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206 HOPI SONGS
return with which y opens are both wider in A1, but in the course of that movement the roles are again exchanged, the singer rehearsing in each case his initial division of the basal fourth, ga-de; in A1 the semitone, e-de, in A2 the tone, f-de. The genesis of the minor third in the final movement of y is doubtless shown in A2, where it approximately repeats the pitch reached by the foregoing slide; but the different reading in A1 caused by the different span of the antecedent movements does not prevent the singer from striking the same final pitch within a seventh tone in the two A's. B follows, approximately repeating in the first movement the trichordal division at ab and f of the two fourths, the latter just rehearsed in A2; and in the second movement their tetrachordal divisions at b, fg, and e; and combines with them notes at d outlining the lower penumbra of the main field of movement.
The figure of the song is conspicuously adiatonic. Mainly as the result of a mingling of trichordal and tetrachordal divisions, the pitches used are crowded together until but one space as wide as a tone is left unoccupied in either A. Notwithstanding this intricate departure from the diatonic norm, the staff notation records the song as one of the most unmistakably European of the series, electing to substitute for its wayward notes not always the nearest semitone of the key it suggested. Yet the flexible grace with which the slides of A2 sketch out the movements laid down with more particular care in A1 has not the air of blundering. The song is no fixed scheme in the singer's mind, but a composite memory of many free renditions, as a folk-tale in the mind of the narrator, minute exactness alternating with wide latitude in the recital. |
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