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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 772 



takes its place among some non-European 

 peoples would appear a widely different thing. 

 In some cases there is no tendency to end on 

 the tonic note. In Kubu scales Dr. von Horn- 

 bostel finds absolute pitch an element. There 

 remain the instances like that of Javese music 

 in which no principal note is discoverable at 

 all. New musical factors reaching deep into 

 the heart of the art, seem revealed in these 

 fundamental divergences. 



Fifth: rhythmic complication. Hindu and 

 African music is notably distinguished from 

 our own by the greater complication of its 

 rhythms. This often defies notation. Pro- 

 fessor Stumpf remarks that a group of Af- 

 rican drummers sometimes perform different 

 rhythms simultaneously; as it were a chord 

 of rhythms like the chords of notes to which 

 different performers contribute in harmonic 

 music. For its jejune structure in tone non- 

 European music makes amends by a rhythmic 

 richness beside which that of European music 

 seems in its turn poverty. In Dr. von Horn- 

 bostel's words, " The vertical in the score 

 (harmony) is the enemy of the horizontal 

 (rhythm)." It is not impossible that this 

 revelation of elaborate rhythm in non-Euro- 

 pean music may affect the future development 

 of our own. The east has already profoundly 

 influenced our painting, as it may perhaps, 

 through some view-point hitherto unguessed, 

 yet influence our sculpture. 



Sixth: the melody type. For one element 

 in exotic music no recognized counterpart 

 exists in our own, and it is difficult for the 

 European mind to obtain a clear conception 

 of it. This is the Hindu Eaga; apparently a 

 type of melody with a delicate and abstract 

 but very definite expressiveness. A certain 

 Eaga may, it is said, be attuned only to a cer- 

 tain season or time of day, and may shock the 

 sense at any other time. This is mysterious, 

 but the whole subject of musical expressiveness 

 is wrapped in a mystery which the isolated stu- 

 dents who have attacked it inductively are 

 only beginning to enter. How can the choice 

 of a certain step of the scale as tonic deter- 

 mine a " soft Lydian mode " demoralizing to 

 the fancy? Or was modality itself in Greek 

 music a type of melody otherwise determined 



and perhaps akin to the Hindu Eaga? Why 

 should medieval times have proscribed the 

 major mode as the "Modus Lascivus"? In 

 general why should a minor third upward 

 from the tonic sound sad, and downward sound 

 serene? Is the differing imaginative character 

 of different modern keys a fact or a fancy? 

 Do not all consist of the identical scale per- 

 formed only at a different pitch? That these 

 questions are, in the present state of musical 

 science, unanswerable, evidences the indiffer- 

 ent equipment of Europeans for the study of 

 the Eaga. For the present it is another 

 puzzling datum of musical expressiveness 

 which may some day yield an explanation of 

 wide applicability. 



Seventh: scale versus song. Still another 

 fundamental difference from European music 

 has been suggested to the writer by the singing 

 of the Pueblo Indians. These musicians do 

 not seem to grasp the notes they utter as steps 

 in any scale at all, but simply as constituents 

 in a familiar sequence of tones, unrolling it- 

 self before the memory. This characteristic 

 may prove the differentia of pure song from 

 music as determined by instruments. A scale 

 would then appear the creation of mechanisms 

 giving fixed tones, like the lyre or the pan- 

 pipes, the voice by itself knowing none. 

 America would appear the continent of song 

 par excellence, the one place where instru- 

 mental music has never attained a develop- 

 ment capable of putting an end to the liberty 

 of the voice. European music, wholly built 

 on instrumental forms, again appears only one 

 among radically distinct varieties of the art 

 of tone. 



Hitherto Europeans have believed all this 

 alien music to be rude, primitive and nuga- 

 tory — an assumption of which the present in- 

 quiries amply show the naivete. The extraor- 

 dinary exactness of ear and voice revealed in 

 the phonographic records of some Pueblo songs 

 is matched by the achievements of Siamese 

 musicians in tuning their instruments, as 

 tested by Professor Stumpf. They proved able 

 to approximate more closely to their isotonic 

 scale than our piano tuners commonly do to 

 the European octave. The absolute pitch of 

 panpipes from Melanesia proved so closely 



