Lying down to rest, I ask myself the reason of the singular emotion
inspired by that simple peasant-chorus. Utterly impossible to recall the
air, with its fantastic intervals and fractional tones--as well attempt
to fix in memory the purlings of a bird; but the indefinable charm of it
lingers with me still.
Melodies of Europe awaken within us feelings we can utter, sensations
familiar as mother-speech, inherited from all the generations behind us.
But how explain the emotion evoked by a primitive chant totally unlike
anything in Western melody,--impossible even to write in those tones
which are the ideographs of our music-tongue?
And the emotion itself--what is it? I know not; yet I feel it to be
something infinitely more old than I--something not of only one place
or time, but vibrant to all common joy or pain of being, under the
universal sun. Then I wonder if the secret does not lie in some untaught
spontaneous harmony of that chant with Nature's most ancient song, in
some unconscious kinship to the music of solitudes--all trillings of
summer life that blend to make the great sweet Cry of the Land.