Al HJALMAR THUREN. 
W.E. Parry, in his account of the natives of Melville Peninsula 
and the neighbouring islands, gives a detailed characterisation of 
the Eskimos’ mode of singing. He remarks that they sing in octaves, 
that even a large chorus can sing quite in unison, and he makes 
several observations indicating the difficulty of taking down the 
Eskimo music. Parry’s journal, which was published in 1824, con- 
tains the two oldest records of Eskimo music. ! 
We owe the first collection of melodies of any extent to F. Boas, 
who published his work on the Central Eskimo in 1888; this con- 
tains an appendix with 19 melodies. > 
So far as Greenland is concerned, only a couple of melodies of 
the heathen Eskimo were on record before 1900, in addition to some 
intermediate forms between European and Eskimo music. 
On the other hand, a very considerable material has been col- 
lected in the last ten years. In 1902 appeared R. STEIN’s collection 
of 39 songs, taken down from the Smith Sound Eskimo, in 1903 
WILLIAM THALBITZER’S large collection of melodies from North-West 
Greenland, and lastly, the present work contains a large number of 
East Greenland melodies. Some scattered notices and a few, still 
unpublished, phonographic collections will be mentioned in the fol- 
lowing. 
We are thus in possession now of such an extensive material?” 
that we can lay claim to complete knowledge of the whole musical 
system of the Eskimo. In the following pages I shall endeavour to 
analyse the music of these natives, dwelling mainly on the East 
Greenland melodies. 
I. Melodies of East Greenland. 
On studying the song expressions of the East Greenlanders, we 
very soon observe that these in no way have a specially primitive 
character. Already the fact, that the East Greenlanders have not 
remained at dancing tunes, but have developed a series of different 
types of song, as also the use of the drum, is evidence that the 
result we now see is the outcome of a long technical or artistic 
development. And the melodies themselves are constructed, from a 
rhythmic standpoint, with a wonderful technique — the work of 
I W. Е. Parry, Journal of a second voyage for the discovery of a North-West pas- 
sage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, p. 541 (London 1824). 
? F. Boas, The Central Eskimo, рр. 648—658 (Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau 
of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institution) 1884—85. Washington 1888). 
5 The sources for the various melodies will be cited in the following. 
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