MUSIC AND SCIENCE. 
173 
to him, “You write such eccentric stuff it is hardly possible to 
sing it.” But in all generations, like a poem or a drama, every 
musical work of art must have movement without complete 
pause till the end is reached ; and certainly in the past the 
best music has had “unity in variety.” Sometimes this has 
been bluntly forced on one’s attention, as by the old-fashioned 
title “Theme with Variations;” generally it is more subtle; 
the school girl had a true sense of this principle who said of 
“In Memoriam,” “It’s wonderful in how many ways Tenny- 
son says the same thing.” Variety is lacking in trumpet 
notes and generally in primitive songs and tunes, and how- 
ever enjoyable they are at first the listener soon tires of them, 
as one does of repetitions fit only for children. At the other 
extreme, one may find it difficult to see the unity, to keep the 
connection, in a movement of a sonata, as in a passage of 
Henry James or of Robert Browning; obviously the intelligi- 
bility of these depends always on the training and often on 
the mood of the reader ; and obviously, too, a pianist by proper 
phrasing, or an elocutionist by the voice, can make clearer an 
involved passage ; it is at this point that automatic piano-play- 
ers are most likely to be found wanting. 
The paramount unifying principle is named Tonality. 
This means that out of the ten thousand tones of different 
pitch that our ears can discriminate, even out of the twelve 
tones in an octave on the piano there shall be used in any 
short passage only a few, which stand in definite, easily recog- 
nized relations to one or all of the others, and when other 
tones are wanted they shall be introduced in a recognized way ; 
too much freedom would lead to chaos; too little, to monot- 
ony. The names of some of these relationships are: Tonic, 
Tonic Chord, Dominant, Mediant, Leading Tone, Third, 
Major, Minor, etc. If there were time, many curious quota- 
tions might be made regarding some of these terms; many 
men, even Goethe, appear to have been almost bewitched by 
the word “Minor.” It may contribute to accurate thinking 
to notice that the clearest, most satisfying relation is gener- 
ally recognized to be that of the major tonic chord in its first 
position, as C, E, G; and these sounds are heard as a broken 
