ACCENT AND REGNANT HARMONY 109 



accent of melody has generated these first three 

 regnant harmonies in the order I, V, IV, and the reg- 

 nant harmony of melody arises of itself, asserts itself 

 and is unalterable in one voice. We note that 

 evolving melody in spinning the psychological web 

 of correlated threads of harmony began with one 

 thread, do, mi, sol of I ; melody next added the by tones 

 re and la on light rhythmic accents, re reporting V as 

 byharmony, la reporting IV as byharmony; melody 

 next introduced re and la on eflScient accents and so 

 produced the regnant V and IV. Thus far we have 

 traced the genesis of harmony, and the addition of 

 the regnant V and IV to I opens new channels of 

 development and so many changes and possibilities 

 in harmonic relation that it may be well to present 

 the more noticeable points one by one. 



7. The melodies in our last two examples are 

 pentatonic, that is, composed of the five tones do, 

 re, mi, sol, la, which we have abeady identified as 

 the pentatonic scale. Enough has been explained 

 to show the archaeologist that in his endeavor to 

 establish the true chronological order of primitive 

 melodies his conclusions are to be deduced not alone 

 from the number of individual tones or the scale of 

 a given melody, but from the inherent harmonic con- 

 tent and relations of that melody. The scale is not 

 the thing of essential importance, but the inherent 

 harmony is the important thing, the true guide and 

 test. Melodies composed of the components of reg- 

 nant I exclusively are earliest; melodies containing 

 the bytone re are later, those containing the bytone la 

 are still later; those containing the regnant V and IV 



