The Word Carrier (Santee, Nebraska), 1899-10 - 1899-11

              The Word Carrier
•
VOLUME   XXVIII.
HELPING   THE   BIGHT,   EXPOSING   THE   WIIONG.
NUMBERS  10,  11.
SANTEE AGENCY, NEBEASKA.
OCTOBER- NOVEMBER, 1899.
FIFTY CENTS PEE YEAE.
our platform.
For Indians we want American Education! We want American Homes!
We want American Rights! The result of which is American Citizenship!
And the gospel is the Power of God for
their Salvation'
-
The article on Indian music by !
John Comfort Fillmore is without ;
doubt the most complete study of
the   subject   that  has   ever   been :
made.    Our extracts lack the musical illustrations which appear in ;
"Music" for September, 1899,where
it was   originally published.    We
commend those who can to see the
full article in that magazine.
My Brother's Keeper, the article
which we copy from The Land of
Sunshine Magazine is well worth
reading. And it is interesting too,
even to those in the government
school service who are made to feel
as if they had a charge of dynamite
exploded under them. They will
feel utterly anihilated until they
come to the last paragraph about
Miss Eeel. Then they will recover
themselves as they discover the oracle is but human, and loses his good
judgment when he comes under the
influence of "a woman of charm."
THE HARMONIC STRUCTURE OF
INDIAN MUSIC.
Probably every one, at the first
hearing of Indian music, is impressed with the difference between it
and our own. That is my own experience and is also the experience of
all other white people I have known
who have come in contact with Indian singing. The impression made
is that of a crude barbaric attempt
at music which seems to have very
little in common with our own. We
do not at once discover what this
music means to the Indian; we do
not see that the savage strains express to those who make them, any
of those emotions we are accustomed to associate with music. In
case of some of the wilder and more
savage tribes, the sounds we hear
bear so much greater resemblance
to the yelps and howls of wild beasts
that we may be impressed with the
feeling that this people, when they
are singing at least, have more in
common with the lower animals
than with us.
In the case of many who make
no attempt to go below the surface,
this impression persists. I have
met not only uneducated frontiersmen, but even cultivated people,
who seemed unable to get rid of
the impression that Indians have
no music worthy of the name; that
is, no music which is intelligible to
us as expressing emotions which
are common to the raoe. I have
even known this opinion to be publicly expressed by men distinguished in one or another department of science, and even in music.
There are also many who seem
to get the impression that Indian
music differs essentially and fundamentally from our own, not merely in power of expression but also
in its melodic structure. Many
who have heard more or less of Indian music, either directly or in
phonographic reproductions, seem
to think that Indian melodies are
the product of natural laws differ
ent from those which determine
the structure of our own melodies.
They frequently fail to recognize,
in the intervals out of whieh Indian
melodies are made, those which
characterize our own; or if they do
think they recognize familiar intervals, they also think they discover
differences which may be essential,
and they fear to class them under
our own familiar chord and scale
intervals, lest they should, as one
scientific investigator once put it to
me, "import our Aryan ideas into
tbe music of alien races." In short
there is the impression abroad that
Indian music is based on one or
more scales different from our own
and characterized especially by
smaller intervals than any which
find place in our civilized music.
Altogether I have studied many
hundreds of   aboriginal American
songs,   of   many   different   tribes
and linguistic stocks, ranging from
the Arctic Ocean to Central America, and from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, enough,  I   am  confident,
to warrant general conclusions as
to  the laws which  determine  the
forms of our aboriginal  melodies.
I say laws, for I assume that the
forms taken on by primitive melodies are no more accidental than are
any other natural products, mental
or otherwise. Vocal music,of course,
precedes all instrumental   by   immeasurable interval.    When vocal
music is made spontaneously without reference to any theory, it must
follow the lines of least resistance,
must obey the general law of all activity,   physical  and mental.    The
real questions to be determined,then,
in studying the structure of primitive
songs, are such as these : what direction does the voice take when primitive man expresses his feelings in
songs? Is that direction the same
for all races of men, or are there
different laws which govern thekiud
of intervals used by different races ?
But I shall be asked, and with entire pertinancy: Are you sure that
the intervals sung by the Indians
whose songs you have studied are
the ones you have transcribed? I
answer without hesitation:   Yes, I
am sure.    I started my investigation with the impression that there
might    be essential  differences in
structure between the Indian music
and our own,    I studied the Indian
music for ten years with the utmost
care and thoroughness of which I
was capable.    1 have failed to find
one single interval in Indian music
which we do not use.    It is true, I
have often heard Indians sing these
intervals out of tune; but this is a
phenomenon by no means confined
to savage or uncivilized races.    In
every such case when I was singing
with Indians and was able to get at
then real intention, I  have found
that they meant to sing exactly the
interval  we  should  sing  in  their
place.    The   false   intonation was
due usually to precisely the same
causes which   produce   it   in  our
own singers.    Sometimes it is an
untrained or defective ear;  there
is just as much difference between
Indian as between white singers in
this respect.    Sometimes it seemed
to be due to an imperfect correlation
of the ear and the  vocal apparatus
just as it is  with us.    Sometimes
it comes from pitching a song too
high or too low. In short,an Indian
singer, for the greater part, does
just what a white singer of his grade
of musical culture would do under
the same conditions.
