414 PICURIS CHILDREN'S STORIES |eth. ann. 43 



can not be said to fall into patterns which characterize any particular 

 song or group of songs. 



The songs are very melodious, rather surprisingly so for a random 

 collection not made on this basis, and their similarity in tonality to 

 our songs in major and minor modes renders them especially accept- 

 able to our ears. They are short and simple, with little evidence of 

 elaboration of, or play with, melodic themes. Apparently no struc- 

 tural feature characterizes Picuris myth songs as a type, unless it be 

 the prevalence of the ternary forms. 



SCALES 



It has already been stated that these Picuris songs are built on 

 scale systems so nearly comparable to our major and mmor that it 

 seemed justifiable to employ key signatures, not for the purpose of 

 implying key settings, but merely because none of the tones repre- 

 sented by the chromatic signs in any given signature used was absent 

 from the song. On the other hand, to use a signature of five sharps, 

 for instance, when only a# occurs in a song and b seems to stand in 

 the relation of a tonic or general level to the rest of the tones, carries 

 rather far the assumption of the song being definitely committed to 

 the setting of b major. Of course keys in vocal music only unply a 

 certain location, in the great gamut of possible pitches which the 

 voice can produce, of a group of tones bearing fixed relations to one 

 another in pitch. This whole group might be shifted higher or lower, 

 that is, to a different key. Except for presenting the actual range 

 of any song or voice in true pitch, songs intended for analytical study 

 might all be written in the same key. 



In working out the scale of tones in any given song, each tone 

 from highest to lowest was considered in turn. The total number 

 of beats or the sum total of all notes occurring on each pitch during 

 the entire song was counted. That note which had covered the 

 greatest number of beats (but not necessarily occurring oftenest) 

 was taken as the standard of value by which to compare the other 

 notes of the song. Thus in the first song the lowest tone, e, if not 

 reverted to more often than any of the othere, at least covers a greater 

 number of beats, and moreover, occurs m places which, to a musician, 

 are clearly of greater strategic importance for the melody as a whole 

 than most of the other notes, a fact which contributes to its promi- 

 nence quite as much as the total number of beats which are devoted 

 to its utterance. Merely as an initial procedure in estimating the 

 relative prominence of the different pitches, only the number of 

 beats consumed on each was taken into consideration. After the 

 number of beats occurring on each pitch was learned, the tune 

 devoted to the pitch receiving the most attention (if the term may 

 be allowed) was taken as the standard of value. In the first song 



