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On the Fallacies of Dr. Day's Theory of Harmony, with a Brief Outline of the Elements of a New System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

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Extract

In the present state of scientific knowledge in general, it may appear incomprehensible, to those who hare not pursued it in the direction of music, that we should have arrived beyond the middle of the nineteenth century of the Christian era without any work having yet appeared which has set forth even the elements of that science in a light which has carried conviction and met with general acceptance. I am not speaking here of the excellent treatises of Sir John Goss, John Hullah, Henry Lunn, Henry Banister, Alexander Hamilton, &c. These, and numerous others, do not profess to treat of the recondite view of the subject, but solely to supply the young student with practical applications of accepted facts. What is still wanting, despite numerous endeavours, is a work which shall convincingly trace the materials and combinations of the Harmonist to their true source, and show him (as I believe to be the case) that those materials and combinations are not arbitrary and conventional, but are supplied by Nature herself—thus enlarging his views, and, in fact, laying before him all of which, as a Harmonist, he can avail himself.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1874

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References

The instrument employed was a tube-like part of an organ-pipe, of about two feet long, fitted with a piston, and having a jew's-harp, tuned to c, fixed to the open end of the tube. From this one c, every note of a true scale was produced with great rapidity, by drawing the piston up and down. [Mr. Chappell has sinco fitted up a tube with a harmonium spring instead of a jow's-harp, thus making the scale audible in any room.]Google Scholar