concordances constitute a sort of harmonic skeleton. But it is only a skeleton and its presence should be felt rather than perceived and surely not consciously and continually observed by the listener.

In Stravinsky's music, we are not only confronted by

counterpoint, but by counterpoint whose vertical concordances are new and which, being new, naturally draw our attention so forcibly to them that we lose sight of the lines which produced them and which ought to be our chief concern. One has but to glance at the measures from "The Sacred Rites of Spring", on the preceding page, to realize at once that they are essentially linear in character. In this respect, they are quite typical, for most of Stravinsky's music is pre-eminently melodic and it is interesting to note how his polyphony has passed from the relative simplicity of contrapuntal device which characterizes "Petrouchka" (1910-11),

only to return to the extraordinary concentration and economy of the "Piano Sonata" (1924).1

To appreciate such music, it is obvious that we must establish new habits of hearing, re-acquire a new sense of the old linear values which were the pride of the Renaissance and the glory of Bach.

But there is a greater difficulty in Stravinsky's music, namely, the element of rhythm, and here the trained musician and the layman are equally embarrassed. For several centuries now, we have lived under the tyranny of the barline, of a "strong" beat which reoccurs at regular intervals with insistent monotony. Consequently, we find ourselves helpless when we are forced, as we are so often in Stravinsky's music, to admit another type of rhythm, a rhythm in which the metre is constantly changing and where we are obliged to feel accents at intervals that are no longer regular. Stravinsky's music suggests the old Greek system of rhythm which (instead of taking, as we do, a

Notice, in the last example, the use of the old contrapuntal device known as "augmentation".

maximum unity, like the whole-note, and cutting it up into various small divisions, e.g. halves, quarters, eighths, etc.) took a minimum unity and multiplied it by any even or odd number, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 etc. This is precisely what Stravinsky does, for instance, in the last tableau of "The Sacred Rites of Spring":

Nor is the example an isolated one; we find the same procedure in a great many of his themes, from which I cite, at random, the following: 1

It is illuminating to compare the metre of these themes with the metre of the first few lines of a speech in Euripides' Hippolytus:

I.

(Continued on next page.)