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Page 9
Let us go back to our dust heap. Words have been called
"decayed sentences," that is to say, every word was once a
small sentence complete in itself. This theory seems true
enough when we remember that mankind has three languages,
each complementing the other. For even now we say many words
in one, when that word is reinforced and completed by our
vocabulary of sounds and expression, which, in turn, has its
shadow, gesture. These shadow languages, which accompany
all our words, give to the latter vitality and raise them
from mere abstract symbols to living representatives of
the idea. Indeed, in certain languages, this auxiliary
expression even overshadows the spoken word. For instance,
in Chinese, the _theng_ or intonation of words is much more
important than the actual words themselves. Thus the third
intonation or _theng_, as it is called in the Pekin dialect,
is an upward inflection of the voice. A word with this upward
inflection would be unintelligible if given the fourth _theng_
or downward inflection. For instance, the word "kwai" with a
downward inflection means "honourable," but give it an upward
inflection "kwai" and it means "devil."
Just as a word was originally a sentence, so was a tone in
music something of a melody. One of the first things that
impresses us in studying examples of savage music is the
monotonic nature of the melodies; indeed some of the music
consists almost entirely of one oft-repeated sound. Those
who have heard this music say that the actual effect is not
one of a steady repetition of a single tone, but rather that
there seems to be an almost imperceptible rising and falling
of the voice. The primitive savage is unable to sing a tone
clearly and cleanly, the pitch invariably wavering. From
this almost imperceptible rising and falling of the voice
above and below one tone we are able to gauge more or less the
state of civilization of the nation to which the song belongs.
This phrase-tone corresponds, therefore, to the sentence-word,
and like it, gradually loses its meaning as a phrase and fades
into a tone which, in turn, will be used in new phrases as
mankind mounts the ladder of civilization.
At last then we have a single tone clearly uttered, and
recognizable as a musical tone. We can even make a plausible
guess as to what that tone was. Gardiner, in his "Music of
Nature," tells of experiments he made in order to determine the
normal pitch of the human voice. By going often to the gallery
of the London Stock Exchange he found that the roar of voices
invariably amalgamated into one long note, which was always
F. If we look over the various examples of monotonic savage
music quoted by Fletcher, Fillmore, Baker, Wilkes, Catlin,
and others, we find additional corroboration of the statement;
song after song, it will be noticed, is composed entirely of
F, G, and even F alone or G alone. Such songs are generally
ancient ones, and have been crystallized and held intact by
religion, in much the same way that the chanting heard in the
Roman Catholic service has been preserved.
Let us assume then that the normal tone of the human voice
in speaking is F or G [F: f g] for men, and for women the
octave higher. This tone does very well for our everyday life;
perhaps a pleasant impression may raise it somewhat, _ennui_ may
depress it slightly; but the average tone of our "commonplace"
talk, if I may call it that, will be about F. But let some
sudden emotion come, and we find monotone speech abandoned for
impassioned speech, as it has been called. Instead of keeping
the voice evenly on one or two notes, we speak much higher or
lower than our normal pitch.
And these sounds may be measured and classified to a certain
extent according to the emotions which cause them, although
it must be borne in mind that we are looking at the matter
collectively; that is to say, without reckoning on individual
idiosyncrasies of expression in speech. Of course we know that
joy is apt to make us raise the voice and sadness to lower
it. For instance, we have all heard gruesome stories, and
have noticed how naturally the voice sinks in the telling. A
ghost story told with an upward inflection might easily
become humourous, so instinctively do we associate the upward
inflection with a non-pessimistic trend of thought. Under stress
of emotion we emphasize words strongly, and with this emphasis
we almost invariably raise the voice a fifth or depress it a
fifth; with yet stronger emotion the interval of change will
be an octave. We raise the voice almost to a scream or drop it
to a whisper. Strangely enough these primitive notes of music
correspond to the first two of those harmonics which are part
and parcel of every musical sound. Generally speaking, we may
say that the ascending inflection carries something of joy
or hope with it, while the downward inflection has something
of the sinister and fearful. To be sure, we raise our voices
in anger and in pain, but even then the inflection is almost
always downward; in other words, we pitch our voices higher and
let them fall slightly. For instance, if we heard a person cry
"Ah/" we might doubt its being a cry of pain, but if it were
"Ah\" we should at once know that it was caused by pain,
either mental or physical.
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