686 ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



primitive peoples as nothing more than a more fully instrumentated 

 unison. 



But this is fully contradicted by the last and most interesting case, 

 about which something has already been said in this article. Mr. 

 Thurnwald, on his last expedition, recorded on a phonograph several 

 songs of the Admiralty Islanders, concerning which, after careful 

 analysis, von Hornbostel remarked that all the dance songs from 

 Baluan are two-voiced, and move in seconds, and usually close with 

 this interval. Thus, aside from occasional unisons and quite iso- 

 lated cases of greater intervals, discords were exclusively used. 



Not entirely isolated is this use of seconds, in the double sense of 

 the word. It is also found in Istrian folk songs, and, further, although 

 coniuied indeed to a few examples, among the Makua of East Africa 

 and the Wolof of Senegambia. Franchinus Gafurius (Practica 

 Musicse, 1496) reported that in the Ambrosian funeral htanies in 

 Milan among other intervals are to be found also passages in seconds. 



These new observations must certainly be taken into consideration, 

 and they force us to restore again an alread}^ half-discarded hypoth- 

 esis for the explanation of the above-mentioned passages in fif tlis in 

 the tone art of primitive peoples. Theorists have been reminded by 

 them of the corresponding succession of fifths in the Organum of the 

 Flemish monk, Hucbald, of which we will speak again later. This 

 comparison, as well as that of von Hornbostel with Franchinus 

 Gafurius, is to be reflected upon. The question resolves itself into 

 this: Can we point to that which on the one hand primitive peoples 

 show in their parallels of fifths and seconds, and which, on the other 

 hand, the church shows in the Organum of Hucbald and in the Milan- 

 ese funeral litanies as a budding complexity of tones, or must we not 

 rather conceive of it as a deterioration, as the unmeaning curtailment 

 of a harmony of tones rich in sense, which is practiced outside the 

 circle of influence of primitive peoples, as of the church, and by 

 whom it was only borrowed and mist^sed ? 



I will not anticipate, but I must indeed bring out liere the fact that 

 in the case of the church only the second supposition, that of a 

 deterioration, is tenable. And it is not otherwise in the case of the 

 primitive peoples. Their passing relation to higher musical develop- 

 ment is shown just as plainly in their parallel of fifths and seconds 

 as also in the quality of their finer melodic instruments. But, just 

 as hopelessly as, with their dull music perception, the borrowed 

 instruments of finer quality were sacrificed in a gradual deterioration, 

 just so irretrievably were sacrificed the elements of harmony. They 

 may have taken over the elements in their pure and noble forms, but 

 these forms must necessarily have with them deteriorated into such 

 musical hybrids as their parallel fifths and seconds. 



We will now pass to the consideration of the intervals wliich are 

 characteristic of the music of really primitive peoples. Earlier it was 



