Mr. Gilman's Lecture on Music.

Following is an abstract of Mr. Gilman's fifth lecture in his course on the Psychology of Music, delivered at Sever 11, Wednesday, Feb. 11th, at 7.30 p. m.:

The feeling of Tonality consists in the expectation, in the mind of a listener to msuic, of the sound of a note of a certain pitch. This tension of expectancy requires to be resolved at all the points of rest in the music and at its close. Tonic structure consists in the return of a composition at these moments to a note whose image its previous course has awakened in the mind in this form of latent anticipation. There is evidence that the habitude of awaiting the sound of a certain note was a feature of the music of the early Christian church, and its extence may even be surmised in Greek melody. While much existing primitive music seems likewise to possess tonic structure, it is in many cases, as for instance in the elaberate instrumental compositions of the Iavese, impossible to assign to any note this position of ascendency on others.

The Plain song of the Roman Church was composed within the diatonic scale of alternate tones and hemitones which had been the invention of the Greek race. In the modes, as they were called, of this church music, different notes of the diatonic scale held the position of expectancy. The multiple melody of the Polyphonic style which was the first form assumed by concerted music in Europe, being composed in one or other of these modes gave to either one or other of the notes A C D E F or G (modes in B being unused) the place of tonic note. In the Harmonic style which at the Reformation succeeded Polyphony the modes of E F and G fell out of use. The mode of C became the modern major scale; and those in A and D united to form the modern minor. In this process of development the diatonic scale itself become modified for reasons which will be referred to in the lecture on Harmony.

In the next lecture we shall take as the subject of our inquiry the points of rest at which we have said a composition tend to return to the tonic note.