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We have spoken of the synthetic quality of melody, and it is obvious that the larger the scope of music the more important this quality becomes. When a composer creates a sonata or symphony he must so dispose all his material—rhythms, melodies, and harmonies—as to give to the work perfect coherence. A work of art expressed in the element of time needs this synthesis more than one expressed in space. For although there is in music no “subject,” yet beauty is being unfolded and the need of a cumulative and coördinated expression of it is quite as great as it would be were the music “about” something. There are various ways of arranging musical material so as to attain this end. The chief principle of its synthesis is derived from the volatile nature of sound itself. It is this: that no one series of sounds formed into a melody can long survive the substitution of other series, unless there be given some restatement, or at least some reminder, of the first. The result of this is that in the early music there was an alternation of one phrase or one tune with another; and this in turn was followed by all sorts of experiments tending to bring about variety in unity. (These simple forms somewhat resemble what is known in poetry as the triolet.) The most common form in music is threefold. It is found in folk-songs, marches, minuets, nocturnes, and so forth, and—expanded to huge proportions—in symphonic movements. In folk-songs this form consists in repeating a first phrase after a second contrasting one. In minuets, nocturnes, romances, and the like, each part is a complete melody in itself. In a symphonic movement the first part—save in such notable exceptions as the first movement of the “Eroica” of Beethoven—contains all the thematic material, the second contains what is called the “development” of the material stated in the first, and the third part restates the first with such changes as shall give it new significance.