The Oxford Harmony

The Oxford Harmony is designed to give a complete practical course of instruction in all branches of the subject. It consists of two volumes, of which this is the first. The author deals only with diatonic harmony in three and four parts. He starts with three-part harmony, having found by experience that many beginners can not only think more clearly, but hear more clearly, in three parts than in four. The book is, however, so arranged that it can be used equally well by those who prefer the exclusively four-part method of teaching and learning harmony. English musical scholar, teacher, and composer Reginald Owen Morris (1886-1948), almost universally cited in sources and referred to even by his friends by his initials, as 'R.O. Morris', was born in York. He was educated at Harrow School, New College, Oxford, and the Royal College of Music, where he joined the teaching staff. On the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, along with his friends George Butterworth and Geoffrey Toye. In 1926 he was appointed head of the department of theory at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia but left after two years, returning to England and teaching at the RCM until his death. He became famous as an exceptional teacher of counterpoint and his books, all published by Oxford University Press, came from long teaching experience and are skillfully designed to satisfy the needs of the average student: Figured Harmony at the Keyboard (1931), The Structure of Music (1935), and Introduction to Counterpoint (1944). His first book, Contrapuntal Technique in the Sixteenth Century (1922), has had a lasting influence on teaching in England and elsewhere. It broke new ground by drawing a clear distinction between national schools of composition and by insisting that the study of counterpoint should be based on the works of the composers who wrote it rather than on arbitrary rules invented by later theorists.