I
When we contemplate the life of the savage we are to all intents and purposes observing the lives of our own primitive ancestors. As we see them to-day they without doubt portray for us a phase through which we ourselves passed on our way upward to civilization. No tribe of savages has yet been discovered who have not possessed some elemental fragments of music. No matter how barbaric the people, how rude their manners, or how savage their dispositions, music of some sort plays a vital and significant part in their lives. Most savage tribes have their war cries, songs, and dances; their playful or ceremonious dances; their love or marriage songs, their funeral songs; and lastly, their mysterious and pantheistically religious incantations: prayer songs, appeals to unseen powers, either diabolical or beneficent; to effect the deliverance of some person from a dread disease, or to bring rain, or abundance of game, etc. All these are to be regarded as primitive music—music which has hardly as yet attained the dignity of an Art.
The collection and study of these fragments has been of great interest to ethnologists and philosophers and has given rise to numerous theories regarding the origin of music. Herbert Spencer gives a physiological explanation of its origin, claiming that intense emotion acts in a particular manner on the vocal and respiratory organs, thereby causing the person thus affected to emit sounds; either high or low, loud or soft, according to the kind of emotion with which he is filled. Beginning with the proposition that ‘All music is originally vocal,’ he goes on to say: ‘All vocal sounds are reproduced by the agency of certain muscles. These muscles, in common with those of the body at large, are excited to contraction by pleasurable and painful feelings.’ And again: ‘We have here, then, a principle underlying all vocal phenomena, including those of vocal music, and by consequence those of music in general. The muscles that move the chest, larynx, and vocal cords, contracting like other muscles in proportion to the intensity of the feelings; every different contraction of these muscles involving, as it does, a different adjustment of the vocal organs; every different adjustment of the vocal organs causing a change in the sound emitted; it follows that variations of voice are the physiological results of variations of feeling.’
Charles Darwin attempts to explain the existence of primitive music by considering it as a secondary sexual manifestation. He asserts that primitive song was used as a method of charming the opposite sex; that the first songs were love songs, and that from these all others were developed. In the ‘Descent of Man’ he says: ‘The male alone of the tortoise utters a noise, and this only during the season of love. Male alligators roar or bellow during the same season. Every one knows how much birds use their vocal organs as a means of courtship; and some species likewise perform what may be called instrumental music.’ And later: ‘Women are thought to possess sweeter voices than men, and so far as this serves as any guide, we may infer that they first acquired musical powers in order to attract the other sex.’
Spencer’s explanation is pure theory, based as it is not upon observation of particular facts, but upon a knowledge of certain physiological laws. Darwin’s explanation, on the contrary, is evidently based on very careful observations of particular instances of the manifestation of the primitive musical faculty. Nevertheless, however interestingly Darwin writes concerning the origin of music, Spencer’s explanation must seem to us the broader, more inclusive and satisfying of the two, inasmuch as it bases the origin of music in a variety of emotional experiences rather than in only one (the love emotion). Darwin, however, says that the emotion of love may give rise to many other emotions of a quite different character, such as rage, jealousy, and triumph; and proceeds to indicate the possible development of various kinds of primitive songs from primitive love songs. It is, however, difficult for us to conceive of the development of war songs, incantations, or howls of grief for the dead as having been developed from primitive love songs.
According to Grosse, music arose from the play instinct. It is one of the forms in which superabundant energy is spent. Most animals, including man, are endowed with more than enough energy than is absolutely necessary to supply their physical needs. This superabundant energy is expressed in different kinds of play. The leaping and diving of the porpoise, the gambolling of dogs, the running of races, and the playing of games among primitive men are examples of the working of the play instinct. Our modern sports, tennis, football, etc., are also examples of it. According to this theory, singing and dancing first arose as means of diversion from the monotony of existence, as a means of whiling away the time and making life pleasant. This is a most important theory, and while it probably is not wholly true, it contains a large percentage of truth. It is upheld by a great number of writers besides Grosse, and has great significance concerning the origin of all the Arts, including music.
Another theory of the origin of music is that it arose through the imitation by primitive man of bird-songs and other sounds in Nature. It is true that in a collection of the music of many savage tribes there are numerous songs which are certainly imitations of certain bird calls and other animal cries. Particularly are these to be noted in the music of the North American Indians. They have ‘Pelican,’ ‘Crane,’ ‘Elk,’ and ‘Buffalo’ songs, and even songs imitating the wind in the pines. Their animal songs are to a large extent but slight developments of the cry of the animal himself. This cry was probably first used by the primitive hunter as a decoy, and eventually through frequent use became a recognized song. Although many primitive songs have undoubtedly arisen in this way, the theory of imitation considered as an explanation of the origin of music is somewhat in discredit with ethnologists and philosophers. It is much too partial and there are too many cases to which it certainly cannot apply.
In his study Arbeit und Rhythmus Karl Bücher advances the idea that through regular ‘work’ of any kind ‘song’ as an accompaniment is naturally induced. The regularity of the ‘work,’ be it walking, driving a stake, or grinding corn in a hollowed-out stone, supplies one element of music; i. e., rhythm. One element of a tune being present, what more natural than an attempt on the part of the worker to supply the other element and thus lighten the labor? Especially is this likely to happen if the task require several workers who are obliged to work together, somewhat in unison. Bücher says ‘Song is the offspring of labor. It is a means employed to discipline individual activities to the accomplishment of a common task.’
Leaving out of consideration, however, all external stimuli which may or may not have had a determinative influence in the development of primitive music, we cannot but think of the remark of Karl Böckel, which strikes the note of truth: ‘Song has its origin in the cry of joy or sorrow; in the need of expression inborn in all peoples in a state of nature.’