Excerpt from A Grammar of Musical Harmony: The Substance of Lectures Delivered in St. Martin's Hall and the Training Institutions of the National Society

There are some terms belonging to every art or science which, though convenient or indispensable to adepts, are a source of embarrassment to beginners. In music, melody, harmony, and counterpoint, are among these. A succession of individual sounds, and a succession of combinations of sounds, are obviously different things, and as such they require different designations, - the very existence of which makes it difficult to appreciate the fact that the things designated, though different, must never be considered separately.

For, a succession of sounds can hardly be recognised as melody, unless it be capable of proof, by the addition of that harmony of which it is only one part, while a succession of combinations of sounds will be unworthy of the name of harmony, unless the various parts of which it is composed be individually melodious. Certain it is that a musician never conceives melody without associating it with harmony, as he never hears harmony without being able to trace out more or less of the melody which it must of necessity contain.

The line of demarcation between harmony and counterpoint being less strongly marked than that between melody and harmony, their distinction by different names is attended with much greater inconvenience. For that distinction would seem to imply that the arrangement of individual parts was something over and above, or even different from, making the chords in which they are contained succeed one another properly. Now, no one could be considered as a harmonist who could not connect one consonant combination with another, prepare and resolve discords, and reconcile the frequently conflicting interests of combination and progression. And yet by the term counterpoint is understood little more; for the treatment of mere passing notes can hardly be brought altogether under those strict rules to which a science is generally supposed to be amenable.

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