The Music of Hindostan c17.113

c17.113

But if we cannot select any other than these two notes (the Third and the Fifth) for ‘central’ note, because to do so would upset our tonality, and if to confine it to these two notes and insist upon it in every tune would cramp our harmony without securing for our melody any compensating variety, yet, on the other hand, harmony can establish a ‘centre’ anywhere and everywhere in a tune at will, and some of the most exciting tunes are built entirely on this change of centre (not of tonic); as, for instance, Brünnhilde’s apostrophe to Grane at the end of the Götterdämmerung,