ACCENT AND REGNANT HARMONY 171 



subrhythm, present a great diversity of forms. More 

 complex rhythms of the classes III and IV appear 

 in profusion in the works of Berlioz, Liszt and 

 Wagner, of Chopin, Schumann and Brahms, of 

 Tschaikowsky, Strauss and others. Music's struc- 

 tural development has followed the natural law by 

 which forms proceed from simple to complex, from 

 regular to irregular, from homogeneity to hetero- 

 geneity. Music-rhythms are boundless as thought, 

 imagination and expression; they are however the 

 shapes of music-thought itself and are not to be 

 viewed and treated as moulds into which composers 

 shape music-thoughts as caterers shape cakes and ices. 

 Music-thought and imagination shape tone-rhythm 

 and necessarily obey and fulfil the law of being inher- 

 ent in tone-rhythm. Melody, the composite of the 

 two elements rhythm and harmony, the flower of 

 music and the essential form of the music-muse, has 

 undergone great structural changes and will undergo 

 other changes as the evolving music-muse may require. 

 Greatly as old and modern melodies differ in structure 

 yet they all obey and fulfil the shaping principle of 

 tone-rhythm and they are all based upon a common 

 structural unit, namely, the phrase. The phrase 

 appears everywhere, in bird-song, in folk-song, in 

 the melodies of all composers. Differences in struc- 

 ture lie first of all in the form and next in the treat- 

 ment of the phrase. The phrase as presented by 

 self -developed melody in a state of nature is one thing 

 while the phrase as developed in the creations of 

 music-art is quite another matter, although both are 

 links in a chain of continuous evolution. In fulfil- 



