544 W. THALBITZER. 
THE PHONOGRAPH AND THE HUMAN EAR 
AS RIVAL MEANS OF RECORDING MUSIC AND LANGUAGE 
1? 
The main result of the collaboration between Hjalmar Thuren 
and myself on the Eskimo music appears in the exact deciphering 
of my phonograph records (on wax rolls) from Ammassalik. Thuren 
undertook this side of the task, using a tonometer and a metrometer 
as well as his own well trained ear. Before him no such finely ac- 
curate work of this nature was known, and therefore his comparative 
investigations of all the material on the musical art of the Eskimo 
bear the sign of pioneering work in a new field. By means of his 
demonstrations (Section I of this volume) we have succeeded in sub- 
stantiating the difference — and the boundaries — between Eskimo 
music and all other, and in establishing the characteristics of this 
primitive art. 
HJALMAR THUREN died in 1912 of tuberculosis, only 38 years old, _ 
after a life spent in unswerving devotion to science. He visited the 
Faroe Islands to study the last remnants of the Scandinavian folk 
song, the ancient (Northern) ballads of the Middle Ages and the 
chain dance. He discussed the results in his main work (in Danish) 
on the folk song on the Faroe Islands (1908), a subject which he 
had already taken up seven years earlier. I consider myself very 
fortunate in that on my return home from Ammassalik in 1906, I 
was able to awaken his interest in my musical material from Green- 
land and that in happy collaboration, we were able to obtain im- 
portant results before his death. Working with him was a joy; his 
penetration was deep, his interpretation keen. When results seemed 
unsatisfactory he untiringly stimulated and urged himself and his 
co-workers to enquire ever more deeply into the subject and weigh 
the matter ever more carefully. I thank him in the memory of many 
happy hours of scientific coöperation during which I learned so much. 
His studies on the more primitive stages of our own music were a 
great help in investigating my exotic and modern material. He was 
the first to substantiate the relation between the tonal and rhythmic 
music of our race and that of autochton prehistoric America. 
