ANDERSEN.—An Introduction to Maori Music. 745 
I have often heard above a hundred paddles struck against the sides of 
their boats at once, so as to produce but a single sound, at the divisions 
oftheir music. . . . song not altogether unlike this [a war-dance and 
song] they sometimes sing without the dance, and as a peaceable amuse- 
b 
effect; the time is slow, and the cadence mournful, but it is conducted 
with more taste than could be expected among the poor ignorant savages 
of this half-desolate country ; especially as it appeare 
none of us much acquainted with music as a science, to be sung in parts. 
It was at least sung by many voices at the same time. . . . They have 
sonorous instruments, but they can scarcely be called instruments of music : 
one is the shell, called the Triton's trumpet, with which they make a noise 
not unlike that which our boys sometimes make with a cow's horn; the 
other is a small wooden pipe, resembling a child's nine-pin, only much 
smaller, and in this there is no more music than in a pea-whistle.* They 
seem sensible, indeed, that these instruments are not musical, for we never 
heard an attempt to sing to them, or to produce with them any measured 
tones that bore the least resemblance to a tune." - j 
It cannot be known how nearly the tune given by Forster reproduces 
the original—whether it actually does so or whether it merely gives the 
nearest notes of our scale: if the latter, it is, of course, practically valueless 
for the purpose of acquainting us with Maori music, since its distinguishing 
characteristic is lost. 
nes. | i 
He supposed the enharmonic to be the scale used by the Maori, and he 
to discover the exact interval, that I will not vouch for the mathematical 
exactness; neither will I pledge myself not to have written a chromatic 
for an enharmonic interval, or vice versa. I must also, in justice to myself, 
add, that the singer did not always repeat the musical phrase with precisely 
the same modulation, though without a very severe test this would not 
have been discernable, nor then to many ears ; the general effect being to 
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a European ear very monotonous. 
* The instruments referred to would appear to be a pumoana and a nguru: no 
mention is made of the koauau. 
