp, G flat and F sharp, A flat and G 
 sharp, A sharp and B flat, are made to correspond. 
 F flat is E, E sharp is F, B sharp is C, C flat is B, and 
 so on. The flat notes are slightly raised and the sharp 
 notes are slightly depressed. And the result? The 
 composer can dart hither and thither, anywhere, every- 
 where, and none of his modulations lead to harmonic 
 disaster. He can go round his circle of sharps and 
 come out in flats ; or he can begin his journey in flats 
 and return at ease in sharps. He can construct his 
 chords partly of sharps and partly of flats, or of 
 naturals, sharps, and flats. All the restrictions of the 
 older systems vanished at once. It is true that the 
 differential and summational tones, as well as the 
 sympathetic vibration between these tones and other 
 tones, fundamental and resultant, have lost a little of 
 their fulness, but on the other hand discords are 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 softer. To ask composers to give up their freedom of 
 modulation in the equal temperament system for the 
 sake of the insignificantly smoother concords in the 
 Mesotonic system or the Just Intonation system would 
 be similar to the proposal that painters should become 
 less skilful in their drawing in order that they might 
 gain a very little extra brilliancy in their primary colours. 
 
 The reader must not conclude that music has really 
 lost any charm of sound because of the employment of 
 the tempered scale. Few of the best musical ears could 
 detect any difference whatever between the chords most 
 in tune in the older systems and the same chords 
 played immediately afterwards on a similar instrument 
 tuned to the equal temperament scale. 
 
 On the other hand, the average ear could imme- 
 diately detect the unpleasantness of the bad chords of 
 the old systems, and these bad chords sound as well as 
 the best when they are tuned to the equal temperament 
 scale. Yet equal temperament, like most innovations 
 and improvements, has had its detractors. First there 
 are the scientists, who, unable to judge music as an 
 art, condemn the tempered scale because its derivation 
 is mathematically inexplicable. Secondly, there are 
 those musicians who, 
 
 " With purpose to be dressed in an opinion 
 Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit," 
 
 I02 
 
opponents 
 
 still champion the obsolete. I well know the rich 
 
 sound of certain Tartini tones, as they are called 
 
 by violinists, and other double notes on the 
 
 violin when they are played exactly in tune 
 
 . . ,. , . - Tones 
 
 according to the intervals of the series of 
 
 natural harmonics. For example, an E sounded with 
 
 the C below it will be out of tune with the G sharp 
 
 above it if it is attuned to the natural harmonic major 
 
 third above the C. 
 
 There is a touch of Don Quixotism in all of us, and 
 it must not astonish us that a mad musician here and 
 there should play knight-errantry and tilt in feudal 
 fashion at unconquerable windmills. 
 
 The opponents of the equal temperament system 
 usually conduct their tonal experiments on the metal 
 reeds of a harmonium. It seems that the Oooonents 
 beats that occur when two notes not exactly ^f t|jg 
 
 in tune are sounded together are more easily Equal 
 
 heard between the hard, stiff tones of metal Tempera- 
 reeds than between the softer tones of other ment 
 instruments. It is safe to say that no System 
 system of tuning would make the detestable tone of a 
 free, metal reed, as found in a concertina for instance, 
 agreeable to a sensitively musical ear. On the soft 
 toned piano, the still softer toned pipe organ, and on 
 most of the instruments in the orchestra, the advant- 
 
 103 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 ag'es of just intonation are almost indistinguishable 
 from the shortcomings of equal temperament. The 
 violin is tuned in fifths as perfect as the ear of the 
 violinist can make them. It can only be by chance, 
 however, that the unaided ear can tune these intervals 
 so perfect that a scientific measurement would find 
 them perfect. If the violin is tuned from the A that 
 corresponds with the same note on an equally tempered 
 piano, the E of the violin will be sharper than the E of 
 the piano ; the D will be flatter than the piano D to 
 the same extent as the E was sharper, while the G will 
 be still more flat. If the ear could hear these dis- 
 crepancies, they would not be tolerated. Our sense of 
 hearing can no more detect them than our sense of 
 touch can feel the roughness of the serrated edge a 
 microscope finds on the keenest razor. When violinists 
 talk about quarter tones, and the difference between F 
 double sharp and G, B sharp and C, A double flat and 
 G, and other pseudo-temperamental distinctions which 
 do not exist for the composer, they reveal their inability 
 to grasp the first principles of the harmonic scheme 
 employed by the composer. 
 
 Beethoven has written G natural, instead of F double 
 sharp, as the leading note in the scale of G sharp 
 minor in his Fifth Piano Concerto. Now, Beethoven 
 seldom had any consideration for the convenience of 
 
 104 
 
Imperfections of Brass Instruments 
 
 the performer. In his simple-mindedness, believing 
 F double sharp and G natural to be identical in sound, 
 he put on paper the note that his first violins would be 
 most likely to play in tune. He knew that the least 
 sharpening of the F double sharp would produce a 
 most disagreeable tenth with the D sharp in the bass. 
 
 Adagio. * 
 
 BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Brass 
 Instruments 
 
 The brass instruments are the most out of tune with 
 equal temperament of any of the orchestral instruments. 
 Brass instruments have keys or slides to 
 enable them to play the notes that lie 
 between the widely separated notes of the 
 natural harmonic series. Depressing a key or moving 
 a slide on a brass instrument merely transposes the 
 series of harmonics, with the fundamental, to another 
 pitch. Theoretically, the only notes on a brass instru- 
 ment that are in tune with the corresponding notes in 
 the equal temperament system are the fundamentals, 
 or generators, and the octaves of the fundamentals. 
 In actual performance these slight discrepancies are 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 insignificant, for all good players instinctively correct 
 these false intervals. 
 
 Any note of a brass instrument can be flattened or 
 sharpened nearly a quarter tone at will by the pressure 
 of the lips. A brass instrument which can correct a 
 false interval can also falsify a correct one. This 
 facility in going wrong, in conjunction with the marked 
 influence of changes of temperature, would reduce the 
 advantages of just intonation to an inappreciable 
 minimum. The difference between these natural notes 
 and the corresponding notes in the equal temperament 
 system is only the twelfth part of the interval expressed 
 by the ratio 551441 to 524288, or nearly 80 to 81.0915. 
 To the mathematician a difference of 2262!, which is 
 the twelfth part of the difference between 551441 and 
 524288, looks startling enough. Yet where is the 
 musical ear that shudders at the clashing of these 
 irreconcilable discords when the glorious hymn in the 
 finale of Brahms' C Minor Symphony is played by the 
 united strings, wood- wind, and brass ? 
 
 ,^,d i Ti 
 
 1 8-71 
 
 8 l.g 
 
 t\ 
 
 @ J 1 
 
 ^^— 
 
 BRA 
 
 HMS. 
 
 If 
 
 
 
 NH 
 
 
 =N 
 
 Ni=M=d 
 
 — e 
 
 ^m 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 
 106 
 
Mole-hill Mountains 
 
 A strand of spider's web hanging across the lens of 
 an astronomer's telescope blots out a mountain in the 
 moon and obliterates the canals of Mars. True; yet 
 who but an astronomer can tell us this ? And who but 
 a mathematician knows anything of ratios among 
 several hundreds of thousands of units ? The highest 
 note employed in music has little more than 4000 
 vibrations per second. Nearly all music is written for 
 sounds that vary in pitch from only about 60 to 2000 
 vibrations per second. Then why talk in tons when we 
 are working in ounces ? The schoolmen in the middle 
 ages, for want of something better to do, wasted much 
 ink and some brain energy in measuring angels, and in 
 reckoning how many little devils could dance on the 
 point of a needle. Likewise in our day scholars of 
 sound-waves, scientists in reed-vibrations, are need- 
 lessly perturbed to find the host of little discords that 
 shriek and howl in every clash of an equal tempera- 
 ment chord. 
 
 The defects of equal temperament are nothing 
 but theoretical spectres raised by the acoustician. 
 Like other ghosts, they exist only in a fervid 
 imagination. 
 
 The first great brain to grasp the importance of 
 equal temperament was none other than that of 
 J. S. Bach. He called his masterly collection of 48 
 
 107 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Preludes and Fugues for the clavicord "The Well- 
 tempered Clavicord." These pieces, the first 24 of 
 
 which were sriven to the world in 1722, and 
 " The Well- r . . 
 
 the second in 1744, are not only written in 
 tempered 
 p. . . „ all the major and mmor keys of the entire 
 
 chromatic scale, but their freedom of modu- 
 lation is impossible in any other system than that of 
 equal temperament. Bach, therefore, is not only a 
 contrapuntist, — the greatest in the history of music. 
 On account of his superb achievement in the then new 
 world of harmony discovered in equal temperament, he 
 is the father of modern harmony. Before quitting this 
 chapter mention must be made of one of the greatest 
 names in the history of French music, Rameau, who, 
 in his Demonstration du principe de VHarmonie (page 
 104 of the original edition of 1750), has a few words to 
 say in favour of Equal Temperament. 
 
 108 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 HARMONY. 
 
 Definition — Difference between harmony and counterpoint — Complex 
 counterpoint and simple harmony — Of Italian origin — Emancipa- 
 tion of harmony — Chopin's harmony — Grieg — Wagner — Monotony 
 and restlessness — Theories of harmony — Necessity for rules. 
 
 The simplest definition of Harmony that can be given 
 
 is that it is the sounding together of two or more 
 
 different musical tones. The most elaborate 
 
 treatise, however, could not exhaust the 
 
 resources of the possible harmonic combina- ,, 
 
 xiarmony 
 tions and sequences. Whenever a new 
 
 genius arises he finds a way of expressing himself in 
 harmonies that do not sound like those of his prede- 
 cessors. Bach's " Sarabande " of 24 bars length in the 
 G minor English Suite contains about as many harmonic 
 changes as Grieg's song, " Du bist der junge Lenz," of 
 28 bars length. Yet these two pieces differ as widely 
 as do the twp hundred years that separate the dates ot 
 their composition. 
 
 109 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 And this difference of manner is to be found between 
 contemporary composers as well as between old and 
 modern masters. No one who knows 
 anything of musical style could confound 
 the harmonies of Bach and Handel. How 
 utterly unlike that of Bach is the 24 bar "Sarabande" 
 in Handel's G minor suite, No. 16. Mendelssohn and 
 Schumann, Brahms and Wagner, Chopin and Liszt, 
 
 Difference 
 of Manner 
 
 (^^ dT^tl'n*^^ *-y^^><^cP ,0<h^4a,^'^ / 
 
 /^ 
 
 j£^^/. 
 
Resources of Harmony 
 
 Strauss and Elgar, Weber and Schubert, Berlioz 
 and Meyerbeer, worked during the same periods of 
 musical development ; yet their harmonies are not alike. 
 Arthur Sullivan and Edvard Grieg were fellow-students 
 in Leipsic ; and the violent contrast between their styles 
 only emphasizes the extraordinary resources of harmony, 
 which up to the present have proved inexhaustible. 
 
 During the great contrapuntal epoch little attention 
 was paid to harmony ; that is to say, the composer 
 did not choose his harmony and then make his counter- 
 point fit his harmonic scheme. It was the counterpoint 
 which received the lion's share of care and attention, 
 while the harmony was as ignominiously treated as the 
 poor sheep in the fable. 
 
 It is of course impossible to make a contrapuntal 
 combination that does not produce some kind of 
 harmony. It is possible, however, to have a very great 
 contrapuntal complexity with the most meagre harmony ; 
 as, for instance, in Tallis's Motet " Spem in alium non 
 habui," where we frequently find a forty-part counter- 
 point with no change of harmony for several bars. 
 Such a barmecide feast of visionary and unreal fare 
 cannot satisfy the cravings of the heart for genuine 
 musical substance ; for the deepest note of musical 
 emotion can be sounded by harmony only. Harmony 
 is the colour, the warmth, the passion of music. 
 
 Ill 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Palestrina, though he lived in the contrapuntal day 
 
 before the discovery of the tempered scale, was an 
 
 , inspired composer. His music, because of 
 
 PcllCS tf 1 tl Si 
 
 the varied chords which his ingenious counter- 
 point often makes, delights us to-day. He was fettered 
 to the Church, unfortunately, and all his greatest works 
 are yolked to the turgid Latin text. The painters 
 of his day wrought altar-pieces, crucifixions, and 
 Madonnas till all the walls in Italy were draped in 
 penitential canvas. But the blue and gold and purple 
 haze of the sunny Italian landscapes, which have been 
 the inspiration of so many glorious pictures from Titian 
 to Turner, were also beginning to make their genial 
 warmth felt within the shady aisles of the cathedrals. 
 On the shores of the Mediterranean or the Adriatic, 
 whose azure waves still sparkle in the verse of Virgil, 
 TibuUus, Catullus, the sense of harmony first found its 
 voice. It is not improbable, as some authors affirm, ^ 
 that St. Mark's in Venice was the cradle of Harmony, 
 Certain it is that in the compositions of the masters of 
 music who directed the musical services of this gorgeous 
 Romanesque-Byzantine Church, during the first half of 
 the seventeenth century, we find a relaxing of the rigid 
 rules of counterpoint, and the introduction of the 
 sensuous element of beautiful chord changes, un- 
 ' Naumann, History of Music, chap xi., "Adrian Willaert." 
 112 
 
Harmony and Counterpoint 
 
 doubtedly an expression of that harmonic instinct 
 which is such an integral part of the modern composer's 
 nature. The old masters of counterpoint hardly 
 can have imagined that in admitting a few harmonic 
 effects into their compositions they were introducing an 
 element that was destined to assume so much import- 
 ance and drive counterpoint from the field altogether. 
 
 The difference between harmony and counterpoint has 
 been aptly set forth by Ouseley,^ who says that the har- 
 monist looks at the chords perpendicularly, 
 while the contrapuntist considers the im- Difference 
 portance of each separate melody ; that is between 
 
 to say, looks at the composition horizontally. 
 
 « . Ajid 
 
 From the view-pomt of the harmonist it is of _ 
 
 Counter- 
 little importance what manner of melody the 
 
 separate voices make if each voice is 
 played alone. He considers the effect of each complete 
 chord and its progression to the next complete chord. 
 But the contrapuntist aims at having each voice a 
 melody in itself. Harmony sacrifices a great deal of 
 detail of fine part-writing for the sake of the general 
 effect of the whole. Counterpoint, in the strictly 
 classical sense of the definition, has a powerfully re- 
 straining influence on the harmonic freedom of the 
 
 * Sir F. A. Gore Ouseley, A Treatise on Counterpoint, Canon, and 
 Fugue; Oxford, 1880. 
 
 113 r 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 composer. Paradoxical as it may sound, it is neverthe- 
 less true that the student of practical composition finds 
 the difficulties of counterpoint to lie in the harmonic 
 progressions, and the obstacles in harmony to be the 
 part-writing — that is to say, the counterpoint. 
 
 In the following example, A, I have combined three 
 well-known tunes and a florid counterpoint bass in 
 the manner of the eighteenth century masters. The 
 soprano melody is Sullivan's "Onward, Christian 
 soldiers"; the alto is from J. J. Rousseau's " Le Devin 
 du village " ; the tenor is the theme of the variations in 
 the finale of Beethoven's " Eroica" symphony; and the 
 bass is my own. This, of course, has no musical value, 
 but it will serve to illustrate the manner of elaborating 
 themes in vogue before the days of harmony. There 
 are only two chords, F and C, in the example, and the 
 themes stand out clearly one from the other by reason 
 of the contrasted lengths of the notes of which they are 
 constructed. In example B I have reduced the melodic 
 material to the one Sullivan tune, which I have har- 
 monized in a modern manner, more or less like Grieg's 
 "Ballade" for piano solo. It will be seen that the 
 interest consists in the progression of one complete 
 chord after another complete chord, and not in the 
 variety of rhythms of a number of tunes which are 
 apparently independent of each other. A has four 
 
 114 
 
Berlioz attacks Palestrina 
 
 themes and two harmonic changes; B has one theme 
 and eight different chords : — 
 
 Diatonic counterpoint. 
 
 Chrpmatieharmony 
 
 Berlioz, great musical colourist and impressionist as 
 he was, detested the old contrapuntal style. It was 
 like the red rag to a bull to him. "Why," he 
 exclaims,^ " should the vanquishing of the difficulties of 
 counterpoint be supposed to add to the religious 
 sentiment of a work? " He even questions Palestrina's 
 right to be called a composer. He avers that most of 
 the old Italian's work consists of four-part perfect 
 chords with a few suspensions, without melody and 
 without rhythm, and that there is only evidence of a 
 patient science in overcoming certain artificial contra- 
 puntal problems. ' ' If Palestrina, having lost his 
 hands, had been obliged to write with his feet and had 
 
 ' Hector Berlioz, Memoirs, xxxix., "Palestrina." 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 succeeded in spite of this difficulty, would his works 
 have acquired any value therefrom, or be any more 
 religious?" 
 
 With Bach's fugues Berlioz was continually at enmity. 
 
 The brilliant French composer's contempt for the fugal 
 
 style is to be seen in his superb dramatic 
 
 ^ -.' legend, Tfie Damnation of Faust. In the 
 
 Berlioz, ^ , j , „ 
 
 , TT At tavern scene the drunken revellers smg a 
 and Handel ° 
 
 short and weakly constructed fugue, con- 
 cerning which Mephistopheles remarks, " Here we find 
 bestiality in all its frankness." As an antithesis to this, 
 we have the criticism of the great contrapuntist and 
 epic composer, Handel, who said of the greatest 
 dramatic composer of the day, " Gluck has no more 
 counterpoint than my cook." There is room in the 
 world, and welcome too, for the profundity of Bach, the 
 grandeur of Handel, the noble tragedy of Gluck, and 
 the fiery passion of Berlioz. It is puerile for a modern 
 composer, who has inherited all the rich legacies slowly 
 accumulated by his predecessors, to laugh at the 
 productions of the simple toilers whose patient plodding 
 
 made his riches 
 possible. A 
 single battalion 
 \i/ /"/ ^^V\^ of the present 
 
 day could worst 
 ii6 
 
Emancipation of Harmony 
 
 the hugest army of antiquity, 
 band of Grecian 
 swordsmen and 
 archers was mightily 
 worthy of the pane- 
 gyric of Thucydides. 
 The guesses and the 
 ventures of Magellan 
 and Columbus have 
 given the modern 
 rlavies their infallible 
 charts. 
 
 The complete eman- 
 cipation of harmony 
 was the natural result 
 of the establishment 
 of the tempered scale. 
 And the instrument 
 which has contributed 
 most to the discovery 
 of new harmonic pro- 
 gressions is the piano. 
 A good piano well 
 tuned on the prin- 
 ciples of the tempered 
 scale offers an easy 
 
 Yet the valiant little 
 
 KE OF CHANDOS CHAPEL, EDGWAEeJnEAR 
 LONDON. HERE HANDEL WAS ORGANIST 
 AND WROTE THE CHANDOS ANTHEMS. 
 
