A Famous Theory

This, then, was the situation until gestalt theory posed the radical question: is it at
all the case that when I hear a melody I really hear the sum of individual notes, at
least as a primary basis? Is it not perhaps the other way around, that what 1 have
taken up in me, the manner in which I perceive the single tone, is that of a part
determined by the structure of the whole? in other words, what the melody gives
me is not built up (by some added aids) secondarily out of the sum of the individual
parts, but what ta kes place in the individual part radically depends upon the whole.
Is it not clear that the flesh and blood of a certain note in a melody depends upon
the part it plays in that melody? that B as a leading tone of C is quite different from
B as the tonic? that the role and function of data in a whole belong to the life and
essence of the data?