ACCENT AND REGNANT HARMONY 165 



less music is inconceivable and never existed. That 

 it never did exist, and that tone and rhythm have 

 never been separated in music, has been demon- 

 strated and proved in precedent chapters of this 

 book by the truth that the original form and rela- 

 tion of tone, namely, consonance and dissonance in 

 one voice, had their genesis in the stable and unstable 

 equilibrating periods of rhythm. This indissoluble 

 union of rhythm and tone took place not by any 

 voluntary effort of man, but under the impulse of 

 inherent laws. The high degree of rhythmic com- 

 plexity attained in primitive music is a familiar fact 

 of history. The rhythm of primitive chants and songs 

 unaccompanied by instruments was emphasized by 

 words or gestures or both together, and when accom- 

 panied by instruments the rhythmic emphasis was 

 further intensified by drum, pipe and string. In all 

 this musical exercise, the results of which must have 

 been very crude in its early stages, common feeling of 

 rhythmic sound was its common guide, while pleasure 

 in and love of rhythmic sound were its common 

 stimuli. Moreover, this exercise in its early stages 

 was marked by an instinctive and unconscious 

 obedience to inherent and unwritten laws, not so 

 difficult to be sure as conscious obedience to written 

 laws. The effect of this pleasure-gratifying and un- 

 conscious law-abiding exercise of the music-sense was 

 the slow dawning and developing of that keen and 

 accurate perception which is the source of all our 

 knowledge of music, the evolution of perception 

 being the road upon which all knowledge has been 

 gained. This pleasure-gratifying and law-abiding 