 117 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 and delightful means of testing every conceivable 
 chord. Theodore Dubois, late director of the Con- 
 servatoire Nationale de Musique of Paris, 
 mancipa- ^^^jj ^^ ^y^^^. -^^ j^jg Jong experience as a 
 
 teacher of harmony and musical composi- 
 Harmony 
 
 tion he had found that those of his pupils 
 
 who had learned the piano became masters of harmony 
 more readily and thoroughly than those who learned 
 the violin. 
 
 The most lovely human voice and the exquisite 
 violins of Stradivarius and Guarnerius are impotent in 
 harmony. They have contributed, and will continue to 
 contribute, to the development of melody. And thus 
 these two instruments, the violin and the piano — one the 
 most perfect in compass and modification of tone colour 
 for the expression of melody, the other unlimited in its 
 harmonic resources — mutually act on each other for the 
 general good of music. The composer who writes for 
 the orchestra carries about with him the harmonic 
 instinct which the piano has fostered ; and though his 
 score is full of the richest and most elaborate harmony, 
 the melodic nature of the stringed instruments curbs 
 his exuberance of chord changes and prevents him from 
 making his composition a restless and vague con- 
 glomeration of modulations, like a picture without a 
 theme, a chaos of colour. 
 
 iiS 
 
Chopin and Grieg 
 
 The composer who best understood the nature of the 
 piano, and who wrote for it in a manner most in accord- 
 ance with its nature, was Frederic Chopin. In the 
 works of this inspired Pole the student will find some 
 of the most beautiful harmonies and melodies ever 
 devised by the mind of man. These works, therefore, 
 are excellent models for the student of harmony to 
 analyze. And Edvard Grieg is one of the boldest 
 harmonic innovators of our times. 
 
 As in the past, so in the future will every composer 
 of importance find in the limitless combinations of 
 harmony a means of expressing his own personality. 
 The best masters will never do without counterpoint 
 entirely ; nor did the best masters of the past ignore 
 the musical beauty of harmony in their contrapuntal 
 works. The counterpoint we employ to-day is not the 
 colourless diatonic chant of the old church modes. Its 
 white light has been shattered into iris hues by the 
 prism of modern harmony. It is chromatic — that is to 
 say, "coloured"; so called because when they began to 
 appear in music, and the old notation had no signs to 
 represent these foreign sounds, the notes to be raised 
 or depressed a half tone were printed in red instead of 
 the customary black. Painting ^-,. 
 
 has also had its contrapuntists ^^-^^^2?'^>*r. 
 and its harmonists, — the excess 
 
 119 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 of detail of the pre-Raphaelites, and the vaporous 
 vagueness of the impressionists. The best art avoids 
 both extremes. 
 
 Bach has not yet had a superior as a musical contra- 
 puntist, and it will probably be a very long time before 
 the amazing fertility in harmony of Wagner is surpassed. 
 The prelude to Tristan und Isolde alone contains more 
 harmonies than can be found in two hundred years of 
 Italian opera down to the death of Rossini. Can the 
 grandeur and beauty of the harmonies of Die Gotter- 
 datnmei-ung ever be equalled? But because Bach in 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 % 
 
 1\vJ?^^ 
 
 'a-*<<i< 
 
Harmonizing Old Tunes 
 
 counterpoint and Wagner in harmony seem to say 
 "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther!" it by no 
 means follows that the possibilities of music are 
 exhausted. Tschaikowsky's " Pathetic " and Dvorak's 
 "From the New World" symphonies are sufficient 
 refutations in themselves of this charge. 
 
 The musical quotation with which the chapter on 
 Cadences ends is an excellent example of very modern 
 harmony as distinct from classical harmony. It is 
 evident that Verdi was influenced by the harmony in 
 the construction of the melody. This is often the case 
 in compositions written in our harmony epoch ; in fact, 
 a modern composer finds difficulty in harmonizing in a 
 manner satisfactory to himself the old tunes that have 
 descended to us from the days when there was no har- 
 mony sense in the authors of these tunes. Beethoven's 
 treatment of a number of Scotch tunes is very unsatis- 
 factory; yet Beethoven well knew the surprising and 
 beautiful effect of harmony changes, as many a page of 
 his sonatas and symphonies testify. Though composers 
 of modern times are not limited to the few chords of 
 the old contrapuntists, they frequently make use of a 
 harmony as simple as that of their antecedents. In the 
 beginning of Das Rheingold Wagner employs the chord 
 of E flat for 136 bars without a break. This monotony, 
 which is of course intentional, is quite different from 
 
 121 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 the harmonic sameness that causes our interest to flag 
 
 in the older works of any 
 dimensions, and vitiates 
 the masterly counter- 
 point. 
 
 The art of composing 
 beautiful and striking 
 harmony cannot be 
 taught. It is the birth- 
 right of talent and 
 genius, as is the gift of 
 melody. The student 
 with a natural aptitude 
 for music, however, can 
 best develop his harmonic 
 instinct by repeatedly 
 hearing the works of the 
 great composers. The 
 one remarkable genius 
 on whom Nature lavished 
 abilities approaching the 
 combined powers of his 
 predecessors was Richard 
 Wagner. Die Meister- 
 singer and Der Ring 
 dcs Nibeluns's are the 
 
 heethoven monument in central 
 park, new york. 
 
Theory and Practice 
 
 epitome of the profundity, the grandeur, the noble 
 trag-edy, and the fiery passion of the best of Wagner's 
 antecedents. 
 
 Along with this hearing of good music must go the 
 careful study of it in detail, and a long practice of 
 harmony exercises with a text-book and under the 
 direction of a competent master. And the student 
 must continue his studies notwithstanding the fact that 
 he finds all the rules of his theory-book broken re- 
 peatedly by the great masters. Theory must for ever 
 lag behind the practice of the composers. The theorist 
 can only classify and explain what the composer has 
 done. He is not a creator, an inventor. The diffi- 
 culties of producing a perfect theory of harmony are so 
 great, unfortunately, that most theorists fill their pages 
 with the rules of older theorists. Hence it is that the 
 student of to-day has frequently to subject his practice 
 to the rules established by the composers who wrote 
 before the advent of the tempered scale. 
 
 The hue and cry of " Rule-breaker!" " Outlaw!" has 
 been hurled at Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Wagner, 
 Strauss ; and probably will be heard as long as 
 composers produce and theorists deduce. But the 
 discipline of these rules has a very important bearing 
 on the character of the future composer, when he is at 
 liberty to roam at large in the free world of harmony. 
 
 123 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 These rules will prove to be the rudder to his ship. 
 His g'enius only sends the breeze that fills the sails. 
 Without these rules he will be uncertain in his choice 
 of harmonies. Without these rules he will be unable 
 to defend himself or explain himself, when his procedure 
 is called into question. As the crafty Machiavelli four 
 centuries ago remarked : " For a man may be wise and 
 know many things are good, and yet want reasons and 
 arguments to convince other men.''^ 
 
 ' N. Machiavelli, " Discourse on Titus Livius," chap. xi. 
 
 124 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PURITY OF STYLE. 
 
 Vague thing to describe — Avoidance of glaring contrasts — Mixtures of 
 national styles — Obvious only to the cultured — ^Juxtaposition of 
 incongruities — Jumble of antique, mediaeval, and modern — Music 
 and architecture — Exaggerated style — Performers' embellishments. 
 
 We have seen that rhythm marks our phrases into 
 
 bars ; that cadences divide our melodies into phrases ; 
 
 that harmony shows what these cadences 
 
 are, and indicates to our musical sense J\ ' 
 
 Melody, 
 where they should come. Rhythm, melody, „ 
 
 harmony are the stones of which our musical 
 
 structure is built. When the composer wishes to write 
 
 a composition of some length, he does so by stringing 
 
 together two, three, or more melodies, each one of 
 
 tvhich has its rhythm, phrases, and cadences, or by 
 
 joining a number of transformations of one theme. 
 
 Now, it is this art of stringing together different 
 
 melodies that is commonly called Musical Form. He 
 
 who can compose a beautiful melody and clothe it in 
 
 125 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 appropriate harmony will find very little difficulty with 
 the form of his composition. Study and experience will 
 give him the judgment necessary to select the form 
 best suited to the musical ideas he has to bequeath to 
 the world. It is conceivable that a composer might be 
 such a heaven-born genius that everything he wrote 
 should bear the unmistakable mark of his rare style. 
 But it is safer for the student to assume that in his case 
 it is possible there is a certain amount of earthly dross 
 in his make-up that might cloud the effulgence of his 
 sacred fiame if he neglected the study of the works of 
 the great masters who preceded him. 
 
 Purity of style will give him much trouble. Purity of 
 Style in music is a vague thing to. describe in words. 
 
 If a painter represented Ajax armed with a 
 „ repeating rifle, or Socrates wearing a silk 
 
 hat, or Cleopatra shod in French shoes with 
 Louis heels, the critics would condemn his anachron- 
 isms. So in music would anachronisms, as well as a 
 mixture of dissimilar styles of contemporary periods, 
 constitute bad style. Most of the music of our times, 
 like our architecture, is composite. It is a kind of style 
 formed from modifications of a number of older styles, 
 with the addition of a few novelties. The difficulty in 
 making use of this style is in avoiding glaring con- 
 trasts. If the work begins in the modern rich harmonic 
 
 126 
 
Pitfall of Anachronism 
 
 manner, it will offend the musical judgment of the 
 capable critic to place a Handelian counterpoint in 
 juxtaposition to this harmony. Nor should the styles 
 of Germany, Italy, France, and Russia be all pro- 
 minently in evidence in the composition of an English 
 composer, unless that composer is powerful enough to 
 fuse all this copper, tin, and zinc into his own bronze. 
 It is not difficult to write in a modern manner, nor is it 
 very hard to imitate the old masters; but it requires 
 considerable skill to cope successfully ,with a number of 
 styles in one composition. The pitfall into which the 
 young composer is most likely to stumble is that of 
 anachronism. It was this clashing of Palestrina and 
 Wagner, Verdi and Bach that stamped the work of 
 Perosi as that of an amateur. 
 
 If Socrates lived in our day, it would not be out of 
 place to put a silk hat on his head; and if the short- 
 statured Egyptian queen had the opportunity of dis- 
 carding her sandals for the French shoe, she would 
 doubtless show her feminine predilection for the modern 
 footwear. If Handel and Bach and Palestrina lived 
 to-day, they would certainly admire the music of 
 Wagner, Strauss, Tschaikowsky, Grieg, Elgar. There 
 is therefore nothing really wrong in all these styles, 
 except in the misplacing of their historical sequence. 
 These inconsistencies of manner would, of course, be 
 
 127 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 obvious only to the musically cultured; and for those 
 composers who are content to be judged by the un- 
 cultured this book is not written. 
 
 The composer is free to choose any style he pleases. 
 All that is required of him is that he keeps his style 
 pure. One of Edgar Allan Poe's characters 
 boasts of the incongruities in the furnish- 
 ings of his chamber: "You behold around 
 you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. 
 The chastity of Ionia is offended by antediluvian 
 devices, and the sphynxes of Egypt are outstretched 
 upon carpets of gold.''^ This character was a madman. 
 And the composer who jumbles antique, mediaeval, and 
 modern styles may sooner get a reputation for eccen- 
 tricity than for originality. 
 
 A recent work on architecture^ classifies and describes 
 
 the essential points of that art so clearly that I cannot 
 
 but choose to call the music student's 
 
 attention to them, for they are the same in 
 Architecture 
 
 the upbuilding of a musical work. First is 
 
 truth — the building must look fit for the purpose for 
 
 which it is designed. An abbey should not resemble 
 
 an hotel, nor should an anthem under any pretext 
 
 ' E. A. Poe, The Assignation. 
 ' John Belcher, Essentials in Architecture, 
 128 
 
Truth and Beauty 
 
 whatever sound like a polka or a fackeltanz. Twenty 
 years ago, when I was more susceptible to shocks than 
 I am to-day, I was amazed to hear a tenor cavatina in 
 the style of an operatic love scene sung, with a running 
 triplet accompaniment in arpeggios for the grand 
 organ, in St. Peter's in Rome ! — the sacerdotal pomp, 
 the glories of the Raphael pictures in mosaics, the 
 magnificent cathedral which Michael Angelo wrought 
 at the end of a life's experience, defiled with such 
 frivolity ! And another picture rises before me, another 
 service of song thousands of miles west of Italy. The 
 freed negro slaves are gathered together on a few 
 benches in the forest. The gothic pines are their 
 temple rbof, a blazing log gives light, and they sing, 
 — barbaric exultation with tears on their cheeks and 
 fervour in their tones. Which of those two musical 
 performances had the more of the quality of truth 
 in it? 
 
 The second essential is beauty — that undefinable 
 quality which no precept can confine and no recipe 
 compound. Then comeis strength, not necessarily 
 " sound and fury signifying not-hing,"i but the strength 
 of earnest utterance and emotional conviction. The 
 next quality, vitality, hardly needs defining. The 
 
 ' Shakespeare, Macbeth. 
 
 129 K 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 quality of repose is discernible in the works of the 
 great masters. They always "ride the whirlwind 
 and direct the storm. "^ They accomplish their ends 
 without undue straining after effects. Compare the 
 climaxes in Beethoven's F minor sonata with those 
 of a Liszt rhapsody. Liszt makes the greater noise; 
 but whose message is the deeper, think you? Then 
 there is the feminine quality of grace, and Beethoven 
 had that too — see the scherzando of his eighth sym- 
 phony. So had Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schumann, 
 yes, and Bach — for if the pastoral symphony of his 
 Christmas oratorio is not graceful, then I do not 
 understand the word. Breadth in architecture and in 
 painting is really a unity of style in general without 
 the exclusion of variety in detail; and surely this 
 quality is most desirable in a musical work. Lastly 
 we come to proportion and restraint, which are, in 
 other words, balance and freedom from exaggeration. 
 An exaggerated style can hardly be called 
 pure, even when there are no traces of 
 other styles. The latest New York build- 
 ings, towering nearly seven hundred feet above the 
 pavement, are enormously tall and absurdly narrow. 
 The engineering is high, but the art that hides the 
 
 ' Pope, An Essay on Man. 
 130 
 
Grace and Purity 
 
 steel frame behind a thin stone skin is narrow. Com- 
 pared with the tiny Sainte Chapelle in Paris, the beauty 
 of the skyscraper is that of an ungainly giraflFe to a 
 lovely child. So in our concert-rooms we frequently 
 find long, showy, brilliant, and difficult rhapsodies, 
 paraphrases, and transcriptions which, though requir- 
 ing great executive ability on the part of the performer, 
 are of the slenderest musical value. And how their 
 beauties pale before Schumann's little "Traumerei"! 
 Now, a work may be difficult of execution and yet be 
 of the highest artistic value; and a building may be as 
 vast as the Houses of Parliament in London and yet 
 be a masterpiece. Purity demands that there should 
 be some reasonable proportion between the difficulty 
 of execution and the value of the idea expressed. 
 Music written to display the digital skill of the per- 
 former does not rank with the chaste purity of that 
 art where every note not needed to express with clear- 
 ness the composer's idea is eliminated. The stately 
 beauty of the Chiesa della Salute in Venice, rising 
 from the water's edge and mirrored in its depth, is a 
 vision that for ever afterwards haunts the memory of 
 the traveller. But the sight of a smaller dome than 
 that which crowns the Venetian church perched four 
 times as high, on a pile of as many offices as rivets 
 will hold together, shocks the artistic judgment. 
 
 131 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Equally to be condemned are many of the mere- 
 tricious cadenzas introduced by soloists in the concertos 
 of the great masters, — cadenzas as much at 
 
 variance with the style of the composition 
 Embellish- ,, . , . ^ . 
 
 as the runmng and racmef of the executant s 
 ments . 
 
 fingers differ from the flights of imagination 
 
 of the composer. And when singers, who are usually 
 the least qualified to do so among all those who meddle 
 with music, attempt to remedy a song's defects by 
 adding a few notes for vocal effect, their so-called 
 improvements are trite, hackneyed, and vapid phrases 
 in a style at least a century older than the song they 
 seek to embellish. 
 
 In the choice of the form for his composition it is 
 necessary to be discreet. Some musical forms are 
 simple and short, and are suitable for slow movements. 
 Other forms have so many repetitions, and are so 
 extended, that no movement not a rapid one would be 
 tolerable in them. 
 
 In a vocal composition the words and subject-matter 
 play a very important part in the selection of the form. 
 The nature of the instrument for which the composer 
 writes must also be considered when choosing form 
 and style. 
 
 The actual number of forms in use are comparatively 
 few. The difference among all the many kinds of com- 
 
 132 
 
Comparatively Few Forms 
 
 positions is due more to variety in rhythm and style 
 than to form. A gavotte, a gallop, a waltz, a funeral 
 march, a nocturne, an anthem, and many another 
 composition could all be written on the same form. 
 The difference would be entirely in the style and the 
 rhythm. 
 
 133 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 SONG FORM. 
 
 Simple hymn tunes — Principles of Form — Old composers' standards — 
 Modern departure from — Waste of time to count bars — New com- 
 posers always take liberties — "Dangerous innovations" of Haydn 
 — Wagner a classic of the future — Short compositions — Strophic — 
 Folk-songs — Art-song — Binary and Ternary forms — Maximum of 
 good effect. 
 
 The form in which the greatest number of composi- 
 tions are written is a short, simple, easily-understood 
 
 arrangement of subject-matter, which for 
 Song Form 
 
 convenience's sake is called the Song Form. 
 
 All songs are not written in this form, however, and 
 all compositions in this form are not songs. The 
 song form, as it is popularly understood, consists of a 
 complete tune of any length the composer sees fit to 
 make it, followed by a secondary tune, usually shorter 
 and of less importance, which is followed by the re- 
 petition of the first tune. A still shorter so-called song 
 form is to be found in some hymn tunes where the 
 phrases, four in number, are so constructed that the 
 
 134 
 
Revolutionary Haydn 
 
 second and fourth are identical, while the first and 
 
 third are different. But this need not detain us. The 
 
 readers for whom this book is intended are not likely 
 
 to require aid in grasping the import of a hymn tune. 
 
 And for those students who aspire to be composers this 
 
 work is but a sketch of the underlying 
 
 principles of form the details of which must "f "^ *^ 
 
 of Form 
 be sought m technical text-books. At the 
 
 same time, the student must be warned that there is a 
 marked tendency on the part of the makers of text- 
 books to select the forms used by the eminent old 
 masters, such as Haydn and Mozart, and to stigmatize 
 any modern departure from those sacred forms as 
 irregularities. Old Father Haydn, as he is often 
 called, was a revolutionary composer in his day, and 
 was execrated by the same class of theoretical writers 
 that condemn any modern departure from the sonata 
 form that he perfected, or perhaps invented. Probably 
 not one young composer in a hundred would prefer 
 Mozart's D minor piano concerto to Saint-Saens' G 
 minor concerto for the same instrument. Why must 
 Mozart's be held up as the standard and Saint-Saens' 
 as the irregularity? If we accept the latter work as 
 the standard, then Mozart's is irregular. The fact is 
 that neither is standard and neither is irregular. Any 
 form that serves the composer adequately to express 
 
 135 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 his thoughts is a good form. With this idea as his 
 guide the young composer will have little trouble with 
 the mastery of form if he has the genius to compose 
 haunting melodies, and to clothe them in beautiful 
 harmonies. It is but a waste of time to count the bars 
 and the key sequence of all the dead masters in order 
 to find an average that must serve as a standard to 
 measure the living. It is just such encyclopaedic lumbef- 
 learning that oppressed and crushed the judgment of 
 the German teachers who, according to Prout,^ con- 
 demned the fugues of Bach on account of their irregu- 
 1 E. Prout, Fugue, Preface. 
 
 p:(r^.irj'j.ri ^ 
 
 /^€/zjflvtA ^ />H^ /'SulCf^ /itied, ^cu^ 
 
 W^ f /' 1 ^ \'m 
 
 
 136 
 
Classical Wagner 
 
 larities ; that made the Vienna musicians censure Haydn 
 for his "dangerous innovations," "errors of counter- 
 point, heretical modulations";^ that will cause the 
 critics of the future to fall foul of the methods of the 
 young composer who has the temerity to depart from 
 the classical manner of Wagner. 
 
