The University Course of Music Study, Piano Series: A Standardized Text-Work on Music for Conservatories, Colleges, Private Teachers and Schools; A ... Credit for Music Study (Classic Reprint)

The distinguishing of color is of course an attribute of the sense of sight, and yet in the analysis of sound, particularly of musical tones, there appears a quality so nearly analogous to that of the shades of the spectrum, that after the general policy of artists as opposed to scientists musicians have borrowed and readapted a term belonging to another realm rather than to invent one of their own. Color in music is then something which at least the musician will understand, since he has discovered the quality even before there is felt the need of a word with which to describe it. This color may be of two kinds: tone color in the abstract, a timbre -again borrowing from the French which belongs particularly to single tones or tones of a single pitch; and harmonic color, which is a quality which results from different chord combinations, both as isolated chords and as progressions of chords. The different degrees of tone color are the result of the blending of foundation tone, overtones or harmonics, with false and impure tones, such as must result from the various devices by which tones are produced. Much of the character or individuality of a tone as of a personality results from its imperfections rather than from its perfections. If all tones and all persons were perfect, they would all be alike; and without variety and without an imaginary vision of perfection beyond our present attainment, what a dreary and monotonous world this would bel Harmonic color, on the other hand, is perhaps the result of the varying degrees of consonance and dissonance between the individual tones which enter into the chord combinations. It is evident that a melody, whatever the voice in which it appears, must stand out from the accompanying texture with which it is surrounded, and by which it in a measure is supported. Mere loudness will attain this result, and yet the poetry
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