Febeuaey 9, 1900.] 



scieng:s. 



207 



lished commendations of such music teach- 

 ers and writers as W. S. B. Matthews and 

 C. B. Cad J', of Chicago, may justify one in 

 feeling that it is more than the work of a 

 dreamer or idle rhapsodist, — that what he 

 has observed of the operations of his own 

 mind in hearing music, can be observed in 

 other minds also. 



The introduction is a vigorous plea for 

 ' a higher education in music,' with a severe 

 indictment of ordinary methods for their 

 ignoring sound pedagogical principles. 

 "The how is studied before the what :" the 

 order should be reversed. " The musician 

 is represented in the what, the instrumen- 

 talist in the hoiu : the two must be com- 

 bined in one individual. There is a far 

 more important instrument than the voice, 

 piano, organ or violin, whose technique 

 must be developed to a high degree of 

 automatism. This instrument is the mind" 

 (p. 25). "The ready-made tone of the 

 piano is a serious though not an insur- 

 mountable obstacle to the development of 

 the mental instrument of the pianist. By 

 the employment of logical methods, the 

 piano is best suited as an auxiliary to a 

 higher musical education" (p. 26). "I 

 have already stated that the mental autom- 

 atism requisite to a discriminating musi- 

 cian is very great. When an able musician 

 listens to or reads a piece of music, he hears 

 and comprehends all its melodic, rhythmic 

 and harmonic incidents as fast as they take 

 place in a given tempo. This means that he 

 listens to music just as he would listen to 

 any familiar tongue. * * * To stop to 

 think is the sure sign that we do not under- 

 stand" (p. 29). " I have demonstrated in 

 my capacity as teacher that children may 

 be intelligent musicians from the start" 

 (p. 32). " But such results * * * are made 

 practicable only by the simplification of the 

 Tonal system itself * * * The child re- 

 quires a simpler foundation than the scale 

 to begin on. The scale-half or tetrachord 



and the septonate supply this desideratum" 

 (p. 33). 



Then follows his novel way of looking at 

 tones and their relations. The first chapter 

 is mainly devoted to definitions ; the tones 

 of any series are felt to be either ' repose- 

 tones ' ('harmonics ') or ' progression-tones ' 

 (' by-tones '), the latter lying a step or half- 

 step under or over the former (p. 40). A 

 tone is nothing definite until it is relationed 

 in a key, that is, thought and heard in rela- 

 tion with a tonic, which is the point of ab- 

 solute repose (p. 41). The Tonic is a cen- 

 tral tone or klang, and the remaining 

 key-klangs are equally distributed over and 

 under it (p. 42). The seven tones of the 

 scale arranged with the tonic in the center 

 form a septonate, composed of two tetra- 

 chords or scale-halves, an over and an under 

 one : thus, 



G^a—buC^d—euF. 



A key-group contains these seven princi- 

 pals, also five up-mediates (the sharp- 

 notes) and five down-mediates (the flat- 

 notes), or seventeen in all, including five 

 more sharps and five more flats; a full tone- 

 stratum consists of twenty- seven tones ; so 

 there are only twenty- seven tonic centers, 

 and only twenty-seven keys in music. 

 Every key has two modes, a brighter major, 

 and a dark or minor mode (p. 51). 



In the second chapter it is suggested that 

 " whether we will or not we cannot think a 

 series of tones, even in one voice, except in 

 connection with some harmony," though 

 this is not necessarily conscious (p. 54), 

 and then the attempt is made to prove that 

 the accent determines whether a tone is felt 

 to be a harmonic or a by-tone, and so ac- 

 cent determines harmony (p. 71). 



Chapters three and four continue the 

 analysis of tone relations and intervals ; 

 there is space only for two points : in a 

 rising scale-half as G to C, the tones may 

 be called Dominant, Passing By-tone, Lead- 



