The Oxford Harmony: Volume 1

(from the Introduction to Volume One…)

The first volume of The Oxford Harmony deals only with diatonic harmony and the common methods of ornamentation, leaving all the chromatic chords, and the preliminary stages of applied harmony, to be expounded in Volume II.

The form of this volume differs from that of other manuals covering the same ground, in that three-part work only is recommended as the first course of study. The only serious objection I have heard raised to this plan is that three-part chords are necessarily incomplete.

This objection seems to me invalid. In the first place, the common chord in all its positions is a three-note chord, of which one note has to be doubled in four-part writing. As such, it cannot reasonably be considered incomplete in three parts. By doubling a note or notes in four-, five-, and six-part work, a fuller volume of sound is naturally obtained; but that is a different matter altogether. The chords of the seventh are in rather a different position; they are basically four-note chords, of which one note has necessarily to be omitted in three-part writing. But even in four-part work the fifth, in practice, is very commonly omitted and the root doubled, without any objection being raised. Provided the root, the third, and the seventh itself are present, any chord of the seventh is clearly recognisable, both by eye and ear, for what it is, and so may be employed with perfectly good effect in a three-part progression.

None the less, if harmony consisted only of essential notes moving uniformly together (as in the very earliest stages it does), then there would indeed be a very strong case for the four-part view. But if the study is to be made at all attractive, then it is most desirable that the texture should be diversified as soon as possible by the use of the unessential, in the form of passing notes, auxiliary notes, suspensions, and what you will. From an exclusively harmonic point of view these things may be, as their name implies, ‘unessential’; but to rhythm they are vital, for without them no variety of rhythm is possible, and without such variety both melody and harmony alike will remain dull and lifeless.