is full of such good thought as we in our power may understand.
It is to supply us with just this that the lesser masters write. In
simple, yet clear and beautiful pictures, they tell us many and many a
secret of the world of tone into which we shall some day be welcomed
by the greater ones if we are faithful unto the lesser.

CHAPTER XIV.

HARMONY AND COUNTERPOINT.

"Whilst I was in Florence, I did my utmost to learn the exquisite
manner of Michaelangelo, and never once lost sight of
it."--_Benvenuto Cellini._[43]

On any important music subject Schumann has something to say. So with
this:

"Learn betimes the fundamental principles of harmony." "Do not be
afraid of the words theory, thorough-bass, and the like, they will
meet you as friends if you will meet them so."

We now begin to feel how definitely these rules treat everything. They
pick out the important subjects and tell the simplest truth about
them. The meaning of these two rules is this: From the beginning we
must try to understand the grammar of music. Some of the great
composers could in childhood write down music with the greatest
fluency. Handel, even as a boy, wrote a new church composition for
every Sunday. Mozart began to write music when less than five years
old, and when he was yet a boy, in Rome, he wrote down a
composition,[44] sung by the choir of the Sistine Chapel, which was
forbidden to the public.

Harmony and counterpoint stand to music very much as spelling and
grammar stand to language. They are the fundamentals of good writing
and of good--that is, of correct--thinking in music. Harmony is the
art of putting tones together so as correctly to make chords.
Counterpoint has to do with composing and joining together simple
melodies. A modern writer[45] on counterpoint has said: "The essence
of true counterpoint lies in the equal interest which should belong to
ever part." By examining a few pieces of good counterpoint you will
readily see just what this means. The composer has not tried to get
merely a correct chord succession, such as we find in a choral. Let us
play a choral; any good one of a German master will do.[46] We notice
that the soprano is the principal part, and that the other voices,
while somewhat melodic, tend rather to support and follow the melody
than to be independent. If, now, we play a piece of counterpoint like
the G-Minor Prelude by Bach,[47] we shall have quite a good piece of
counterpoint, as