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INDIAN STORY AND SONG
The creation of that which we know as musical form seems also to be due to the influence of story upon song. We have already noted how the directive emotion started the distinctive rythm and determined the order of the related tones, and so constructed the motive or theme. But neither the rythm nor the simple motive could express the movement of the dramatic story: hence we find this expressed by the repetition, modification, and variation of the motive, the growth of the phrase, the formation of the clause, and the grouping of clauses into a period,— in fact, the outline of the form upon which all our culture music is built. Culture music, however, shows an intellectual control of emotion, a power of musical thinking, the enlarging and embellishing of musical form, — a form, nevertheless, which we find outlined, more or less clearly, in the songs of the untutored red man. The difference between these spontaneous Indian melodies and the compositions of the modern masters would seem to be not one of kind, but one of degree.
As these songs are from a race practically without musical instruments,— for the drum and rattle were used only to accentuate rythm, — they are representative of the period when the human voice was
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