The Tinguian: Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe

by Fay-Cooper Cole

Pentatonic Character. That peculiar essence or quality which a melody has when it is built up entirely or almost wholly of the tones of the pentatonic or five-note scale. The melody may employ sparingly one or both of the two tones foreign to the pentatonic scale, and yet its pentatonic character will not be destroyed.

Diatonic Character. That quality which a melody takes on when the two tones which are foreign to the pentatonic scale of the same key or tonality are freely employed.

I use this term in contradistinction to “Pentatonic Character,” and not in contradistinction to “Chromatic,” as it is usually employed in musical literature.

Melodic Structure. That form of flowing succession of tones in Page 479which the accented tones, if considered in sequence, show dominant non-adherence to chord intervals.

Harmonic Structure. That form of tonal succession in which the tones of the melody follow rather persistently the structural outline of chords.

Major Pentatonic Scale. That scale in which the constituent tones, if considered in upward sequence, would show the following arrangement of whole and whole-and-a-half-step intervals,—(whole) (whole) (whole-and-a-half) (whole) (whole-and-a-half).

Minor Pentatonic Scale. That scale in which the constituent tones, if considered in upward sequence, would show the following arrangement of whole and whole-and-a-half step intervals,—(whole-and-a-half) (whole) (whole) (whole-and-a-half) (whole).

The pentatonic scale is markedly primitive in character. It is known to have been in use anterior to the time of Guido d'Arezzo, which would give it a date prior to the beginning of the 11th century.[8]

Rowbotham ascribes the invention of scales to those primitive musicians who, striving for greater variety in their one-toned chants, added first one newly-discovered tone, then another, and another.[9] The pentatonic scale might have resulted from such chanting.

Most of the primitive peoples of the present day do not seem to feel or “hear mentally” the half step. If musicians of early days had this same failing, it was only natural for them to avoid that interval by eliminating from their songs one or the other of each couplet of tones which if sung would form a half step, thus their chants would be pentatonic.