■22 THE NATURE OF MUSIC 



inherent principles and laws, are problems of psy- 

 chology the solution of which can alone be found in 

 what I have called the common reports of common 

 feeling verifiable by common perception. 



13. Elemental Form 



Form is vehicle or messenger, not message, but 

 bearer of message. We are here primarily concerned 

 with the messenger, not with the message of music, 

 since all that can be learned of the latter depends upon 

 what can be learned of the former. The two should 

 not be confounded. Elemental form or messenger 

 of music is united rhythm and tone. In this elemen- 

 tal form lies music's elemental truth and beauty, 

 the study of which involves neither vagueness nor 

 speculation and alone concerns us in these pages. 

 Vague, mysterious, inscrutable, yet none the less 

 real and important is the spiritual message of music, 

 a message of universal harmony and unity. How- 

 ever, the spiritual message of truth and beauty, the 

 emotions, poetic and religious sentiments and the 

 aesthetic and metaphysical speculations and theories 

 to which it gives rise, belong not to music alone, but 

 to all the arts and to all things. By the word feeling 

 in connection with music I mean simply and only 

 feeling of united rhythm and tone, which is music- 

 feeling per se and common to all of us. 



14. Elemental Relation 



A tone's relation in time is its rhythmic relation. 

 JA tone's relation in space is its harmonic relation. 

 Thus tone-relation is a composite of time-relation 



