Customer Reviews

Harmony: Its Theory & Practice (The Works Of Ebenezer Prout)

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This book is quite a surprise for a hundred year epic, which it now certainly is. Ebenezer Prout's world was of course, Wagner, Chopin, Beethoven, Shubert, Bach, and Dvorák, but with his depth of understanding, oddly enough, the book has a very contemporary feel. You can almost imagine that with his organization of chapters into successively higher degrees of harmonic structure, you could almost imagine this as a source book for jazz improvisation.

The great value of the book is that many segments from real compositions are included. Ebenezer doesn't stop at one example of each chord - he gives many quite varied examples from quite disparate pieces, and provided that one can play these pieces oneself on the piano, this is a very good way to get an idea of what the theoretical material is all about.

The fascinating thing about Prout is his highly systematic and organizational ability. Starting from Helmholtz's idea of harmonic series, he describes the major & minor scales, and builds up ideas on higher and larger chords of greater degree. He explains the augmented sixth chords as chords on two generators, and treats progressions including them, and their resolution analytically this way, with great consistency and effect.

[He is unusual in that he discusses chords of the 11th, modern writers often dismissing these as artifacts, suspensions, etc.]

You can well imagine how following chapters would have been written if he had lived to hear Debussy... The later chapters probably anticipate Gustav Holsts's and Stravinsky's bitonality, though the book may well have been different altogether given such revolutions at the beginning of this century.

I really would reccommend the book. It may not be easy in view of his rather different voice (from 100 years ago this is hardly surprising), but his enthusiasm and love for his craft make it a real joy to read.

I just picked up a "1903" Copy of Harmony: Its Theory and Practice by Ebenezer Prout. It is so easy to read, and each point written about Harmony is easy to understand in comparison to other books I have read on the matter, such as Tonal Harmony by Stefan Kostka, which was written in the last 10 years. I think the authors of today have become to abstract in the way they write, which leaves the student questioning, if they undersand the material at all. I know music teachers are suppose to pick up where the book leaves off, but that dosen't always happen. It's refreshing to find a book that explains in detail what you need to know, without having a thrid party to fill in the blanks. I look forward working through Ebenezer Prout's book more throughly. Also as an encouragement to other Music Students. Ebenzer writes this in the preface of his book. "The Learner's Motto must be. . ."One thing at a time, and done throughly." ". This is a reminder to me to keep learning, and not give up until I feel I have learned all that I need to learn about Harmony. The next mountian to climb will be counterpoint. In the mean time I am going to sit back and enjoy "Harmony: it's theory and Practice by Ebennezer Prout. 1902 Sixteenth Version of the book. Believe it or not I got this book for only Ten dollars. It's in great condiditon and is going to keep me busy for awhile.

I mean , this book may have 100 years but the approach is very practical and I may say deeply wise . You can feel that Prout was a REAL teacher . I have enjoy reading every chapter and making all the exercises . I really love all the quotes that he made of REAL music , that makes it all more interesting and I'm sure it took him a lot of time to find them . Some views even have surprised me and I'm a graduate in composition.If you 're interested in tonal harmony this book works even if you can't afford paying a teacher and you won't waste your money at all .
Yes , maybe he took things from Marx or Riemman , but that's not bad anyway and Prout still had his own way of teaching the subject.
As a curiosity just to say that John Cage learnt a lot of stuff from Prout's books , ain't that curious?
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