 Short compositions, then, may be written in one 
 single musical sentence of eight bars. Many national 
 airs are no longer. This form may be ex- 
 tended by making the sentence consist of a 
 
 , Composi- 
 
 few more phrases, compound sentences; or 
 
 it may be lengthened by repeating the first 
 sentence, or tune, before the second tune is introduced. 
 For instance, if a composer had a poem of four stanzas 
 to set to music, he could make the second stanza a 
 repetition of the first stanza if the nature of the words 
 permitted such treatment. The third stanza would 
 be another tune in a new key, and the fourth stanza 
 would be a repetition of the first, with, perhaps, a 
 few variations. Such is the general plan of the 
 form of Tosti's popular ballad "For ever and for 
 ever." 
 
 Frequently the same melody is made to do duty for 
 each stanza of the poem. Schubert's "Wild Rose" is 
 
 ' F. J. Crowest, Great Tone Poets. 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 an example of this " strophic " song form. Folk-songs 
 are always in this form, as are many of the national 
 dances. The most important kind of song is called 
 the "art-song," of which form Schubert's "Erlking" 
 and "Wanderer" are the finest examples. 
 o -songs j^ j.jjjg f-Qj.^ tjjg composer endeavours to 
 
 ^ , portray in music the varying emotions and 
 
 jj suggestions of the poem. He will frequently 
 
 return to a phrase or a complete tune if the 
 poetic conditions justify him in so doing. But he may 
 make new music, unlike anything else he has done 
 before, for each line of the poem. Schubert's "Wan- 
 derer " begins with an introductory passage of six bars, 
 very slow, on the dominant of F sharp minor. Then 
 there are eight bars of accompanied recitative for the 
 voice, ending in C sharp minor. One bar for the piano 
 leads to a seven-bar phrase for the voice, beginning in 
 E major and ending in the dominant of C sharp minor. 
 Then follows another melody for the voice — a complete 
 sentence of eight bars divided into two sections at the 
 end of the fourth bar, both sections being identical for 
 the first two bars, and different in the last two. This 
 melody begins in C sharp minor and ends in E major. 
 One bar for the piano leads us to another melody of 
 nine bars in length of varied rhythm and a quicker 
 movement, which is immediately followed by a new 
 
 138 
 
Schubert's Formlessness 
 
 movement in a different rhythm and still quicker move- 
 ment of fourteen bars in length. Then follows three 
 slow bars in the first movement for piano, leading to a 
 repetition of the seven-bar phrase, beginning in E major 
 and ending on the dominant of C sharp minor. Six 
 bars of a new phrase different in character from any 
 that precede it, followed by two concluding bars for the 
 piano, bring this superb song to a close. The form of 
 this song is here given in detail, not as a model for 
 other composers to follow in composing other songs— 
 for this form would not fit another poem — but as an 
 illustration of the freedom of form a great composer 
 deemed necessary to the nature of the poem he wished 
 to represent in music. But though Schubert followed 
 no set form in this song, he has admirably kept within 
 the bounds of unity of style. We feel that this com- 
 position is organically complete, a perfect whole. A 
 composer without the genius of Schubert might con- 
 struct a song absolutely perfect in form from the 
 theoretical point of view, but which would contain 
 some of the most glaring mixtures of styles and incon- 
 gruities of treatment. It will be seen, then, that "The 
 Wanderer " song, is not in Song Form at all. The 
 following mazurka (the 24th) by Chopin, which is here 
 given in a very much simplified version, is a perfect 
 example of the so-called Song Form: — 
 
 139 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 •Fart I, 
 
 CHOPIN. 
 
 fl LnJpJ^ 
 
 nJ 
 
 
 > u 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 I iiliJjM'''^'' 
 
 jtJ»^ 
 
 f=f^ 
 
 'PfP'Sff 
 
 i#l^ 
 
 Tff= 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ^ — 
 
 UJ — Y- 
 
 LiTI ' K 
 
 LjU — 1^ 
 
 
 w 
 
 Partn. 
 
 'silghtly varied. 
 
 ^ 'Slightly varied. 
 
 ii ;irf ^i r r' WiV|i| i yr-p|i3^'J.ib Jil LiiJ^^ 
 
 'm r "^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 m 
 
 m 
 
 ^ 
 
 h^\Mr n 
 
 frtNw 
 
 fr¥^ 
 
 *irff^ 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ^ — ^ — >— 
 
 y 
 
 JJ 1 — jfL 
 
 3yj — (i 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 Part in 
 same as 
 I^rtl. 
 
 140 
 
Chopin's Example 
 
 This consists of three parts, of which the first and third 
 are alike. Each part consists of sixteen bars, making 
 in all forty-eight bars. Each part is divided into two 
 sections of eight bars each, the first four bars of each 
 section of parts I. and III. being identical. Part II. is 
 made up of eight bars, which are repeated in a slightly 
 varied form to make up the sixteen bars. Nothing 
 could be more clearly constructed or more perfectly 
 balanced. The numbered and lettered bars make a 
 plan for the eye thus: — 
 
 Part I. 
 
 123 4** 
 
 5678 
 
 I 2 3 4 (9 10 II 12)** 
 
 13 14 IS 16. 
 
 Part II. 
 ' ABCDEFGH 
 
 ABCDEFGH (slightly varied). 
 
 Part III. 
 123 4** 
 5678 
 
 I 2 3 4 (9 10 II 12)** 
 13 14 15 16. 
 
 ** It will be noticed that the initial phrase, which sets the 
 character for the rest of the composition which is to follow, is 
 heard four times. 
 
 141 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Nothing could be simpler in its structure than the 
 famous melody in the scene between Valentine and 
 Raoul in the fourth act of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. 
 This scene, which was one of the greatest dramatic and 
 musical successes of the nineteenth century, had for its 
 principal theme a tune consisting of barely more than 
 the repetition of two simple phrases. It is first sung 
 by the tenor, and the orchestra repeats each phrase in 
 canonic imitation. Later on in the scene the soprano 
 sings the tune, while the tenor sings the canonic 
 imitation. It is merely a repetition of the same music 
 with different instrumentation. 
 
 Only the melody and the imitation are here given. 
 The harmonies that accompany these phrases are by no 
 means elaborate: — 
 
 VOICE. 
 
 OSCHESTR/ 
 
 Andiinte. 
 
 MEYERBEER: 
 
 ii^\\,'\ f~~Tf^m\ 
 
 rjn — I — 1 
 
 'M. ► 
 
 1 » — T^ 
 
 rf— 
 
 
 ^W-i\ L£:=^ 
 
 r * M 
 
 =^ = ^ 
 
 \ I I \ 
 
 a 
 
 fl. Ii L 1 n 
 
 b 
 
 c - • 
 
 d 
 
 
 IvW-i - = 
 
 J jjri 
 
 1 r< 
 
 
 --^-. 
 
 IJjji E-i 1 
 
 
 ■-i* ' 
 
 i-» 
 
 
 142 
 
Meyerbeer Song 
 
 M^\^\. fi- ftnJJr. .r>^l 
 
 
 p-t^ ny'irr-'io'l 
 
 ig! LJ 
 
 -KJ — MINIM. 
 i(k)"""" 
 
 V 1 " i •• 
 
 "Vri'iiin — ■■ — I" 
 
 m 
 
 ^-^^^ 'i — ^ 
 
 •5B^-^^-i^iSS3^ 
 
 1/ ^ ^ 
 
 S^3i^ 
 
 'i>^ * * ' 
 
 The plan of the form of this piece is as follows : — 
 
 ABCD 
 ABG H 
 IJ 
 IJ 
 
 M N 
 
 ABCD (slight variation in bar D(r)) 
 
 S. 
 
 A melody from the third scene of the first act of 
 Wagner's Die Walkilre is constructed as follows: — 
 
 ABCD 
 EEC H 
 EEKL 
 ABCD 
 A B S T (slight variation in bar B(r)). 
 
 143 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 The voice part without accompaniment is herewith 
 given: — 
 
 gWAGNER. 
 
 1 . a(m) b(n) c(o) 
 
 After these balanced and simple examples from 
 
 Chopin, Meyerbeer, and Wagner of the Song Form, 
 
 it may be profitable to put the structure of Schubert's 
 
 art-song " Der Wanderer" into the same plan for the 
 
 eye: — 
 
 ABCDEF 
 
 G H I J K L M N 
 
 O 
 
 1234567* 
 
 PQRSTUVWX 
 
 aa bb cc dd ee fif hh ii 
 
 jj kk 11 mm nn 00 pp qq rr ss tt uu vv ww 
 
 XX yy zz 
 
 1234567* 
 
 8 g 10 II 12 13 
 
 14 15. 
 
 144 
 
Bach's Ignorance 
 
 Such irregularity of structure in a longer composition, 
 especially in an instrumental work where there are no 
 words to furnish the poetic outline of the subject, would 
 produce nothing but an incoherent, rambling, meaning- 
 less effect. No one but an artist can write an art-song; 
 and Schubert was an artist — as a song-writer, the 
 greatest the world has seen. 
 
 The two-part "song form" is often called the 
 Binary Form. The name binary is appropriate to any 
 composition, long or short, which can be divided into 
 two parts. Composers, however, do not quarrel over 
 the classification of names. It is altogether likely that 
 Bach, who wrote the greater part of his shorter pieces 
 in binary form, never heard the name. 
 
 The three-part "song form" is often called the 
 Ternary Form. Here again we must leave the theorists 
 with a bone of contention. Prout and Marx and other 
 theorists each severally class the self-same form as 
 binary, ternary, and rondo. Now a ternary form is 
 one which can be separated into three parts. 
 
 It may not be out of place to again remind the reader 
 that the object of the composer is to express his idea 
 clearly and with proper regard to the variety of emotion 
 and unity of style. He cares nothing at all for the set 
 forms of other compositions, knowing well that a form 
 which is natural to one kind of musical expression may 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 be disastrous to another. The one point he considers 
 is that his melodies are so ordered that they produce 
 the maximum of good effect. As a rule the set forms 
 of the two-part song, or binary form, or else the three- 
 part song, or ternary form, are the best for the produc- 
 tion of this desirable maximum effect. But if they are 
 not, then the composer must cast them to the winds. 
 Matter must always take precedence over manner. 
 
 146 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 VARIATION FORMS. 
 
 Not so frequent now — Many varieties of — Great value of — Old music 
 more contrapuntal — Modern more harmonic — Thematic develop- 
 ment the principal function of variation forms — Oldest form of 
 variation — Purcell and Each. 
 
 Compositions called variations are not written so 
 frequently now as they were an hundred, or even fifty 
 years ago ; but the art of theme transforma- 
 tion, otherwise variation, remains, and will Variations 
 remain the chief source of interest in com- 
 positions of any length. Even in a very short piece 
 the composer will usually make some slight variation 
 in his principal theme if he has occasion to repeat it. 
 There are a number of ways in which a phrase can be 
 varied, though it cannot be said that any one way is 
 more important than the others in the list: — 
 
 (i) Melodic, in which the theme itself is varied. 
 
 {2) Harmonic, in which the theme remains the 
 same, but the harmonies are changed. 
 147 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 (3) Contrapuntal, in which the theme is accom- 
 
 panied by other themes in counterpoint. 
 
 (4) Rhythmic, in which the rhythm is changed. 
 
 (5) Tonal, in which the theme and its harmonies 
 
 are transposed to a different key or to a 
 different pitch. 
 
 (6) Ornamental, in which all sorts of turns, trills, 
 
 ornamental passages, are added to the 
 theme or to the accompanying harmonies. 
 
 (7) Instrumental, in which the themes and har- 
 
 monies are arranged wholly or in parts 
 for different instruments, as in orchestral 
 . variations. 
 
 (8) Dynamic, changes in the loudness, softness, 
 
 fulness, and the accents. 
 It is seldom that a composer employs any one of 
 these singly. If the theme is changed there is almost 
 certain to be harmonic variation as well. In Schumann's 
 " Impromptus," op. 5, the theme is announced as — 
 
 Theme. 
 
 SCHraiANN. 
 
 148 
 
Example from France 
 
 Appears in the 7th Variation in this form : — 
 7th Var. 
 
 This variation has slight harmonic changes as well, 
 and, in addition, it is an example of tonal variation. 
 It cannot be classed under ornamental variation, for it 
 is less elaborate than the original theme. Examples of 
 harmonic variation are very common. In the overture 
 to his HArUsienne music Bizet first announces his 
 theme (an old Provencal air which LuUy has also 
 treated) in a powerful unison without harmony: — 
 
 BIZET. 
 
 This theme is immediately taken up very softly by 
 another combination of instruments and accompanied 
 with harmony thus : — 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 This variation, which is primarily harmonic, is also 
 secondarily dynamic and instrumental. 
 
 Old music is full of examples of contrapuntal varia- 
 tions A comparatively modern instance of the employ- 
 ment ot counterpoint in the treatment of a theme is the 
 second variation in Weber's op. 9. The melody to be 
 varied is first accompanied thus : — 
 
 \VEBEB. 
 
 »tr. 
 
 In Saint-Saens' " Le Rouet d'Omphale'' symphonic 
 poem the principal theme appears in three different 
 rhythmical forms : — 
 
 SAINT- SABNS. 
 
 150 
 
Lohengrin" Prelude 
 
 Tonal 
 Variation 
 
 Saint-Saens makes no harmonic changes in these 
 three rhythmical variations, but the instruments are 
 different on each appearance of the theme. 
 No finer example of tonal variation could 
 be quoted than the prelude to Wagner's 
 Lohengrin, too long to give here. In this prelude 
 the theme is first heard in the highest notes of the 
 violins in the key of A. It is then repeated, note for 
 note, without any change of sequence of harmonies, in 
 the key of E, an interval of a twelfth lower, by the 
 wood-wind instruments. In the meantime the violins 
 continue to play a secondary theme in counterpoint to 
 the first which is now in the wood-wind. Then the 
 theme is taken up by the violas, 'cellos, horns, bassoons, 
 and other deeper-toned instruments in the key of A, 
 a fifth below the previous E. The harmonies are only 
 transposed, not changed. Finally the full orchestra 
 has the theme and the same harmonies transposed a 
 fifth lower to D. The theme is curtailed on its final 
 
 151 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 appearance, and a coda is added to round off the 
 composition into a satisfactory whole. The entire 
 movement is constructed of four statements of 
 one theme with the same harmonies, transposed to 
 different keys, with the addition of instrumental and 
 dynamic variation, for about eighty slow bars, — the 
 maximum of effect with almost the minimum of 
 material. 
 
 Beautiful examples of ornamental variation can be 
 found in the works of all the good composers. The 
 second theme of the first movement of the " Waldstein" 
 sonata makes its appearance in the simplicity of a 
 classical nude, thus: — 
 
 BEETHOVEN:' 
 
 The composer immediately presents it in all the 
 beauty of translucent draperies, in this ornamental 
 fashion : — 
 
 tOl^ 
 
 152 
 
Wagner's Music Dramas 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say more than has been said 
 
 in the foregoing- on Instrumental variation, Beethoven, 
 
 in his Fifth Sonata for violin and piano, 
 
 places the first theme in the violin. He nstra- 
 
 immediately repeats it on the piano, the „ , , 
 
 ... , . , , . Variation 
 
 violm meanwhile playmg what was m the 
 
 right-hand part of the piano score when the violin J^a»d 
 
 the theme. This is one of the simplest applications of 
 
 the instrumental variation in a composition. 
 
 It often happens that a section of a movement, or 
 even the entire movement, is to be repeated with no 
 variation whatever beyond the direction "second time 
 forte (or piano)" as the case may be. This is the 
 simple use of the dynamic variation. 
 
 The skilful employment of all these variation forms 
 offers scope for the greatest ingenuity of the composer. 
 There is seemingly no limit to the possible 
 
 ways in which a theme may be transformed. ^ 
 „, . , , , . , . Develop- 
 
 Thematic development, which is a term em- 
 bracing all these various ways of varying a 
 theme, is the most important factor in the construction 
 of great works. It is the middle section of the sonata 
 form, as well as of the fugue. Wagner's music dramas 
 are devoid of any of the set forms of older works. 
 They are only one vast accumulation of leading themes 
 (leitmotiven) with thematic development. Without 
 
 153 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 thematic development, transformation, Wagner's works 
 could not exist. Like the symphonies of Beethoven 
 and Brahms, they would only consist of a few short 
 tunes if there was no art of thematic development to 
 build them into a consistent whole. The few examples 
 quoted above can give only a suggestion of the range 
 of the variation. They are but a few pebbles from 
 the seashore. 
 
 Though compositions named "Variations" are not 
 so frequently written now as formerly, yet there are 
 many splendid examples of modern variations. The 
 orchestral variations of Tschaikowsky, Dvordk, Elgar, 
 are shining examples of the form. In the classical 
 days there were numerous variations published. Bach 
 and Beethoven wrote several collections. Mendels- 
 sohn's "Serious Variations" — so called because they 
 are in the classical spirit in contradistinction to the 
 showy ornamental variations of the day — are in the 
 repertory of all pianists. 
 
 In former times there were three forms of composition 
 in popular use which were constructed entirely of 
 variations. They were called Chaconne, Passacaglia, 
 and Ground Bass. The first two were in dance 
 rhythms at first, though they had long ceased to be 
 danced before the old composers used them as vehicles 
 for some of their most elaborate writing. Perhaps the 
 
 154 
 
Purcell anticipated Bach 
 
 chaconne most famous in our day is the theme with 
 
 thirty variations in Bach's D minor sonata for violin 
 
 alone. Beethoven's 32 variations in C 
 
 minor for piano, though not so named by aconne, 
 
 the composer, are really a chaconne. The ' 
 
 and Ground 
 passacaglia is so much like the chaconne _ 
 
 that the modern ear cannot detect the 
 
 difference that gave rise to the two names. Bach 
 
 and Handel have both left excellent examples of these 
 
 two forms, of which the former composer's masterly 
 
 and dignified Passacaglia in C minor for the organ is 
 
 unique among works of its class for its contrapuntal 
 
 grandeur. 
 
 The oldest form of variation is in all probability the 
 ground bass. This consists of a short phrase, usually 
 of eight bars in length, which is repeated in the bass, 
 while the upper parts are changed at each repetition. 
 
