basis of music is, except upon a keyed
instrument tuned to the compromise of equal temperament,
unnatural and impossible. No player upon a stringed instrument
can play the scale of whole-tones and arrive at an octave
which is in tune with the starting note, unless he
deliberately changes one of the notes on the road and alters
it while playing it. The obvious result of the application of
the whole-tone scale to an orchestra or a string quartet would
be to force them to adopt the equal temperament of the
pianoforte, and play every interval except the octave out of
tune. When this modification had taken hold all music in the
pure scale would be distorted and destroyed, unless string
players were to face the practically impossible drudgery of
studying both the equal temperament and the pure scale from
the start, and were able to tackle either form at a moment's
notice. A thorough knowledge of the natural genesis of the
scale of western nations will be the best antidote to fads
founded upon ignorance of it. It is a curious commentary upon
this question that Wagner, in the opening of the third act of
_Tristan_ (bars 6 to 10), experimented with the whole-tone
scale and drew his pen through it, as was to be expected from
a composer whose every work proves the writer to have had the
pure scale inbred in him."

[Footnote 21: Stanford--Musical Composition (1911) p. 17.]

There may be some difference of opinion among acousticians as to whether
Mr. Stanford is correct in his scientific assumptions regarding the
difference between "tempered" and "pure" scales,[22] but even so, there
is a far more potent reason why the whole-step scale will probably never
become popular as the major and minor scales now are, viz., the fact
that it offers no possibility of _inculcating tonality feeling_, which
has always been the basis of even the simplest primitive music. Tonality
scales give rise to a feeling of alternate periods of contraction and
relaxation--an active tone (or chord) followed by a passive one, but no
such effect is possible in the whole-step scale, and it seems suitable
therefore only for that class of music whose outlines are _purposely
intended to be_ vague and indefinite--the impressionistic style of music
writing.

[Footnote 22: Recent tests in Germany seem to prove conclusively that
the _tempered_ scale is the sca