Traditional Hopi Songs - online book

Native American Songs With Sheet Music, Notation & Commentary

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	114                                        HOPI SONGS discord and resolution of which this music is the theatre. In Snake Song No. 1 a tritonus is escaped by an upward swell of the figure ; here by a similar movement not actually executed but mirrored in the lower octave, — like a defeated plan in the unchanged purpose. The subject of these vicissitudes is a downward tetrad extended by an opening flourish of a tone; and their source lies in the partial sub­stitution of a minor reading of this movement (ending in a minor trichord, as shown in Masi-umtiwa'sfor a major reading (ending in a major trichord, as shown in Kano's. The course of the song may thus be described: The theme is given at once by way of introduction (a) in a form hardly recognizable, but showing traces in each rendition of the reading characteristic thereof, and cramped a semitone: it is then sketched to the octave (cd) of its summit , that is, shifted down a fourth; then fully revealed in the two readings (major in Kano's minor in Masi-umtiwa's), to be quickly withdrawn first within its upper three intervalsthen its upper twoto prepare its reappearance at the original pitch, which after a delayed note and a moment's pause ensues The way is plain before Masi-umtiwa from this point, thedemanded by his minor reading of the theme already echoing in his ears from the movements in the But for Kano in the major reading immediately ensues a struggle, the pitch it demands, here a, yielding at firstto the after image of the previous ga, and asserting itself lateronly to assume their relation (a tone) to the note next below. This compromise springs the axis of the song upward a semitone from this point on, and at first the axis alone. Repeated unchangedbut for the loss of its lower semitone, the theme comes to span a tritonus The same tritonus introduces the quick development of the theme a tone downwardby which the plunge in B is foreshadowed, as in the like quick development shifted a tone upward (8') the rise of the theme in returning to the initial pitch was before announced. The immediately following rehearsal of the two lower intervals of the tetradin its minor reading nearly fills the tritonus field; but on proceeding to B, while still submitting to the new