Critical and Historical Essays: Lectures delivered at Columbia UniversityMacDowell, Edward
History
Critical and Historical Essays: Lectures delivered at Columbia University
MacDowell, Edward
Music -- History and criticism
The fourth consists of a seemingly capricious intermixture
of dual and triple rhythm, and is especially noticeable in
Spanish and Portuguese music as well as in that of their South
American descendants. This distinction, however, may be traced
directly back to the Moors. For in their wonderful designs we
continually see the curved line woven in with the straight, the
circle with the square, the _tempus perfectum_ with the spondee.
This would bring this characteristic directly under the head
of orientalism or ornamental development. Yet the peculiarity
is so marked that it seems to call for separate consideration.
The fifth type, like the fourth, is open to the objection that
it is merely a phase of the oriental type. It consists of the
incessant use of the augmented second and diminished third,
a distinctively Arabian characteristic, and is to be found
in Egypt, also, strange to say, occasionally among our own
North American Indians. This, however, is not to be wondered
at, considering that we know nothing of their ancestry. Only
now and then on that broad sea of mystery do we see a half
submerged rock, which gives rise to all sorts of conjectures;
for example, the custom of the Jutes to wear green robes and
use fans in certain dances, the finding in the heart of America
of such an Arab tune as this:
[Figure 27]
or such a Russian tune as this:
[Figure 28]
The last type of nationalism in folk song is almost a negative
quality, its distinguishing mark being mere simplicity,
a simplicity which is affected, or possibly assimilated, by
the writer of such a song; for German folk song proper is a
made thing, springing not from the people, but from the many
composers, both ancient and modern, who have tried their hands
in that direction.
While this of course takes nationalism out of the composition
of German folk song so-called, the latter has undoubtedly gained
immensely by it; for by thus divesting music of all its national
mannerisms, it has left the thought itself untroubled by quirks
and turns and a restricted musical scale; it has allowed this
thought to shine out in all its own essential beauty, and thus,
in this so-called German folk song, the greatest effects of
poignancy are often reached through absolute simplicity and
directness.
Now let us take six folk songs and trace first their national
characteristics, and after that their scheme of design, for
it is by the latter that the vital principle, so to speak, of
a melody is to be recognized, all else being merely external,
costumes of the different countries in which they were born. And
we shall see that a melody or thought born among one people
will change its costume when it migrates to another country.
Arab Song
[Figure 29]
Scheme [Figure 29a]
Russia--Reiteration
[Figure 30]
[Figure 31]
Red Sarafan
[Figure 32]
Scotch
[Figure 33]
[Figure 34]
Irish--Emotional in character, with greater perfection in design
[Figure 35]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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