Fkbeuaey 9, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



209 



sical compositioD in the usual way. And 

 all his wealth of information and inspira- 

 tion is poured forth in a clear stream, in 

 language precise and often felicitous, so 

 that one may turn these pages with pleasure 

 even for the style alone. 



The earlier chapters throw some light on 

 the subjects covered by the other books 

 under review, and the extracts must be 

 limited to passages bearing on these sub- 

 jects. In the chapter on Preliminaries, it 

 is pointed out that the intensity of men's 

 pleasures or interest leads to expression ; 

 this to be intelligible requires common 

 terms, that is, a design. Design is the 

 equivalent of organization in the ordinary 

 affairs of life. In music especially, form as 

 well as design is necessary, but this book has 

 only to do with design. Music is the ex- 

 pression of what is in man and, therefore, 

 is not mainly imitative. " The story of 

 music has been that of a slow building up 

 and extension of artistic means of formula- 

 ting utterances which in their raw state are 

 direct expressions of feeling and sensi- 

 bility." Everywhere are voices, shouts, 

 etc., "but neither music nor speech begins 

 till something definite appears in the tex- 

 ture of its material ; some intellectual proc- 

 ess must be brought to bear upon both to 

 make them capable of being retained in the 

 mind" (p. 5). "It was not till mankind 

 had arrived at an advanced stage of intel- 

 lectuality that men began to take note of 

 the relations of notes to one another at all " 

 (p. 6). 



" The first indispensable requirement of 

 music is a series of notes which stand in 

 some recognizable relation to one another 

 in respect of pitch " (p. 16). Then follows 

 a thirty page account of the scales used in 

 various pai"ts of the world, which is quite 

 satisfactory, being based mainly on the 

 work of Ellis and Hipkins. While the 

 author avoids the common error of assum- 

 ing that these were attempts to obtain our 



scale, he has been misled in some cases by 

 the dogmatism of some of his authorities, 

 as in treating of the Persian- Arabian scale ; 

 and he has not got so far away from the 

 modern musician's position as to observe 

 more than what other people have done ; 

 their principles and their reasons have 

 escaped him. His " summary is sufficient 

 to show the marvellous variety of scales 

 developed by different nations for purely 

 melodic purposes" (p. 44). Of our scale 

 he says the functions of the notes (domi- 

 nant, mediant, etc.), are always being ex- 

 panded and identified with fresh manipula- 

 tions of the principles of design by able 

 composers : the classification of these func- 

 tions puts our harmonic scale eight cen- 

 turies ahead of all melodic systems ; and the 

 last stage in this development was the as- 

 similation of all the keys to one another by 

 equal temperament. 



In the chapter on Folk-Music, it is 

 pointed out that orderliness and intel- 

 ligibility in tunes proceed parallel with 

 the general development of capacities in a 

 race. It is very difficult to make out what 

 intervals savages intend to utter. The ele- 

 ments of design that appear among them 

 are repetition, perhaps at different levels, 

 and sometimes the contrast of two short 

 phrases. Tonality marks a considerable 

 advance, and the impression of finality de- 

 pends on this. The resources of art are 

 not sufficient to allow a long consistent de- 

 velopment of a single movement in melodic 

 art ; so Orientals fall back on ornament ; 

 this is " the part of anything which makes 

 for superficial effect ; * * * it generally 

 implies either undeveloped mental powers 

 or great excess of dexterity." In modern 

 German folk-music the harmonic basis is 

 simple and obvious. As art-music grows, 

 folk-music tends to go out of use ; for civil- 

 ization reduces everything to a common 

 level. 



From this point on the author treats 



