How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. | Page 7

the
"Sound of a voice that is still."
[Sidenote: The value of memory.]
This is one of the drawbacks which are bound up in the nature of music;
but it has ample compensation in the unusual pleasure which memory
brings. In the case of the best music, familiarity breeds ever-growing
admiration. New compositions are slowly received; they make their
way to popular appreciation only by repeated performances; the people
like best the songs as well as the symphonies which they know. The
quicker, therefore, that we are in recognizing the melodic, harmonic,

and rhythmic contents of a new composition, and the more apt our
memory in seizing upon them for the operation of the fancy, the greater
shall be our pleasure.
[Sidenote: Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm.]
[Sidenote: Comprehensiveness of Melody.]
In simple phrase Melody is a well-ordered series of tones heard
successively; Harmony, a well-ordered series heard simultaneously;
Rhythm, a symmetrical grouping of tonal time units vitalized by accent.
The life-blood of music is Melody, and a complete conception of the
term embodies within itself the essence of both its companions. A
succession of tones without harmonic regulation is not a perfect
element in music; neither is a succession of tones which have harmonic
regulation but are void of rhythm. The beauty and expressiveness,
especially the emotionality, of a musical composition depend upon the
harmonies which either accompany the melody in the form of chords (a
group of melodic intervals sounded simultaneously), or are latent in the
melody itself (harmonic intervals sounded successively). Melody is
Harmony analyzed; Harmony is Melody synthetized.
[Sidenote: Repetition.]
[Sidenote: A melody analyzed.]
The fundamental principle of Form is repetition of melodies, which are
to music what ideas are to poetry. Melodies themselves are made by
repetition of smaller fractions called motives (a term borrowed from the
fine arts), phrases, and periods, which derive their individuality from
their rhythmical or intervallic characteristics. Melodies are not all of the
simple kind which the musically illiterate, or the musically ill-trained,
recognize as "tunes," but they all have a symmetrical organization. The
dissection of a simple folk-tune may serve to make this plain and also
indicate to the untrained how a single feature may be taken as a mark of
identification and a holding-point for the memory. Here is the melody
of a Creole song called sometimes Pov' piti Lolotte, sometimes _Pov'
piti Momzelle Zizi_, in the patois of Louisiana and Martinique:

[Music illustration]
[Sidenote: Motives, phrases, and periods.]
It will be as apparent to the eye of one who cannot read music as it will
to his ear when he hears this melody played, that it is built up of two
groups of notes only. These groups are marked off by the heavy lines
across the staff called bars, whose purpose it is to indicate rhythmical
subdivisions in music. The second, third, fifth, sixth, and seventh of
these groups are repetitions merely of the first group, which is the germ
of the melody, but on different degrees of the scale; the fourth and
eighth groups are identical and are an appendage hitched to the first
group for the purpose of bringing it to a close, supplying a resting-point
craved by man's innate sense of symmetry. Musicians call such groups
cadences. A musical analyst would call each group a motive, and say
that each successive two groups, beginning with the first, constitute a
phrase, each two phrases a period, and the two periods a melody. We
have therefore in this innocent Creole tune eight motives, four phrases,
and two periods; yet its material is summed up in two groups, one of
seven notes, one of five, which only need to be identified and
remembered to enable a listener to recognize something of the design
of a composer if he were to put the melody to the highest purposes that
melody can be put in the art of musical composition.
[Sidenote: Repetition in music.]
Repetition is the constructive principle which was employed by the
folk-musician in creating this melody; and repetition is the fundamental
principle in all musical construction. It will suffice for many merely to
be reminded of this to appreciate the fact that while the exercise of
memory is a most necessary activity in listening to music, it lies in
music to make that exercise easy. There is repetition of motives,
phrases, and periods in melody; repetition of melodies in parts; and
repetition of parts in the wholes of the larger forms.
[Sidenote: Repetition in poetry.]
The beginnings of poetic forms are also found in repetition; in

primitive poetry it is exemplified in the refrain or burden, in the highly
developed poetry of the Hebrews in parallelism. The Psalmist wrote:
"O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath, Neither chasten me in thy hot
displeasure."
[Sidenote: Key relationship.]
Here is a