444 



NA TURE 



[April 6, 1876 



true parts of a major scale. They are such as a correct 

 musical ear would dictate, but they tell little as to the cul- 

 tivation of music. 



Upon the same page (67) M. Engel passes on to the 

 Pitos (of the flageolet kind) used by the Aztecs. These 

 are of reddish pottery, having four finger-holes, and 

 producing five notes, including the open note of the 



pipe ^jg ^^ . 



Several examples are in 



the British Museum. Although Pitos vary in size they 

 have all the same pitch of sound, says M. Engel, and 

 are easy to blow. They have but five notes to the octave, 

 in the major scale, and this has been popularly called 

 " The Scotch Scale." M. Engel terms it pcntatonic, 

 but, if it must needs have a Greek name, we prefer penta- 

 phonic, since two of the intervals for an octave scale are 

 of minor thirds. The points to be remarked in these 

 Pitos are that the various lengths should have been so 

 proportioned as to be of the same pitch, and that the 

 scale should be major. We may say of the Aztecs, as of 

 the Chiriqui, that the practice of harmony did not obtain 

 among them, but the Aztecs had advanced further in the 

 direction of melody, and had in all probability a custom 

 of playing many pipes together in unison. They were 

 also advanced in the manufacture of pottery. It is often 

 convenient to suppose that a people is " indigenous," and 

 it may have been so for many centuries, but the specula- 

 tion for ethnologists is " Whence originally came the 

 •Aztecs ? " 



The third case is of the Inca Peruvians 

 (p. 70). They had a Syrinx, or Pandean 

 I pipe, which played in octaves. The seven 

 double pipes were of equal length, but 

 the one pipe was closed at the end, and 

 its fellow open. When M. Engel says : 

 " The reader is probably aware that the 

 closing of the pipe at the end raises its 

 pitch an octave," it is an error in writing 

 — he means that closing the end loivos 

 its pitch an octave. The Peruvian Syrinx 

 i5 pcfitciphonic in the key of C major. 

 The scale is printed as beginning with 

 the octaves of A, which we suspect to be 

 a misprint for B, and the reason will pre 

 sently appear. 



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FiG. 3. — Huayra- Another instrument of the same class 



I'eruvtanl'*^*^"'^^ " ^'^^ discovered placed over a corpse in 



a Peruvian tomb, and was procured by 



the French general Paroissien." The scale of this set of 



pipes, as given by M. Engel, is as follows : — 





E 



It commences with E, the major Seventh below F, the 

 key-note, just as we suppose the preceding pipes should 

 have been given. It then forms an ascending chromatic 

 scale of F to the extent of an octave, excluding only the 

 Fourth and the minor Seventh of the scale. The reason is 



evidently because those two are not good melodic inter- 

 vals. They require their own basses to render them 

 agreeable to the ear, and the instrument does not include 



Fig. 4. — Huayra-puhura of the Inca Peruvians. 



a bass. On the other hand the major Seventh, or semi- 

 tone below the key-note, is included. It is a good 

 melodic interval, and the French term it la note sensible. 

 The only tone above the octave is A, which adds to the 

 instrument a run over the common chord of A major. 



i^ 



^m. 



This is a remarkable and an excellent melodic scale, 

 which has not been duly appreciated by M. Engel. He 

 says : " The musician is likely to speculate what could 

 have induced the Peruvians to adopt so strange a series 

 of intervals — indeed it seems rather arbitrary than pre- 

 meditated." 



A little reflection upon the intervals of the harmonic, or 

 natural, scale would have satisfied M. Engel that these 

 Peruvians had exceptionally correct ears for music. It is 

 not, as he supposes, any " natural predilection for that 

 series of intervals which may be called the pentatonic scale, 

 because it contains only five different intervals in the 

 compass of an octave" (p. 311) but, "because '' the two 

 omitted notes are unsatisfactory to the ear in unaccom- 

 panied melody. They are " irrational " intervals, and 

 therefore they have been rejected by nations in all quarters 

 of the globe, Scotch and Irish, Egyptians, Chinese, Malays, 

 Peruvians, Aztecs, and others. Even Europeans, who 

 cultivate harmony, reject the minor seventh in minor 

 scales. 



M. Engel has fulfilled a laborious duty w ith great 

 industry and ability. A more intricate subject than the 

 ever-changing names of the musical ^instruments of past 

 ages could scarcely be found. It is next to impossible that 

 it should be quite perfect. Sometimes the names of in- 

 struments were changed without any appreciable reason, 

 and, in many cases, those names were absurdly misplaced. 

 For instance, an Italian monochord for measuring inter- 

 vals was called tromba marina, and was translated into 

 English as a " trumpet marine." Dr. Burney not unna- 

 turally assumed that it must have been a trumpet made 

 of a shell, like the Triton's conch, but it consisted of 

 three long pieces of wood, glued together triangularly 

 and it had one string to be sounded by a bow. Again, 

 as to the guitar in Spain. It had but four strings until 

 about the sixteenth century, and then, seeing that foreign 



