THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8472, 24 January 1891, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC.

The interpretation of music which Mr. Darwin gives agrees with my own in supposing music to be developed from vocal noises, but differs in supposing a particular class of vocal noises to have originated it— the amatory class. I have aimed to show that music has its germs in the sounds which the voice emits under excitement, and eventually gains this or that character according to the kind of excitement; whereas Mr. Darwin argues that music arises from those sounds which the male makes during the excitements of courtship, that they are constantly made to charm the female, and that from the resulting combination of sounds arise not love-music only, but music in general. That certain tones of voice and cadences having some likeness of nature are spontaneously used to express grief, others to express joy, others to express affection, and others to express triumph or martial ardour is undeniable. According to the view 1 have set forth, the whole body of these vocal manifestations of emotion form the root of music. According to Mr. Darwin's view, the sounds which are prompted by the amatory feeling only, having originated musical utterance, there are derived from these all the other varieties of musical utterance which aim to express their kinds of feeling. This roundabout derivation has, [ think, less probability than the direct derivation. Certainly the animals around us yield but few facts countenancing his view. What, then, is the true interpretation? Simply that, like the whistling and humming of - tunes by boys and men, the singing of birds results from overflow of energy —an overflow which in both cases ceases under depressing conditions. The relation between courtship and singing, so far as it can be shown to hold, is not a relation of cause and effect, but a relation of concomitance'; the two are simultaneous results of the same cause. Throughout the animal kingdom at large the commencement of reproduction is associated with an excess of those absorbed materials needful for self-maintenance, and with a consequent ability to devote a part to the maintenance of the species. This constitutional state is one with which there goes a tendency to superfluous expenditure in various forms of action — unusual vivacity of every kind, including vocal vivacity. While we thus see why pairing and singing come to be associated, wo also see why there is singing at other times when the feeding and weather are favourable ; and why, in some cases, as in those of the thrush and the robin, there is more singing after the breeding season than before or during the breeding season. We are shown, too, why these birds, and especially the thrush, so often sing in the winter : the supply of worms on lawns and in gardens being habitually utilised by both, and thrushes having the further advantage that they are strong enough to break the shells of the hibernating snails ; this last ability being connected with the fact that thrushes and blackbirds are the first among the singing birds to build. It remains only to add that the alleged singing of males against one another with the view of charming the females is open to parallel criticisms. How far this competition happens during the pairing season I have not observed, but it certainly happens out of the pairing season. I have several times heard blackbirds singing alternately in June. But the most conspicuous instance is supplied by the redbreasts. These habitually sing against one another during the autumn months, reply and rejoinder being commonly continued for five minutes at a time.

Even did the evidence support the popular view adopted by Mr. Darwin that the singing of birds is a kind of courtship — even were there good proof, instead of much disproof, that a bird's song is a developed form of the sexual sounds made by the male to charm the female, the conclusion would, I think, do little toward justifying the belief that human music has had a kindred origin. For, in the first place, the birdtype in general, developed as it is out of the reptilian type, is very remotely related to that type of the vertebraia which ascends to man as its highest exemplar ; and, in the second place, song-birds belong, with but few exceptions, to the singular order of innawores — one order only of the many orders constituting the class. So that, if the verlebrata ac large be presented by a tree, of which man is the topmost twig, then it is at a considerable distance down the trunk that there diverges the branch from which the bird-type is derived ; and the group of singing birds forms but a terminal subdivision of this branch—lies far out of the ascending line which ends in man. To give appreciable support to Mr. Darwin's view, we ought to find vocal manifestations of the amatory becoming more pronounced as we ascend along the particular line of inferior vertebrate/, out of which man has arisen. Just as we find other traits which prefigure human traits (instance arms and hands adapted for grasping) becoming more marked as we approach man, so should we find, becoming more marked, this sexual use of the voice, which is supposed to end in human song. But we do not find this. The South American monkeys (" the howlers," as they are sometimes called), which, in chorus, make the woods resound for hours together with their "dreadful concert," appear, according to Ilengger, to be prompted by no other desire than that of making a noise. Mr. Darwin admits, too, that this is generally the case with the Gibbons ; the only exception he is inclined to mako being in the case of Hylohatca agilis, which, on the testimony of Mr. Waterhouse, he says ascends and descends the scale by half-tones. This comparatively small set of sounds, he thinks, may bo used to charm the female, though there .is no evidence forthcoming that this is tho case. When we remember that in tho forms nearest to the human— the chimpanzees and the gorilla— there is nothing which approaches even thus far toward musical utterance, we see that the hypothesis has next to none of that support which oujdit to be forthcoming. Indeed, in his " Descent of Man," vol. ii., p. 332, Mr. Darwin himself says: "It is a surprising fact that we have not as yet any good evidence that these organs are used by male mammals to charm tho female," an admission which amounts to something like a surrender.— Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the Popular Science Monthly.