Franklin W. Robinson Aural Harmony

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Upon these two laws depend all the tonal relationships possible in music. In the training of the ear in music, the tonal relationships determining the harmonic law, being basic, are discerned first; the tonal relationships determining the melodic law, being de pendent upon the harmonic law, are discerned next. All tones in music are related to each other through the medium of activity and rest. The degree of any scale is either a rest tone or an active tone; any chord of the scale is either a rest chord, or one of many active chords. Play the scale of C and perceive the active quality of the tone B, the rest quality Of the tone C or the tone G. The musical ear is quickly affected by these qualities; and, com mensurable with the power of the ear to discern the active and rest qualities which tones possess, is a person considered musi cal. The ear is therefore trained (i) to listen to related tones and not to isolated tones; (2) to listen in the ensemble, and not to single tones; (3) to listen to tonal relationship through the medium Of activity and rest as setting up two laws (harmonic and melodic) which make those tonal relationships purposeful and not merely pleasant sounding concords or melodies. In formulating a method for the study Of aural theory all of these points will be taken into consideration.