L. Heiberg's attempt to apply this system to Danish verse. But the
system was too arbitrary for anything to be built up upon it. And I then
made up my mind, in order better to understand the nature of verse, to
begin at once to familiarise myself with the theory of music, which
seemed to promise the opening out of fresh horizons in the
interpretation of the harmonies of language.
With the assistance of a young musician, later the well-known composer
and Concert Director, Victor Bendix, I plunged into the mysteries of
thorough-bass, and went so far as to write out the entire theory of
harmonics. I learnt to express myself in the barbaric language of music,
to speak of minor scales in fifths, to understand what was meant by
enharmonic ambiguity. I studied voice modulation, permissible and non-
permissible octaves; but I did not find what I hoped. I composed a few
short tunes, which I myself thought very pretty, but which my young
master made great fun of, and with good reason. One evening, when he was
in very high spirits, he parodied one of them at the piano in front of a
large party of people. It was a disconcerting moment for the composer of
the tune.
A connection between metrical art and thorough-bass was not
discoverable. Neither were there any unbreakable laws governing
thorough-bass.
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