constructed song. The creation of an expressive melody is a sure mark of
genius.

Harmony arranges musical sounds with reference to their union, and is
regulated by artistic and æsthetic rules and requirements. It has
endless modes of transforming, inverting and intensifying its materials,
thus continually affording new means of development. All the intervals
and chords used in music had to be discovered, one by one. It often took
more than a century to bring into a general use a chord effect
introduced by some adventuresome spirit. Our scale intervals are the
slowly gained triumphs of the human mind. Modern music did not emerge
from the darkness of the past until harmony, as we know it, came into
active being.

Both melody and harmony are controlled by rhythm. It is the master force
of the musical organism. Before man was the ebb and flow of nature had
its rhythm. On this elementary rhythm, the one model music finds in
nature, the inventive mind of man has builded the wonderfully impressive
art rhythms existing in the masterpieces of music.

Melodies are made up of smaller fragments, known as motives, phrases
and periods, or sentences, all of which are judiciously repeated and
varied, and derive their individuality from the characteristics of their
intervals and rhythms.

A motive is the text of a musical composition, the theme of its
discourse. The most simple motive, with proper handling, may grow into a
majestic structure. In Beethoven's Fifth Symphony three G flats in
eighth notes, followed by an E flat in a half note, form a text, as of
Fate knocking at the door, which, when developed, leads to tremendous