THE MUSICAL SCALES IN USE AT THE PRESENT DAY.
In 'An Introduction to the Study of National Music' (London, 1866) I have endeavoured to give some account of the musical scales of different nations. The subject requires, however, fuller investigation than the aim of that book would permit. The 'Introduction to the Study of National Music' is intended to acquaint the student with the facts respecting the music of foreign nations and tribes which have been transmitted to us by travellers and through other sources. It can therefore scarcely claim more than to be a collection of materials which will prove useful for the erection of an edifice called the Science of National Music, as soon as the necessary additional materials have been obtained, without which it would be premature to design in detail the plan of the edifice, and to determine precisely its dimensions and internal divisions. The acquisition of useful materials will probably be promoted by the step recently taken by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.[113] There can be no greater mistake in such pursuits than to form a theory before the examples which are to serve as illustrations have been most carefully examined and verified. It is by no means easy to commit to notation a popular tune of a foreign country which possesses peculiarities with which we are unfamiliar. Even musicians who have had experience in writing down national songs which they happen to hear, find this difficult. How unreliable, therefore, must be the notations of many travellers who know but little of music! Still, the student of National Music, by careful attention and comparison, is gradually enabled to discern what is genuine, and valuable for his purpose. He knows that if there prevails a certain peculiarity in the scale on which the tunes collected are founded, the cause may be owing to want of musical experience in the person who wrote the tunes down, or to an individual whim of the performer by whom they were sung or played to the writer of the notation. But, supposing the student examines several collections of popular tunes from the same country, the collections having been formed by different persons independently of each other, and he finds all exhibiting the same peculiarity, he has no reason to doubt that it really exists in the music of that country. Nothing gives to the popular music of a country a more distinctive feature than the order of intervals on which it is founded; when the scale has been clearly ascertained, such other characteristics as the music possesses are generally soon discerned with sufficient exactness to be definable by the experienced musical inquirer.
The notations of musical scales of uncivilized nations emanating from European travellers who have heard the people sing, are certainly to be received with caution. Of this kind of communication is, for instance, the notation of the vocal effusions progressing in demi-semitones of the Marquesas Islanders at their cannibal feasts, written down by Councillor Tilesius, and published in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, Leipzig, 1805; or the notation of songs of the New Zealanders containing smaller intervals than semitones, which Mr. Davies has written down, and which Sir George Grey has published in his 'Polynesian Mythology of the New Zealand Race' (London, 1855). It is, however, often possible to ascertain the musical scale of a nation with exactness by examining the musical instruments appertaining to the nation. Thus, for instance, the Chinese close some of the finger-holes of their flutes by sticking pieces of bladder over them, in order to ensure the pentatonic scale; the Javanese construct instruments of percussion with sonorous slabs of metal or wood, arranged in conformity with the pentatonic scale; the Arabs, and most Mohammedan nations who have cultivated their music after the system of the Arabs, possess wind-instruments of the oboe kind on which the finger-holes are placed in accordance with the division of seventeen intervals in the compass of an octave; and also several stringed instruments of the Arabs, which are supplied with frets made of gut wound round the neck or finger-board, exhibit the same order of intervals; again, certain stringed instruments of the Hindus contain a number of little bridges, stuck with wax beneath the strings so as to produce, on a string being pressed down on the bridges successively, twenty-two intervals in the compass of the octave. Other instruments have marks on the sound-board as a guide to the performer where he has to press down the strings in exact conformity with the established scale.
What we observe with different nations of the present day, respecting the diversity of musical scales, might evidently also have been observed in ancient time. The Greeks had several kinds of scales, the popularity of which changed at different periods. So also had our forefathers during the Middle Ages. There is no necessity to refer to the Tetrachord of the ancient Greeks and the Hexachord of Guido Aretinus for evidences of the mutability of taste in these matters, since it can be observed sufficiently by referring to the music of nations around us. However, the so-called Modes of our old ecclesiastical music require here, at any rate, a passing notice.
Some theorists maintain that our diatonic major scale is alone a true scale, and that any other regular succession of tones in which the two semitones of the diatonic scale occur upon other intervals than 3-4 and 7-8 is, properly speaking, a Mode. According to this doctrine, which was evidently suggested by the ecclesiastical Modes, our minor scale must be called a Mode, and the scales with steps exceeding a whole-tone, of which some examples will presently be given, are Imperfect Modes. It is unnecessary to refute such pedantic definitions; suffice it to remember that they exist.
