PREHISTORIC ART. 515 



migbt have had a different pitch and have given different notes, but 

 there is nothino- to show that they were intentional!}^ so. It is much 

 more probabk' that they were made to produce tones of strength, clear- 

 ness, sweetness, etc. When prehistoric man understood and attempted 

 to make melody he had advanced one grade in culture. 



Frequent attempts have been made to give written representations 

 of the rude music heard among savage or barbarous nations, but these 

 should always be received with distrust, not so much from want of con- 

 fidence in the observers as from want of accurate representation of 

 sounds heard. The usual practice is to try to write the sounds accord- 

 ing to our modern musical notation, but it must be borne in mind that 

 this notation only corresponds with our own peculiar scale, which 

 has no signs to represent other sounds. Hence, when we see the 

 chants of a savage tribe expressed in our notation we should not take it 

 for granted that they actually used the intervals of our scale. We can 

 only assume that the observer wrote something as nearly like what he 

 heard as he could find means of expression. 



In the music of savage tribes they used a few sounds, differing in 

 pitch, but in most cases there is no sufficient reason to believe that 

 these sounds correspond, as regards their gradations, with any regu- 

 lar musical system. To get traces of such a system we must look to 

 Xieoples more civilized, and we soon find not only a considerable advance 

 in the knowledge of the sounds used, but, what is of more importance, 

 a more accurate definition of them. This definition is aided when, as 

 often happens, they have introduced musical instruments with fixed 

 tones. 



There has been much speculation among iihilosophers and scientists 

 as to the origin of music. Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Letour- 

 neau, De ^lortillet, and others agree that music originated with the 

 cry of the human voice, and that it developed from vocal noises. 

 Letourneau continues the simile by suggesting that the noises of nature 

 were the originators of musical instruments. The others treat of vocal 

 music, and their investigations and theories are devoted almost exclu- 

 sively to an explanation of its origin. Darwin and Spencer differed as 

 to the particular class of vocal noises which served as the origin of 

 music. Darwin attributed it to the amatory class, that is, those sounds 

 which the male makes during the excitements of courtship and in order 

 to charm the female, and he thought that not only love music, but 

 nuisic in general was the resulting combination of these sounds. Spen- 

 cer disagreed Avith the latter reason and was of the opinion that music 

 had its germs in the sound which the voice emits under excitement, and 

 that it eventually obtained its particular character according to the 

 kind of excitement. Darwin, true to his development theory, believed 

 that "the vocal organs were primarily used and perfected in relation to 

 the propagation of the species." Spencer, agreeing to the excitement 



