In studying authors of the past, an orientation to their vocabulary is crucial for understanding their thinking and ideas no matter what the native language may be, even when it matches that of the reader. Such an orientation is particularly important when a foreign language is in play because of potential changes of meaning and resultant misinterpretations owing to translation. These notes are intended to anticipate and clarify certain terms and ideas to smooth the way for readers entering into Halm's conceptual world.

Halm, along with Schenker and Kurth, is one of the chief early twentieth-century representatives of musical energetics. Dynamism and musical logic lie at the foundation of his analytical thinking generally and his notion of processual form in particular. Dynamism—the presence of an unfolding teleological process based on melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and metric design—is readily understandable as arising from intuitive, embodied responses to music but also from composers' strategic handling of intrinsic musical properties. In discussing Halm's analyses, I use the word “dynamism” and its offshoots, “dynamics” and “dynamic,” because they are implicit in his analytical narratives, even though he may express the idea with descriptive phrases rather than with the words “Dynamismus,” “Dynamik,” and “dynamisch.” In characterizing events in a processual form, Halm speaks of growth and attenuation cycles—foreshadowing Kurth's wave dynamics (“Wellendynamik”). Here, he commonly uses the word “Steigerung” and related verb forms, “steigern” and “ansteigen,” to describe phases of increasing tension.