RHYTHM AND TONE 49 



two which still prevails as the direct result of false 

 theories can no longer be continued. Separate books 

 on melody and separate books on harmony will be 

 valueless and will not be written in the future. Such 

 phrases as ** the intimate connection between melody 

 and harmony" no longer have any sense. Never hav- 

 ing been separable or separated, melody and harmony 

 do not require connecting. Another conception of 

 melody, namely, a conventional form constructed 

 by rule and composed of certain specified groups of 

 phrases in a variety of ** geometrical patterns," also 

 requires modification, a modification clearly and elo- 

 quently trumpeted in the works of Liszt, Berlioz and 

 Wagner, of Schumann, Brahms and MacDowell. 

 Formalism in our classics has played not only an 

 important but an essential part in music's evolution 

 and masterpieces. But here we are concerned with 

 melody. Than its form, nothing could be at once more 

 free and more law-abiding yet less subject to any given 

 or conceivable code of rules. Melody is as free as 

 thought and imagination, and its forms are as limit- 

 less as are the forms of nature; it is the essence of 

 music. Anything from a succession of two tones 

 onward is a melody, a music-idea, and out of such 

 ideas do genius and craft evolve masterpieces of music- 

 art. It is jejune folly to say that melody is exhausted, 

 that new forms cannot be created. 



The term harmony is universally used in the sense 

 of chord, and everywhere the study of harmony means 

 the study of chords. But the accepted meaning of 

 this term is completely changed by the discovery that 

 original harmony asserts itself in one voice without 