 Henry Purcell, who preceded Bach and Handel by a 
 number of years, has left a touchingly beautiful air in 
 his Dido and Aeneas, written on a ground bass, and 
 set to the words, " When I am laid in earth." The 
 bass, which is given here, shows what a "modern" 
 the old English master was. And it is diificult to 
 believe that there was no tempered scale in existence 
 at that time. An examination of the harmonies, how- 
 ever, will reveal the fact that Purcell has found a 
 
 15s 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 means of harmonizing the bass eight different ways 
 • without revealing the poverty of his harmony resources. 
 
 PURCELL.' 
 
 Handel in the opening chorus of his oratorio 
 Susanna, and Bach in the " Crucifixus " of his B 
 minor Mass, have both employed a descending 
 chromatic bass, very much like this older bass of 
 Purcell. 
 
 The shallow, ephemeral variations, consisting of 
 trills, arpeggios, and other ornamental passages, with 
 which the vacuous popular tunes are often stuffed 
 out, are really a debased use of a method Mozart has 
 employed with exquisite taste in the Theme and Varia- 
 tions of his piano Sonata in A. 
 
 It will take the world a long time to outgrow Haydn's 
 masterly variations in F minor. 
 
 '56 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 RONDO AND SONATA FORMS. 
 
 Example in miniature — Few rondos regular — Composer tries to conceal 
 the plan — Structure of sonata form — With Haydn and Mozart 
 clear and balanced — Beethoven's expansion and free treatment — 
 Monotony of tonality — Fine effect by Grieg — Old sonatas — Liszt's 
 sonata — Harmony important to-day. 
 
 There are still two forms to be described — the Rondo 
 
 and the Sonata. The rondo form is of great utility in 
 
 making a long movement of rapidly-moving 
 
 themes, which if heard in song form would _ 
 
 Forms 
 be too soon finished. It consists in repeating 
 
 the principal theme as often as the composer thinks it 
 
 advisable to do so, with the addition of new themes 
 
 between each repetition of the principal theme. The 
 
 composer naturally tries to hide the seams in his musical 
 
 fabric. It is not always easy for the novice to find the 
 
 dividing and connecting bars in a long and elaborate 
 
 composition. For the sake of illustration I submit 
 
 herewith an example of the simple rondo form which 
 
 157 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 I have written for this chapter. Needless to say, it has 
 no musical value whatever. It would be impossible to 
 find a musical composition constructed so mechanically 
 of four-bar tunes. But if the student will bear in mind 
 that each of these four-bar tunes, marked ABC, may 
 be of any length and of a number of sub-divisions, and 
 that the simple chords marked with an asterisk, thus *, 
 may be elaborate passages of any number of bars 
 in length, he will then understand the value of this 
 ridiculous little model rondo : — 
 
 
 
 
 TJ ^ ^ J J = 
 
 j-^n r- 
 
 K i 1. 
 
 J 1 Ij ^ 
 
 3 
 
 
 t^ F-: 
 
 ftincipal theme. 
 
 f=F^ 
 
 
 -^ ^^— 
 
 link 
 
 • •-#— 
 
 2nd theme 
 
 r i(« 
 
 M 
 
 r Lr^. . 1^ U~ 
 
 y=^==^ 
 
 bd 
 
 ■ 7 " , 
 
 !!■ T 
 
 =i 
 
 F#= 
 
 
 -d — 
 
 r^J, 1 
 
 
 1 * 
 
 FF=F 
 
 - 1 
 
 a 
 
 ^m 
 
 1 J 1 
 
 
 [ — 
 
 N^ 
 
 — 1 
 
 "5 
 
 Hi 
 
 Ik 
 
 "5 
 
 — 3-*- 
 
 -«) — 
 
 t r'r r 
 
 ■4li- 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^ C-T 
 
 =;i^v J 
 
 rJ* L-i- 
 
 '-I LJ 
 
Embryonic Rondo 
 
 1 
 
 r?T — — F=Fn-i 
 
 
 * * 
 
 link 
 
 k=m=n=^E= - 
 
 ^j^rr 
 
 ^^ 
 
 Principal theme 
 
 rs 
 
 , Coda 
 
 I'A p V J 1 
 
 k P rJ FJ* W 
 
 fr=^ 
 
 
 IJ' V J 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 s 
 
 A still longer rondo form is as follows : — 
 A B A C A B A. 
 
 There are few rondos, however, that can be called 
 strictly regular in form according to these two patterns 
 given. The theme A may be constructed of two or 
 more sentences. When it is repeated one of the sen- 
 tences may be omitted, or the whole may be varied; in 
 fact, the composer does his best to hide the plan and to 
 emphasize the musical effect. 
 
 A detailed analysis of a rondo by Beethoven is given 
 in Appendix A. See " Rondo." 
 
 Of all these cyclical forms — that is to say, forms in 
 which certain themes keep on recurring — the Sonata 
 Form is the most important. Some con- 
 fusion is apt to result from the use of the 
 words "sonata" and "sonata form." A 
 sonata is a long composition in several movements, of 
 which rtiovements one at least is generally in the sonata 
 form. It is this form that we must now consider. 
 
 To put it briefly in words, the Sonata Form consists 
 1 59 
 
 The Sonata 
 Form 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 of [a) a principal theme, [b] a passage leading to, 
 (c) a second theme in the dominant key; this much, 
 constituting the first section of the sonata form, is 
 repeated. Then follows {d) the development section, 
 called "thematic development," in all the ways de- 
 scribed in Chap. XIII., (e) re-appearance of the principal 
 theme, usually more elaborated, {/) passage leading 
 tOi (g) the second theme, this time in the key of the 
 tonic, with concluding bars or coda. This form is easy 
 to understand as a form, though difficult to weld into 
 a satisfactory whole in actual composition. The sonata 
 form as found in the works of Haydn and Mozart is 
 very clear and balanced. With Beethoven, who is the 
 greatest master to use the sonata form for the expres- 
 sion of his greatest utterances, the clear and simple 
 form of Haydn and Mozart underwent considerable 
 modification and expansion. Beethoven, like all com- 
 posers, soon found that no set form was suitable for 
 every composition. Several of his later sonatas are 
 hardly recognizable as sonatas if we attempt to judge 
 them by the Haydn-Mozart model. One of the first 
 liberties Beethoven took was in putting his second 
 theme in other keys than the dominant on its first 
 appearance and the tonic on its second. A plan of a 
 movement in sonata form in the key of C will make 
 this clear: — 
 
 1 60 
 
Beethoven 
 
 A in C major. 
 
 B in G major. 
 Repeat: — 
 
 Development section in several keys. 
 
 A in C major. 
 
 B in C major. 
 It will be noticed that there is the risk of monotony 
 of tonality in having A and B both in the same key 
 after the development section. To avoid 
 this Beethoven put some of his second 
 themes in £ major on their iirst appearance 
 and in A major on their second. These keys, of course, 
 are the keys of the second theme of compositions in 
 C major. If the key-note or tonic of the composition 
 was G, then the keys of the second theme would 
 be B and E. There are many other ways in which 
 Beethoven changed the form to suit his subject-matter, 
 but we must content ourselves with an analysis of 
 what the sonata form is generally supposed to be. 
 
 Haydn's Sonata in D (No. 7, edition Peters') is con- 
 structed as follows: — A, principal theme in D for 16 
 bars; B, second theme in A for 18 bars; 
 
 C. short codetta of 6 bars in A. This is 
 
 Sonata 
 repeated. Then follows the development 
 
 section, E, for 20 bars, passing through a number of 
 
 different keys and returning to ; A, principal theme in 
 
 i6i M 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 D for 19 bars, slightly changed and extended at the 
 end in order to better prepare the entry of; B, second 
 theme in D for 18 bars; short codetta, C, of 6 bars in 
 length, ending in D. Beethoven, in addition to putting 
 the second theme in other keys, might have extended 
 the codettas of this movement, especially the last one. 
 He sometimes introduced some new thematic develop- 
 ment in his final coda. 
 
 The first movement of Grieg's well-known and beauti- 
 ful Sonata for violin and piano in F major is constructed 
 thus: — 
 
 Four bars of unimportant introduction; principal 
 
 theme in F for 29 bars; passage in canonic imitation 
 
 of 18 bars in A minor, leading to; second 
 
 theme in C of -53 bars length. All this is 
 Sonata 
 
 marked to be repeated. Then follows a 
 
 long development section of 98 bars in different tempi, 
 
 and many keys in which the principal theme is treated to 
 
 various thematic transformations; return of principal 
 
 theme in F for 29 bars; passage in canonic imitation 
 
 of 18 bars in D minor, leading to; second theme in F 
 
 for 33 bars; codetta of 5 bars made from principal 
 
 theme. It will be seen that Grieg has kept to the 
 
 classical form in his relation of keys for his first and 
 
 second themes. It was a clever and ingenious device 
 
 on his part, however, to employ that canonic imitation 
 
 162 
 
Sonata before Haydn 
 
 as a link between the two subjects. It is as natural 
 and smooth to proceed at once to D minor from F 
 major as it is to go there from A minor. In choosing 
 these two keys for his link passage he found a means 
 of making the appearance of the second theme in the 
 key of F sound as fresh and welcome as he had previ- 
 ously done when he put it in C. It is by just such 
 touches of genius as this that the great composers are 
 able to produce such new and beautiful effects in the 
 old forms. Grieg proved that the sonata form is not 
 such an old bottle that it was incapable of holding his 
 new wine. 
 
 The sonatas of ^ach and of other composers before 
 the time of Haydn are not in the form that we now 
 associate with that designation. Bach seems 
 to have used the title for almost any col- Sonatas of 
 lection of movements that was too irregular ^^ *" 
 
 to be called a suite. His sonata in A minor ^ 
 
 , T-. 1 1- Composers 
 
 for clavier consists of a slow Prseludium, a 
 
 Fuga, an Adagio, an Allemande, a Courante, a Sara- 
 bande, and a Gigue. If he had omitted the first three 
 movements he could have called the remaining four a 
 Suite. In these Bach sonatas all the movements are in 
 the same key. In the sonata as we now know it — 
 that is to say, a long composition in several move- 
 ments, of which movements one at least is generally 
 
 163 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 in sonata form — the different movements are put In 
 various keys. Usually these keys are related. By 
 related keys is meant keys that have a great many 
 notes in common in their respective scales. The more 
 notes there are in common the more nearly related the 
 keys are. Hence it will be found that if a composer 
 writes his first movement in G, for instance, he would 
 probably put his second in D or C. This rule is by no 
 means binding. Even Haydn, who preceded Mozart, 
 put the second movement of his Sonata in E flat (three 
 flats) in the key of E (four sharps). He could not have 
 found a key less related to the first. The one rule 
 which they all observe, however, is that all the move- 
 ments should not be in the same key. 
 
 Franz Liszt has left us one sonata. Few musicians 
 realize how much they are indebted to the efforts of 
 
 Liszt for their present social rank. Mozart 
 Liszt's 
 
 when visiting a nobleman had to be content 
 Sonata 
 
 to eat with the servants in the kitchen. 
 
 Liszt, one of the most widely cultured men known to 
 history, whose amazing power of swaying multitudes 
 surpassed that of the fabled musician of whom Shake- 
 speare wrote : — 
 
 " Orpheus with his lute made trees, 
 And the mountain tops that freeze, 
 Bow themselves when he did sing ; " 
 164 
 
Liszt Unpardonable 
 
 this Hungarian who wrote in French a panegyric on 
 Chopin, a Pole, and a contemporary rival; whose 
 charity enabled the Saxon Wagner to live during the 
 composition of those music dramas in which more than 
 one of Liszt's musical ideas are utilized ; Liszt, who for 
 thirty years gave lessons witJiout remuneration to any 
 and all who came to him; whose princely gifts saved 
 from starvation the inhabitants of inundated Raiding; 
 whose liberality raised the Beethoven monument at 
 Bonn when Germany would not contribute ; who made 
 the profession of a musical artist respected in all the 
 courts of Europe ; this same Liszt had the temerity to 
 publish a Sonata for the piano, of which instrument he 
 was king. Ah ! Then those miserable dwellers in the 
 caves of theory raised their encircling dust in contro- 
 versy. Those toilers in antiquarian research, who 
 plough a stagnant sea in a barge with no bellying sail 
 to catch the glint of the sun, and who know not the 
 smell of the salt brine in the breeze, shook their heads 
 in sorrow, and exclaimed, " Ichabod, Ichabod ! His 
 glory has departed." This so-called sonata in one 
 movement is really a symphonic poem for piano. 
 Call it a sonatic poem, and all the controversy will 
 cease. It consists of a principal theme, and a few 
 secondary themes which are treated to a number of 
 various transformations and developments. In form 
 
 i6s 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 it resembles a very long development section of the 
 classical sonata. It fills thirty-five closely printed 
 pages, and it is full of ingenious and striking harmonies 
 and passages. The form is one which Liszt has made 
 eminently his own in the symphonic poem of which he 
 is at once the inventor and one of the greatest ex- 
 ponents. Whether this sonata pleases us or not is 
 another matter. Byron is credited with the remark 
 that a man would tire of Venus if he had to face her 
 every morning at breakfast. It is purely a matter of 
 taste. The principal theme of this remarkable work is — 
 
 LISZT. 
 
 but to give all the harmonic and contrapuntal devices 
 
 that the composer has found for it would take almost 
 
 as many pages as the sonata fills. 
 
 Sonatas are sometimes written which contain no 
 
 movement in sonata form. Beethoven's Thirtieth 
 
 Sonata, op. 109, is a fantasia and a set of 
 
 ^. . . . variations. If the greater number of sonatas 
 Thirtieth ^ 
 
 _ ^ were written in this form, then this would 
 Sonata ' 
 
 be the accepted standard form. But the 
 form established by the first masters of the sonata, 
 Haydn and Mozart, consists of — 
 
 166 
 
More Beethoven Alterations 
 
 {a) First movement, in sonata form. 
 
 (6) Second movement, any form suitable to a 
 slow tempo, such as the binary or two- 
 part song form, though any form may be 
 used. 
 
 (c) Third movement, a minuet, binary or ternary 
 
 form. 
 
 (d) Finale, usually a rondo, or a quick movement 
 in sonata form. 
 
 Beethoven changed the minuet to a scherzo, and 
 sometimes joined two movements together, as in the 
 " Appassionata " Sonata, op. 57, wherein the finale 
 follows the slow movement without a break. This 
 
 ADDRESS ON A LETTER WRITTEN BY BEETHOVEN TO F. RIES. 
 167 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 sonata has only three movements, as have also other 
 sonatas of Beethoven. In fact, the title Sonata to-day 
 carries with it no exact meaning as far as the form and 
 number of movements are concerned. All we associate 
 with the name is a certain dignity and seriousness of 
 style which is impossible to describe but easy to re- 
 cognize. 
 
 The difference between a sonata and a symphony is 
 
 one of style, not of form. If we arranged a sonata for 
 
 the orchestra we would have what might be 
 
 ^''ence galled a symphony, but which would prob- 
 
 „ ably be unsatisfactory as a symphony on 
 
 a oonata 
 
 . account of the smaller calibre of the themes 
 
 Symphony ^"^ ^^^ ^^^^ °^ breadth and power in the 
 climaxes. A sonata written for a violin and 
 a piano, for instance, will receive a different treatment 
 by the composer during its production than the com- 
 poser would have given to themes intended to be 
 performed in a larger hall by an orchestra. But so far 
 as the formal structure is concerned, the sonata, trio, 
 
 ^ quartette, and symphony are the 
 
 • ^en^jyj^ 1^ same. 
 
 / The symphony, like the sonata, 
 is no longer the formal collection 
 //] I of a certain number of set move- 
 
 ^1^ ments that it used to be. 
 
 i68 
 
 
Pauper Masterpieces 
 
 Tschaikowsky's popular "Pathetic" Symphony in 
 
 B minor has two slow movements, of which the slower 
 
 is the last. In one of the same composer's 
 
 symphonies we find a waltz, probably sug- Tschat- 
 
 gested by the second movement of Berlioz's ^wsfcy's 
 
 ** PcitHctic " 
 "Fantastic" Symphony. This takes the place _ . 
 
 oymphony 
 or the scherzo. In Schumann's " Rhenish " 
 
 Symphony in E flat the scherzo is the second movement, 
 and in the same composer's fourth symphony, in D 
 minor, the second movement, a romance with a trio, 
 leads without a break into the finale. This three- 
 movement symphony has no scherzo. Beethoven 
 introduces a section of the preceding scherzo in the 
 middle of the finale of his Fifth Symphony in C minor. 
 
 The nine principal symphonies published in full score 
 by Peters of Leipzic, selected from the hundred or 
 more written by Haydn, all conform to the same plan 
 of a first movement in sonata form, followed by a 
 slower movement, succeeded by a minuet and a finale. 
 The three masterpieces in G minor, E flat, and C, com- 
 posed by Mozart in the zenith of his powers and 
 shortly before he was laid to rest in his pauper grave, 
 are also in the Haydn form. In these twelve sym- 
 phonies of Haydn and Mozart the slow movements 
 alone are in different keys than the other three move- 
 ments, which are invariably in the key of the first 
 
 169 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 movement. The sequence of keys in Brahms' First 
 Symphony is — first movement in C minor, slow move- 
 ment in E major, allegretto in A flat, leading without a 
 break to the finale in C major. 
 
 The same composer's Second Symphony has a key 
 sequence of D, B, G, D respectively for the four move- 
 ments ; and Brahms' Third Symphony has F, C, C minor, 
 F minor with a short coda in F major, for its respective 
 four movements. Harmony, therefore, plays a very 
 much more important part in modern than in old music ; 
 for not only do composers pay more attention to the 
 contrasts of diff^erent tonalities for the consecutive 
 movements of their longer works, but each separate 
 movement itself is full of harmonic changes that can be 
 sought for in vain in the earlier works. 
 
 170 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 True and false ideals — Ruskin, Tolstoy, and others — Music impalpable 
 — Sensuous charm — Rembrandt — Emerson's simile — Fabrication 
 of fiction — Fallacious theories — Experience and "unfolding of 
 faculty." 
 
 The student of music is often at a loss to recognize 
 
 true from false ideals in music. So many eminent 
 
 writers have written such nonsense about 
 
 the art that it is no wonder he is puzzled. _ , ^ , . 
 
 False Ideals 
 When he reads a number of contradictory 
 
 passages in Ruskin's works, ^ and discovers that none 
 
 of them quite agree with the common practice of the 
 
 great composers; when he finds Tolstoy^ classifying 
 
 Wagner's Nibelun^s Ring as a type of counterfeit 
 
 art, and condemning Beethoven's music as absurd and 
 
 Bach's as bad, he may find himself in a hopeless 
 
 quandary. 
 
 ^ John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, Modern Painters, Praterita. 
 ' Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? 
 
