Traditional Hopi Songs - online book

Native American Songs With Sheet Music, Notation & Commentary

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	26                                           HOPI SONGS and practice amply justified the labor which had made it possible; the more amply because of the unlooked-for character of the new fact. The notations presented herewith differ from all others known to me, excepting the collection of Zuni melodies I have already published, in being notations of perform­ ances and not of pieces of music.1 This difference is one of importance, involving no less a distinction than that between facts of observation and theories upon them. A fact of observation is any­thing that is observed; a theory is the idea that something would be observed under specified conditions. A musical performance is a real event open to observation like any other; a piece of music is an ideal of event which any given performance more or less completely realizes. The exacter notation of musical performance by the naked ear may be said to be practically impossible. None but the most exceptional observers would be equal to the task of writing down with any pre-
	1 The year after the appearance of the Zufli Melodies I contributed to the Phi­losophical Review (1892, vol. i, Nos. 1 and 2) a paper entitled " Some Psycho­logical Aspects of the Chinese Musical System," containing notations of Chinese performances of whieh I had myself ob­tained phonographic records. In these notations a mean of closely grouped notes was assumed as the pitch intended by the performer. Within the past few years the closer examination of musical struc­ture with the aid of the phonograph and by a similar method has been continued in the Psychologisches Institut of Professor Carl Stumpf at Berlin University, by Pro­fessor Stumpf, Dr. E. M. von Hornbostel, and Dr. 0. Abraham, using records col­lected by themselves and others. The	published results of these studies include C. Stumpf, " Tonsystem und Musik der Siamesen," Beitrage zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft, 3 Heft, 1901; E. M. von Hornbostel, " Phonographirte Tune-sische Melodien " ; " Notiz ilber die Musik der Bewohner von Sud Neu Mecklen­burg " ; also an essay on the present state of the science of Comparative Music con­tributed to the Bericht of the Basler Kongress of the Internationale Musikge-sellschaft, 1906. O. Abraham and E. M. von Hornbostel, " Phonographirte Indi-anermelodien aus British Columbia," con­tributed to the Boas Memorial Volume, New York, 1906. I regret that the limits of my leisure forbid more than the men­tion of these inquiries.