But I have observed also special causes for aberations from the
pitch intended by aboriginal singers. Chief among these is emphasis. I have frequently known Indian singers to emphasize a tone
by striking it ahead of the beat
from a quarter of a tone to a tone
above pitch.
I have also found Indians vary
from pitch under stress of emotion,
especially in love songs. I have
noted down intervals as I heard
them, only to be told that they were
wrong. The Indian meant to sing a
plain diatonic interval, for he declared this to be correct when I play-
edit. Although he had actually sung
it from a quarter to a half tone
below pitch, he would not tolerate
my playing of anything else than
the plain diatonic interval. All this
goes to show, among other things,
that the Indian does not make nice
discriminations in the matter of
pitch. It shows also, what is very
clear from all my experience, that
what the Indian is thinking about is
purely the expression of his feeling,
and not the nicety of his intervals—
that has to take care of itself. But
it makes the evidence as to the form
spontaneously assumed by his songs
all the more forcible.
I have also found that increase of
power is almost always accompanied
with increased elevation of pitch,
and diminution of intensity with a
lowering pitch, seemingly without
the Indian being aware of it. When
I have asked Indians to sing louder
into a graphophone, they have
invariably raised the pitch. Songs
which remain of the same intensity
throughout I can easily play with
them on a piano. Songs which vary
greatly in intensity, such as love
songs, do not go well with piano
accompaniment, because they vary
not only the power but the pitch
with every variation of intensity.
Yet they will not tolerate these
variations when they hear them
from an instrument. Clearly they
intend plain harmonic or diatonic
intervals, and are not aware that
they vary from them.
The same is true in regarding to
sliding from one tone to another
instead of making the outlines of
pitch definite. The practice of
Indians in this respect can be
matched in any camp meeting of
negroes or uneducated whites in the
United States. There is really nothing unusual about it. And as for the
Indian appreciating smaller intervals than we do, there is simply
nothing of the kind. The Indian
ear is not more but less discriminating than our own in the matter of
musical intervals: this is to be expected, since he has had no training whatsoever. When he intones
an interval a quarter of a note off
pitch, it is not that he intends to do
so, but because he is groping more
or less.blindly after an interval imperfectly conceived. The instant he
hears it correctly given, he perceives that it is what he was trying
for and immediately conforms his
intonation to ours. That has been
my experience over and over.
Further, it has been my experience, many times repeated, that the
Indian prefers  the harmonized to
the unharmonized  version  of  his
songs when they are played on the
piano—that is, of course, when the
chords used are the ones naturally
implied or embodied inthe melodies.
In the light of this experience I feel
justified in stating once more, and
most emphatically,the conclusion at
which I have arrived, namely,  that
when savage manmakesmusic spontaneously he obeys the universal law
of all activity and follows the line of
least resistance, and that in every
instance this line is found to be a
chord line, a harmonic line.    Folk-
melody, so far as now appears, is always and every where harmonic melody, however dim the perception of
harmonic relations,and however untrained and inexperienced as regards
music  the untaught   savage   may
be.    The first harmonies to be displayed are naturally the simplest—
those ofthe tonic and its chord.  The
more complex relations are gradually evolved as a result of the growth
of experience.    But in every stage
of its development, the harmonic
sense is tbe shaping and determining
factor in production of folk-melody.
The evidence of the essential unity of all music from the most primitive to the most advanced, is cumulative.    The Navaho howls his song
to the war gods directly along the
line of the major chord;   Bethoven
makes the first theme of his great
"Eroica" symphony out of precisely the same material.    The Tigua
makes  his "Dance of the Wheel"
out of a major chord and its relative
minor; Wagner makes  Lohengrin
sing"mein lieber schawn" to a melody composed of exactly the same ingredients.    In short,  there is  only
one kindof music in the world.    But
there are vast differences betweenthe
stages of development  represented
by 'the savage and  by the modern
musician ; and there are also ethnological, differences  resulting   from
the physical and mental peculiarities of the races, yet essentially and
fundamentally, music is  precisely
the same phenomenon for the savage as it is for the most advanced
representative of modern   culture.
—John   Comfort   Fillmore in Music
Magazine.
FROM GRAND RIVER.
Miss Mary P. Lord writes: Perhaps you do not know that 1 am
really expecting to take a vacation,
—an indefinite one. As heretofore
there has seemed to be no time
when I could "see my way clear to
it," that time has now come 1 think.
For several weeks past I bave
been directing my plans and work
toward that end. Miss Collins will
be here in a few days, and then I
expect to go. So 1 want to shake
hands with you in my heart.
FORT BERTHOLD.
The school buildings have been
remodeled this summer; and by
putting on wings and taking out partitions here and there the loss of the
main building by fire last winter
is fully made up. A full corps of
teachers are now at work, but who
they are we have not heard. Miss
Harriet B. llsley has returned to
Elbowoods after a year in the East.