INTRODUCING FIRST PRINCIPLES 15 



9. Cardinal Principle 



Harmony (equilibrium) as just defined is the 

 cardinal principle responsible for the genesis and 

 evolution of music and music-feeling, for all that is 

 law, order, form, relation, proportion and structure 

 in music. Thus all the principles and laws of 

 music, of its elementary forms and their original 

 relations and of the gradual expansion of its forms 

 and relations, are so many different manifestations 

 of the operation of this one all-shaping and all- 

 explaining principle. Under the impulse of princi- 

 ples and laws operating in feeling music sprang into 

 being and, passing through a series of natural and 

 interdependent stages, evolved from simple to more 

 and more complex forms, from a state of nature to 

 an art. Nature-music and art-music differ only in 

 degree, not in kind; the same fundamental prin- 

 ciples and laws underlie both. 



10. One Music 



Nature-music includes the songs of birds and all 

 those human melodies of the homophonic period in 

 the production of which man was guided wholly by 

 intuition and the impulses of the heart and simply 

 obeyed his innate feeling of the principles and laws 

 of tone-rhythm. This intuitional evolution of nature- 

 music reached its culmination in that lovely and per- 

 fect flower, the folksong. Nature had spent incal- 

 culable ages in the production of this perfect form 

 of melody, had thus fulfilled her mission and laid 

 the foundation for the art of pure music. From the 



