This series of changes perhaps occupied centuries, for the artistic power of primitive men advances very slowly. The singers had not yet thought of putting this song in rhythm; and it was yet many centuries before they would feel anything like a musical scale. Rhythm had probably developed among people as a thing in itself, not directly connected with musical tones. Rhythmic movement is common to all men—in walking, in running, and in the beating of the heart. Dancing must have arisen spontaneously from an excess of emotion. Such dancing was perhaps accompanied by the clapping of hands, the beating of sticks, or the pounding of some primitive drum. Then with the invention of some primitive musical instrument the tribal musician began to play a simple dance tune in rhythm, a tune of two notes, at first an aimless shifting from one note to another, and later an organized melody with tonal figures and balances and contrasts.
It is probable that these two elements—rhythm and melody—were developed separately and were at first regarded as separate arts. At least it seems certain that singing was at first without rhythm. It must have been a wonderful day when somebody thought of combining the two—of singing the old song with metre and accents. But this, too, must have developed very slowly, being at first no more than an accenting of each alternative note. At the same time the song had probably been divided into line divisions. The singer then probably developed his rhythm from both ends, so to speak, building a more complex series of accents from the single group of two notes, and at the same time subdividing the line into sections. After several more centuries, perhaps, the tribe possessed a song that was fairly metrical and regular.
All this time the notion of a scale—a set succession of notes from which the notes of the tune were to be chosen—was entirely lacking. It came comparatively late in musical development, though it is the first incident in musical history. At first each melody was its own scale. Then, as people began to observe similarities in the tone relations between several melodies, they began to have a conception of the regular succession of tones which was common to all of them. Such a succession, a mode or primitive scale, was of but three or four notes. By arranging the semi-tones several new scales could be formed. And by here and there adding a note above or below the scales could be enlarged.
With the enlargement of the scales melodies became enlarged in range. More opportunities arose for the balancing and contrasting of melodic devices. The tune became more complex, more regular, and more beautiful.
It was now several centuries since the song had first come into existence. Since that time it had undergone perhaps a dozen transformations, each so unlike the other that nobody would have suspected they had any relation. But they were different forms of one and the same song. For songs have ancestors and descendants just as men do. Our song may have had a numerous progeny. As it passed from one province to another certain phrases of the melody lingered in people’s minds and found their way into other songs. Perhaps a line or two of its words became common property and were used as the refrain for a new song. Certainly as people made other songs they perforce made them somewhat in the image of the great ancestor.
Thus for centuries—ten, twenty, or thirty, likely as not—the song was growing and changing, or at least giving birth to children before dying by the wayside. And folk-songs are still alive, growing and changing. It seems possible that the years of their natural life may be numbered, for it is becoming harder every year for them to live in their new environment. But they are still in the land of the living and may continue for centuries to come, and if so they are bound to continue to grow and change. Thirty centuries of growth have not taken place that songs may stop growing right here. Perhaps the songs of to-day may seem as crude to people five hundred years hence as the songs of five hundred years ago seem to us now.
V
We must always remember that songs of every kind are primarily composed in the spirit of this typical folk-song. Even the most learned composer is spiritually a descendant of the crazy Roumanian peasant woman, and his songs, if they are real songs at all, are of the same spontaneous kind as hers. However much he may be occupied with conscious scholastic principles, if his music does not somehow sing in this natural, artless vein it is but as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. The impulse to song is the soul of all true songs the world over.
What this impulse is has occupied the minds of theorists for many a year. Their explanations are perhaps not important, since whatever their conclusions we still posses the wonderful song literature which is at our disposal. But their theories are at least interesting, if only to prove that song, like love, is one of those human things that can never be utterly explained.
Primitive people almost invariably attribute music to divine agency. We know the story of Orpheus, who moved the beasts and even the rocks and trees to tears by his sweet singing. We know also the story of the competition of Apollo the harp player and Marsyas the flute player. The Chinese say that they obtained their musical scale from a miraculous bird. The legend is interesting as showing how people tend to invent a supernatural explanation for the artificial laws which are felt to need some sort of superstitious bolstering up. For it is recorded in Chinese history that this scale has several times been changed by edict of the emperor, who considers an orthodox scale a very important thing to insist upon and wishes to have his word accepted as divine law. The Japanese tradition is that the sun-goddess once retired into a cave and the gods devised music to lure her forth once more. The story suggests the practice of certain primitive tribes who sing and dance during a solar eclipse, either to scare away the evil spirits or to beg the sun-god back into their midst. The Nahua Indians of North America say that the god Tezcatlipoca sent for music from the sun and made a bridge of whales and turtles by which to convey it to the earth. The Abyssinians have a tale to the effect that Yared transmitted music to men, the holy spirit having appeared to him in the form of a pigeon. But in the story of the Javans there seems to be a kernel of scientific truth. They say that the earliest music was suggested to them by the wind whistling through a bamboo tube which had been left hanging on a tree.