Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/353

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��AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

��[n. s. v i, 1899

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��the major third and the fifth of this key-note, making a major tonic chord.

No. 2. NAVAHO.

���This song also is made exclusively of the tones which compose the major chord, only here the key-note predominates so strongly as to make the song exceedingly monotonous. The line of these melodies is a chord line, a harmonic line.

��No. 3. NAVAHO.

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��Some of the Navaho songs are illustrations of melody so prim- itive as to bring us very near to the beginning of music making* In example 3, C is plainly the key-note, and the song is confined mainly to that tone and its minor third, E flat. G, the remaining component of the tonic chord, does not appear at all, but B flat comes in at first so decidedly as to suggest £ flat major as the tonic chord. It also appears later as a bye-tone. The implied harmony of the song is plainly the chord of C minor as tonic, and its relative major, E flat.

In all these primitive Navaho songs the gaps between the chord tones are filled up by tones belonging to the nearest related chords, viz., the dominant, the subdominant, and the relative minor. These intervals, when arranged in consecutive order, produce exactly the major or minor scales which we ourselves use, although seldom complete.

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