700 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



consisted of rhythm, derived all its essential qualities, not from the 

 conflict between shaman and layman, but that between lord and 

 slave, between command and labor. 



The history of the refrain shows us how this rude rhythm disappears 

 more and more, and how music as melody constantly gains in extent 

 and significance. The oldest refrain divides the work songs measure 

 by measure with the precision of clockwork. Their rhythm is as 

 monotonous as that of the drum, and they themselves are so com- 

 pletely mere sound, and not melody, that Bucher designates them 

 as mere animal cries — the groans of labor become, as it were, tone. 

 In the strange conflict between the little interspersed particles of 

 melody and the recurrmg dull rhythm of the refrain ethnologists are 

 able to read many things. The free style of the leader is an expres- 

 sion of the dominating and compellmg caste, which is more mature 

 as regards development. The rigid regularity of the refram, how- 

 ever, forced upon the chorus, is the whip-rhythm of Livingstone. It 

 is that hypnotic music wliich was taken from the shaman by the secular 

 power, and by this the secular power held the masses in bondage. 



We have seen how the beginnings of music as an art lay entliralled, 

 and have sought the outlet which led from tliis condition of cap- 

 tivity to greater freedom. No savage people, so long as they remam 

 miinfluenced, can rise above a certain grade of horizontal, two- 

 dimension music. It is Europe, and the dominating races of the 

 north of Europe, that have rendered this decisive service, Tliis 

 possibility arose from the pm-er, more intellectual atmosphere, which 

 developed the gloomy death cult of earlier times into the freedom of 

 the sun cult. From the cave cult of the south and of the less 

 developed races has come the liigh cult of the north. The thought 

 and feeling of the northern races was joined to a freer and broader 

 cosmogony, and to this greater freedom we owe the beghmhigs of 

 our European music. 



