The Tendencies of Modern Harmony as Exemplified in the Works of Dvořák and Grieg

Extract

It is presumably a fact, which no student of musical history will contradict, that from the earliest times the theorist has been behind the composer. It is the duty of the “maker” of music to create harmony; it is the province of the theorist to explain, analyse, and classify those harmonies. To ascertain, therefore, in what position the harmony of to-day stands, it is not sufficient for the student to turn to textbooks—they are probably now explaining the progressions used by the last generation of composers. If the student would ascertain the most modern developments of harmony, he must seek them in the works of the most original and advanced composers of to-day—not in the treatises of the theory of yesterday.