 171 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 If he will turn back to the first chapter of this book 
 and read the quotation from Spencer's The Study of 
 Sociology, the scales will fall from his eyes. 
 Raskin, Ruskin, Tolstoy, and a dozen others equally 
 great in their own spheres, have not ex- 
 perienced that "unfolding of musical 
 faculty." They have remained children in music. 
 Why should the musician heed the verbose lucubrations 
 of Ruskin on music, and the senile croaking of the 
 great Russian moralist, whom the ignorance and 
 oppression of his fellow-countrymen has made ascetic ? 
 An American author wrote: — "In a new country we 
 often see a little patch of land, a clearing in which the 
 pioneer has built his cabin ; the remainder of the farm is 
 still forest. It is thus with the brain of the average 
 man. There is a little patch, just large enough to 
 practise medicine with, to sell goods or preach with, 
 while all the rest of the brain is covered with primeval 
 forest. "1 And it is into this primeval forest that these 
 literature farmers stray when they leave their familiar 
 fields. They had better far heed the counsel of 
 Candide^ and "cultivate our garden." 
 
 Music is not only impalpable, — a succession of 
 impressions, — "a kind of inarticulate, unfathomable 
 
 ' Robert Ingersol, God and Man. 
 ^ Voltaire, Candide, ou Voptimisme, chap. xxx. 
 172 
 
Music and Pleasant Sounds 
 
 speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite, 
 and lets us for moments gaze into that,"^ but it has 
 a sensuous charm which flatters the ear, 
 turning aside the senses of the unwary ""*^ 
 
 into the flowery fields of indolence. This 
 sensuous charm of musical sounds may prove a 
 stumbling-block. Even the great poets rarely get 
 beyond the sensuous exterior of music; as if it was 
 so soft and mellifluous a language that their ears, 
 charmed by the magic tones, were deaf to the meaning. 
 Spenser wrote: — 
 
 "Right hard it was for living wight which did it heare, 
 To read what manner musicke that mote bee ; 
 For all that pleasing is to living eare 
 Was there consorted in one harmonee ; 
 Birdes, voices, instruments, windes, waters all agree."' 
 
 Shakespeare^ confessed that Spenser was dear to him, 
 and it therefore would be impertinent to question the 
 poetic value of this description of the "Bowere of 
 Blis." The old poet meant merely an agreeable 
 mixture of pleasant sounds. But could a composer 
 commit the absurdity of mingling birds, voices, 
 instruments, winds, and waters in a symphony? 
 
 ^ Thomas Carlyle, The Hero as Poet. 
 
 ' Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, bk. ii. canto xi. 
 
 ' Shakespeare, " The Passionate Pilgrim," xi. 
 
 173 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Now, sensuous charm — that is to say, mere beauty of 
 
 sound — means as little in a musical composition as the 
 
 prismatic hues of a decomposed ray of white 
 Sensuous -. I 
 „, light mean m a picture. The child that 
 
 ignores the character in Rembrandt's ' ' Por- 
 trait of an Old Man,"i will shout for joy when the livid 
 blues, yellows, and reds from the prism dart about the 
 room. And the childish ear that craves pretty sounds 
 will hardly grasp the import of a Brahms symphony. 
 
 ^ The National Gallery, London, No. 243. 
 
 ^^^^^^ 
 
 0^ 
 
 Put^ 
 
 ■^ 
 
 174 
 
Silly Criticisms 
 
 The eye that only looks for beautiful colour will resent 
 
 the intrusion of the greys, browns, and blacks necessary 
 
 to complete a picture. Likewise, the ear that finds 
 
 delight in no music save that of mellow sounds and 
 
 melting voices must fail to understand why certain long, 
 
 sombre, and frequently harsh compositions are called 
 
 great. 
 
 Emerson says: — "A man is like a bit of Labrador 
 
 spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand, 
 
 until you come to a particular angle ; then it 
 
 shows deep and beautiful colours. "^ The z, 
 
 ,,,.., , , of Tones 
 
 composer should rejoice that the language 
 
 of tones does not permit him to express himself on any 
 
 subject but music, else he might utter as silly sayings 
 
 on literature and ethics as moralists and writers have 
 
 written on music. His range of subject-matter may 
 
 be circumscribed, but at least he is limited to the "deep 
 
 and beautiful colour" of his best angle. The student 
 
 may rest assured that those forms which have been 
 
 sanctioned by the usage of the great masters are the 
 
 best, — best because they allow the freest play and the 
 
 strongest expression of the entire gamut of emotion 
 
 from "the morning of laughter to the night of tears."* 
 
 Ignore the arm-chair critic. No one can take these 
 
 ^ R. W. Emerson, " Experience." 
 
 ^ Robert Ingersol, Pfose Poems (Farrell). 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 unconscious humorists seriously when they affirm that 
 a folksong among the hills and a chorus of peasants at 
 sunset are expressions of a truer art than are the out- 
 pourings of a great composer. Do they imply that the 
 peasants are more musical than the composer? — whose 
 work they stigmatize as "complex and intellectual." 
 In a like manner the death of Cock Robin is a tragedy ; 
 but no man who had experienced an unfolding of 
 literary faculty would exalt it above Macbeth, even 
 though Shakespeare's work is more "complex and 
 intellectual." 
 
 And the popular novelists and story-tellers of the day 
 almost invariably misuse musical terms, or refer to the 
 art in a manner consistent with their vocation as 
 fabricators of fiction. Marie Corelli's pretty simile of 
 "harps in unison" has pleased thousands of her 
 readers ; but no musician who had taken his first steps 
 in orchestration would write for his "harps in unison. "^ 
 
 Finally, the student must not condemn a work because 
 
 he does not immediately like it. We are often told 
 
 that a true work of art should at once appeal 
 
 to all. This is another of those fallacious 
 Theories , . , . , , . 
 
 theories which owe their currency to the 
 
 well-chosen language and plausible reasoning of the 
 
 brilliant, but art-ignorant, writer who postulated them. 
 
 ' Marie Corelli, A Romance of Two Worlds. 
 176 
 
Experience Necessary 
 
 There is no expression that can to^ich alike the infant 
 and the grandfather, ignorance and the wisdom of age 
 and experience, the fool and the genius. 
 
 The composer, the poet, and the painter are men of 
 many moods. Before they can produce works that 
 ring with character, and which interest because of their 
 intensity of feeling, they must feel and think more than 
 it is possible for the ordinary man to do. It is only to 
 be expected, therefore, that they will often voice a 
 sentiment and express an emotion that the student has 
 not yet experienced. 
 
 Time will reveal to him many of the dark sayings of 
 old, and draw aside the veil that hides so much of the 
 master music from his understanding. 
 
 "All nature is but art unknown to thee ; 
 All chance, direction which thou canst not see; 
 All discord, harmony not understood." ■' 
 
 ' Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Man," Ep i. 
 
 177 
 
Appendices. 
 
 A. List of Forms in Compositions. 
 
 B. Bibliography. 
 
 179 
 
Appendix A. 
 List of Forms in Compositions. 
 
 Adagio. A name sometimes given to a movement in very 
 
 slow time; it can be in any rhythm and in any form. 
 
 The Adagios in Beethoven's Sonatas are fine examples. 
 Allegro. Sometimes given to a quick movement ; it can be in 
 
 any time and in any form. Beethoven excelled in this 
 
 movement. 
 
 Allegretto. Often used in the same way that Allegro is used, 
 except that Allegretto is considerably less energetic, and 
 not so fast. 
 
 Allemande. A very old dance, long obsolete. It is important, 
 however, in that it was one of the essential movements of 
 the suite, usually the first. In form it is often irregular as 
 regards number of bars, but it was divided into two parts, 
 each of which was repeated. The time signature is 4/4. 
 The suites of Bach and Handel contain the best examples 
 of the Allemande. 
 
 Andante, Andantino. Movements faster than Adagio, but 
 slower than Allegro. Beethoven has named one of his 
 most attractive piano solos "Andante" in F. 
 
 Anglaise. An old dance sometimes ascribed to France and 
 
 sometimes to England. Writers disagree as to the time 
 
 signature, which is variously stated to be 2/4, 3/4, and 3/8. 
 
 Bach, whose authority is at least equal to that of these 
 
 181 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 disagreeing authors, has written an Anglaise in 4/4 in his 
 third " French " suite. 
 
 Anthem. A vocal composition, usually with words of a religious 
 nature. It is written in various forms, according to the 
 requirements of the text. The English Church composers 
 have distinguished themselves in this kind of composition 
 — Purcell, Croft, Wesley, Goss, Stainer, and many others. 
 
 Aria. A vocal composition for a solo voice, with an accompani- 
 ment for instruments. Standard form is a more or less 
 extended first part, followed by a shorter second part, 
 ending with the repetition of the first part. This form 
 is often called the " Song Form.'' The Arias in Men- 
 delssohn's Sf. Paul and Elijah are good specimens. 
 
 Aubade (French). Literally "morning music,'' in distinction 
 to Serenade, which is " evening music." The Aubade has 
 no set form. 
 
 Ave Maria (Latin). A hymn of the Roman Catholic service. 
 No set form. It takes the Song Form at times, as in the 
 Ave Maria by Gounod, also Luzzi. 
 
 Ballad. In vocal music a "simple song." Also used for the 
 musical setting of a narrative poem for solo, chorus, and 
 orchestra. 
 
 Ballade. An extended instrumental composition in the nature 
 of a ballad — i.e., a story told in music. Usual form, that 
 ot the development section of a sonata form. It may be 
 written in any form, however. Chopin's Ballades for piano 
 are the finest examples of this kind of work. Grieg, also, 
 has left one interesting specimen of Ballade. 
 
 Ballet. A series of dances for the stage. Elaborate dances 
 requiring skilled dancers. Sometimes applied to a stage 
 piece with words, but a piece in which dancing is the 
 182 
 
Appendix A 
 
 principal element. In the eighteenth and early nineteeth 
 century the Ballet was a necessary and very expensive 
 appendage to Italian opera in England and elsewhere. 
 
 Barcarolle. An instrumental, sometimes a vocal, piece in 
 imitation of and an elaboration of the Venetian gondolier's 
 song. Almost always in 6/8 time, but the form is not set. 
 Chopin's Barcarolle is well known and justly admired. 
 
 Berceuse. A cradle-song (wiegenlied). Of no set form, but 
 usually of a very simple harmonic texture. Schubert, 
 Chopin, Brahms, and others have kept to the same bass 
 note for the entire movement. Chopin's remarkable 
 Berceuse for piano has a number of elaborate passages and 
 harmonic changes in the upper part without any change in 
 the bass. 
 
 Bolero. A Spanish dance in 3/4 time, usually with castagnets, 
 faster than a Polonaise. There is no set form for this 
 dance. Chopin has written a Bolero. It is an early work, 
 however, and hardly does the composer justice. 
 
 Bouree. A quick and jovial dance of French origin. In 2/4 
 or 4/4 time. It consists of two parts, each of which is 
 repeated. Each phrase of the Bourse should begin on 
 the fourth quarter note, or crotchet, of the bar. In this 
 respect it differs from the Gavotte, with which it is some- 
 times confounded. A very fine Bouree is to be found in 
 Bach's B minor Sonata for violin solo. 
 
 Branle, or Braijsle (English, Brawl). An old French dance in 
 4/4 time. An old writer in 1588 (Arbeau) names eighteen 
 varieties of this dance, which is now obsolete. 
 
 Brindisi. A drinking song, popular in Italian operas. Of no 
 set form. 
 
 183 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 BahenweilifestspSel. A name given by Wagner to his " Stage- 
 consecrating-festival-play " — i.e., Parsifal. 
 
 Burden. The chorus or refrain of a song. Form will depend 
 on the nature of the words. 
 
 Burlesca, A piece, either vocal or instrumental, usually the 
 former, of a burlesque nature. 
 
 Burletta. A farcical operetta. 
 
 Cachucha. A Spanish dance, in 3/8 or 3/4 time. As a national 
 dance it consists of a single tune, which is repeated. 
 Composers sometimes employ the rhythm for movements 
 of greater length and of more elaborate form. Raflf has 
 published a composition in this form for piano solo. 
 
 Calata. An Italian dance in 2/4 time. 
 
 Canarie, Canaries, Canario, A dance in a kind of jig manner 
 in 3/8 or 6/8 time. 
 
 Canon. A composition in which one or more voices, or parts, 
 imitate another voice strictly from the beginning to the 
 end. (See Chapter VIII.) Schumann wrote some in- 
 teresting Canons for piano solo. 
 
 Cantata, Formerly meant a composition to be sung, in contra- 
 distinction to a Sonata, something to be played. Now the 
 word is used for any kind of a composition in the nature 
 of an elaborate song, up to an oratorio, or an opera not 
 intended for the stage. It includes a number of move- 
 ments, each one of which is a complete movement in 
 itself. Composers make little distinction to-day between 
 the Cantata and the Oratorio. The text of the Cantata 
 may be sacred or secular, but of late it is usual to associate 
 a text of a religious nature with the name Oratorio. 
 Haydn's Seasons and Schumann's Paradise and the Peri 
 184 
 
Appendix A 
 
 are Cantatas. The name Cantata, however, has been 
 given to so many short and unimportant works that 
 modern composers frequently call their important choral 
 works dramatic legends, or some such title — for instance 
 Sullivan's Golden Legend. 
 
 Cantica, Cantico, Canticle. Short tunes of a hymn-like 
 nature, for church use. 
 
 Cantilena. A short vocal composition of a song-like nature. 
 
 Canto, Cantus. See Chant. 
 
 Canzona. A song, or ballad. 
 
 Caprice, Capriccio. A free, fantastic sort of composition, 
 wherein the composer follows his own caprice in his formal 
 structure of the piece. Mendelssohn and Saint-Saens have 
 each written an excellent Rondo Capriccioso — the former 
 for piano, the latter for the violin. 
 
 Carol. A carol of mirth, or of jubilation ; Christmas Carols 
 are of very old origin. One of the best examples of a 
 modern carol is Gounod's " Cradled all lowly." 
 
 Carola. A kind of Italian round dance accompanied by 
 singing. 
 
 Cassatio, Cassazione, Cassation. Formerly the end piece at 
 an extended musical performance. Later it became a 
 kind of serenade for instruments. The form of each 
 movement is simple. 
 
 Catch. A canon in the unison for three or more voices, usually 
 of a simple character and set to words of a cheerful or 
 humorous nature. It is also called " Round." The English 
 school of composers excel here. 
 
 Cavatina, A short song or tune of an impressive nature. 
 Raff's well-known example will be well remembered. 
 
 i8S 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Chacona, Chaconne, Ciacona. An old slow dance in 3/4 time 
 on a ground bass. The finest example of this form in 
 music not intended for dancing is in Bach's violin sonata 
 in D minor. A masterly dance is to be found in Gluck's 
 Ifihigenie in AuUs. 
 
 Chanson. A song. 
 
 Chant. A short composition to words from the Psalms or 
 Canticles. There are Gregorian chants and Anglican 
 chants. The Gregorian consist of the intonation, first 
 reciting note, mediation, second reciting note, and the 
 ending. The Anglican chant begins with the reciting 
 note. Anglican chants are single or double. A single 
 chant is constructed of a phrase of three and a phrase of 
 four bars. Double chants consist of four phrases re- 
 spectively of three and four, and then of another group 
 of three and four bars. 
 
 Chorale, Choral, Corale. A hymn-tune, plain-chant. There 
 are several hundred wonderful Chorales by Bach extant. 
 
 Concertante. A composition in which two or more solo instru- 
 ments are all of equal importance, in contradistinction to 
 a Concerto, where one is of solo importance and the others 
 merely accompaniments. 
 
 Concerto. A composition of two, three, but rarely of more 
 movements, in the sonata form, with the addition of 
 passages intended to display the particular nature of the 
 instrument for which the concerto is written. Its most 
 usual style is that of a brilliant solo for one particular 
 instrument, with an accompaniment for orchestra. Most 
 concertos are written for the piano or for the solo violin, 
 though the 'cello, flute, clarinet, oboe, organ, harp, and 
 186 
 
Appendix A 
 
 other instruments have a repertory to choose from. 
 Concertos are very occasionally written for two solo 
 instruments. The finest Concertos in existence are 
 Beethoven's in G and Schumann's in A minor, for piano; 
 and Beethoven's in D and Mendelssohn's in E, for viohn. 
 The list of excellent Concertos, however, is very long. 
 
 Concert (koncert). The German spelling of Concerto. 
 
 Among obsolete forms are now to be classed the Con- 
 certo da camera, the Concerto da chiesa, the Concerto 
 grosso. 
 
 ConcertstQck. German for Concert piece; usually an abbre- 
 viated Concerto. Weber's Concertstiick is the most 
 famous work of that title. 
 
 Gontraddanza, Contredanse. Country-dance, a popular kind 
 of dance, of which the most important to-day is the 
 Quadrilles. The movements are in 6/8 and 2/4 time, and 
 the form of each movement is very simple. 
 
 Coranto, Cottrante, A merry, bright dance, now obsolete, but 
 to be found in the classical suite in great variety. It 
 was in 3/2 or 3/4 time. Like most of the old dances, it 
 consisted of two parts, both of which were repeated. The 
 suites of Bach and Handel contain many examples of this 
 old dance form. 
 
 Cracovienne. A Polish dance in 2/4 time which belongs to the 
 district of Cracow. Chopin's op. 14, a composition for 
 piano with orchestral accompaniment, is one of the very 
 few examples of this dance to be found in the works of 
 the great composers. 
 
 Credo, See Mass. 
 
 187 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Czardas. A Hungarian (Magyar) dance in 2/4 or 4/4 time. It 
 is in two parts, of which the first, slower part, is called 
 Lassu, and the second, rapid movement, Fris. Liszt's 
 Hungarian rhapsodies are the best examples of this dance 
 form applied to extended compositions. 
 
 Danse Macabre. A French term for "Dance of Death." 
 Saint-Saens has so named his symphonic poem for 
 orchestra, op. 40. It is a weirdly humorous waltz move- 
 ment in G minor. 
 
 Deutsche Tanze, Deutsche, Teutsche. Old slow German 
 dances in 3/4 time, from which the modern Waltz has 
 been evolved. 
 
 Dirge. There is no particular form for the dirge, but as the 
 name implies, the nature of the composition is mournful. 
 It may be in any time. 
 
 Dithyrambus, A Greek hymn to Bacchus. A title some- 
 times given to a wild, impetuous, and enthusiastic vocal 
 or instrumental composition. Lucas' Dithyrambus for 
 organ is an example of this little-used title. 
 
 Ditty. A title not used by composers, but sometimes applied 
 to a simple, short, or commonplace song or tune. 
 
 Divertimento, Divertissement. Compositions in no particular 
 form, of a very light, pleasing, diverting nature. 
 
 Dozology. A Greek name for a short hymn to the glory and 
 honour of God. 
 
 Dreher. An obsolete Austrian dance resembling the Landler. 
 In 3/4 time. 
 
 188 
 
Appendix A 
 
 Duet, Dho. Compositions for two voices, or two instrumenta 
 performers. Saint-Saens has written a fine set of variations, 
 on a Beethoven theme, as a duet for two pianos. 
 
 Echo. A name given by the old composers to a composition 
 wherein a loud passage or phrase was immediately repeated 
 very softly. The best example extant of this is the last 
 movement of Bach's " French " (franzosische) overture in 
 B minor. 
 
 Eclogue. See Pastoral. 
 
