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I am extremely sorry if anything that I have said has given the appearance of misapprehension. If this is so it must be due to some clumsiness of phrase, for I certainly understand Professor Fillmore's paper in the same sense as I understand Miss Fletcher's analysis of it. I have no wish to [[under?]] the great interest of the melodies which Professor Fillmore has [[?]], or the great debt which is owed to him by Musical Ethnology. But I still venture to maintain that he has not made out his case in his interpretation of the facts, & that he has used them as the basis of generalizations which are indisputably incorrect.

His paper contains two main positions. The first is a special description of the North American Indian music, the second is a generalization from this & other examples (Japan, Australia, the Pacific Islands &c) to primitive folk music at large. The first may be summarised as follows:

(a) That North American Indian folk-music is characterised by pitch-relations which are 'as plainly diatonic & harmonic as are ours.'

(b) That in its development 'a natural perception of the harmonic relation of tone is the shaping determining factor.'

(c) That these melodies fall within the limit of a pentatonic scale, & moreover of such a pentatontic scale as contains those intervals which we call a major third & a perfect fifth or, in Professor Fillmore's words 'those of the tonic & its chord.'

With the third of these propositions I am cordially ready to agree: indeed I never thought of calling it in question. That North American Indian folk-music is pentatonic in character is intrinsically probable: & [[?]], the matter is partly one of intonation & nobody has any right to an opinion on it who

Transcription Notes:
The topic is John Comfort Fillmore's paper 'The Harmonic Structure of Indian Music.'