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Peabody Museum, Harvard University. Cambridge Mass.
November 19, 1900.
William Crooke, Esq. B.A.
Sec'y, Anthropological Institute, Gt. Britain and Ireland:
Dear Sir:
Will you kindly permit me to correct the misapprehension of the writer of a book notice published in a recent issue of your Journal. (vol. XXIC (New series, Vol. II) Nos. 3,4.)
The notice is of a pamphlet by the late Prof. John Comfort Fillmore on "The Harmonic Structure of Indian Music."
The subject treated in the pamphlet is one of much interest and value to the study of the history of the development of music, and as the late Prof. Fillmore was not only a thorough student of music and an authority on its theoretical and historical aspects, but during the last ten years of his life had brought his training to bear upon an entirely new field of musical research, making first hand investigations of the songs of the North American Indian, it is important that the results of his work should not be misunderstood.
The reviewer says: "Prof. Fillmore's thesis may be stated in the following propositions (see pp. 304, 305, 318): (a) That "Folk-melody is always and every where harmonic melody;" (b) That "the first harmonies to be displayed are those of the tonic and its chord;" (c) That the primitive scale, all the world over, was the pentatonic, and that from this, by natural growth, our diatonic scale was developed; (d) That "in every stage of its development the harmonic sense is the determining factor in the production of folk-melody, " the harmonies being those proper to our diatonic major and minor scales; (e) That "in short there is only one kind of music in the world." "