MUSIC OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES — PASTOR. 683 



rhythni — the art of tones or that of tone. The fact alone that in the 

 art of tone the principle of the horizontal, or two-dimension, music 

 is much more forcefully conveyed than in the art of tones, is sufficient 

 to lead us to regard the hypnotic rhythm as older than the stimulat- 

 ing rhythm, and here we encounter the very important consideration 

 that magic and witchcraft are inextricably bound up with all hyp- 

 notic art. 



The belief in witchcraft is the oldest known philosophy of the 

 world. ^Yh.ili significance this belief possesses in connection with 

 the primitive history of music, and indeed with all art, we shall 

 consider at the close of the article. Here we are chiefly concerned 

 \vith the fact, on which stress must be laid, that in the music of 

 prmiitive peoples traces of an epoch of belief in magic are still 

 everywhere recognized, most conspicuously in weather magic, to be 

 mentioned later, and almost as strongly in some of the practices of 

 the medicine men. We must consider a statement like that of 

 Lenz on the effect of tomtoms, if we would understand the full 

 significance of music in the early history of medical science. Musical 

 healing is widely practiced among savages, and there is manifold 

 evidence that it is also occasionally effective. We should not, 

 however, comj^are the effect this music has on the colored races 

 with that which it has on us. Nussbaum was not so far wrong 

 when he warned us that in connection with certain old remedies 

 that appear to us to-day entirely wrong, we must first of all inquire 

 into the character of the people that occasioned such prescriptions. 



The spirit of the most primitive music of savages, here under 

 consideration, when we separate the older from the oldest, carries us 

 back to those early epochs in the history of civilization which were 

 dominated by belief in magic, and our fu-st conclusion may be stated 

 as follows: In the entirely unmelodic, purely elementary music, 

 whose rhythm is articulate, and either not at all crude (as with the 

 wind instruments) or entirely so (as that of drums), we recognize 

 the first musical attempts of mankind. In this music, which in the 

 main only confuses, tlu^ principle of the horizontal or two-dimension 

 music is unquestionably su])ported. 



One of the most fundamental characters of such an art, is that it 

 does not develop melodic histruments nearly so abundantly as 

 percussion instruments. Any vaudeville theater can teach us how 

 clever musicians can make purely noise instruments melodic also. 

 We know the performance in which differently toned wine glasses are 

 manipulated like a keyboard, the performance on a bell by musical 

 clowns, with merely a penholder to suggest melodies by short or long 

 strokes. Tendencies to such arts we find here and there among 

 primitive peoples, but they remain merely tendencies. Schauenburg 

 relates how a negro of Kujar made his signal drum almost speak as 



