[G:  f’ g’ c’’ d’’ f’’]

We know how singers slur from one tone to another.  It is a fault that caused the fathers of harmony to prohibit what are called hidden fifths in vocal music.  The jump from G to C in the above scale fragment would be slurred, for we must remember that the intoning of clear individual sounds was still a novelty to the savage.  Now the distance from G to C is too small to admit two tones such as the savage knew; consequently, for the sake of uniformity, he would try to put but one tone between, singing a mixture of A and B[flat], which sound in time fell definitely to A, leaving the mystery of the half-tone unsolved.  This addition of the third would thus fall in with the law of harmonics again.  First we have the keynote; next in importance comes the fifth; and last of all the third.  Thus again is the absence of the major seventh in our primitive scale perfectly logical; we may search in vain in our list of harmonics for the tone which forms that interval.

Now that we have traced the influence of passionate utterance on music, it still remains for us to consider the influence of something very different.  The dance played an important role in the shaping of the art of music; for to it music owes periodicity, form, the shaping of phrases into measures, even its rests.  And in this music is not the only debtor, for poetry owes its very “feet” to the dance.

Now the dance was, and is, an irresponsible thing.  It had no raison d’etre except purely physical enjoyment.  This rhythmic swaying of the body and light tapping of the feet have always had a mysterious attraction and fascination for mankind, and music and poetry were caught in its swaying measures early in the dawn of art.  When a man walks, he takes either long steps or short steps, he walks fast or slow.  But when he takes one long step and one short one, when one step is slow and the other fast, he no longer walks, he dances.  Thus we may say with reasonable certainty that triple time arose directly from the dance, for triple time is simply one strong, long beat followed by a short, light one, viz.:  [2 4] or [- ‘], the “trochee” in our poetry. [4 2] [’ -], Iambic.  The spondee [2 2] or [- -], which is the rhythm of prose, we already possessed; for when we walk it is in spondees, namely, in groups of two equal steps.  Now imagine dancing to spondees!  At first the steps will be equal, but the body rests on the first beat; little by little the second beat, being thus relegated to a position of relative unimportance, becomes shorter and shorter, and we rest longer on the first beat.  The result is the trochaic rhythm.  We can see that this result is inevitable, even if only the question of physical fatigue is considered.  And, to carry on our theory, this very question of fatigue still further develops rhythm.  The strong beat always coming on one foot, and the light beat on the other, would soon tire the dancer; therefore some way must be found to make the strong beat alternate from one foot to the other.  The simplest, and in fact almost the only way to do this, is to insert an additional short beat before the light beat.  This gives us [- ’ -] or [4. 8 4], the dactyl in poetry.