THE EVOLUTION OF A SONG.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19376, 10 July 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE EVOLUTION OF A SONG.

THE OPINIONS OF SANDY.

BX KOTARE.

" You were saying that there was some instinct for rhythm in the average human being that he gratified in the fixed pattern of the dance or the pulsing melody of the popular song. I suppose that is as near as we can get to it." So Sandy delivered his soul. "I.don't know.that you are not right in thinking that words do not matter. But there is something on the other side, too. ' Yes, We Have No Bananas ' in its music was an obvious crib from the once famous, ' I Dreamt That I Dwelt In Marble Halls,' and under its new form the air won a popularity, evanescent it is true, that it had never reached even in its palmiest days. And it was a mighty popular song 30 years ago. "And you have another example to hand. Lemare, the greatest organist of his day, wrote a melody that was always popular in select circles. It had no association of words, but as an organ solo, later adapted for the 'cello, it had a host of admirers among a limited group. But our age has set it' to sentimental words about ' Moonlight and Roses,' and every gramophone screeches it, and every party of young people shout it, and the boys in the streets whistle it. You can't go far to-day without hearing it Ln its modern guise. You might have gone for years without hearing it in its original form. ' " And I've often noticed that at a high-class concert, when the great artist abandons grand . opera or oratorio and sings a simple ballad in the commpn speech ' understanded of the people,' there is a wider and more . generous response from the audience. Words evidently count for something. But I grant you that it is more often' the music. One wonders, sometimes, .if the public pays any attention to the words it sings. You find that in sacred music as well as in secular. - ■ - Some Hymns. " How often I have heard congregations singing lustily some such sentiment as this: Whatever, Lord, we lend'to Thee, Repaid a thousand-fold, shall be; Then gladly will we give to Thee, Who givest all. An-atrocious sentiment,,that; a barbarous survival from the earliest groping forms of religion. Notice the 'lend' ? We are prepared to lend because the interest is satisfactory. We give because we expect a thousand-fold in return. You are back to' the lowest forms of prudential morality. We declare our intention to bo good because it. pays best. "And you get the same primitive semitism in one of the most popular of hymns, 'O, God of Bethel!':. ■ Such blessings from Thy gracious hand, i Our humble prayers implore. And Thou shall be our chosen God, And portion evermore. , ■ Exactly the same sentiment, you see. The second part depends on the first. If we get what' we want, then we are prepared to' do our part, to give, pur allegiance.' That is exactly the* bargaining spirit of the old '•patriarchj but it is as far from the Christian idea as East is from West. Yet' we go on singing it, arid'l suppose shall keep at'it to the end of time. It is hopelessly opposed to the higher Old Testament morality. Job had the truth of the matter when he said: 'Though He slay pie yet will'l trust .in Him,' The Minstrel. "In the olden days the minstrel was a welcome figure at every gathering. Up and down the roads of medieval England, the minstrel passed from castle to castle, not unwilling to stop the night in the huts where poor men lie. I've, often wondered where the minstrels found their songs. They were long, and usually topical—the exploits of the hero in love and war, the mighty deeds of men-at-arms. For the audiences did not depend on, encores for a flight's entertainment. They liked their ballads long and they liked them strong. It used to be thought that these old-time ballads arose from the heart, of the people. ; There was no single composer. The whole community produced them. Someone began them, of course. But as time went on both words and music altered as the communal mind got to work on them, until something like a final form was evolved which became a tradition and which no man could alter. Then from generation to generation the lays of the tribe were handed down in the form stabilised and sanctified by centuries of custom. " But, even so; there must have been many songs that so appealed to the public in the form the original author had given them that they started on their course toward, posterity in the shape we know to-day. Modern critics, think that communal authorship is a myth. " T4ke a ballad like 'Sir Patrick Spens.' Modern criticism assigns a single author and a comparatively late date of composition. And that is the mbst famous ballad of our race. But if my head agrees with the critics, my heart always sides with the tribal authorship theory. ! I like to think of the- soul of a people slowly becoming artidfclate, its massed joys and sorrows through the centuries at last finding their voice, not in an individual effort by one inspired singer, but through the poetical and musical sense of the multitude. The words of our ordinary speech were, many of them, the product of the masses' feeling for beauty, the native poetry of the race finding expression in moulding the beautiful word. And why should it not be so with the songs ? The Genius. " A man of genius may give the final and perfect form which .the nation's instinct recognises as superior to the mass You have that .in the history of Scottish song. Burns took the songs that many bitter years of struggle had wrung from the heart of Scotland, and. a fervid patriot himself, gave them the form in, which we know them to-day. But Burns was himself the superlative product of generations of humble singers. The instinct for song had worked for centuries in .darkness till it flamed forth in the man of genius. It was the tude of unknown men and women all through the years, keeping alive the love of beauty in' cadence and in music, that made Burns possible. ' " That's how I. see it anyway. I have just been reading Jack McLaren's ' My Crowded Solitude," one of the greatest books that ever came out of Australia. He lived alone among the Australian blacks on a cocoanut plantation on the eastern shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and he used his leisure to study the native mind with a sympathy not often accorded to that unfortunate race. Among other things about a very lovable though improvident people he noted their passion for music. They had only four notes, but they worked them to the limit of their permutations and combinations. They made songs about anything and everything. Usually the Words were a repetition ad nauseam of a single sentiment. But, apparentlv, the song-making was a tribal affair. The words were knocked into shape by the combined intelligence of the group. Here, too, a final satisfying form was at last reached, and it became the standard, a recognised tribal lay. And this was the song they made about the solitary planter: The white man is good and kind, And our hearts are glad he is here. ," If the Australian blacks can evolve as admirable a song on the communal basis, I am prepared to that civilised Europe created its early songs after the same fashion." ,