VERTICAL (or PERPENDICULAR) and HORIZONTAL METHODS OF COMPOSITION. Two highly characteristic and expressive terms, used by modern critics for the purpose of distinguishing the method of writing cultivated by modern Composers from that practised by the older Polyphonists.
The modern Composer constructs his passages, for the most part, upon a succession of Fundamental or Inverted Chords, each of which is built perpendicularly upwards, from the bass note which forms its harmonic support, as in the example...