[39] _Ueber die Bedeutung der Aphasia für den musikalischen Ausdruck_
(Vierteljahrsschr für Mus-Wiss., September 1891).
[40] Article cited, p. 57.
[41] _Ibid._, p. 60.
[42] For example: "One patient, from the beginning of his disease
to his death, could say nothing but _Yes_ and _No_.... One morning
a patient began to sing 'I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls.' The
speechless patient joined in and sang the first verse with the
other, and then the second verse alone, articulating every word
correctly."--_Ibid._, p. 61.
[43] Article cited, p. 53, _note_: "Many idiots, who are scarcely
capable of other impressions, are extraordinarily susceptible to music,
and can remember a song which they have once heard."
[44] "A peasant, who as the result of a heavy blow on the head lay
unconscious for three days, found, when he came to himself, that he
had forgotten all the music he ever knew, though he had lost nothing
else."--_Ibid._, p. 64 (quoted from Carpenter, _Mental Physiology_, 4th
edit., p. 443).
[45] _Ibid._, p. 65.
[46] See Jules Combarieu, _Les rapports de la musique et de la poésie,
considerées au point de vue de l'expression_ (1894), wherein there is
an elaborate and searching examination of Spencer's theory.
[47] To say nothing of the savage music which is either purely
non-verbal, or linked to an almost meaningless refrain.
[48] No importance, I take it, need be attached to such sentences as
that the Malays "rehearse in a kind of recitative at their _bimbangs_
or feasts." The word recitative here affords no support for Spencer's
theory. Travellers who have written of the music of primitive races
have always been prone to use the term too loosely. Accustomed as they
are to the highly developed music of Europe, with its fixity of scale
and its wide range of instrumental tone, they use the term recitative
as the easiest one to indicate, in a rough-and-ready way, a kind of
music much less developed than our own in these respects. But such a
use of the term is quite unscientific. There is no reason to believe
that what we call their recitative is not really their music.
[49] Wallaschek, _Primitive Music_, pp. 173, 174.
[50] Of course Spencer might have rejoined that the songs in their
present state represent the fully developed tree, which had to pass, in
remoter times, through the previous stages he mentions. Apart from the
general objections I have already urged against this theory, however,
it is evident that Spencer cannot have the music of savage races under
two categories--song _and_ recitative--using the one or the other as
suits the purpose of his argument at the time. It will be seen later
that his theory rests, to a very large extent, on the supposition that
the music of savages and of Orientals represents only the second or
recitative stage of the development from speech.
[51] As Berlioz expressed it in the _Grotesques de la musique_,
"Music exists by itself; it has no need of poetry, and if every human
language were to perish, it would be none the less the most poetic, the
grandest, and the freest of all the arts."
[52] See the chapters entitled "Orpheus at the Zoo," in Mr. Cornish's
_Life at the Zoo_. Every one who has kept dogs or snakes must have
noticed how vivid their musical perceptions are. My own dog has a
decided musical faculty in him. He is exceedingly susceptible to the
mezzo-soprano voice in the upper part of its middle register. Tones
produced there--but no others in that or any other voice--he will try
to imitate. It is not a howl, but a real attempt to hit the right pitch
and to shape the sound with his mouth. "Excited speech" has nothing to
do with _his_ musical perceptions. The excited speech usually comes
later, from the singer whom he is favouring with this sincerest form of
flattery.
[53] Italics mine.
[54] It seems quite clear that the Greeks had distinct tunes like
our melodies, that were passed about from one singer or player to
another. "In later times," says Müller, "there existed tunes written by
Terpander, of the kind called _nomes_.... These nomes of Terpander were
arranged for singing and playing on the cithara." They were, he goes
on to say, "finished compositions, in which a certain musical idea was
systematically worked out, as is proved by the different parts which
belonged to one of them." There were popular songs, and there were
certain tunes that were sung at festivals. Nor was the music invariably
associated with poetry; there was music that was purely instrumental.
Olympus (B.C. 660-620) seems to have been a musician only. "Olympus is
never, like Terpander, mentioned as a poet; he is simply a musician.
His nomes, indeed, seem to have been originally executed on the flute
alone, without singing." See K. O. Müller's _History of the Literature
of Ancient Greece_ (Eng. trans.), vol. i. chap. 12. For an expert
treatment of the whole subject, see Hugo Riemann's _Handbuch der
Musikgeschichte_, Erster Teil (1904), especially Book I., chap. I., §
3, § 4, § 5.
[55] It does not seem to have occurred to Spencer that if savages have
melodies, however tiny and primitive, it can hardly be true that they
are only in the recitative stage. The plain fact is that his use of
the term recitative was wholly unscientific. He never saw that there
is a vast æsthetic distinction between recitative in the sense of
more sonorous and more formal speech--as in the case of an orator or
a preacher--and recitative in the musical sense. In the latter case
the distinctively musical appetite comes into play; in the former it
does not. The one is an intensification of ordinary speech, but never
becomes more than speech; the other is music, even though restricted
music. They spring from different faculties and appeal to different
organs of enjoyment.
_To BERTRAM DOBELL_