CHAPTER XIII
THE WHITE-FACED DECTICUS: THE INSTRUMENT OF SOUND
Art has three fields which it may cultivate in the realm of natural objects: form, colour and sound. The sculptor uses form and imitates its perfection in so far as the chisel is able to imitate life. The draughtsman, likewise a copyist, seeks in black and white to give the illusion of relief on a flat surface. To the difficulties of drawing the painter adds those of colour, which are no less great.
An inexhaustible model sits to all three. Rich though the painter’s palette be, it will always be inferior to that of reality. Nor will the sculptor’s chisel ever exhaust the treasures of the plastic art in nature. Form and colour, beauty of outline and play of light: these are all taught by the contemplation of actual things. They are imitated, [[247]]they are combined according to our tastes, but they are not invented.
On the other hand, our music has no prototype in the symphony of created things. Certainly there is no lack of sounds, faint or loud, sweet and solemn. The wind roaring through the storm-tossed woods, the waves curling and breaking on the beach, the thunder growling in the echoing clouds stir us with their majestic notes; the breeze filtering through the tiny foliage of the pine-trees, the Bees humming over the spring flowers charm every ear endowed with any delicacy; but these are monotonous noises, with no connection. Nature has superb sounds; she has no music.
Howling, braying, grunting, neighing, bellowing, bleating, yelping: these exhaust the phonetics of our near neighbours in organization. A musical score composed of such elements would be called a hullabaloo. Man, forming a striking exception at the top of the scale of these makers of raucous noises, took it into his head to sing. An attribute which no other shares with him, the attribute of coordinated sounds whence springs the incomparable gift of speech, led him on to scientific vocal exercises. In the absence [[248]]of a model, it must have been a laborious apprenticeship.
When our prehistoric ancestor, to celebrate his return from hunting the Mammoth, intoxicated himself with sour tipple brewed from raspberries and sloes, what can have issued from his hoarse larynx? An orthodox melody? Certainly not; hoarse shouts, rather, capable of shaking the roof of his cave. The loudness of the cry constituted its merit. The primitive song is found to this day when men’s throats are fired in taverns instead of caverns.
And this tenor, with his crude vocal efforts, was already an adept at guiding his pointed flint to engrave on ivory the effigy of the monstrous animal which he had captured; he knew how to embellish his idol’s cheeks with red chalk; he knew how to paint his own face with coloured grease. There were plenty of models for form and colour but none for rhythmic sounds.
With progress came the musical instrument, as an adjunct to those first guttural attempts. Men blew down tubes taken all in one piece from the sappy branches; they produced sounds from the barley-stalks and made whistles out of reeds. The shell of a [[249]]Snail, held between two fingers of the closed fist, imitated the Partridge’s call; a trumpet formed of a wide strip of bark rolled into a horn reproduced the bellowing of the Bull; a few gut-strings stretched across the empty shell of a calabash grated out the first notes of our stringed instruments; a Goat’s bladder, fixed on a solid frame, was the original drum; two flat pebbles struck together at measured intervals led the way for the click of the castagnettes. Such must have been the primitive musical materials, materials still preserved by the child, which, with its simplicity in things artistic, is so strongly reminiscent of the big child of yore.