208 



SGIENCK 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 267. 



ing-tone, and Tonic (p. 78) : And second, 

 the student should begin with counter- 

 point and get his earliest intelligence of 

 harmony therefrom (p. 117) ; for all 

 through attention is directed, not to har- 

 mony, but to one governing voice (p. 167). 



Chapter five deals with Harmony and 

 six with Suspensions, Inter-relations of 

 keys and Modulation. The boldness of 

 the author's thought about tone-relations 

 appears in such passages as these : " It is 

 plain that any tone and any combination 

 may be relationed in any key. What the 

 presiding key of the moment is, and when 

 a change of key takes place, are matters 

 that are determined bj' the melo-rhythmo- 

 harmonic inter-relations in which a series 

 of tones appears" (p. 221). "Modulation 

 takes place (even in one voice) at the very 

 moment a shift of relation to another key- 

 center takes place" (p. 253). 



The final paragraph is curious : " Since 

 there are twenty-six keys to modulate into 

 from any one key, and twenty-seven ways 

 from one key into each of the others, there 

 are 26 X 27 = 702 ways out of and into any 

 one key," and " 27 X 702 = 18,954 ways in 

 which a prominent voice can modulate " 

 (p. 265). 



So much for a meagre presentation of the 

 author's views. While there are many 

 quotable passages in his book, it is strik- 

 ingly free from quotation, and the. very few 

 references to other writers are general, not 

 specific. He objects to Dr. Riemann's theory 

 that major and minor are polar opposites (p. 

 96) , and feels that Helmholtz's explanations 

 are inadequate (p. 270), on which points the 

 reviewer agrees with him. As an oifset to 

 his serious discussion he gives a page on 

 nature-music which is more fantastic than 

 Gardner's book of sixty years ago. The 

 student of comparative music notices with 

 interest how this most modern exponent of 

 music interpretation and of music psychol- 

 ogy throws away notions of the scale that 



have been laboriously and fruitfully de- 

 veloped during the last 800 years, to take 

 up the old Greek heptatonic system of two 

 conjunct tetrachords, with Mese in the 

 central position, though his are Lydian in- 

 stead of the usual Dorian tetrachords. And 

 one notices further that by limiting the 

 series to seven tones which are repeated in 

 successive tone-strata, this new system is 

 brought into correspondence with more than 

 one Oriental system ; for except among 

 Europeans the eighth note is not usually 

 counted as belonging with the seven, but it 

 starts a new series, and in one case is called 

 by the happy name ' response.' 



II. 



The reader of Dr. Parry's book feels at 

 once that he is under a master. The au- 

 thor has the degree of Doctor of Music from 

 Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin ; he is well- 

 known as one of the leading English com- 

 posers, and a number of years ago contrib- 

 uted to Grove's Dictionary of Music most 

 of the articles relating to the theory of 

 music : so he was admirably equipped by 

 knowledge of the past, experience as a com- 

 poser, and maturity of judgment to analyze 

 the musical impulses and expressions of 

 men and to put the results of such analysis 

 into fitting words. Probably no book ever 

 written is so well adapted as this to help 

 the non-musical reader to some understand- 

 ing and appreciation, both of what music is 

 as an expression of the human soul, and of 

 the artistic means employed in this ex- 

 pression. So far as can be done by one 

 book it brings music back to where the 

 Greeks placed it, to the position of a liberal 

 art, of an instrument of culture as truly as 

 poetry or history or painting ; it makes mu- 

 sical training mean something quite other 

 than an accomplishment, or the ability to 

 perform or enjoy a performance, or acquain- 

 tance with the history of musicians and their 

 works, or even the power to analyze a mu- 