 Ecossaise, Old Scotch dance in 3/2 or 3/4 time of a slow 
 character. The name has now become associated with a 
 lively, bright dance in 2/4 time. There is nothing similar 
 between the old and the new dances. 
 
 Elegia, Elegy. A composition expressing tender regret, long- 
 ing, sorrow. In character slow; it may be in any form 
 and in any time. Massenet's beautiful Elegy is deservedly 
 popular. 
 
 Ensemble. A term given to that part of an opera where 
 most or all the performers are singing together. 
 
 Entr'acte. An instrumental composition of no set form, 
 intended to be played between the acts of a work for 
 the stage. The Entr'acte music of Schubert's Rosamunde 
 is still played, though the opera is forgotten. 
 
 Entrata. An instrumental introduction to a longer com- 
 position. 
 
 Epilogue, The concluding piece of a number of movements. 
 The name is very rarely given to a musical work. 
 
 Epinicion, A Greek song of victory. 
 
 189 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Epiodion. A Greek funeral song. 
 
 Epithalamion, Epithalamiutn. A bridal song, wedding music, 
 nuptial composition. It can be of any form and in any 
 time. The usual signature, however, is 4/4. 
 
 Erotica. 'An Italian love- song. 
 
 Estravaganza, A musical farce of an extravagantly far- 
 fetched character. 
 
 Etude. Literally a "study" intended to help to a mastery 
 of the difficulties of any particular instrument. The word 
 has been often applied, however, to beautiful and poetic 
 compositions, usually difficult. Probably the finest ex- 
 amples of the Etude are Chopin's two volumes for the 
 piano, op. 10 and op. 25. 
 
 Fackeltanz, or Marche auz Flambeaux. A kind of curious 
 military band-piece in the style of a Polonaise March. 
 It consists of a loud first and last part, with a quiet middle 
 part or trio. It is in 3/4 time. A very popular one with 
 English organists a decade or two ago was Scotson Clark's 
 (Augener). Meyerbeer's Fackeltanz is the best of this kind 
 of work. 
 
 Fandango, One of the national dances of Spain. It is of 
 Andalusian origin, and therefore bears traces of Moorish 
 influences. The oldest form of this dance was in 6/8 
 time. Later, the time was changed to 3/8 or 3/4. It 
 often consists of a first and last part in the minor, with a 
 middle part, or trio, in the major. It is usually accom- 
 panied by castagnets. It closely resembles the Bolero, 
 Jota Arragonesa, Polo, Seguidilla, Tirana. 
 190 
 
Appendix A 
 
 Fantasia., Fantasie. Some of the classical movements of Bach, 
 of Mozart, as well as mere introductions to longer pieces 
 and loose arrangements of operatic tunes, are called 
 fantasias. They all resemble one another, however, in 
 being absolutely free in their structural form. 
 
 Farandole, Farandola. A dance of Proven9al origin. It is 
 
 in 6/8 time. 
 
 Finale. The concluding movement of any long work, whether 
 for orchestra or voices. The last movement of a symphony, 
 and the concluding ensemble of the act of an opera, are 
 called finales more frequently than are any other move- 
 ments. 
 
 Folias, Follia, Folies d'Espagnes. A Spanish dance in 3/4 
 time. The dance is obsolete. All that is known of it 
 is that it was on a kind of ground bass, resembling the 
 chacone. 
 
 Forlana. A merry, gay dance, once popular with the Venetian 
 gondoliers. It is in 6/8 or 6/4 time. Bach employed it 
 in his C major suite for orchestra, sixth movement. Bach's 
 dance is in 6/4 time. 
 
 Francaise. A bright dance in 6/8 time, once popular in 
 France, but later merged into the quadrille. 
 
 Frottola. An Italian name for a ballad, a song of the people. 
 
 Fngtte. The most serious and important of the old contra- 
 puntal forms. It is the flower of counterpoint. It consists 
 of a subject, answer, exposition, counter-exposition, counter- 
 subject, stretto, coda. It is a composition in which a 
 certain characteristic short phrase is heard in different 
 voices, above, below, backwards, diminished, augmented, 
 191 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 inverted, according to the rules of fugal writing. The 
 fugue can be separated into the three sections, all of 
 which are so closely interwoven, however, that it requires 
 some experience to see these sections, which are ; (a) the 
 exposition and counter-exposition; (5) the free develop- 
 ment part ; (c) recapitulation and coda. (See Chapter 
 VIII.) In Niecks' Dictionary of Musical Terms there 
 are over forty kinds of fugues mentioned. 
 
 Galliard, An old dance of Roman (?) origin, in 3/4 time. 
 Popular in the time of Shakespeare, who mentions it. It 
 was of a merry character, with strongly marked rhythm. 
 
 Galop. A quick dance in 2/4 time. It is of German origin, 
 and is supposed to be a kind of corrupt waltz in 2 time. It 
 is sometimes written with an introduction, a trio, and a 
 coda. 
 
 Gavotte. An did French dance in 4/4 time, of a jovial, 
 springing nature. Each phrase of the Gavotte should 
 begin on the third beat of the bar and end on the first of a 
 bar. Bourses, and some modern compositions resembling 
 Gavottes, though wrongly barred, and consequently 
 wrongly accented, are often miscalled Gavottes. Bach 
 and Handel are the two greatest German masters who 
 employed this dance freely. Rameau and Gluck put it in 
 their dramatic works for the French stage. One of the 
 most beautiful in existence is to be found in the latter 
 composer's Iphigenie in Aulis. 
 
 Gesang, German for Song. 
 
 Giga, Gigue. A rapid, lively, frolicsome dance which formed 
 the last movement of the old Suite. It consists of two, 
 three, or four groups of triplets in the bar. The time 
 192 
 
Appendix A 
 
 signature should therefore be 6/8, 9/8, or 12/8. The older 
 composers, however, were often undecided in their time 
 signatures. We frequently find 4/4 with triplets, 12/16, 
 24/16, 3/8. The so-called Gigue in 8/4 time, without 
 triplets, with which Bach ends his E minor Partita (No. 5), 
 is really misnamed. The form of this fugato-caprice, 
 however, is the same as that usually found in Gigues : — 
 two strains, each of which is repeated. There is no set 
 number of bars for this dance form as employed in the 
 Suite. One by Handel in 12/8 time fills 143 bars. 
 Another by Bach in 12/8 time only extends to 44 bars. 
 
 Glee. An English vocal composition for three or more voices 
 without accompaniment. Each part is sung by one voice 
 only. It is therefore a trio (terzett), quartette, quintette, 
 as the case may be, but not a chorus where there are 
 several voices to each melodic part. There may be several 
 movements in a glee. The name is derived from the Saxon 
 word gligg, meaning music, and by no means signifies that 
 the words of the glee are merry, or even contented. It is 
 often very serious. The glee is essentially modern in 
 harmony, and there are to be found in it scarcely any of 
 the contrapuntal devices which characterized its ancestor, 
 the Madrigal. 
 
 Gloria. See Mass. 
 
 Gondellied, Gondola Song. See Barcarolla. 
 
 Greek Music, Too complicated and problematical to be dealt 
 with here. Of antiquarian interest only. See Chapter III. 
 
 Ground, Ground Bass. A passage in the bass which is con- 
 tinuously repeated while the upper parts are continually 
 varied. See Passacaglia. 
 
 Hochzeitsmarsch. German for Wedding March. 
 
 193 o 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Hornpipe. Old English dance in 4/4 time in its later form, but 
 often in 3/2 in the older. It is a spirited, energetic dance, 
 usually ending with two beats after the first of the bar of 
 the last bar. The form is the old binary : two sections 
 each of which is repeated. It is not unlike the Bouree. 
 Edward German has done a great deal in reviving this old 
 dance in his compositions for the English stage. 
 
 Hymn, Hymnos, Hymnus. A short tune with words of a 
 religious nature. 
 
 Idyl, Idylle, Idillio. A quiet, short composition in Pastoral 
 style. 
 
 Impromptu. A name loosely applied to almost any free, 
 unpretentious composition. The name implies a piece 
 composed off-hand without evidence of study or plan. The 
 most poetic and beautiful Impromptu ever written is that 
 of Chopin in F sharp, op. 36, for piano. 
 
 Interlude, Interludium, Anything sung, acted, played, be- 
 tween the acts of a play or opera, or between the verses of 
 a hymn or psalm. 
 
 Intermezzo, Intermede, Anything sung or played between the 
 acts of a stage piece. The Intermezzo from Mascagni's 
 Cavalleria Rusticana was enormously popular during the 
 life of the opera. 
 
 Intrada. See Entrata. 
 
 Introduzione. Introduction, see Entrata. 
 
 Introit. See Mass. 
 
 Inventions. A name given by Bach to 30 little pieces in 
 imitative style, and impromptu nature for the clavichord 
 (piano). 
 
 194 
 
Appendix A 
 
 Jig. See Gigue. 
 
 Krakowiak. See Cracovienne. 
 
 Kyrie. See Mass. 
 
 Lancers. See Quadrilles. 
 
 Landler. A kind of slow, boorish waltz in 3/8 or 3/4 time, 
 belonging to the districts of South Germany and Austria. 
 The character of the music is such as peasants would care 
 to dance to. It is entirely lacking in that aristocratic 
 aroma that Chopin's Valses de Salon exhale. Schubert 
 wrote a number of excellent Landlers. It belongs to the 
 same family as the Deutsche Tanze. 
 
 Larghetto. A word meaning " slow." The slow movement of 
 a symphony or a sonata is sometimes called the "Larghetto" 
 or " Andante," as the case may be. These names imply 
 no particular form. 
 
 Leit-motive. A short characteristic phrase with which a certain 
 sentiment, individual, or idea is associated. Wagner was 
 the first to employ the device systematically and con- 
 sistently, though it was occasionally used by Weber, Berlioz, 
 and others before him. 
 
 Lied. German for Song ; plural Lieder. 
 
 Litany. A church composition in which the invocations of the 
 priest and the responses of the congregation are the leading 
 feature. 
 
 Lobgesang. German for Hymn of Praise. Mendelssohn's 
 " Hymn of Praise " is called Lobgesang in Germany. 
 
 Loure. An old French dance in 6/4 time, occasionally in 3/4. 
 It was rather slow and heavy, with a well-marked accent on 
 
 19s 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 the first of the bar. Descended from the old bagpipe 
 tunes. There is one to be found in Bach's fifth French 
 suite. 
 
 JUadtigal, Madriale. A vocal composition for several voices 
 in which contrapuntal devices of all kinds were conspicuous. 
 It was of Italian origin, and in Italy it was most successfully 
 cultivated. In England the madrigal was much in favour 
 in the sixteenth century. It was the outcome of the instinct 
 to express sentiment, passion, humour, and human feeling by 
 means of music at a time when the only musical means of 
 expression of any considerable development was the poly- 
 phonic church style. The madrigal went out of fashion 
 when the harmonic manner came into general use. 
 
 Magnificat. The Vesper Canticle of the Church service. The 
 name is simply the first word of the Latin line " Magnificat 
 anima mea Dominum," etc., Luke i. 46. 
 
 March, Marche, Marcia, A composition to accompany 
 marching, especially soldiers, but also processions, funeral 
 or festival or bridal. It is usually in 4/4 time in the slower 
 marches, but often 2/4 or 6/8 in the quick marches. The 
 festival march is the slowest and broadest, the funeral 
 march a little quicker, and the quick march is, of course, 
 the fastest. The form of the march varies. The magnificent 
 Kaiser March of Wagner is an elaborate tone poem. The 
 standard military march consists of two parts of 1 5 or 24 
 or 32 bars each. The second part is called the trio, and is 
 followed by a repetition of the first part. A marked 
 characteristic of the march is the strong rhythm. In 
 military marches the drum is much in evidence. The 
 happiest adjustment of a popular manner, individuality of 
 melody, and appropriateness of rhythm is to be found in 
 196 
 
Appendix A 
 
 the marches of Sousa, who is known in America as the 
 " March King." 
 
 Marseillaise. A popular French revolutionary song written 
 and composed by Rouget de Lisle in 1792. 
 
 Mascherata, Masque. An old form of dramatic entertainment 
 which was the most important predecessor of the modern 
 opera. The subjects were mostly allegorical or mytho- 
 logical. 
 
 Mass. The most important musical composition of the Roman 
 Church service. It consists of the Kyrie, the Gloria, the 
 Credo, the Sanctus, and Benedictus, the Agnus Dei 
 Masses also sometimes containthe Introitus, the Graduale, 
 the Offertorium. 
 
 Probably the finest Mass in existence, from a musical 
 standpoint, is Bach's superb B minor Mass. The Masses 
 of Cherubini are notable examples of purity and dignity of 
 style. Very few composers, even the greatest, Haydn, 
 Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Verdi, Schubert, are able to 
 maintain that severity, dignity, and grandeur of style that 
 is most desirable in a Mass. 
 
 Mazurka, Masurka, Mazurek. A national dance of Poland. 
 Chopin's incomparable Mazurkas are all in 3/4 time, and 
 are to be played slower than the valses, though the tempo 
 varies considerably. A characteristic of the Mazurka is a 
 division of the first beat into two notes in the melody. The 
 usual form for these pieces is a first part followed by a kind 
 of trio in another key, and a repetition of the first part. 
 
 Melody, Melodia, Melodie, A pleasing succession of notes of 
 different pitch, and almost always of a certain rhythmic 
 197 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 symmetry. Rubinstein has named his most popular piano 
 composition " Melody" in F. The name, however, implies 
 no set form; but a composition called "Melody" would 
 necessarily be simple in construction. 
 
 Minuet, Menuet, Menuetto. An old French dance in 3/4 
 time. It was originally a stately, graceful dance of the 
 royal courts and the aristocratic balls. When it was 
 introduced into the Suite, and later into the Sonata and 
 Symphony, the pace was quickened and the character 
 considerably altered. It differs from a slow waltz in that 
 the first beat of the bar is not so heavily accented. 
 
 The usual form of the Minuet is a second strain, or Trio, 
 after the first strain, and then a repetition of the first strain. 
 The minuet and trio in Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata 
 (Op. 27, No. 2) contains 36 bars in the first strain, and 24 
 bars in the second. The entire movement is therefore 96 
 bars long with the repetiton of the first part, and without 
 the repetition of the different subdivisions of the two 
 strains. 
 
 Monferina. An Italian dance belonging to Lombardy and 
 Piedmont, of a lively, light-hearted nature, in 6/8 time. 
 
 Miserere. A musical setting of the Latin psalm beginning 
 " Miserere mei Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam 
 tuam." It was a " Miserere " by Allegri that Mozart wrote 
 down from memory when a boy in Rome. 
 
 Missa, Latin for Mass. Missa brevis, a short mass ; Missa 
 pro defunctis, a requiem mass ; Missa solemnis, high mass. 
 
 Monody, Monodia, Monodie. A vocal composition for one 
 voice. 
 
 ig8 
 
Appendix A 
 
 Morceau. French for Piece. The name Morceau de Concert 
 means the same as the German Concertstucke, though the 
 French title is usually associated with a lighter composition 
 than the German Concertstucke. 
 
 Morris Dance. A dance supposed to be in Moorish style. It 
 was popular in England at May-time. It was usually 
 noisy, with plenty of drum and percussion effects, but there 
 was no set form for this dance. There is a Morris dance 
 in Edward German's well-known Henry VIII. music. 
 
 Motet, Motetto. This once famous form of writing was the 
 religious counterpart of the secular madrigal. It was for 
 voices, in several parts, and full of contrapuntal devices. It 
 is sometimes to be found with instrumental accompaniment. 
 The motet, strictly speaking, should not be accompanied, 
 but should rely on its vocal part writing for all its effects. 
 
 Movement. A name often applied to any one complete section 
 of a long instrumental composition of any description. 
 
 Nachspiel. German for Postlude. 
 
 Nocturne. A French word applied to a dreamy, romantic 
 quiet kind of " night piece." It is of no set form, and the 
 rhythm is usually slow. Brought into vogue by Field, and 
 perfected by Chopin. In the latter composer's 19 Nocturnes 
 are to be found six different time signatures. The lovely 
 Notturno in Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream 
 music consists of a first strain of 34 bars, followed by a 
 section 38 bars long in which the theme of the first part is 
 developed, broken into fragments, put into different keys, 
 as in the middle section of a sonata movement. Then 
 follows the first strain again, with slight changes and richer 
 orchestration, and the piece ends with a coda. 
 199 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Obligato, Ofabligato. An independent instrumental accompani- 
 ment to any composition. This is the modern use of the 
 word. In olden days it meant an indispensable accompani- 
 ment. 
 
 Octet, Octonr, A composition for eight instruments or voices. 
 Instrumental octets are usually written in Sonata form. 
 
 CEavre, French for a work, a composition. Chef-d'oeuvre, a 
 masterpiece. 
 
 Offertoire, Offertorltim. See Mass. A name also sometimes 
 given to short pieces for the organ. 
 
 Opera. A drama with music, though many opera texts are 
 merely an excuse for stringing together a number of arias, 
 duets, trios, quartets, and finales. Wagner called his 
 operas " Music Dramas.'' In these music dramas the old 
 recitative is made more melodic and has an interesting 
 accompaniment, and the old set forms enumerated above 
 are broken up. The entire act is coherent and consistent, 
 and the drama does not halt for the sake of music as in the 
 older vocal concert style of opera. 
 
 All composers are influenced to a great extent by the 
 principles of Wagner, though national styles and tempera- 
 mental differences are manifest in the works written by 
 German, Russian, Italian, French operatic composers. 
 The first really great German opera was Weber's Der 
 Freischiitz. Verdi's works are Italian in style, but 
 Rossini's best work, William. Tell, was written for the 
 French stage. The greatest French opera of modern 
 times is Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila. The most popular 
 French opera, and perhaps the most popular opera ever 
 written, is Gounod's Faust. The German Meyerbeer and 
 the Bohemian Gluck wrote for the Paris stage. 
 
Appendix A 
 
 Opera Comique. This is the French term for an opera of 
 lesser dimensions than the grand opera. It is by no 
 means the English "comic opera." The most famous 
 example of the French opera comique is Bizet's Carmen. 
 Ambroise Thomas' Mignon is of the same class. 
 
 Operetta, Opera Bouffe. To-day these two terms mean the 
 same thing, though formerly opera bouffe was a much 
 lighter, shallower composition than operetta. The best 
 examples in French are the works of the German Offenbach. 
 In England Arthur Sullivan most successfully cultivated 
 the operetta, or " comic opera." 
 
 Opus, Latin for a work, a composition. Abbreviated to op. 
 
 Oratorio. A work of the dimensions of an opera, but intended 
 to be given without action. In fact, the words are more 
 of a contemplative than of a dramatic nature. The subject 
 is taken from the Bible, or from religious sources, and the 
 music should be appropriate to the story. The greatest 
 masters of this form are Handel and Mendelssohn. It is 
 a style much cultivated in England, where the works of 
 Parry, Sullivan, Mackenzie, Elgar, and others of less 
 repute are well known and esteemed. 
 
 The oratorio contains solos, duets, trios, quartets, and so 
 on, but the operatic finale is here represented by the grand 
 choruses which form the backbone of this form. Com- 
 posers now apply Wagner's leit-motive principles to oratorio 
 constructing. 
 
