am continuing to type out scrapes of college notes so i can chuck the disintegrating pieces of paper i've scribbled on:

scottish and irish folk songs, like hungarian folk songs, are constructed on the pentatonic scale. you need only sing "amazing grace" to hear this for yourself – "amazing grace" being composed in imitation of a scottish folk song. dvorak spent a long time searching for "the essence" of american music and heard the pentatonic melodies in negro spirituals. he must have thought that the pentatonic scale was an essential feature of folk music universally, and who's to blame him? it's just the same with hungarian folk music, and in trying to find something essentially american he mistook his own folk heritage for the new music, and if the new world symphony sounds chinese (it does to me, always did.) it isn't in the least surprising for just the same reason.

i wonder if any of this is true or if i was letting my mind wander when i wrote this down. when i get to my dissertation years i shall go sit in on large undergrad music history lectures.