The Study of Folk-Music. 
125 
All these songs I have studied carefully, and I have compared 
them with the recorded folk-songs of the different European 
races. While the music of each race has its own characteristic 
style and is stamped with its own individual race-character as 
regards emotional expression, they all have in common the 
same major and minor tonality with which we are familiar and 
the same harmonic quality. Melody everywhere, the world over, 
is harmonic melody; is based, apparently, on a more or less- 
distinct perception of the natural harmonic relations of tones. 
Why this is so I will not now consider; it would far exceed 
the limits prescribed for this paper to go into speculations of 
this kind. Suffice it to say that not only are the impulses which 
lead to the production of music the same for all races of men, 
but the correlations of the psychical processes with the physiolog¬ 
ical and physical relations of music are also universal. 
The evidence all points in the same direction and each new 
collection of folk-songs, from whatever source, has thus far 
made it cumulative as regards the question I raised at the out¬ 
set of this discussion. If several hundred folk-songs, collected 
from numerous races of the most diverse character, are sufficient 
to justify an induction, then am I warranted in concluding that 
the line of least resistance for primitive man making music spon¬ 
taneously is a harmonic line. Folk-melody is always and every¬ 
where, so far as now appears, harmonic melody, however dim 
the perception of harmonic relations and however untrained and 
inexperienced as regards music the untaught savage may be. 
The first harmonic relations to be displayed in folk-songs are 
naturally the simplest, — those of the Tonic and its chord. 
The more complex relations are gradually evolved as a result of 
the growth of experience. 
One point remains to be made. It may be said that we are 
now forever unable to get at the real primitive man and to ob¬ 
serve his processes in the evolution of folk-song. This is un¬ 
doubtedly true. But surely such songs as these of the Navajos, 
which show us the actual process of transforming excited howl¬ 
ing into songs with unmistakably harmonic pitch-relations, 
take us very far back toward primitive music-making. What 
we should find if we could get still farther back I do not know;, 
