Rudiments of Musical Grammar The Substance of Lectures, Delivered in St. Martin's Hall and the Training Institutions of the National Society

From the PREFACE:

THE title of the following work will, it may be hoped, render any explanation of its aims unnecessary. The mode of treatment of the subject, and the order in which the different branches of it are brought before the student, differing essentially from those adopted in most other works of the same kind, require, however, a few prefatory remarks.

We often find the earlier chapters of rudimentary treatises, whether on music or any other subject, occupied, not with attempts to convey ideas of the things to be first studied, but with explanations of the symbols which represent them, — many of these latter, perhaps, not being called into requisition till an advanced period in the study, when they have to be learned a second time. Thus the beginner in music is made to exhaust the subject of the stave before he is in the least informed as to the nature of the scale; or is called upon to consider the peculiarities of five-crotchet time, while as yet he has no practical acquaintance with the first principles of rhythm. In the following work no attempt is made to introduce the student to the alphabet of music till he has learned something about music, or, more properly, the musical system itself; nor is he instructed in the different kinds of measure, nor even made aware of the existence of bars, until he has acquired some idea of the limits of a musical phrase, and the nature of a musical foot, — things altogether independent of any forms by which they may be represented, and which, as they certainly existed ages before the invention of the present musical alphabet, will as certainly exist ages after that ingenious contrivance has become matter of history, or even of speculation.

The history of an art or science may often be brought to bear practically on the process of teaching it; and the order in which discoveries or improvements have been made will often suggest that in which knowledge of them may best be communicated. So that the consideration even of exploded theories and obsolete forms may not be without its use, as keys to those which have superseded them. The musical student, for instance, will never appreciate the special merits of modem, unless he have learnt something of ancient, tonality; nor would it be easy to devise any shorter or more simple method of explaining the nature of a mode, than through acquaintance with the fact that, though but two modes are used by modern musicians, the number of modes possible is only limited by that of the Sounds of the natural scale. This latter fact is briefly alluded to in an early chapter, and more fully treated in a later one the object of which has been rather to excite than to satisfy curiosity on a very interesting branch of musical science.

The chapters on the Alto and Tenor Staves—part of a subject treated elsewhere by the writer more fully — will, it is hoped, be found sufficient to meet the practical wants of the student. The practice of writing alto and tenor parts an octave higher than they are to be sung has no doubt largely superseded the older and more simple one of writing them at their proper pitch. Whether this practice prove permanent or not, the student may rest assured that, unless he make himself familiar with at least two of the four different staves headed by the C clef, a very large proportion of the works of the greatest writers must remain unintelligible to him….