Harmonic Analysis: A Course in the Analysis of the Chords and of the Non-Harmonic Tones to Be Found in Music, Classic and Modern

HERE is a book many a groping student and lover of music will hail with genuine delight. Mr. Cutter has opened the way to the most practical and stimulating of all methods of music study. Indeed we have a notion that there may be something more at stake than appears on the surface. Here is the concrete thing - music itself from the hands of the masters-like that concrete thing by common consent now the first to be put in the hands of the learner. In the best language schools grammar is relegated to that time when the discussion of it can be conducted in the language itself. The young musician cannot too early begin to store his mind with fair models taken from the classics and turn them over and over and discover what he can of the trick of their making. This to be sure is not quite Mr. Cutter's purpose. His book is intended to follow more or less complete mastery of harmony as it is taught, to determine the accomplishment thus gained and make it practical in "every-day musical life." This is so sensible and useful a design that one is puzzled to know that it has not been executed before.

However, "Harmonic Analysis" gives no sign of being a pioneer. In spite of the fact that it appears on the very crest (as it seems) of a wave of uncertainty in the treatment of music structure the book is as simple and straightforward and logical as if it were the lineal descendant of a whole genealogy of text books. But Mr. Cutter is not dogmatic either; he is liberally tolerant of widely divergent opinion, evidently bent, like a true teacher, upon smoothing the path of his pupils and leading them out into fair pastures.

His plan is very simple. Each item of music structure is laid before the reader, illustrated in a few clear examples, upon which follow copious illustrations drawn from a very wide field of composition for the scholar's practice. It is the abundance and variety of these well-chosen illustrations that gives to the book much of its charm and value. The explanations bear everywhere the earmarks of the studio. Mr. Cutter is not developing a philosophy but writing a text book. Nothing but experience could have suggested the appendix, consisting of " ten fragments of various natures carefully analyzed and discussed." Many a blessing will follow the perusal of those pages. In short here is a very practical book, the fruit of much experience and study, which capitally supplies a long felt want. It ought to be in every student's library, or better, in his head!

-New England Conservatory Magazine, Volumes 9