548 W. THALBITZER. 
This may perhaps refer to the chorus which Parry describes as 
singing “quite in unison” (i. e. the women an octave higher than 
the men), yet as far as the unisonance in the accompaniment is 
concerned, in East Greenland I more often heard the chorus treat 
the melody as a kind of round, dragging it a little behind the soloist, 
or sometimes the converse, singing it a little ahead of him. This is 
presumably due to the fact that the singer’s execution of the song 
is distinctly rubato. 
This is by no means true of the beating of the dancer which 
is very steady. When Thuren, (p. 13) says that “the singer, — at fairly 
long intervals — here and there introduces a ritardando in the drum- 
beats in order to bring a group of beats in time with a definite 
melodic motif’, I am very hesitant about subscribing to his state- 
ment. I am more inclined to believe that the beat is absolutely in- 
dependent of the song and vice versa. It would not be easy to under- 
“stand why we should find here a sudden need for, or appreciation 
of, homo-rhythmics, when this is never found in any Eskimo game 
or sport, (the paddling of the kaiak man was independent of the 
rhythm of the kaïak- singer.) Nor would this be compatible with the 
“surprisingly variegated rhythm and rapidly changing time in the beat 
of the drum singer, so well illustrated by Thuren’s examples (here, 
p. 9). Taken separately, the movements of drum, song and body are 
steady enough, each along its line following the autochtonic and tradi- 
tional laws of its art. But for that very reason the result of the inter- 
crossing of the lines and the breaking of the streams is so strangely 
variegated and fluctuating, or we might even say oscillating. Their 
beloved drum-song dance contains, indeed, an element of our fugue 
style, but is disquieted, hastened and intensified by the staccato of 
the drum, the tremolo of the body and the syncopated rhythm 
of the song. The unrest of the fugue is due, in drum-dancing, to this 
three-fold movement. It is a plastic art, composed over three rhythm- 
ical dimensions. 
When Thuren, (p. 13) tells us further that “the drum-beats are 
made regularly in definite groups in succession” and thereupon draws 
up five groups as examples, we must understand it to mean that, 
within the single drum-song, only one group, i. e. formation or figure, 
is used in constant repetition. The figure is repeated exactly, without 
variation, as long as the same song and dance continue. Only one 
rhythmical drum-beat figure belongs to each song and dance. 
On page 57 I have drawn up a little series of supposed variants 
among my music-material, small groups of melodies corresponding 
Brom one text, “handed down differently in the different families.” I 
EHRT SRE Lg 
wish to make certain reservations in regard to the latter statement 
