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Page 50
Thus, in this barbaric music we invariably find three
principles: 1, rhythm; 2, the howl or descending scale of
undefined intervals; and 3, the emotional raising of the
voice. The rhythm, which characterizes the most primitive
form of song or chant, consists of the incessant repetition
of a very small group of rhythmic sounds. This incessant
recurrence of one idea is characteristic of primitive, weak,
or insane natures. The second principle, which invariably
includes the first (pointing to a slightly more advanced state
of development), is met with in many folk songs of even modern
times. The third principle is one which indicates the transition
stage from primitive or barbaric music to folk music.
To the primitive savage mind, the smallest rhythmic phrase is a
wonderful invention, therefore it is repeated incessantly. Add
to that a certain joy in mere sound, and we have the howl,
which certainly follows the sequence of nature, for a thunder
clap, or the phenomenon of echo, is its prototype, being a loud
explosion followed by a more or less regular sequence of minor
reverberations. When the accent of passion is added to these
two principles--will and nature--we have laid the aesthetic
foundation for all that we call music.[12] The example of a
loud tone with gradually ascending inflections has only been
found in the most perverted types of humanity; for instance, an
English writer quaintly alludes to the songs of the Polynesian
cannibals as consisting of "gruesomely suggestive passages
of rising quarter-tones sung gloatingly before their living
captives who are soon to be devoured."
Now traces of these three elements are to be found in every
folk song known, and we may even trace their influence in
modern music, the lowest or most primitive being, as I have
said, the "one-note" type, the next what I have called the
"howl" type, the third the highest or "emotional" type.
Specimens of the first type, chants such as these [Figure 08],
are to be heard in every part of the globe, the rhythmic figure
being necessarily short and repeated incessantly.
The next step was a tremendous advance, and we find its
influence permeating all music. The most primitive specimens of
this type we find among the Jute Indians [Figure 09], a mixture
of one and two. The same is to be found in Australia, slightly
modified: [Figure 10] The Caribs have the same song
[G: g'' \ Chromatic g']. We find it again in Hungary, although
in a still more modified form, thus:
[Figure 11]
And last of all we meet with it in its primitive state in the
folk song used by Bizet in "Carmen." We can even see traces of
it in the quasi-folk song of the present century:
[Figure 12] etc.
The third element of folk song shows again a great advance,
for instead of the mere howl of pleasure or pain, we have a
more or less exactly graded expression of feeling. In speaking
of impassioned speech I explained the relative values of the
inflections of the voice, how the upward skip of the fourth,
fifth, and octave indicates the intensity of the emotion
causing the cry. When this element is brought into music, it
gives a vitality not before possessed, for by this it becomes
speech. When in such music this inflection rhymes with the
words, that is to say, when the speech finds its emotional
reflection in the music, we have reached the highest development
of folk song. In its best state, this is immeasurably superior
to much of our "made" music, only too often false in rhythm,
feeling, and declamation.
Among the different nations, these three characteristics often
become obscured by national idiosyncracies. Much of the Chinese
music, the "Hymn to the Ancestors," for instance, seemingly
covers a number of notes, whereas, in fact, it belongs to the
one-note type. We find that their melodies almost invariably
return to the same note, the intervening sounds being more
or less merely variations above and below the pitch of the
principal sound. For example:
[Figure 13]
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