The ethnological study of music / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The ethnological study of music / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/24 page 249
    equal temperament are responsible for the attitude of European civilization towards music generally. No sooner do we hear a piece of primitive or advanced music than we endeavour to interpret it in terms with which custom has long familiarized us. Absolutely without reflection we read into the music regular accents, we arrange it in bars, we declare it to be in such and such a key, and to be in the major or in the minor scale, we identify its intervals with those of our own to which they most nearly correspond. We forget that the complexities of rhythm may far exceed what we are accustomed to, and that primitive music knows little of tonality, and nothing of major or minor scale. Thus it comes about that many examples of primitive music are incomprehensible to us, just because they are not so readily assimilated as those which are more nearly related to our previous experiences. Our attention is continuously distracted, now by the strange features and changes of rhythm, now by the extraordinary colouring of strange instruments, now by the unwonted progression and character of intervals. Consequently much familiarity is needed before we can regard such music from a standpoint that will allow of faithful description. We have first to disregard our well-trained feelings towards consonances and dissonances. We have next to banish to the margins of our field of consciousness certain aspects of music, which, were it our own music, would occupy the very focus of attention. Thus incomprehensibility will gradually give place to meaning, and dislike to some interesting emotion. Appendix The manipulation of the phonograph.—The principle of Edison's phonograph is familiar to most people. A wax cylinder rotating about its horizontal axis is driven by clockwork (or by other mechanism). A recording diaphragm, the ‘ recorder ’, is brought to bear on the revolving cylinder. The recorder consists essentially of a very thin glass disk, to the lower surface of which is cemented a sapphire pointer or style. This sharp style cuts a shallow groove on the wax cylinder. While the cylinder is revolving, the recorder is so moved that it marks a continuous spiral groove from end to end of the surface of the cylinder. To obtain a phonographic record or ‘ phonogram ’, a blank cylinder is placed on the phonograph, a trumpet is affixed to the
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