Any attempt in a book like this to explain the intricacies of harmonic development as it is seen in the symphony must be inconclusive. Harmony is, in itself, less tangible than either rhythm or melody, for it lacks to a considerable extent the element of continuity. I mean by this that groups of harmonies do not possess coherence in relation to each other. They do not stay in the memory as a line of melody does; the impression we get from them is fleeting. It may touch with light or shade one brief moment in a piece of music (as it frequently does in Schubert’s compositions); it may produce a bewildering riot of color (as in ultra-modern music); or it may cover the whole piece with a subdued shadow (as in the slow movement of Franck’s quintette). But the real office of harmony is to serve melody. I mean by this that when two or more melodies sound together they make harmony at every point of contact, and this harmony, incidental to the movement of melodic parts, has a reality which chords by themselves cannot acquire. And the whole justification for many of the sounds in ultra-modern music lies in this one perfectly correct theory. Not that the laws must not be obeyed--as they frequently are not; not that a composer may violate nature, and do what he likes. He must, as of old, justify in reason all the dissonances arising from his melodic adventures. He should remember Bach, whose melodies clash in never-to-be-forgotten stridence, striking forth such flashes of strange beauty as can only come from a war of themes. The symphony is, then, an arrangement of rhythms, melodies, and harmonies. Each of these three elements has a life of its own,--the rhythms, taken altogether, have their own coherence, the melodies theirs, and the harmonies theirs,--but each belongs to the whole. The rhythm of Poe’s “For Annie” would be an impossible rhythm with which to carry forward the purposes of any part of “The Ring and the Book.” Equally useless would be the rhythms of Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony to carry forward the purposes of Beethoven’s Ninth. The whole structure of Poe’s poem would disintegrate if one single word fell out of place; so would the fabric of a Schubert melody were a note destroyed. In every direction, wherever we look, this cohesion of all objects in themselves, this blending of all objects into a greater body, reveals itself. This is the basis of all religious belief, of a novel, of the composition of a picture, or of life itself. To say that a symphony is made up of separate elements, that each of these elements has a life of its own, and that they all unite in a common purpose, is to state a truism. And to suppose that a symphony can be understood without an understanding of all its elements is to suppose an absurdity. IV. TONE COLOR AND DESIGN