Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/31

 Indeed, it seems as if primitive religion felt itself forced to adopt musico dramatic modes of expression.

7. Its Technical Features.—All savage music is conspicuously accentual. Usually the accents fall into definite rhythms, duple varieties being commoner than triple. The basal rhythm is made emphatic by bodily motions, noises or vocal cries. The metric patterns (schemes of long and short tones) and the larger phrase-schemes are often curiously intricate, puzzling even the trained observer.

In accompanied songs there are instances of duple patterns in the voice against triple ones in the accompaniment.

The vocal decoration of rhythms leads directly to melodic figures, though the latter doubtless also result from experiments with instruments. As a rule, a given melody contains but few distinct tones, though sometimes varied with indescribable slides or howls. One or two tone-figures are usually repeated again and again. Generally a rudimentary notion of a scale (or system of tones) is suggested, though no one type of scale is universal. Scales and the melodies made from them are more often conceived downward than upward (as is our habit). Whether a true keynote is recognized is often doubtful, the whole intonation being vague and fluctuating. The total effect is generally minor, though major intervals and groups of tones are not unusual.

On the one hand, cases occur in which short intervals, like the semitone, are avoided, yielding melodies that imply a pentatonic system, and these are common enough to lead many to urge that the essentially primitive scale is pentatonic. But, on the other, what we call chromatic scales are also found, utilizing even smaller intervals than the semitone. Scales approximating our diatonic type are also reported, implying a fair sense of tone-relationship.

Just what stimulates the invention of melodies and controls their development is uncertain. In some cases the habit of improvisation seems influential; in others, ingenuity with instruments. A form of melody, once established, is apt to be tenaciously preserved.

It has been thought that ideas of harmony or part-singing are impossible for the savage mind. But it appears that some tribes in Africa and Australia do sing in parts and even attempt concerted effects between voices and instruments. Such combinations, however, are rare and do not show any real system.