songs, many of them being in the old Gregorian modes, while
others show a decided inclination to our modern major and mi-
nor scales. Great is the historical importance of Folk-music,
because in it we see a dawning recognition of the principles of
instrumental form,i.e., the need of balanced phrases, caused
in the songs by the metrical structure of the words, and in the
dances by the symmetrical movements of the body; a recognition
above all, of the application of a definite system of tonal-centres,
and of repetition after contrast. In fact, as we look back it is
evident that the outlines of our most important design, that
known as the Sonata Form are—in a rudimentary state—found
in folk-music. Folk-melodies and rhythms play a large part in
the music of Haydn, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Grieg,
Tchaikowsky and Dvo[vr]ák. It seems as if modern composers
were doing for music what Luther Burbank has done for plant
life; for by grafting modern thought and feeling on to the parent
stock of popular music, they have secured a vigor attainable in
no other way. Thus some of the noblest melodies of Brahms,
Grieg, and Tchaikowsky are actual folk-tunes with slight varia-
tion or original melodies conceived in a folk-song spirit.[22]
[Footnote 21: For an eloquent presentation of the significance
of Folk-music see the article by Henry F. Gilbert in theMusical
Quarterlyfor October, 1917.]
[Footnote 22: For an able account of the important role that
folk-melodies are taking in modern music see Chapter V ofLa
Chanson Populaire en Franceby Julian Tiersot.]
As music, unlike the other arts, lacks any model in the realm of
nature, it has had to work out its own laws, and its spontane-
ity and directness are the result. It has not become imitative,
utilitarian or bound by arbitrary conventions. As Berlioz says
in theGrotesques de la Musique: “Music exists by itself; it has
no need of poetry, and if every human language were to perish,
it would be none the less the most poetic, the grandest and the
freest of all the arts.” When we reach the centuries in which def-
inite records are available, we find a wealth of folk-songs from
the Continental nations: Irish, Scotch, English, French, Ger-
man, Italian, Spanish, Russian,etc.[23] In these we can trace
the transition from the old modes to our modern major and mi-
nor scales; the principles of tonality and of rudimentary modu-
lation, the dividing of the musical thought into periodic lengths
by means of cadential endings, the instinct for contrast and for