10 THE NATURE OF MUSIC 



autobiography and aesthetics. In a study like this such 

 an analysis of personal experience would be out of 

 place and would lead us into the cloudland of vague- 

 ness, mysticism and speculation. Here let us seek the 

 common truth in our common experience of music. 

 We shall, however, consider certain fundamental emo- 

 tions, first because they are common to all of us and 

 next because they are inseparable concomitants of 

 tone-rhythmic feeling. The spirit and the matter of 

 music are inseparably united as idea and form, as 

 message and messenger of truth and beauty. The 

 tone-rhythmic messenger is the bearer of the spiritual 

 message. Our common knowledge of that message 

 is confined to what can be learned from the messenger. 



5. Cause of Union, Shaping Principle 



Both rhythm and tone Sive forms of balanced motion. 

 A shaping principle common to both is the cause of 

 their affinity and union. This shaping principle is 

 equilibrium. Equilibrium is harmony. Harmony is 

 equilibrium. Tone - rhythmic equilibrium is tone- 

 rhythmic harmony. Tone-rhythmic harmony is tone- 

 rhythmic equilibrium. The feeling of tone-rhythmic 

 equilibrium or harmony is our common feeling of 

 music. The feeling of tone-rhythm and its shaping 

 principle, while it explains why every initial effort to 

 intone rhythm is an effort to shape and express the 

 perfect harmonic form of tone essential to the genesis 

 of music, it does not explain why that effort is made, 

 that is, it does not explain the cause which gave 

 and gives the impulse to that effort. What is this 

 impelling cause.? It is a spiritual cause, a common 



