The Origin and Development of Musical Scales [pp. 324-343]

THE PRINCE TON REVIEW.
definite intervals were characteristic of melody from its earliest
youth. He consequently speaks of the expressiveness of music
as if the elaborate melodies and involved emotions of to-day had
always existed, and as if " determinate degrees" were merely a
labor-saving contrivance for simplifying an over-complex artistic
product. Yet a priori considerations and actual observations
unite in asserting that primitive music neither assumes any great
complexity nor is in any sense the outcome of overwrought
emotion.
On the contrary, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has well explained
in his "First Principles," music seems gradually to have unfolded its unlimited expressive powers through a process of
slow improvement and integration of the rude stimuli of mere
rhythmic noise. " Rhythm in speech," says Mr. Spencer,
"rhythm in speech,... in sound,... in motion were in
the beginning parts of the same thing.... Among various
existing barbarous tribes we find them still united. The
dances of savages are accompanied by some kind of monotonous chant, the clapping of hands, the striking of rude instruments; there are measured movements, measured words,
-and measured tones." And again: "As implied by the customs of still extant barbarous races, the first musical instruments were... percussive,... and were used simply to mark
the time of the dance; and in this constant repetition of the
same sound we see music in its most homogeneous form." Now,
if we admit the probability that primitive singing is everywhere
.and always firmly interlocked with some kind of periodic movement or noise, is it not a natural inference that definite melodic
intervals are the immediate fruits of this strongly rhythmic
accompaniment rather than of any attempt to make emotional
utterances intelligible to "immediate perception"? In other
words, may we not justly suppose that precise and measurable
variations in pitch are essentially accessory to the pulse of the
dance or of the tom-tom orchestra, a more or less acute sound
serving to lend a new accentuation to a point of stress, while at
the same time lifting the whole performance out of a bare
monotone and adding a new and easily extensible element of
interest? The same statement holds good to some degree of
music in its higher stages of development; for throughout the
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