INTRODUCING FIRST PRINCIPLES 7 



music. Let any one intone a simple rhythm and he 

 will then and there unite the two elements and engen- 

 der music in its original form of homophony. What 

 is intoned rhythm ? Simply, tone-rhythm, the original 

 and indissoluble composite of music's elements and 

 principles, the embryo in which all that is music is 

 potential. What is rhythm ? Universal form of mo- 

 tion. What is tone.^ The specific form of sound 

 peculiar to music. What is this specific form ? Har- 

 mony of sound, in one word, harmony. In music, a 

 tone is and always has been a harmony. We shall see 

 that the harmonies of music are the harmonies of rela- 

 tions, that they assume one of two forms peculiar to 

 music, namely, the form of consonance or that of dis- 

 sonance. The original forms of consonance and dis- 

 sonance had their genesis in one voice, that is, they arose 

 in homophony. Thus when we intone rhythm, each 

 tone that we express is one or the other, a consonance 

 or a dissonance. This is true of every tone in the 

 homophony of birds and man. Subsequent analysis 

 will show that the genesis of music depended on the 

 genesis of its first harmony. The first harmony is 

 the perfect or major consonance which we call the 

 tonic. Let any one rhythmically reiterate one and 

 the same tone thus : M T M f * I ^ etc. He will 

 then and there engender and express the first har- 

 mony which far back in the ages emerged from silence 

 and announced the genesis of music. At bottom, 

 music per se is tone-rhythm. At bottom, our common 

 feeling of music is the feeling of music per se, that is, 

 the feeling of tone-rhythm. As we proceed let us 

 bear the following points in mind. In music, tone is 



