The qualities of Polish national music have been made known most widely in the mazurkas of Chopin. These must not be taken as representing the real qualities of the Polish folk-song, but they offer an excellent point of departure. In some ways the songs of Poland show a racial relation with the Russian. The swift-moving energy, the recurring and pervading melancholy, find their parallels in the music of the eastern Slavs. But the scale is nearly always the familiar major, or a slightly modified minor. The western nations outgrew the uncertain tonality of the old modes much earlier than the east, and Poland, with her eyes always toward the west, doubtless adopted the technique of music as she found it. Thus such a song as the _Krakowiak_ (an irresistible dance movement), though it recalls in some vague way the spirit of Little Russian music, lends itself perfectly to conventional German harmonization. Another song, _Gdy wczystem polu_ (‘In Summer’), might have been thrown off in one of Chopin’s idle moments. What these songs have, above all other qualities, is grace. No nation, in its folk-music, has used rhythm with greater delicacy. They recall to us a Poland of the story-books, a land of dilettantism and social graces. More than any other folk-songs, except the French, they demand in their interpretation a subtle ear and a firm artistic control. The United States of America has its own folk-music of a sort, a part of it quite indigenous. This part is the music of the North American Indians, which is more primitive than any other large body of folk-music in our possession. There are, also, the songs of the western cowboys, the ‘Spirituals’ and slave-songs of the southern negroes, and the songs of Stephen Foster, all of which are worthy to rank as folk-songs. All these examples of American music have been exhaustively treated in Volume IV (Chapter XI). FOOTNOTES: [7] Countess Martinengo-Cæsareseo. [8] _Cf._ Vol. I, chap. VI. [9] Heinrich Reimann: _Ausländische Volkslieder_. CHAPTER VI THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF SONG Song in early Christian times--The age of chivalry--The troubadours and trouvères--The minnesingers--The mastersingers; the Lutheran revival--Polyphonic eclipse of song. I