The same comment may be made on the specimen next to be given
as on the previous one: there is an entire omission of the
trills and flourishes with which the singer garlanded his
scaffolding of song, and which testified of his adhesion to
the fashion of his ancestors, the fashion according to which
songs have been sung, prayers recited, brave deeds celebrated
since the time when Kane and Pele and the other gods dipped
paddle for the first time into Hawaiian waters.
Unfortunately, in this as in the previous piece and as in the
one next to be given, the singer escaped the author before he
was able to catch the words.
V—Song from the Hula Pa-ipu
Arranged by H. BERGER
[Music]
[Page 154]
Here, again, is a piece of song that to the author’s ear
bears much the same resemblance to the original that an oiled
ocean in calm would bear to the same ocean when stirred by a
breeze. The fine dimples which gave the ocean its
diamond-flash have been wiped out.
VI—Song for the Hula Pele
Arranged by H. BERGER
[Music]
Is it our ear that is at fault? Is it not rather our science
of musical notation, in not reproducing the fractions of
steps, the enharmonics that are native to the note-carving
ear of the Chinaman, and that are perhaps essential to the
perfect scoring of an oli or mele as sung by a Hawaiian?
None of the illustrations thus far given have caught that
fluctuating trilling movement of the voice which most
musicians interviewed on the subject declare to be impossible
of representation, while some flout the assertion that it
represents a change of pitch. One is reminded by this of a
remark made by Pietro Mascagni:[309]
[Footnote 309: The Evolution of Music from the Italian
Standpoint, _in_ the Century Library of Music, XVI, 521.]
“The feeling that a people displays in its character, its
habits, its nature, and thus creates an overprivileged type
of music, may be apprehended by a foreign spirit which has
become accustomed to the usages and expressions common from
that particular people. But popular music, [being] void of
any scientific basis, will always remain incomprehensible to
the foreigner who seeks to study it technically.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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