I had been constantly dissatisfied with the knowledge of harmony of my students of composition at the University of California, Los Angeles. To remedy this shortcoming I instituted a new class to which the conventional harmony teaching should be the prerequisite: STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONS OF HARMONY. At this time (1939) a young former student of mine, Leonard Stein, had already become my assistant and remained in this capacity for the next three· years. Thus naturally when I started to write the present book I could not select one better to help me express my ideas. He had observed the development of these ideas from the very beginning and had watched me struggling with their formulation.
I was not wrong in this selection. While perhaps a perfectionist might have tortured me with corrections of my English, upsetting the flow of ideas, he had the patience to let me pro- nounce my sentences in their rudest forms if only they expressed the idea clearly. Of course the gravest grammatical errors had to be eliminated, but the polishing of the style could be postponed.
In spite of the preliminary work done in classes and Mr. Stein's collection of notes and examples at this time, the real writing and frequent rewriting of the book demanded nearly two years. The extreme number of examples necessary for illustrating and clarifying every problemjthe application of the theories in the analysis of the examples from literature and the inevitable work of writing and copying are indications of Mr. Stein's share in the production of this book. I use with pleasure this opportunity to thank him for his intelligent, careful, assiduous and discriminating assistance.
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG 28 March 1948