Febeuaey 9, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



213 



presented in tlie study of primitive music 

 are two : 1. The problem of the origin and 

 function of music ; 2. The problem of the 

 psychological, physical and acoustic laws 

 in accordance with which the musical phe- 

 nomena have become what they are " 

 (p. 74). 



The most novel part of Professor Fill- 

 more's work is that dealing with the ques- 

 tion of harmony in savage music. It has 

 long been customai'y to add a harmony to 

 simple melodies of people who never use 

 accompaniments ; and as many as thirty 

 years ago Carl Engel showed the great 

 danger of distorting the meaning of a tune 

 by this procedure. But the author takes 

 an almost opposite position, and maintains 

 it with vigor ; he holds in substance that 

 the meaning of these songs cannot truth- 

 fully be presented without harmonizing 

 them ; certainly their interest is greatly in- 

 creased, as no one can doubt who has had 

 the privilege of hearing them rendered by 

 the authors of this book and their coadjutor 

 Mr. La Flesche ; so rendered, some of them 

 are very fine and inspiring and moving. 

 In adding the harmony Professor Fillmore 

 has taken the unusual precaution of sub- 

 mitting every piece of music to native judg- 

 ment, and out of several modes of harmoni- 

 zation has selected that one which pleased 

 Indian hearers best. As a result of this 

 long testing, he concludes that the matter of 

 scales to which ordinarily so much atten- 

 tion is given, is entirely subordinate; that 

 any peculiar scale can easily be accounted 

 for on harmonic grounds ; and that the 

 tonality is to be decided "not alone from 

 the tones actually employed in the song, 

 but from considering what tone or tones 

 need to be supplied in order to make a 

 natural or satisfactory harmony " (p. 64). 

 Above all he thinks he has proved the ex- 

 istence of a ' latent harmonic sense' uncon- 

 sciously determining the choice of melody- 

 tones, or as stated in another place, "It 



seems clear to me that the course of these 

 melodies can be accounted for in no other 

 way than on the assumption that the Indian 

 possesses the same sense of a tonic chord 

 and its attendant related harmonies that we 

 do : although of course it is latent and 

 never comes clearly forward into his con- 

 sciousness " (p. 76). But in spite of this 

 positiveness of conviction there is a sugges- 

 tive doubt expressed in the last paragraph ; 

 " how the feeling for the tonic chord is 

 generated in melodies which do not begin 

 with the key-note, and especially in those 

 which begin with a by-tone, as some of 

 these songs do, I am as yet unable to con- 

 jecture " (p. 77). 



These views of the joint authors have re- 

 ceived hearty (though not universal) ac- 

 ceptance in musical circles, but ethnolo- 

 gists and other students of the problem of 

 savage music dissent from them. To make 

 clear the fundamental reason of this dis- 

 sent, it will be necessary to go back and re- 

 call some things that the other books under 

 review help to establish. To do this is im- 

 portant ; for it is the reviewer's firm con- 

 viction that no one thing so hinders the in- 

 telligent study of non-European music as 

 the wide prevalence of views similar to, 

 though less clear and well developed, than 

 those of which Mr. Fillmore is so able a de- 

 fender. 



And first it is to be recognized that 

 all these authors have much in common, 

 and, however divergent their outlooks, oc- 

 cupy substantially the standpoint of the 

 modern European musician: so, collectively, 

 they help to make more evident than a 

 single book does just what this standpoint 

 is. Klauser declares and Parry implies, as 

 quotations from both have shown, that 

 music is not a physical, but a psychological 

 product, that most of its meaning anywhere 

 is due to habituation, to long familiarity 

 with the elements out of which it is built 

 up ; that it is conventional, in the same 



