PART II. AN ANNOTATED ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF NEUE HARMONTELEHRE'TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE Due to its broad scope as well as its special subject matter, Alois Héba's Neue Harmonielehre des diatonischen, chromatischen, Viertel-, Drittel-, Sechstel- und 2w81ftei-Tonsystems, written in 1927, Yepresents an important contribution to music theory. It remains, even today, the only treatise that has attempted to deal in depth with the equal-tempered quarter-tone and sixth-tone systems. Other compo- sers and theorists have written detailed studies concerning microtonal, systems without an equal-tempered basis, for example, Julian Carrillo's Sonido trece (1948) and other theoretical works, Adriaan Fokker's Neue Musik mit 31 Ténen (1966), Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music (1949), and Joseph yYasser's Theory of Svolving Tonality (1932), but Héba's work remains the sole example of a composer-theorist who has tried to codify the principles of the twenty-four-tone and the thirty-six-tone systems. Whether or not Héba ‘succeeded in formulating valid, convincing theories concerning the quarter-tone and the sixth-tone systems is perhaps not the most important issue, The fact remains that in the 1920s, he chose a path of investigation that, at that time, appeared to him to be extremely fruitful and pointed to the music of the future. As historian William Austin states, "It was surely plausible to imag- ine that the true fulfillment of the famous tendencies towards in- creasing chromaticism and dissonance would be neither twelve-tone technique nor organized sound, but rather a breakthrough to some new a2 scale of pitches with more than twelve degrees in an octave. that their Although the hope of many microtonal musicians such as Héba~ Work would be acknowledged and their music widely playea-—was never realized, the importance of their vision cannot be denied. But, as Mosco Carner comments, "That his path has proved a cul-de-sac is per~ haps the tragedy of Alois Haba. The text of Neue Harmonielehre poses a challenge to the trans- lator for a number of reasons. éba writes in a colorful, flowery style; hovever, his sentence structure does not always follow standara grammatical rules, and there are incorrect verb tenses and punctuation marks. Also, Héba uses an excessive anount of foreign words and phrases and invents words. In addition, many nanes cited in the trea~ tise are misspelled, titles are cited inaccurately, and the numbering of the musical examples is frequently inconsistent. ° It is necessary to point out some of the terminology frequently tetrad," "pen- used in the translation. The terms "dyad," "triad," tad," "sextad," and "septad" are utilized to indicate two-note to seven note (pitch class) sonorities, regardless of the intervals utilized in then. ‘The terms “secundal," "tertian," “quartal,” "quintal," “sextal,” and "septal," are used to indicate the type of interval that comprises a paxticular sonority. (A sextal sextad, for example, is a six-note ‘william Austin, Music in the Twentieth Century: From Debussy to Stravinsky (New York: W. W. Norton @ Company, Inc., 1966), p. 361. 2yosco Carner, review of Mein Weg zur Viertel- und Sechstelton musik by Alois Haba, in Music and Letters 53 (October 1972):436. Fane problem of Haba's periodic lack of historical accuracy and his misinterpretation of factual data has been discussed in the second chapter of Part I of this dissertation on pages 43-44.3 sonority built of sixths,) Chords with more than seven notes are labeled "-note chord;" Arabic numerals are used in this expression in order to avoid the double hyphenation of names of some chords that occur in the microtonal systems. The expression "-step" also uses Arabic nunerals. Some microtonal intervals are written as fractions for the sake of readability; therefore, a “twenty-seven-sixth tone," for example, is given as a "27/6 tone." Finally, the terms “whole tone" and “half tone" have been utilized in the translation instead of the more common expressions “whole step" and "half step)" this has been done in order to conform to the other expressions utilized in regard to the division of the whole tone into smaller parts, for exan- ple, quarter tone and third tone. ‘The punctuation markings used in the translation follow the original treatise as closely as possible. [Italics are used in the translation for the sections of text in which Héba uses larger type, for the names of musical pitches (e.g., c - e -g) and for foreign expressions; both italics and underlining are used in the translation for sections of the text that Héba himself italicizes. Parentheses that appear in the original text have been omitted if they impair the readability of the text and if the information contained in them is important to the sentence; however, they are retained if they set off parenthetical thoughts. Brackets have been used by the translator for added words, but not to show added articles, conjunctions, punctu- ation, and other types of alteration of the original Gexman text es- sential for the idiomatic translation of sentences into English. The main source of the dates, names, titles, and other factual information used in the translation is Baker's Biographical4 Dictionary of Musicians, sixth edition (1978). The sources used for problematic information not foun@ in Baker's Biographical Dictionary were Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Allgemeine Enzylopdie der twelfth edition (1959) and its Musik; Riemann Lexikon: Personenteil Supplement (1972); The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1975 edition; and Ji¥{ vyslou#il's Alois Haba: ¥ivot a dflo (Alois Héba: Life and Work].* Incorrect factual information has been corrected within the text of the translation and the original, inac- curate information given in a footnote. Full names of individuals referred to by Haba are included only the first time the individual is mentioned; later citations give only the last name of the individ- vat, unless the full name is again stated by Hdba. In the translation, footnotes appear in two places on the page. First, Haba's footnotes, which appeared in the original text at the bottom of the page (each indicated by the designation "1)") are in- cluded with an asterisk, and are set up as block quotations. Second, footnotes by the translator are placed at the bottom of the page and arranged consecutively beginning with each chapter, using Arabic nu merals. These footnotes by the translator serve several purposes: they point out incongruities with known facts or practices and clarify certain terminology that Haba utilizes in the work; they also give additional factual information regarding Héba's work and the work of other composers and theories mentioned in the treatise and point out cross-references that occur in the book. 434¥¢ vyslou¥il, Alois Héba: Zivot a dflo [Alois Haba; Life and Work] (Prague: Panton, 1974). SS5 Two indexes compiled by the translator have been added at the end of the translation, The first one, a General Index, incluies the names of individuals and their works mentioned by Haba, as well as general subjects that arise during the course of the treatise. The second index, an Index of Terms, lists most of the important and often unusual terminology that is utilized in the work. In Neue Harmonielehre, Haba makes use of the standard octave designations shown below: ‘The musical examples (numbered consecutively by Haba beginning with each chapter) and the figures (unnumbered) are reproduced in this translation from the original text by permission of the publisher Fr. Kistner & C. F, W. Siegel & Co. of Cologne, West Germany. Short ver~ tical lines have been added by the translator to some of the musical examples to help set off the captions of the individual sections. The following abbreviations have been used on occasion in the musical examples because of the scarcity of space to insert the entire English equivalent of the German captions: A, aug: augmented asymmetr: asymmetricalch: chord chrom: chromatic constr: construction contin: continuation 4, dim: diminished deg: degree div: division dom: dominant func: function Anv(s): inversion(s) invt: inverted M, maj: major m, min: minor mid: middle neut: neutral, oct (s): octave (s) pos: position pt(s): parts sc: scale step sus: suspension symmetr: symmetrical t: tone tetr: tetrachord transp: transposed transpos: transposition