ROBERTS] ANALYSIS OF SONGS 417 



song, SO that its position in relation to the range of tones as a whole 

 may readil}' be seen. The letter e designates that tone on which the 

 song ends, while I have ventured to use t to indicate what seems, by 

 all ordinary means of judging, to be the fundamental tone or general 

 level around which the whole song revolves and to which the melody 

 is constantly reverting — the tonic. Occasionally the same tone 

 assumes all three offices; again only one or two of them. Also 

 occasionally I have placed b under two notes when a song starts with 

 a grace note which is omitted in repetitions of the A phrase, so that 

 doubt exists as to whether the grace at the beginning was or was not 

 inadvertent with the singer and whether the second note on which 

 the remaining A phrases begin should be considered the intended 

 first tone in the song. 



A comparison of the scales of the songs as ranged in the table 

 reveals that no two scales are absolutelj' identical, but that, as might 

 be expected, those covering the different renditions of the same tune 

 are very similar and in a few instances ahnost exactly alike. If 

 Picuris music of one or several types employed a reasonably definite 

 tonal scheme or schemes, we should expect the tonal content of differ- 

 ent songs of a given type to coincide for the most part. On the 

 other hand, no good reason exists why Indian composers should 

 necessarily introduce every known tone of a scale which they use into 

 every song composed any more than that our own songs should do 

 this — a procedure which would tend to increase the monotony con- 

 siderably in the long run. So we should not expect the same degree of 

 similarity in the derived scales of different songs as m those of various 

 renditions of the same song. Although the actual tones used for 

 any one song and its various renditions form a scale the main tones 

 of which seem at first glance quite different from those of any other 

 song or its renditions, I think that a study of the table of scales will 

 convince the reader that the scales of all the songs possess, never- 

 theless, many tones in common. Takmg mto consideration the 

 position of the tonic in relation to the other tones m the scale, all the 

 scales fall into five groups on this basis and that of identity of prin- 

 cipal tones, especially if the ephemeral tones are regarded as being 

 much less important structurally, as they usually are. Now and then, 

 however, a pitch intermediate between two of the more usual scale 

 tones will be found to have been repeated cjuite consistently, not 

 merely in the repetitions of corresponding phrases, but in the different 

 renditions of the same song. Such a tone, however peculiar it may 

 seem to be, rises almost to the place of a structural tone m the melody 

 scheme. In these songs no such tone appears consistently through- 

 out every rendition, although in No. 12, which is a second rendition of 

 No. 1 (p. 303), the flat c's at the beginning of the B phrases and the 

 raised b's in a similar melodic situation at the beginning of the 



