spheric vibrations affecting the ear.
Musical sound, or tone, is produced by regular vibrations, and differs
from mere noise whose vibrations are irregular and confused. The pitch
of a musical tone rises in proportion with the rapidity of the
vibrations that produce it. Tones may be perceived by the human ear
ranging from about sixteen vibrations in a second to nearly forty
thousand, more than eleven octaves. Only about seven octaves are used in
music. The science of acoustics is full of interesting facts of this
kind, and is of profound value to any one who would gain an insight into
the structure of music. It is unfortunately much neglected.

The prime elements of music are Melody, Harmony and Rhythm. They are
perhaps as little realized as its raw materials. Melody is a well
ordered succession of musical sounds, heard one at a time, and selected
from a defined, accepted series, not taken at random from a
heterogeneous store. Harmony is a combination of well-ordered sounds
heard simultaneously, and with suitable concord, or agreement. Rhythm is
measured movement, or the periodical recurrence of accent; and signifies
symmetry and proportion.

Melody, unexhausted and inexhaustible, is the initial force, or, as Dr.
Marx has called it, the life-blood of music. Within itself it bears the
germ of harmony and rhythm. A succession of tones without harmonious and
rhythmic regulation would be felt to lack something. Melody has been
designated the golden thread running through the maze of tone, by which
the ear is guided and the heart reached. Helmholtz styled it the
essential basis of music. In a special sense, it is artistically
constructed song. The creation of an expressive melody is a sure mark of
genius.

Harmony arranges musical sounds with reference to their union, and is
regulated by artistic and aesthetic rules and requirements. It has
endless modes of transforming, inverting and intensifying its materials,
thus continually affording new means of development. All the intervals
and chords used in music had to be discovered, one by one. It often took
more than a century to bring into a general use a chord effect
introduced by some adventuresome spirit. Our scale intervals are the
slowly gained triumphs of the human mind. Modern music did not emerge
from the darkness of the past until harmony, as we know it, came into
active being.

Both melody and harmony are controlled by rhythm. It is the master force
of the musica