THE NATURE OF MUSIC 



mental dat^ of music and music-feeling. In the field 

 of homophony all investigators therefore stand on 

 firm and common ground ; here we set out with a com- 

 mon point of view and may join in a common purpose, 

 namely, the translation of self-reports into the simple 

 words of common thought. By nature we are all 

 homophonists ; the music-consciousness has its awak- 

 ening in homophony; we sing and whistle homo- 

 phony; each of us has the power within himself to 

 produce and reproduce in feeling and thought any 

 homophonic melody ; each of us may observe, study and 

 analyze homophony at his leisure in himself and in 

 others and may learn to translate its self-reports into 

 words; each of us may verify these reports in himself 

 and others; in short, the study of the psychology of 

 homophony lies within the reach of every musical lay- 

 man. The conditions for the evolutional study of 

 homophony are favorable for another reason. The 

 awakening of music-consciousness and the evolutional 

 sequence of tones, relations and harmonies in the de- 

 velopment of each individual musical mind corre- 

 spond with the genesis and early developmental stages 

 of music itself. Supposing then that the material re- 

 presenting the early stages of homophony did not exist, 

 we could reproduce that material by tracing the psy- 

 chological development of the musical mind from tone 

 to tone, relation to relation, harmony to harmony. 



3. Origin of Music 



The origin of music is due to the union of two ele- 

 ments. The two elements are rhythm and tone. 

 Rhythm was intoned, and forever after there was 