Again, the diatonic major scale is regarded by many musicians as the natural order of intervals on which the compositions must be founded whenever the art of music has attained to a high degree of development, and which will therefore be universally adopted in the course of time. They form this opinion especially from the laws of Acoustics, since the intervals constituting the diatonic major scale are those which as harmonics stand in the most simple relation to the fundamental tone produced by a vibrating body. Here, however, it must be observed that the intervals of our diatonic scale are not all of them precisely the same as those harmonics, but are "tempered;" since, did we tune them pure, as nature gives them, we could not use our system of harmony as it has been developed by our classical composers.
Moreover, if the diatonic major scale is thus suggested by nature, the minor scale with its flat third must be more artificial, and less likely to be universally adopted. Howbeit, the minor scale is especially popular, not only with several uncivilized races, but also with several who have cultivated the art of music to a high degree. Some of our most eminent composers have written perhaps more beautiful music in minor than in major keys.
Besides, certain deviations from the diatonic major scale, which we meet with in the music of foreign nations, possess a particular charm, which we are sure to appreciate more and more as we gradually become familiar with them. This, for instance, is the case with the Superfluous Second introduced as an essential interval of the scale. Many of our musicians regard such intervals as whimsical deviations, which ought not to be liked because they do not well agree with the rules laid down in our treatises on the theory of music. To such learned Professors the scale of the Arabs, with its seventeen intervals in the compass of an octave, instead of twelve semitones, as in our own system, is of course a flagrant misconception—not to speak of the twenty-two demi-semitones of the Hindus, which ought to be twenty-four. Those nations have musical systems very different from ours, for which their order of intervals is well suited. Our rules of harmony and forms of composition are unknown to them; still, their popular legends and traditions clearly prove that they appreciate the beauty and power of music not less keenly than we do; and they demonstrate the superiority of their scales with the same confidence as any of our theorists are capable of displaying.
Could we trace our diatonic Major Scale in the songs of birds and in the euphonious cries of certain quadrupeds, we should have a more cogent reason for regarding it as the most natural scale than is afforded by a comparison of the vibrations required for the production of its several intervals. The songs of various birds have been written down in notation, from which it would appear that these feathered songsters possess an innate feeling for the diatonic major scale; but, unfortunately, unless the melodious phrases, or passages, thus noted down are distinguished by some remarkable rhythmical peculiarity, they are seldom easily recognizable when they are played on a musical instrument. There may be among the numerous birds a few which in their natural song, untaught and uninfluenced in any way by man, emit a small series of tones strictly diatonic; but no such musicians are to be found among our own birds, although we have in Europe the finest singing birds in existence. The nightingale, it is true, produces occasionally a succession of tones which nearly corresponds with the diatonic Major Scale in descending, and which might possibly be mistaken for it by a listener charmed by the exquisite purity and sweetness of the tones which he does not investigate with the ear of a pianoforte-tuner. Even the two melodious sounds of the cuckoo cannot be properly written down in notation; nor can they be rendered on the pianoforte, because they do not exactly constitute a Major Third, for which they are generally taken, and still less a Minor Third. A certain ape of the Gibbon family is said to produce exactly the chromatic scale through an entire octave in ascending and descending. Darwin, who in his work on 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals' (London, 1872; p. 87) mentions the astonishing musical skill of this ape, remarks that some quadrupeds of a much lower class than monkeys, namely Rodents, "are able to produce correct musical tones," and he refers the reader to an account of a "singing Hesperomys" During the present century, our musical composers have so frequently employed in the diatonic major scale the Minor Sixth instead of the Major Sixth, that some theorists—among them Moritz Hauptmann—notice this order of intervals as a new and characteristic scale, and desire to have it as such generally acknowledged by musicians. A. Krauss, a teacher of music in Florence, has recently published a pamphlet, entitled 'Les Quatre Gammes diatoniques de la Tonalité moderne,' in which he designates this new scale with the name 'La Gamme semimajeur' (The Half-major Scale,) which is at any rate better than that suggested by Moritz Hauptmann, in his 'Die Natur der Harmonik and der Metrik,' which is 'Die Moll-Dur-Tonart' (the Minor-Major-Key, or scale). We possess then, according to these theorists, now four diatonic scales, namely:—