times for each of her offspring as each is born higher and higher, till they are able to say, "We are seven."1
And as the notes of this family are born of one fundamental note, so the chords into which they are grouped are like so many younger families. The fundamental note is the common root of three chords, each of which is a little family of notes having its own generating root; although the top of the first is the root of the second, and the top of the second, the root of the third. This also is illustrated in the Genesis of the Scale.2
Of these three chords, which constitute a scale or key, Nature next proceeds to generate, in a similar way, a family of scales or keys, and these in two lines, the Major and the Minor. The twice twelve-fold family of keys is brought forth in much the same way as were the chords which constitute them, and as were the notes which constitute the chords. There is a beautiful growth-like continuity in the production of all.
The science of music is the knowledge of how Nature proceeds in this beautiful region of creation in which so much of pleasure for mankind is found, and meet expression for the praise of God. "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast;" how much more to gratify the civilized and educated ear; to stir with inspiration the prophetic gift; to comfort the troubled heart; and to draw forth the best feelings of our nature.
While vibrations are the sound-stuff, the protoplasm of notes, semitones are, as it were, the atoms of which music is composed. We may think and talk of quarter tones and commas, apotomes and skismas, and dots, but these have no place as intervals for the musical ear, nor any part in the compositions which so charm us of the great masters. It will, therefore, be very interesting to all practical musicians to find in this work of D. C. Ramsay's the hand of a true master in the science, who was also a true artist in music, as his compositions and arrangements have been acknowledged to show; and who saw no need to divorce the Art from the intellectual view of its Scientific basis. And those who can read between the lines the unwritten spiritual meanings which underlie
1 See the top of the Genesis, from C to C; or from F to F, Plate II.
2 See Plate X. - The Music Plant.