a domain in which words cannot lose their original meanings
entirely, as in speech. For in spite of the strange twistings
of ultra modern music, a simple melody still embodies the
same pathos for us that it did for our grandparents. To be
sure the poignancy of harmony in our day has been heightened
to an incredible degree. We deal in gorgeous colouring and
mighty sound masses which would have been amazing in the last
century; but still through it all we find in Händel, Beethoven,
and Schubert, up to Wagner, the same great truths of declamation
that I have tried to explain to you.

Herbert Spencer, in an essay on "The Origin and Functions of
Music," speaks of speech as the parent of music. He says,
"utterance, which when languaged is speech, gave rise to
music." The definition is incomplete, for "languaged utterance,"
as he calls it, which is speech, is a duality, is either an
expression of emotion or a mere symbol of emotion, and as such
has gradually sunk to the level of the commonplace. As Rowbotham
points out, impassioned speech is the parent of music, while
unimpassioned speech has remained the vehicle for the smaller
emotions of life, the everyday expression of everyday emotions.

In studying the music of different nations we are confronted
by one fact which seems to be part and parcel of almost every
nationality, namely, the constant recurrence of what is called
the five tone (pentatonic) scale. We find it in primitive
forms of music all the world over, in China and in Scotland,
among the Burmese, and again in North America. Why it is so
seems almost doomed to remain a mystery. The following theory
may nevertheless be advanced as being at least plausible: