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tonality, as the church modes and a scale of whole tones, as 
the succession B, A, G, F in “Pelleas and Melisande.” Much of 
the music of both Strauss and Debussy is in no determinate 
key — sometimes in two keys at once — e. g., “voice and orches- 
tra may be in different keys to express doubt or consterna- 
tion.” As has been said of Wagner’s novelties, these resources 
“are possible to the composer only because the hearer’s sense 
of tonality lias become so highly developed.” 
But enough of definitions and comments on them: let us 
go with the inquiring visitant to learn of more primitive 
music. In many countries of Europe there has been much 
activity in rather recent years in collecting folk-songs from 
the mouths of singers; some good critical work along this line 
has been done by the English Folk-Song Society, and its 
secretary, Mr. C. J. Sharp, has felt warranted in publishing 
a book entitled “English Folk-Songs — Some Conclusions.” 
In distinction from art-song, which is the work of one man 
at one time, and which other singers may repeat with 
scrupulous accuracy, a folk-song begins, no one knows where, 
goes from mouth to mouth, being unconsciously modified 
many times; never reaching a finished state, but always exist- 
ing in several forms, and yet being a composite expression of 
the esthetic sense of the community on this little subject; it 
is communal, the product of a race. We all know that a 
negro melody like “Swing low, sweet chariot,” is in a differ- 
ent class, every way, from Foster’s and other imitation darky 
songs. The English folk-songs when analyzed show to Mr. 
Sharp a marked absence of harmonic relationships; they are 
more like the medieval church-tones, having often a scale 
from D to d, or G to g, etc., rather than from C to c; they are 
rarely accompanied and cannot be harmonized without sacri- 
ficing their charm. Most of the older collections of alleged 
folk-songs are said to be uncritical and untrustworthy. 
In a higher state of society the visitor finds instruments 
and musical notation ; the piano keyboard and the complete 
staff-notation are some 200 years old, the results of earlier 
centuries of development; but except in the earliest times 
