Music, having sound as its medium, thus necessarily expresses in a concentrated way the shocks and instabilities, the conflicts and resolutions, that are the dramatic changes enacted upon the more enduring background of nature and human life. The tension and the struggle has its gatherings of energy, its discharges, its attacks and defenses, its mighty […]

It was unthinkable in Bach’s time to teach children merely to play an instrument without making them aware of the harmonic foundations of music and preparing them to compose their own pieces as soon as possible. —Bach’s World, p. 161