 Organum, The name given to those works produced about 
 the year 900, in which we find the first attempts at 
 accompanying a melody with harmony. The so-called 
 " harmony " consisted of nothing but fourths and fifths. 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Overtare, Oaverture, The name of the instrumental piece 
 which precedes any large vocal work for the stage or 
 concert room. The name is often given to independent 
 orchestral pieces for orchestra. To-day Mendelssohn's 
 FingaPs Cave overture would be called a symphonic 
 poem. The old French overture, often called Lully's 
 overture, consisted of a slow movement, followed by a 
 quicker movement generally in fugal style, and concluding 
 with the first slow movement slightly varied. The overture 
 to Handel's Messiah is an abbreviated LuUy overture. The 
 old Italian overture, named after Scarlatti, consisted of a 
 quick movement, a slow movement, and a repetition of the 
 first quick movement. The overtures of the great classical 
 period were almost always written in the sonata form, with 
 the exception of the overtures to popular operas, which 
 were mere strings of the melodies taken haphazard from 
 the opera. The overtures of the latest works are seldom 
 in any set form. Wagner's overtures generally resemble 
 the development section of a symphony. See Chapter VII. 
 on Counterpoint for an example of Wagner's treatment of 
 the themes in his overture to Die Meistersinger. 
 
 Paean. A hymn in praise of Apollo principally, but also of 
 some other god. 
 
 Pantomime. A stage piece with dancing and acting, but 
 without spoken dialogue. The name is misapplied to 
 theatrical musical plays in England. 
 
 Paraphrase. An arrangement of any composition for another 
 instrument than the one it was originally intended. The 
 name is sometimes incorrectly given to fantasias and 
 variations. Liszt's brilliant paraphrase of themes from 
 Verdi's Rigoletto is well known. 
 202 
 
Appendix A 
 
 Partita, A kind of free suite, or series of pieces of various 
 kinds. Bach's partitas differ from his suites in form in 
 that there are a few new forms in the former that are not 
 to be found in the latter. 
 
 Part-Song. A vocal composition for more than one voice. 
 
 Passacaglia, Passacaglio. A stately dance of uncertain origin, 
 possibly Spanish or Italian. It is in 3/4 time, and it closely 
 resembles a chaconne. According to some writers the 
 only distinction is that whereas in the chaconne the phrase 
 that is continuously repeated is always in the bass, it may 
 be put in some of the upper voices in the passacaglia, 
 Bach's magnificent passacaglia in C minor for organ is 
 the greatest achievement in this form extant. 
 
 Passamezzo, An old Italian dance in 4/4 time of moderate 
 movement. Probably a variation of the Pavan. 
 
 Passepied, Paspy, An old French dance in 3/4 time, but much 
 faster than the minuet. It did not form part of the suite, 
 but was occasionally introduced into partitas, and rarely 
 into suites. 
 
 Passion Music, An oratorio on the subject of the Passion 
 of Christ, and intended for performance during Holy 
 Week. Graun's Death of Jesus and Bach's famous Matthew 
 Passion are standards by which other works of this class 
 are measured. Stainer's Crucifixion is a well-known and 
 much-admired example of English Passion music. 
 
 Pasticcio, Pastiche, A work in which several composers co- 
 operate. A work made up of a number of different themes 
 taken from a composer's different works. 
 203 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Pastoral, Pastorale. "A shepherd's piece," or a little com- 
 position of a quiet, idyllic, cheerful nature, usually in 6/8 
 time, though of no set form. It may also be a rustic 
 opera descriptive of country life. Beethoven's sixth Sym- 
 phony is named " The Pastoral." 
 
 Pavan, Pavane, Pavana, An old, stately, grave dance of 
 unknown origin. Rabelais described it in 1562. It was in 
 4/4 time. 
 
 Phantasie. See Fantasia. 
 
 Phantasiestufke. A title often met with to-day, but which 
 implies no set form. 
 
 Pibroch. A kind of so-called music consisting of variations 
 for the Scotch bagpipes based on a tune called urlar. 
 A. C. Mackenzie has published a violin composition of this 
 
 Plain-cHant, Plain-song. An old ecclesiastical kind of hymn 
 in which the time, or rhythm, of the music was not fixed, 
 but depended on the accent of the text sung to it. 
 
 Polacca. See Polonaise, alia Polacca, in the style of a 
 Polonaise. Weber has written a brilliant Polacca in E for 
 the piano. 
 
 Pol&a. A modern Bohemian dance in 2/4 time. It is only a 
 dance, and must therefore consist of regular phrases of 4 
 or 8 bars in order to fit the steps of the dancers. 
 
 Polonaise. A dance of Polish origin, and one of the most 
 
 chivalrous, courtly, yet animated dance forms in existence. 
 
 It is in 3/4 time, and the form is usually that of one strain 
 
 followed by another, and a repetition of the first strain. 
 
 204 
 
Appendix A 
 
 Chopin employs this form for his polonaises, though the 
 form of each strain is often considerably extended. The 
 polonaise is a very important dance rhythm, and it has 
 been used by many composers, though by none so success- 
 fully as by Chopin. 
 
 Postlude. A short organ voluntary played at the close of a 
 service. 
 
 Pot-pourri. A selection of a number of tunes loosely strung 
 together. 
 
 Prelude. Something played before the beginning of a longer 
 piece. The name implies no set form. Bach calls the 
 short pieces that precede his fugues by the same name 
 that is often given to the long orchestral introduction to 
 Wagner's Lohengrin — Prelude. Chopin's thirty-two beauti- 
 ful little compositions for piano are called " Preludes," but 
 they are all different one from the other. 
 
 Presto. A very quick movement. This word is rarely used 
 to-day as a title. 
 
 Quadrille. A dance of several different movements, in 6/8 and 
 2/4 time. 
 
 Quartette. A name that usually means a composition for four 
 stringed instruments written in sonata form. It also means 
 any composition for instruments or voices limited to four 
 performers. The quartettes of the great classical composers 
 written for two violins, viola, and cello, are the highest 
 achievement in chamber music. 
 
 Quintet. Same as Quartette except that it requires five 
 performers. 
 
 205 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Qnodlibet. A Latin phrase meaning "what you please," 
 formerly given to the style of composition we now call 
 pot-pourri. 
 
 Ranz des vaches, A Swiss herdsman's tune, either sung or 
 played on the Alpine horn. An effect employed by 
 Rossini in the William Tell overture, by Schumann in 
 his Manfred music, by Wagner in the third act of Tristan 
 und Isolde. In all these three cases the melody is allotted 
 to the cor anglais (alto oboe). 
 
 Recitative, Recit, A kind of musical expression half-way 
 between speaking and singing. The words must be clearly 
 enunciated, and there is one note only to each syllable. 
 The singer is allowed great liberty in the tempo. 
 
 Redowa, Redowafc. A Bohemian dance now written in 3/4 
 time; resembling a Mazurka somewhat, but with a less 
 pronounced rhythmical accent. 
 
 Reel. A spirited dance, generally believed to be of Scandinavian 
 origin. It is a dance of the people, and examples in the 
 great masters are not to be found. It is in 4/4 time, rarely 
 6/4. It consists of 8-bar phrases. The Irish reel is faster 
 than the Scotch, which latter dance is the more popular. 
 
 Refrain. That part of a song or instrumental piece which is 
 repeated at the end of each stanza, or strain. 
 
 Requiem. A mass for the dead. It consists of (i) the introit 
 Requiem atemam; (2) Kyrie; (3) the tract Absolves (4) 
 the sequence Dies ires; (5) the offertorium Domine Jesu 
 Christej (6) Sanctusj (7) Benedictusj (8) Agnus Dei; (g) 
 the communion Lux aterna. Five of the most famous 
 Requiem masses, of different epochs and schools, are 
 206 
 
Appendix A 
 
 Mozart's, Cherubini's, Berlioz's, Brahms' (German 
 Requiem), and Verdi's. 
 
 Rhapsodie, Rhapsody. A composition of a brilliant, showy 
 nature, but of no set form. See Czardas, Liszt's Hun- 
 garian Rhapsodies and Brahms' two Rhapsodies in B 
 minor and G minor have nothing in common but the title. 
 
 Ricercata. A kind of very strict, highly artificial, complicated 
 fugue. In Bach's Art of Fugue is a composition in six 
 voices called ricercata. The title which Bach gave this 
 work above mentioned is " Regis lussu Cantio et Reliqua 
 Canonica Arte Resoluta," the initials spelling the word 
 " Ricercar," by which name a ricercata is often called. 
 
 Rigaudon, Rigadoon. An old French dance in 2/4 or 4/4 time 
 of an unequal number of bars. It is peculiar for its jumping 
 step, and it is in three or four sections, of which the third 
 is the shortest. Rameau's quaint dance of this name is 
 still popular. 
 
 Ritornello. An old Italian term, formerly used for the intro- 
 duction to a song; also the refrain of a song. 
 
 Rondo, Rondeau. A name often given to a composition in a 
 certain form; the form of many compositions not so named 
 is often that of a rondo. The characteristic of the rondo is 
 the repetition of the principal theme, with secondary themes 
 between each repetition. The order of these repetitions is 
 not always the same. Two forms of rondos might be con- 
 structed thus:— (i) a, b, a, c, a; (2) a, b, a, c, a, b, a. 
 Considerable harmonic variety can be obtained by putting 
 the principal theme, a, in different keys on each repetition, 
 though the last appearance of the theme will be in the 
 tonic, or key in which the piece began. The theme b can 
 207 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 also be heard in diflFerent keys. The rondo with which 
 Beethoven ends his "Waldstein" sonata in C, op. 53, is 
 very long. It is constructed on this plan: — A, 62 bars in 
 C; passage of 8 bars leading to; B, 28 bars in A minor; 
 passage of 15 bars leading to; A, 62 bars in C; C, 45 bars 
 in C minor; A, 16 bars in various keys; long passage of 76 
 bars to; A, in C major for 32 bars; long passage of 58 bars 
 leading to Coda made up of; A, and various passages at 
 accelerated speed of 141 bars. The extraordinary char- 
 acteristic of this rondo is the economy of melodic material 
 in it. Only the theme A is of importance. The themes B 
 and C and the numerous long passages are quite unable to 
 stand alone. But the judicious contrast and mixture of the 
 important theme with the others in rondo form have pro- 
 duced one of the finest of Beethoven's compositions for the 
 piano. (See Chap. XIV). 
 
 Round. See Catch. 
 
 Roundel, Roundelay, A musical setting to a poem in rondo 
 form. 
 
 Saltarello. An Italian, especially Roman, dance in 6/8 time, 
 or 2/4 with triplets. It is vivacious, and distinguished by 
 the skipping triplets in the melody. Mendelssohn has 
 written a saltarello as the last movement of his Italian 
 Symphony. 
 
 Sanctus, See Mass. 
 
 Sarabanda. Formerly a lascivious dance, possibly of Oriental 
 origin, but subsequently changed to one of the most digni- 
 fied and stately of all dances. It became one of the 
 essential movements in the suite, where it took the place of 
 the slow movement of the modern sonata. It is in 3/4 or 
 208 
 
Appendix A 
 
 3/2 time. Some of the most expressive of Bach's shorter 
 pieces are couched in this form. The noble and touching 
 air in Handel's Rinaldo, " Lascia ch'io pianga," is a sara- 
 bande. It was introduced into England from Spain, where 
 it is thought by some writers to have originated. 
 
 Scena. As a musical form this name is given to a composition 
 for solo voice with accompaniment for orchestra. A scena 
 consists of recitative and arias of different kinds and speeds. 
 Beethoven's " Ah, Perfido " is a scena for soprano. 
 
 Scherzo. A composition perfected by Beethoven. It took the 
 place of the minuet in most of his symphonies and sonatas, 
 and other works in sonata form. It is not a dance, and it 
 therefore allowed the composer greater freedom in ex- 
 pressing all kinds of humour, caprice, odd effects than the 
 minuet could. In speed it is considerably quicker than the 
 minuet tempo proper. Its form is that of a principal strain, 
 followed by a trio, ending with a repetition of the first 
 strain. Many exceptions to this form are to be found. It 
 may be in rondo form. It is the character of the music, 
 not the form, that makes a scherzo. 
 
 Schottisch. A dance in 2/4 time. It is not the same as the 
 ecossaise. It was sometimes called the German Polka. 
 The music resembles that of the polka, but should be 
 played slower than that dance. 
 
 Seguidilla. An old Spanish dance mentioned by Cervantes. 
 It is in 3/4 or 3/8 time, usually in a minor key, and accom- 
 panied by castagnets. It is of moderate tempo, and is still 
 danced in all parts of Spain. 
 
 Septett, Septuor. A composition for seven instruments, usually 
 in sonata form ; also any composition for seven voices. 
 
 3og p 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Serenata, Serenade, Literally " evening " music. A composi- 
 tion in one or more movements for instruments or voices of 
 no set form, but of a certain quiet, pleasing style, such as 
 would be appropriate to sing or perform under the window 
 of any one of exalted rank, or of a beloved lady. Mos- 
 kowski's melodious and graceful Serenata was till recently 
 greatly in vogue. 
 
 Siciliana, Siciliano, Formerly a simple rustic dance in 6/8 or 
 12/8 time. Later the style was used for various composi- 
 tions of a moderate movement. There is much of the 
 siciliano manner in the air " He shall feed his flock " in 
 Handel's Messiah. 
 
 Sinfonia, Sinfonie. See Symphony. 
 
 Sketch, Skizze. A name sometimes given to any kind of little 
 composition of no set form. 
 
 Solo. A name given to any piece sung or played by one per- 
 former, although he or she may be accompanied by 
 instruments. The accompaniment will be entirely sub- 
 ordinate in interest to the solo. 
 
 Sonata, A name formerly less definite in its meaning than it is 
 to-day. It now means a composition in several movements, 
 or at least sections, one of which movements or sections 
 being in the sonata form. The several movements of a 
 sonata are in related keys as a rule, though here, as in all 
 musical forms, there are many exceptions. Sonatas are for 
 one or for two instruments. Sonatas for three instruments 
 are called Trios, for four instruments Quartettes, for 
 orchestra Symphonies. The sonata descended from the 
 old suite. The most striking improvement in the sonata 
 over the suite is that, whereas all the movements of the 
 210 
 
Appendix A 
 
 suite are in the same key, the movements of the sonata 
 have a great tonal variety. The sonata form has only been 
 brought to its present perfection since the suite went out of 
 fashion. (See Chapter XIV., where the sonata form is 
 more fully treated.) 
 
 Sonatina. A composition similar to the sonata, except that the 
 middle or development section is omitted from the move- 
 ment in sonata form. Many compositions not named 
 sonatinas, such as overtures, are like sonatinas in form. 
 
 Song. Any composition, good or bad, which is a tune set to 
 any kind of words is called a song. Needless to say, the 
 name embraces an enormous number of compositions in 
 all forms. (See Chapter XII. on Song Form.) 
 
 Stabat Mater. A musical setting of an old Latin hymn of the 
 Roman service, beginning with the words " Stabat mater 
 dolorosa." The most popular Stabat Mater is Rossini's. 
 
 Strathspey, A spirited Scotch dance, somewhat slower than 
 the reel, and with a melody less smooth by reason of the 
 dotted and short notes in it. It is in 4/4 time. 
 
 StQck, German for a piece, a work. 
 
 Study, Studle. See Etude. 
 
 Suite. The most important of the great forms before the 
 advent of the sonata. It consisted wholly of movements in 
 dance form, but not of dance music as some writers seem 
 to think. The four essential movements of the suite were; 
 (i) AUemande; (2) Courante; (3) Sarabande; (4) Gigue. 
 To these four movements were often added extra move- 
 ments, such as a Prelude before the AUemande; a Bourse, 
 Gavotte, Minuet, or Passepied before the Gigue. The suite 
 211 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 also occasionally contained the Loure, Anglaise, Polonaise 
 (not the modem polonaise), the Pavane, and other dance 
 forms. Occasionally a fugue was incorporated in the suite. 
 The movements of the old suite were almost always in the 
 same key. Modern suites are more irregular in their 
 structure, and are always more varied in their sequence 
 of keys. 
 
 Symphonic Poem, Symphontsche Dichtung. A name given 
 to a kind of composition invented by Liszt. The form of 
 this composition is free, and is the outcome of the subject- 
 matter of the poem itself. It consists of one or two prin- 
 cipal themes, which are transformed in various ways, as in 
 the development section of a sonata. It is a form admir- 
 ably adapted for certain musical expressions, and the 
 inventor, Liszt, has left a number of splendid examples in 
 this form, of which the best is undoubtedly " Les Preludes," 
 after Lamartine's poem. Saint-Saens and Richard Strauss 
 have made use of this form with conspicuous success. It 
 is usually in one movement, or at least the movements are 
 connected. 
 
 Symphony. This greatest of all musical forms, in which genius 
 finds at once its unlimited freedom and its hardest task, is 
 in form only a sonata for orchestra. But the subject-matter 
 of a symphony is broader, richer, and more varied than it 
 would be possible for one performer to grapple with in a 
 sonata. In the symphony "absolute music" — that is, music 
 that has no help in the way of words, scenery, or action, 
 finds its highest expression. The greatest symphonist is 
 Beethoven. With this name may be coupled Schubert 
 (Symphony in C) and Brahms. The symphonies of Haydn 
 and Mozart, who preceded Beethoven, are of smaller 
 calibre in every way; and the symphonies of Schumann, 
 
 312 
 
Appendix A 
 
 Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Tschaikowsky, and others since 
 Beethoven's day are wanting in that coherence, sustained 
 power, and high imaginative quahty that distinguishes the 
 works of the great master of masters. The name symphony 
 was formerly used to designate any instrumental introduc- 
 tion to any kind of piece. In England to-day this old 
 custom still prevails, though the musical world in general 
 uses the word symphony in the specific sense only. It is 
 anomalous that the English public should call the most 
 trivial introduction to the commonest ballad or dance by 
 the same name that musicians use to distinguish the 
 greatest of musical works. 
 
 Tamfaourin. An old French dance of a lively character, 
 accompanied by a tambourine, in 2/4 time. 
 
 Tarantella. A rapid dance of Neapolitan origin, now written 
 in 6/8 time. As a dance form it has found considerable 
 favour with composers of brilliant piano or violin pieces. 
 It differs very slightly from the saltarello. Liszt, Chopin, 
 Moskowski, and others have written excellent tarantellas 
 for the piano. 
 
 Tc Deum. A musical setting of the Ambrosian (?) Hymn 
 beginning " Te Deum laudamus." It is a hymn of thanks- 
 giving. 
 
 Terzett, Terzetto. A composition for three voices or instru- 
 ments. The name trio is now usually given to instrumental 
 works for three performers. 
 
 Thema, Theme. A melody, or tune. The name is usually 
 given to the principal melody, tune, or subject of a move- 
 ment. 
 
 Threnody. A song of lamentation, or a piece in that style. 
 
 213 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Tiranas. A certain kind of national song of Spain. 
 
