ORIGIN AND NATURE OF MINOR 223 



The meaning and use of these numbers we have 

 defined. Over the notes of a melody they are read 

 thus: large root, small root; large third, small third; 

 large fifth, small fifth; small seventh; large ninth, 

 small ninth. 



The self-reports of melodies in minor like those in 

 major confirm the truth of our theses, namely, that in 

 one voice each tone is felt, heard and expressed in 

 cadence or repose as root or third or fifth or seventh 

 or ninth ; that specific relations generate specific forms 

 of harmony, and that the two are linked as cause and 

 effect; that no form of harmony contains more than 

 five components. These nine percepts derived from 

 the major and minor forms of consonance and dis- 

 sonance, and which are the harmonic products of 

 homophonic melody far back in the ages, constitute 

 the connecting link between homophony on one hand 

 and polyphonic and chorded music on the other, and 

 therefore the harmonic basis of all music. However 

 simple the one or complex the other, one thing is 

 always true of and reported by all one-voice music 

 and all multi-voice music. It is this. Now the reg- 

 nant harmony is a consonance, now it is a dissonance, 

 one or the other. This was so in the yesterday, is so 

 in the to-day, and, we may assume, will be so in the 

 to-morrow of music's evolution. Homophonic mel- 

 ody produced the only two forms of consonances in 

 music and the two original major and minor forms of 

 dissonances. All the above nine harmonic percepts 

 are therefore distinctively homophonic products. As 

 we shall see, homophonic melody may have continued 

 to produce even other harmonic percepts of the dis- 



