Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/55

 of scope and extend its field of expression; music would thus enter on the wide and royal road that would lead to the most vast developments. The study of masterpieces and analysis of his own inspirations confirmed him in this idea. The invention of music is above all else an invention of harmony. To imagine a musical utterance is to imagine a sequence, a linked chain of chords embracing a certain expressive sense. The other portions of musical invention, that is to say melody and the interplay of concerted parts, are virtually included in these; they merely define, detail, shade, or as a philosopher would say actualise, the latent expression. Obviously this does not mean that for Rameau melody is deduced mathematically, and by a simple operation of logic, from harmony when once discovered. No, the creation of melody demands a special initiative, a stroke of genius of its own, a fresh inflow of the grace of inspiration. But that is a second process, and harmony does at least lay down for melody the limits within which it must trace its own line. Similarly it fixes for the intermediate processes certain signposts, certain points they must pass. In cases where the melody has been hit upon first, where a musician rejoices to have found a good piece of melody, this melody postulates, or contains in itself, a certain harmony which is necessarily bound up with it, and which has implicitly guided the artist's mind, because in the natural order of things harmony precedes melody.

Ignorance of the true doctrine concerning the function of harmony in music was not the only fault that Rameau found with the instruction he had received He complained also of not having found in it satisfying doctrine on harmony itself. Harmonic proper-