 Toccata. An old name little used to-day, but signifying about 
 the same kind of composition as it did two hundred years 
 ago — a composition designed to display rhythmical energy, 
 technical brilliancy, and showy effects in the performer. 
 It should sound like an improvization or an impromptu 
 prelude. Broad, sustained melody is out of place in a 
 toccata. Bach has written some masterly toccatas for the 
 organ. Modern toccatas are richer in harmony and fuller 
 in sound than the old. But the nature of the composition 
 remains the same. It has no set form, and it may be in 
 any time. Schumann's Toccata for piano is very difficult, 
 but of little musical interest. Widor and Dubois, among 
 the French composers, have written successful organ 
 toccatas in modern times. 
 
 Todtenmarscb, German for dead march. 
 
 Touquet. A French name sometimes given to Toccata. 
 
 Transcription. An arrangement of any tunes or tune for any 
 voices or instrument other than those for which the tunes 
 were originally composed. The word usually is applied to 
 a brilliant set of variations on a few themes. One of the 
 finest examples of a transcription is Liszt's transcription 
 for piano solo of Schubert's song, " The Erlking." 
 
 Trauermarsch, German for funeral march. 
 
 Trinklied. German for drinking song. See Brindisi. 
 
 Trio. This word has three distinct meanings, often con- 
 fusing; — (a) any composition, vocal or instrumental, for 
 three performers; (6) an instrumental composition in sonata 
 form for three players; {c) the middle part of many dance 
 214 
 
Appendix A 
 
 forms or other movements. This last meaning of the word 
 has descended to us from olden times, when, for the sake of 
 variety, the middle part of the dance or other piece was 
 written in three part counterpoint in contradistinction to 
 the first part, which was written in two part counterpoint. 
 
 Tune. A series of single notes, a melody, theme, thema. 
 
 Variations. Melodic, harmonic, rhythmical transformations 
 of a theme. See Chapter XIII. 
 
 Vaudeville. A popular, commonplace, gay song; also a 
 theatrical piece which contains a number of such songs. 
 
 Vespers. Part of the evening Church service. 
 
 Villancico. A Spanish name for a kind of motet, or religious 
 piece. 
 
 Villanella. A rustic kind of dance, or song. It is of no set 
 form, except that when it is for more than one voice the 
 melody is to be in the upper part. They are to be found 
 in different rhythms. 
 
 Volkslied. German for folk-song; a simple, unpretentious 
 vocal tune. 
 
 Waltz. A very important dance of German origin. It is 3/4 
 time, rarely in 3/8. The music intended for dancing must 
 be in regular phrases of eight bars. There is often a chain 
 of waltzes in different keys, each one of which is 32, or 48, 
 or 64, or more bars long. The best examples of waltzes 
 for dancing are those of Strauss and Waldteufel. The 
 poetic, romantic piano solo in waltz form by Weber, 
 " Invitation to the Dance," was probably the beginning of 
 the style carried to such perfection by Chopin. 
 
 215 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Zarzuela. A Spanish name for a kind of short comic, light 
 opera, or operetta. 
 
 Zingaresca, Gipsy music, or music sung by masked performers 
 during carnival. There is a certain wild, barbaric nature 
 in this music that cannot be described in words, but there 
 is no set form for it. It much resembles the Czardas of 
 the Hungarians. 
 
 216 
 
Appendix B. 
 Bibliography. 
 
 Aalst, J. A, van.— Chinese Music; Shanghai, 1884. (See 
 p. 27.) 
 
 Ashton, Algernon.— Truth, Wit, and Wisdom. Letters 173, 
 183, and 193: "Beethoven and Sonata Form." 
 
 Anger, J, H. — Form in Music. 
 
 Aristoxenas, the Harmonics of. Translated by H. S. Macran, 
 M.A. 
 
 Banister, H. C. — Musical Analysis. 
 
 Beaufort, R. L. de. — Franz Liszt. 
 
 Bellasis, E, — Cherubini. 
 
 Benedictines of Stanbrook. — A Grammar of Plainsong. 
 
 Benson, Louis F., D.D. — Studies of Familiar Hymns. 
 
 BerIio2. — Autobiography : Memoirs. 
 
 Capes, J. M., M.A.— Growth of the Musical Scale and of 
 Modern Harmony. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas.— The Hero as Poet. (See p. 173.) 
 
 217 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Chorley, H. F.— The National Music of the World. 
 
 Corelli, Marie.— A Romance of Two Worlds. (See p. 176.) 
 
 Cornell, J. H. — Theory and Practice of Musical Form. 
 
 Crowest, F. J.— Great Tone Poets. (See p. 137.) 
 
 Cummings, W. H., Mus. D., F.S.A.— Handel. 
 
 Dannreuther, E, — Richard Wagner. 
 
 Darwin, Charles. — The Descent of Man, Part III. chap. ii. (see 
 p. 13); iUd., Part III. chap. xix. (see p. 23). 
 
 Dickinson, Edward. — Music in the History of the Western 
 Church. 
 
 Draper, J. W.— The Intellectual Development of Europe, vol. 
 ii. chap. ii. (See p. 29.) 
 
 Ellis, W. Aston. — Life of Richard Wagner. 
 
 Elson, L. C. — Curiosities of Music. 
 
 History of American Music. 
 
 Engel, Carl. — The Literature of National Music. 
 
 Erb, J. L. — Brahms. 
 
 Fincfc, Henry T, — Wagner and his Works; New York, 1893. 
 (See p. 63.) 
 
 Grieg. 
 
 Findon, B. W.— Sir Arthur Sullivan. 
 
 Fisher, G, A, — Beethoven. 
 
 Fletcher, Alice C, — Indian Story and Song from North 
 America. 
 
 218 
 
Appendix B 
 
 Flood, W. H. G.— History of Irish Music. 
 Gilman, L.— Edward MacDowell. 
 
 Goetschius, Percy, Mas. Doc, — (a) Homophonic Forms; (d) 
 Models of Principal Forms. 
 
 Gounod, C— Mozart's Don Giovanni. 
 
 Grove, Sir George, — Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 
 
 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Gregorian 
 Modes" (see p. 29, 37); Hid, "Cadences.'' (See p. 44.) 
 
 Hadow, W. H, — Sonata Form; Studies in Modern Music 
 (2 vols.). 
 
 HeImhoIt2. — The Sensations of Tone, Part III. chap. xiv. 
 (See p. 28.) 
 
 Herodotus, — Book II. "Euterpe," Iviii. and Ixxix. (See p. 27.) 
 Hervey, A, — French Music in the Nineteenth Century. 
 Holmes, E, — Life of Mozart. 
 Hope, R. C. — Medieval Music. 
 Huneker, J.— Overtones (Temperaments). 
 Huxley, T. H, — Science and Art and Education. (See p. 3.) 
 Ingersol, Robert, — God and Man. (See p. 172.) 
 Jadassohn, Dr. S, — Manual of Musical Form. 
 Karasowski, Moritz,— Frederic Chopin. 
 Krehbiel, H. E,— Music and Manners in the Classical Period. 
 Liszt, F, — Life of Chopin. 
 
 Maitland, J, A, Fuller.— The Age of Bach and Handel. 
 
 219 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Maitland, J. A. Fuller. — Schumann. 
 
 Mason, D, G. — From Grieg to Brahms. 
 
 Milton. — L'AlIegro. (See p. 60.) 
 
 Monro, D.B., M.A.— The Modes of Ancient Greek Music. 
 
 Mndaliyar, A. M. Chinnaswami. — Oriental Music; Madras, 
 1892. (See p. 31.) 
 
 Nagai (Y.) and Kofaatake (K.). — Japanese Popular Music; 
 Osaka, 1893. (See p. 32.) 
 
 Naumann, Emil. — The History of Music. (See p. 67.) 
 
 Newman, Ernest.— Musical Studies. 
 
 Niedermeyer, L., and Ortigue, J. d'. — Gregorian Accompani- 
 ment. 
 
 Ouseley, Sir F. A. Gore. — A Treatise on Counterpoint, Canon, 
 and Fugue; Oxford, 1880. (See p. 113.) 
 
 Parry, Sir Hubert. — The Art of Music, chap. ii. (See pp. 25, 
 26, 33-) 
 
 Pauer, Ernest. — Musical Forms. (See p. 15.) 
 
 Plato. — The Republic ( Jowett's), bk. vii. (see p. 7) ; ibid. bk. iii. 
 (See p. 14.) 
 
 Pope, Alexander, — An Essay on Man, Ep. I. (See pp. 130, 177.) 
 
 ProBt, E. — Fugue. 
 
 Form (2 vols.). 
 
 Riemann, Hugo. — Musical Dictionary (translated by J. S. 
 Shedlock). 
 
Appendix B 
 
 Rubinstein, Anton, — A Conversation on Music. 
 
 Ruskin, John. — Fors Clavigera, Modern Painters, Prseterita. 
 (See p. 171.) 
 
 Shakespeare. — Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. sc. 2 (see p, 5); 
 Richard II., Act v. sc. 5 (see p. 15); Hamlet, Act iii. sc. i 
 (see p. 24); Macbeth (see p. 129); The Passionate Pilgrim 
 (see p. 173). 
 
 Smith, Herman. — The World's Earliest Music. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert.— The Studyof Sociology (see p. 7, 13, 47); 
 Feeling versus Intellect (see p. 8); The Origin and 
 Function of Music (see p. 8). 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, — The Faerie Queene, bk. ii. canto xi. (See 
 
 P- I73-) 
 Spitta, P. — Johann Sebastian Bach. 
 Teetgen, Alexander. — Beethoven's Symphonies. 
 Thome, E. H.— Bach. 
 Tolstoi, Leo.— What is Art? (See p. 171.) 
 Tyndall, John. — On Sound. 
 
 \7aIIaschek. — Primitive Music; London, 1893. (See p. 13.) 
 Wasielewski, W. J. von. — Life of Robert Schumann. 
 
 221 
 
Index. 
 
 Aalst, J. A. VAN, 27 
 Abderiahman, 28 
 Acropolis, 2 
 Africa, 13 
 Ajax, 126 
 AUegri, igS 
 America, 13, 19 
 Arabians, 28, 29, 36, 96 
 Arbeau, 183 
 Asia, 13 
 Athens, 2 
 
 Bach, J. S., 3. 4. «7, 18. S°, S4. 
 68, 70, 71, 83, 8s, 88, 91, 92, 
 99, 107, 108, log, 110, 116, 
 120, 123, 130, 155, 163, 181, 
 182 
 
 Beethoven, ^ 9, 17, 25, S2,'-53, 
 
 -108, ie9r'M'S^' H4,- I^l,<!^<e9^ 
 
 »«<^^ i§sf»fiS\t(ianit|iaiPti<i9, 
 181 
 
 Berlioz, 17, 18, 57, 64, III, 115, 
 
 116, 169 
 Bizet, Georges, 52, 56, 149, 201 
 Bonn, 165 
 Brahms, Johannes, 54, 106, no, 
 
 170, 207, 212 
 Brazil, 22 
 British Museum, London, 13, 27 
 
 Burchell, 13 
 Burns, Robert 6 
 Buxton, Jedekiah, 8 
 Byrde, 78 
 Byron, 166 
 
 Californian, 80 
 
 Carlyle, T., 173 
 
 Catullus, 112 
 
 Cervantes, 209 
 
 Cherubini, 62, 73 
 
 Chicago, 80 
 
 China, Chinese, 21, 26, 33, 34, 96 
 
 Chopin, F., 19, 48, no, 119, 130, 
 
 139, 140, 144, 182, 183 
 Cleopatra, 126 
 Columbus, 117 
 Confucius, 34 
 Cordova, 28 
 Corelli, Marie, 176 
 Croft, 79, 182 
 Crowest, F. J., 137 
 
 Dante, 82, 83 
 Darwin, Charles, 13, 22, 23 
 David, King, 33 
 Dordogne, 13 
 Draper, J. W., 29 
 Dubois, Theodore, 118, 214 
 Durham, 80 
 Dvorak, A., 121, 154 
 
 223 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Egypt, 27, 28, 128 
 
 Elgar, Edward, 19, 20, 55, 
 
 127, 154, 201 
 Emerson, E. W., 175 
 England, English, 78, 79, 
 
 iSSi 181, 183, 193, 194, 
 
 201, 202, 213 
 Epictetus, 34 
 Europe, 36, 165 
 
 Fergusson, James, 2 
 Field, J., 199 
 Finck, H. T., 63 
 Fletcher, Alice C., 19 
 France, 127, 181 
 Franck, Caesar, 88 
 
 Galton, 13 
 
 Garrick, David, 9 
 
 Gautier, Theophile, 57 
 
 German, Edward, 199 
 
 Germany, 127, 136 
 
 Gibbons, Orlando, 78 
 
 Glareanus, Henricus, 84, 85 
 
 Gliick, Ch., 45, 48, 70, 116 
 
 Goethe, 81 
 
 Goss, Sir J., 182 
 
 Gothic, 68 
 
 Gounod, 182, 185 
 
 Graun, 203 
 
 Greek, 27, 29, 30, 96, 117 
 
 Gregorian, 36, 38, 96 
 
 Gregory, Pope, 29 
 
 Grieg, Edvard, 49, 109, III, 
 
 119, 127, 162, 182 
 Grove, Sir George, 29, 44 
 Guarnerius, 118 
 
 Handel, Ge6rge, 85, 99, 
 
 n6, 127, 137, iss 181 
 " Harmonicon, The," 6. 
 Harvard University, 20 
 
 127, 
 196, 
 
 114, 
 
 no, 
 
 Haydn, Joseph, 63, 123, 135, 160, 
 
 161, 163, 169 
 Helmholtz, 28, ICX) 
 Herodotus, 27, 57 
 Horace, 3 
 
 Humperdinck, E., 54 
 Huxley, Thomas, 3, 4 
 
 Iceland, 13 
 Incas, 92 
 India, 31 
 
 Ingersol, R., 172, 175 
 Ionia, 128 
 Irish, 206 
 Israelites, 28 
 Italy, 29, 127 
 
 Japan, 31, 6t, 96 
 
 Jews, 27, 28 
 
 John XII., Pope, 36 
 
 Klengel, a. a., 88 
 Kobatake, K., 32 
 Koran, 65 
 
 Lamartine, 212 
 
 Leipsic, 169 
 
 Lempriere's Classical Dictionary, 
 
 46,47 
 Lenz, 13 
 Liszt, Franz, 39, 49, 62, 1 10, 
 
 130, 164, 165, 166 
 Liverpool, 94 
 London, 84, 131 
 Lucas, C., 19, 63, 188 
 Lully, 149, 202 
 Luzzi, 182 
 
 Machiavelli, N., 124 
 Mackenzie, Sir A. C., 87, 204 
 Madras, 20 
 Magellan, 117 
 Marx, 145 
 
 224 
 
Index 
 
 Mascagni, P., 51, 52 
 MacDowell, E. A., 18 
 Mendelssohn, Felix, 93, no, 130, 
 
 182 
 Meyerbeer, G., in, 142, 144 
 Milton, John, 60 
 Miriam, 28 
 Moreri, 28 
 Moskowski, 210, 213 
 Mozart, W. A., 18, 48, 63, 80, 
 
 13s, i6o, 169 
 Mudaliyar, A. M. Chinnaswami, 20 
 
 Nagai, J. , 32 
 
 National Gallery, London, 174 
 
 Naumann, Emil, 67, 112 
 
 Netherland, 83 
 
 Newton, 79 
 
 New York, 94, 130 
 
 Omaha Indians, 19 
 Oriental, 20, 31 
 Orpheus, 164 
 Ouseley, Sir F. A. Gore, 113 
 
 Paderewski, J. J., 13 
 
 Palestrina, 21, 84, 85, 112, 115, 127 
 
 Paris, 67, 118, 131 
 
 Parry, Sir C. H. Hubert, 25, 26, 201 
 
 Pauer, E., 15 
 
 Penelope, 92 
 
 Pergolesi, 63 
 
 Perosi, 127 
 
 Persians, 28, 96 
 
 Plato. 7, 14, 38 
 
 Poe, E. A., 46, 128 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 177 
 
 Prescott, 92 
 
 Prout, Ebenezer, 136, 145 
 
 Purcell, Henry, S3, 78, 84, 85, 155, 
 
 156, 182 
 Pythagoras, 30 
 
 Rabelais, 204 
 Raiding, 165 
 Rameau, J. P., 108 
 Raphaelites, Pre-, 120 
 Rembrandt, 174 
 Rheinberger, 94 
 Rimsky-Korsakow, 20 
 Rome, 84, 129 
 Rossini, G., 17, 21, 120 
 Rouen, 80 
 Rousseau, J. J., 114 
 Rubinstein, 198 
 Ruskin, John, 171, 172 
 Russia, 127 
 
 Saint-Saens, Camillb, 24, 53, 
 
 8S. 13s. ISO, 151, 212 
 Saxony, 8$ 
 Scandinavian, 206 
 Scarlatti, 202 
 Schubert, Franz, 17, 53, 61, in, 
 
 137, 138, 139. 144 
 Schumann, Robert, 17, 22, 49, 
 
 S3, 55, 61, no, 130, 131, 148, 
 
 169 
 Scotch, 189, 204, 211 
 Shakespeare, 9, 15, 24, 129, 173, 
 
 176, 192 
 Shanghai, 33 
 Socrates, 126, 127 
 Sousa, J. P., 197 
 Spain, Spanish, 21, 183, 184, 190, 
 
 191, 209, 214, 21S, 216 
 Spencer, Herbert, 7, 8, 13, 23, 47, 
 
 172, 173 
 Spenser, Edmund, 173 
 Spohr, Louis, 18 
 St. Ambrose, 29 
 Stainer, Sir John, 182, 203 
 Stevens, 13 
 Stradivarius, 118 
 Strauss, J., 215 
 
 225 
 
Story of Musical Form 
 
 Strauss, Richard, 57, iii, 123, 
 
 212 
 Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 74, 75, m, 
 
 114, 123, 127, 185 
 
 Tallis, 78, 79, III 
 
 Tegner, K., 13 
 
 Thucydides, 117 
 
 Thunberg, 13 
 
 TibuUus, H2 
 
 Titian, 112 
 
 Tolstoy, Leo, 171, 172 
 
 Tosti, P., 137 
 
 Tschaikowsky, P., 19, 121, 127, 
 
 154, 169 
 Turner, J. M. W., 112 
 Tyndall, John, 26 
 
 Ulm, 80 
 Ulysses, 92 
 
 Venice, 112, 131 
 Venus, 35, 166 
 Verdi, G., 58, 121, 127 
 Virgil, 112 
 Voltaire, 82, 83, 172 
 
 Wagner, Richard, 17, 21, 31, 
 S3. 54. 63, 64, 71. 75. 76, 78; 
 93, 100, no, 120, 121, 122, 
 123, 127, 137, 143, 144, 153, 
 165, 171 
 
 Waldteufel, 215 
 
 Wallaschek, R., 13 
 
 Ward, Artemus, 33 
 
 Weber, Carl M. von, III, 150 
 
 Wesley, 182 
 
 Widor, 214 
 
 Wood, 13 
 
 Zaryab, 28 
 Zoroaster, 57 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD., FELLING-ON-TYNE.