374 



origin iil^e so many other melodies that have become popular 

 in West Greenland. Especially pretty and genuine in sound is 

 no. 99 (written down in Rodebay near Jakobshavn i. 



I have always taken down and reproduced the songs in 

 the key Intonated by the individuals themselves. As for the 

 female voices I have always put them an octave lower. As a 

 rule the Greenlanders sing in tune, but now and then I had 

 to take down the melodies after individuals who were less 

 certain in their intonation, and on those occasions it often 

 occurred to me that the intervals of our staff might be too 

 great or that the fixed values of our notes might not be adapted 

 for all the Eskimo's tones. But aside from such occasional 

 circumstances, I did not get the impression that our staff was 

 unsatisfactory for the notation of this kind of music or that 

 the Greenlander makes use of more minute or different intervals 

 than those we have in our music. 



As a rule 1 do not introduce the songs with any indications 

 of key and measure because both of these often shift within 

 the same song, and particularly because neither of them cor- 

 responds to what is generally understood by those terms in 

 civilized music. It often seemed rather arbitrary to me to 

 mark off bars, yet in most cases I have done it to the best of 

 my ability. The qualitative value of the tones, that is their 

 pitch, I found easier to determine than their quantitative and 

 rhymthmical values. But I acknowledge my lack of practise in 

 taking down records of this kind and I leave to those who are 

 more competent to criticize and utilize this material. 



The tempo in the songs I estimate to shift between 

 andante and allegretto*!. 



The mark >. on the music-line indicates that the preceding 

 measure is to be repeated unchanged. 



*) А\Ъеп the Greenlanders sing their hymns to ours melodies, they have 

 a tendency to draw the tones out very long and to make our andante 

 into a Greenlandic adagio. 



