In writing about counterpoint I have dwelt on the rhythmic quality in melody, and have stated that a well-defined and varied rhythm is essential to contrapuntal treatment. I might almost have said that all good melody depends on rhythm. I do say--expecting many a silent protest from certain of my readers--that all the greatest melodies have a finely adjusted rhythm, and I apply this statement to all melody from the folk-song to the present time. I might enumerate beautiful melodies whose effect depends on other properties than rhythm,--as the second melody in Chopin’s Nocturne in G major, opus 37, number 2,--but I should add that, as melody, existing by itself, it is not fine and the reason is that its rhythm is monotonous.[10] And when I say it is not fine, I mean that it is not highly imaginative, and that it depends too much on its harmonization. And when, in turn, I say that, I mean, perforce, that it is too emotional. The difference between such a theme and one with a really fine rhythm is the difference between Poe’s “The Raven” and Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn.” In the former the mind is being continually lulled by the soft undulation of the rhythms and rhymes; in the latter the mind is being continually stimulated by their complexities. Yet Keats’s ode is as unified as Poe’s lyric. There are melodies for songs for the pianoforte, for the violin, and for the orchestra; there are sonata melodies and there are symphonic melodies just as there is a shape for a hatchet and a shape for a pair of scissors--which is only stating once again the old law that the style must suit the medium of expression, or that the shape must suit the uses to which a thing is put. Symphonic themes, in contradistinction to themes for songs or short pianoforte pieces, or dances, should be inconclusive; they are valuable for what they presage rather than for what they state, and they should indicate their own destiny. The four notes with which the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven begins are so,--in fact the whole theme is valueless by itself,--but they contain enough pent-up energy to vitalize not only the first movement, but the three which follow it. If it were possible for each reader of these words to hear--as an interlude to his reading--a series of great symphonic melodies, and if he would listen to them carefully, he would find almost every one to contain a finely adjusted rhythm.