Chapter 6

CHAPTER IV

THE MUSICAL SENTENCE

Before passing on to an explanation of the fundamental types
of musical structure, we must give some idea of the constituent
parts of thePeriodin music. Every art has its units of expres-
sion: the straight line, the curve, the arch, the poetic stanza
and the prose sentence. Just as poetry and prose are a series of
stanzas or sentences, so a musical composition is a succession of
definitely organized portions of thought and emotion, in terms
of rhythm and sound. In the heart of a composition, to be sure,
we often find a great freedom in the phraseology, comparable
to blank verse or to a rhapsodic kind of prose; but with few
exceptions, such as a Fantasie, every composition alwaysbegins
with one or two periods which, in regard to subdivision, balance
and directness of statement, are carefully planned and are com-
plete in themselves. Before it is possible to follow intelligently
the structure of a musical sentence we must gain a clear idea
of what is meant by the frequently used terms Tonality and
Modulation. Since the evolution and acceptance of our three
modern scales:[44] the major, the minor and the chromatic—
which gained their sanction chiefly through the investigations
and compositions of Bach and Rameau—every melody and the
accompanying harmony are said to be in a certain “tonality” (or
“key”) which takes its name from the first tone of the scale in
question,e.g., C, E-flat, F sharp,etc. Hence this first tone is