220 THE OKIGIN AND FUNCTION OF MUSIC. 



state; and Las Leon adopted oil account of the instinctively 

 felt congruity between it and the contrition, supplication, 

 or reverence verbally expressed. 



And if, as we have good reason to believe, recitative 

 arose by degrees out of emotional speech, it becomes mani 

 fest that by a continuance c.t the same process song has 

 arisen out of recitative. Just as, from the orations and 

 legends of savages, expressed in the metaphorical, allegori 

 cal style natural to them, there sprung epic poetry, out of 

 which lyric poetry was afterwards developed ; so, from the 

 exalted tones and cadences in Avhich such orations and le 

 gends were delivered, came the chant or recitative music, 

 from whence lyrical music has since grown up. A:id there 

 lias not only thus been a simultaneous and parallel genesis, 

 but there is also a parallelism of results. For lyrical poetry 

 differs from epic poetry, just as lyrical music differs from 

 recitative: each still further intensifies the natural language 

 of the emotions. Lyrical poetry is more metaphorical, 

 more hyperbolic, more elliptical, and adds the rhythm of 

 lines to the rhythm of feet ; just as lyrical music is louder, 

 more sonorous, more extreme in its intervals, and adds the 

 rhythm of phrases to the rhythm of bars. And the known 

 fact that out of epic pot-try the stronger passions developed 

 lyrical poetry as their appropriate vehicle, strengthens the. 

 inference that they similarly developed lyrical music out of 

 recitative. 



Xor indeed are we without evidences of the transition. 

 It needs but to listen to an opera to hear the leading gra 

 dations. Letwcen the comparatively level recitative of 

 ordinary dialogue, the more varied recitative with wider 

 intervals and higher tones used in exciting scenes, the 

 still more musical recitative -which preludes an air, and 

 the air itself, the successive steps arc but small; and 

 the fact that among airs themselves gradations of like 

 nature may be traced, further confirms the conclusion 



