Indian Story And Song Part 9

The motive of a song and its distinctive rhythm were determined by the emotion evoked by the dramatic circ.u.mstance. The simplest resultant of this directive emotion in music is a pulsating rhythm on a single tone. Such songs are not random shoutings, but have a definite meaning for those who sing and for those who listen, as in this Navaho ritual song.

[Music]

From this extremely simple expression the growth of the musical motive can be traced in these Indian songs through the use of two or more tones up to the employment of the full complement of the octave.[12]

[Footnote 12: A careful a.n.a.lysis of hundreds of aboriginal songs, gathered from the arctic seas to the tropics, shows that in every instance the line taken by these tones is a chord-line where the tones are harmonically related to each other. Out of these related tones the untutored savage has built his simple melodies. The demonstration of the interesting fact that "the line of least resistance" in music is a harmonic line was made by my late a.s.sociate, Professor John Comfort Fillmore.]

[Music: A PRAYER FOR RAIN.

_Mexico. Tarahumare._

From DR. CARL LUMHOLTZ.]

[Music: SONG.

_British Columbia. Kwakiutl._

PROF. J.C. FILLMORE.]

The creation of that which we know as musical form seems also to be due to the influence of story upon song. We have already noted how the directive emotion started the distinctive rhythm and determined the order of the related tones, and so constructed the motive or theme.

But neither the rhythm nor the simple motive could express the _movement_ of the dramatic story: hence we find this expressed by the repet.i.tion, modification, and variation of the motive, the growth of the phrase, the formation of the clause, and the grouping of clauses into a period,--in fact, the outline of the form upon which all our culture music is built. Culture music, however, shows an intellectual control of emotion, a power of musical thinking, the enlarging and embellishing of musical form,--a form, nevertheless, which we find outlined, more or less clearly, in the songs of the untutored red man.

The difference between these spontaneous Indian melodies and the compositions of the modern masters would seem to be not one of kind, but one of degree.

As these songs are from a race practically without musical instruments,--for the drum and rattle were used only to accentuate rhythm,--they are representative of the period when the human voice was the sole means of musical expression,--a period which antedated the invention of instruments by an immeasurable time. They prove, therefore, that musical form was not developed, as has sometimes been stated, by the use of instruments, but that it took its rise in a mental necessity similar to that which gave structure to language.

The influence of song upon story is seen in the attempt to bend prose to a poetic form.

Many Indian songs have no words at all, vocables only being used to float the voice. On cla.s.sifying these wordless songs, we discover that those which are expressive of the gentle emotions have flowing, breathing vocables, but, where warlike feelings dominate the song, the vocables are aspirate and explosive. In this determinate use of vocables we happen upon what seems to represent the most primitive attempt yet discovered to give intellectual definition in verbal form to an emotion voiced in rhythm and melody.

In songs where words are employed, we also find vocables which are in accord with the spirit of the song, used to make the words conform to the musical phrase. These vocables are either appended to the word or else inserted between its syllables, to give length or added euphony.

We also note a desire for rhyming, since vocables similar in sound frequently occur at the end of each musical phrase.

It would lead into too many details to present the various devices discernible in this aboriginal material by which the Indian sought euphony and measure. Nor can it be easily ill.u.s.trated how words of many different languages were bent by elisions or stretched by vocables, that they might conform to the musical phrase. There is abundant evidence that the ear, accustomed to the pleasure of the rhythmic cadence of the song, was beginning to demand a corresponding metrical use of words in expressing the poetic thought involved in the dramatic story which gave birth to the music.

The art of poetry is here in its infancy, giving even less sign of its future development than music, which had already acquired the outline of that form which has since crystallised into the art of music.

Notwithstanding, we find that words were chosen for their descriptive power, and that they were made rhythmical to fit the melody. Like the swelling buds on the bare branch, which hint the approach of summer's wealth, so these little vocables and rhythmic devices whisper the coming of the poets.