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.

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    a 1 particular ’ scale. The music of a given people, therefore, consists of a single general scale, and of a series of particular scales. Now the tones which a people employ in their music are not merely dependent on their aesthetic appropriateness. Their exact . pitch is in part determined by the construction of musical instruments, and by the difficulties of instrumental technique. The arrangement of the holes of flutes and of other wind instruments is sometimes dictated not by auditory considerations, but by principles of sym¬ metry or by other determinants. Moreover, mathematical principles have always influenced the fixation of the pitch of tones, wherever civilization has sufficiently advanced to enable calculation to do so. Among the Greeks, Pythagoras divided the string in the ratio of 2 : 3, and the Chinese shortened the pipe in the same ratio. They thus produced the interval of a fifth, and they divided the shortened pipe or string again in the same ratio, and repeated the procedure, thus obtaining a geometrical progression of fifths, bearing these relations to the initial tone:— I, (!)2, (I)3, (I)4, &c. Other mathematical principles have also played a part; so, too, has the mystic value of certain numbers. It remains yet to be proved by accurate observation how far many of the abstruse specu¬ lations of the mathematical theorists are actually embodied in practical music. We may hopefully look to discovering the 4 natural ’ intervals that are employed by a given people when these control¬ ling influences of authority and convenience are, so far as possible, experimentally removed. We must be on our guard against placing too great a reliance on the speculations of comparatively modern theorists. In the development of European scales, for example, it would be rash to suppose that the octave has always been the distance theoretically subjected to division. The earliest Greek melodies, for example, appear to have had a much narrower compass. The tetrachord is thought to have been the first attempt at a scale in Greece. It con¬ sisted of the interval of a fourth divided into three parts. Another added tetrachord subsequently completed the octave. The mode of construction of the particular scales is found to vary widely among different peoples, and even among the same people at different times and in different kinds of music. Most usually the octave of the particular scales is divided into five or R TYLOR