The study of primitive music / [Charles S. Myers].

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
[1912?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The study of primitive music / [Charles S. Myers]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    trust only to transcriptions taken down at the moment the song is being sung by the natives. It must repeatedly happen that important features are overlooked. The most accomplished European musician is only human. We are only too apt to be guided by our previous experiences, and to interpret what we hear in the light of them. Just as with our ear to the telephone we ‘read ’ what is really a false meaning into its sounds (inasmuch as this instrument actually transmits an exceedingly distorted and defective rendering of what is being spoken at the other end), and realize what ought to be there, thus unconsciously supplying the omissions and neglecting the errors of distortion; so in listening to primitive music, we are only too apt to hear an air as we think from past experience it ought to sound. Even with the assistance of a phonograph, it has repeatedly happened to me that my attention has been called to errors of transcription (due to the inevitable dangers of habituation to European music just mentioned) only after I have heard the air a considerable number of times. Moreover by the help of the phonograph the pitch, at all events of the longer (and more important) notes, can be determined much more satisfactorily than by the observer in the field. A single tone can be prolonged on the phonograph by lifting the steel lever, the threaded surface of which usually rests on the spiral thread of the rotating shaft and is driven along it. When this lever is raised, the glass style of the diaphragm which records the marks previously impressed on the wax cylinder, remains stationary; it travels in a circular path instead of, as usually, along the spiral groove cut in the wax cylinder. That is to say, the note is prolonged, instead of being followed by the next note of the song. Its pitch can be accurately determined by comparing it with the tones from a box of numerous metal tongues, each carefully attuned, and differing from its neighbour in the pitch of the note it emits by two vibrations per second. This apparatus, or pitch-meter, is blown by bellows. It is generally known after the name given it by its first German constructor, as a Tonmesser. Let us now return to our consideration of Miriam and Yedda music, taking the former first. The especial interest of Miriam music consists in the fact that three distinct styles of music may be dis¬ tinguished, which are of very different ages. The first may for convenience be styled Malu music, the second keber music, the third ‘ secular ’ music. That is their order of age. The Malu tunes are extremely ancient, so ancient that at the present day many of the words which are sung to them have altogether lost their meaning. The Malu tunes are also extremely sacred. The Malu ceremonies K 2
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