THEORETIC POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE Harmony has not yet found a place for so simple a natural phenomenon as the 7th note of the harmonic series. Here are the first 16 notes from bass C as the fundamental. Many a "clang" contains them all in appreciable strength, yet no fewer than three (besides the octave of No. 7) are outside our system, Nos. 7 and 13 being much flatter than the notes here written, and No. i i much sharper.
Enthusiasts for new systems are naturally infuriated when the systems thus fade into the light of common or Wagnerian day. Nevertheless, the pleasure given by every effort at revolutionary harmony results from the fact that the new chords enter our consciousness with the meaning they would bear in a classical scheme. Not only Wagner, but Bach and Palestrina lurk behind every new harmonic sensation and cannot long be prevented from making sense of it. After sense has been made, the fundamental theorists will return and prove to us that many quite common place chromatic progressions contain the triskaidekahyperhende kaenneaheptachord of Ex. 26 with the omission of not more than four of its notes.
Other new theories are not less quickly worn out, even when invented by gifted composers. Scriabin, each of whose last five sonatas is built round its own new chord, complained shortly be fore his untimely death that he had, after all, not succeeded in getting away from a sophisticated dominant 7th. This complaint recalls Philipp Emanuel Bach's criticism of Rameau's theory, and its cause lies deep in the very nature of articulate thought. If you wish to compose freely, do not fix your mind on new har monic propositions. Language is not extended by declining to use what is known of it.
Arnold Schonberg's harmonic theory is often masterly in its analysis of classical music ; but it is extremely disappointing in its constructive aspect. Not only does Schonberg think the absurd old theory of "added 3rds" worth refuting, but he invents a new theory of added 4ths which has even less foundation. The theory of "added 3rds" was no more scientific than a classification of birds by the colour of their feathers. But birds do have feathers of various colours, and classical music does build up chords by sequences of thirds. Schonberg's theory rests on no observation at all, for the piling up of 4ths has no origin in classical harmony and only a quickly exhausted melodic value. However, it can be carried right round the tempered scale in i 2 steps and ad infinitum Again, though resultant tones are audible enough to save organ builders from the expense of 32 ft. pipes by means of devices which reinforce the resultant tone and obliterate its generators, they have played no acknowledged part in musical aesthetics. A theory which builds upon them must abandon the hypothesis that all harmony grows upwards from the bass. Abandon it by all means if your musical intuitions inspire you with ideas based on resultant tones—by which, however, you must mean something different from harmony whose ideal bass lies in its resultant tones —for that will merely be another notion of fundamental bass, differing from Rameau's, but again forcing you to regard harmony as rising from the bass. And, after all, the hypothesis is not a theory, but an experience. The language of music has, in fact, taken shape without guidance from resultant tones; just as the art of painting has, until recent epochs, made no conscious use of complementary colours, except by instinctively avoiding ugly or unintelligible effects.
Schonberg rightly says that das Einfall, the inspiration that comes without theorizing, is the sole criterion of musical truth; and perhaps some composers may have Ein f Mlle so convincing in their use of Nos. 7, i i and 13, as to compel us to build new instruments for them. And so with the use of a resultant-tone or inverted harmonic system. The string-quartets of Haba have not as yet made quarter-tones sound convincingly unlike faulty intonation. We must not blame our ears, which of ten appreciate much smaller measurements. The just intonation of a Wagner opera would comprise some thousand notes to the octave. The question is not how many notes we use in the long run, but how small a direct measurement is of interest to us. The carpenter deals faithfully with the incommensurable when he so much as fits a cross-bar to a square gate.
Many other modern harmonic tendencies are essentially matters of instrumentation. If, abandoning the polyphonic hypothesis, we use chords, simple or complex, as mere unanalysed tone colours, we can start a new polyphony with moving chords instead of moving single parts. Our problem, then, will be to keep the vlanes of tone distinct. Organ-mixtures, if not properly drowned by the fundamental tones, would shock the boldest multi-planar harmonist by the mess they would make of classical harmony.
Extremes meet, and we are recovering a sense of the values of unharmonized melody ; not melody which wants to be harmonized, nor melody which achieves harmonic sense by draughtmanship, but the austere achievement, far more difficult than any "atonal ity," of a melody that neither needs nor implies harmony. And so we return to nature. (D. F. T.)