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has not heard the melodies at first hand. On this point therefore Professor Fillmore's conclusion may be taken as authoritative. Then again there is perhaps no serious harm—though there is serious danger—in describing these pitch relations as diatonic. But when Professor Fillmore goes on to argue that 'in all this process it would seem that a natural perception of the harmonic relations of tone is the shaping determining factor' he advance a statement which no one who has studied the history of harmonic development could accept without the strongest evidence. Such evidence is not supplied in Professor Fillmore's treatment of his examples. Any melodic curve which can be expressed in our notation can as a matter of fact be harmonical if we adopt modern devices & follow a succession of tonal centres. But this affords absolutely no ground for inferring that the forces which traced that curve ('along the line of least resistance') involved any reference however unconscious to harmonic relations, or any feeling however unconscious for those centres or tonal. So far, however, as Professor Fillmore is dealing in particular with the music of the North American Indian, so far the question is one of fair controversy. But on the second of his two points, the generalisation to primitive folk music at large, the question becomes one of fact: and it is with this that my notice was principally concerned. Professor Fillmore's paper maintains. (1) That the pentatonic scale is the primitive scale all the world over & that one diatonic scale is derived from it. I answer that so far as primitive scale can be classified they fall into two separate & distinct groups: the one pentatonic & the other heptatonic: the latter of which is not developed from the former
Transcription Notes:
The topic is John Comfort Fillmore's paper 'The Harmonic Structure of Indian Music.'