It is quite possible, provided you are certain never to misunderstand your text-book and never to commit any errors. Otherwise you will need the advice of an experienced musician in correcting them. A good teacher, however, is always better than a book for this study. Of text-books there are a great many. Any reliable music house will furnish you with a list of them.
Should Piano Students Try to Compose?
Besides my study of the piano shall I try to compose if I feel the inclination and believe I have some talent for it?
The practice of constructing will always facilitate your work of reconstructing, which is, practically, what the rendition of a musical work means. Hence, I advise every one who feels able to construct even a modest little piece to try his hand at it. Of course, if you can write only a two-step it will not enable you to reconstruct a Beethoven Sonata; still, there may be little places in the Sonata that will clear up in your mind more quickly when you have come in touch with the technical act of putting down on paper what your mind has created, and you will altogether lose the attitude of the absolute stranger when facing a new composition. Do not construe this, however, as an encouragement to write two-steps!
The Student Who Wants to Compose
Please advise me as to the best way of learning composition. Which is the best work of that kind from which I could learn?
First learn to write notes. Copying all sorts of music is the best practice for that. Then study the doctrine of harmony. Follow it up by a study of the various forms of counterpoint. Proceed to canon in its many kinds and intervals. Take up the fugue. Then study forms until you learn to feel them. Books for every one of these stages there are many, but better than all the books is a good teacher.
The Difference Between Major and Minor Scales
What is the difference between the major and minor scale? Does it lie in the arrangement of semitones or in the character, or in both?
There are three differences: First, in the arrangement of the semitones; second, in the character; and, third, in the circumstance that the minor scale admits of a number of modifications for melodic purposes which cannot be made in the major scale.