Let us keep distinctly in mind, in all our study, these three modes of repetition, which are of radical importance to musical design: 1st, the imitation of a motive in a different "voice" or "part"; 2d, the transposition of a motive, in the same voice, to a higher or lower place in the scale; 3d, the restatement of a motive already once stated, after an intervening contrast. We shall constantly see these kinds of repetition--imitation, transposition, and restatement--used by the great composers to give their music that unity in variety, that variety in unity, without which music can be neither intelligible nor beautiful.
V. THE FIRST STEPS AS REVEALED BY HISTORY.
It must not be thought that these ways of varying musical motives without destroying their identity were quickly found out by musicians. On the contrary, it took centuries, literally centuries, to discover these devices that seem to us so simple. All savage races are musically like children; they cannot keep more than one or two short bits of tune in mind at the same time, and these they simply repeat monotonously. The first two examples in Figure II, taken from Sir Hubert Parry's "The Evolution of the Art of Music," give an idea of the first stage of the savage musician.
The first is from Australia, the second from Tongataboo. Both are made of a single motive endlessly repeated without relief.
In a slightly higher stage, two motives are used, but with little more skill. Number 3, in Figure II, is an example. Then come tunes in which one or more motives, repeated literally, are still the main feature of the design, but in which a certain amount of variety is introduced between the repetitions (see Number 4, in Figure II, a Russian tune). Here the little characteristic figure of four short notes and a long, marked N.B., is agreeably relieved by other material.
From such primitive music as this to the beautiful "folk-song" of the modern nations is a long step indeed. Even in the simplest real folk-songs, the means of varied repetition of ideas that we have been discussing are used with an ingenuity which places them on an infinitely higher level than these primitive efforts of savages. It is true that in folk-songs, which were sung by a single voice instead of a group of voices, the device of "imitation" was used hardly at all:--that is available only where there are several different voices to imitate one another. But in order to see what good use was made of "transposition" and "restatement" we need take only a single example, from Galicia in Spain (see Figure III). Let us examine this tune in some detail, as a preparation for a further study of folk-songs in a later article.