108 il MERIC.,l N r l NTl l KOPULOGIST [N. S., 33, 1931

Phonophofography in Folk Music. MILTON METVESSEL. (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1928, x, 181 pp., 68 figs.) This book gives the results of Dr. Metfessel’s experiments a t the Iowa Univer-

sity Psychological Laboratory in methods of photographing the human voice in song, and presents in detail the conclusions reached from a study of the sound waves. He has built a portable apparatus, using motion picture films for recording sound, for field work, which is fully described, and pursued some of his researches among the southern negroes. His chief interest seems to have lain in the vibrato as the essential element of beautiful emotional singing, and as a measurement of the ex- pression of emotion in music. An effort to compare the vocal characteristics of dif- ferent noted singers was also included in the researches.

Although Dr. Aletfessel, and Professor Seashore who wrote the Introduction, seem to have been primarily concerned with the vibrato, they claim, with entire justification, that the photographed sound waves are a complete record of every- thing conveyed by musical expression, and that these may be measured and ana- lyzed by instruments of precision so as to permit of the isolation, description, and classification “of all types of variants, from the cold, non-emotional, and mechanical production of tones, to the most highly artistic expression of aesthetic emotion.”

They speak rather disparagingly of the methods anthropologists have hitherto been forced to use in recording and studying primitive music by means of phono- graph records, of their reading and interpreting them by hearing only, and tran- scribing them in ordinary notation, although these statements are not exactly true.

I t is stated that the cost of reducing four-minute records by the new method to film and score for publication would lie between fifty and seventy-five dollars apiece, but claimed that this price is not prohibitive when it is considered how vastly su- perior is the product to that hitherto used lly anthropologists, and the practically unlimited amount of time that may be spent in special study and interpretation of the records without wearing them.

For the kind ol study which primarily interests these investigators, such as variability of vibrato, attack and release of tones, various nianifestations of emotion and certain phases of physiological psychology, no doubt the film records, and a moderate number of them, may suflice. Anthropologists, however, are not more interested in these problems than in discovering the characteristic features of musi- cal composition of each group ol people to be studied, and in comparing tribal styles. This entails not only the discovery of peculiarities of voice production likely to be conimon to whole racial groups of singers (as certain phonetics may be to large masses of humanity speaking a single language), nor even the range of individual variation in such minutiae, but involves as well the larger survey, both in number and structural features of composition, etc., of tens, or more often hundreds, of songs belonging to each tribal group. For i t appears that styles of musical coniposi- tion may be vastly different for different kinds of songs used by one and the same group, and to compare the music as a whole, of different groups, involves securing records of literally thousands of songs. At this rate, the present cost of the Metfessel- Seashore apparatus is prohibitive, I venture to say, to all anthropologists. It is

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not alone prohibitive in money cost, but in the cost of human labor. I n order to secure any intelligible results from the waves, it is apparently necessary to expend upon each one an appalling amount of preliminary work, from the “hand counting” under artificial light, of the millimeters covered by each wave, to complex mathema- tical calculations. At least that was the case sometime before the book was pub- lished, when the present writer personally examined the apparatus a t Iowa.

However desirable it may be to have complete and entirely accurate visual re- cords from which not only the most minute but also the largest aspects of musical study could be made, i t is necessary in the final stage, to present the music in nota- tion capable of being read and comprehended, in order to render it intelligible to general students of anthropology and psychology and the mass of the musical pub- lic. Dr. Metfessel himself resorts to i t and makes in the use of i t as great compro- mises as, if not greater than, the compromise notations adopted by different an- thropological students of music. Thus, except for some of the more minute details of sound production, a far more enormous amount of labor has been involved in ar- riving a t a workable presentation, than is needed in the less scientific notation, to arrive a t which, itself, is long, slow, careful work when properly done. This ordi- nary notation may be sufficiently altered to take account of most of the features essential to purely anthropological, if not to psychological, study. That the more minute features are also important, is not to be doubted. But it is somewhat doubt- ful if the conditions which may influence some of these features of vocal performance have been, or can be, sufficiently controlled and isolated.

I t is true enough that no ordinary notation can express all that is conveyed by sound, as the complex wave can. This has long been observed and admitted by all thoughtful musicians. But it has this present advantage over the wave method- that everything noted is, or can be made, intelligible, whereas the complex wave has not yet proved entirely amenable to analysis. An important point to be men- tioned in connection with the analysis of the sound wave is that of phonetics. Certain vowels, all pitches, and their duration, seem capable of isolation, but other vowels and many consonants are evidently not clearly identifiable. I t has been necessary to resort t o audible records continually in determining and placing the words. If this is true of familiar English texts, it will be much more true of the sounds of exotic languages, with their obscure and often very diEcult consonants, so that exclusive reliance on film records is as yet far from being possible.

All this is not intended to convey the idea that the Metfessel apparatus is not a great step in advance. As a means of procuring exact visual records of sound, in all its ramifications, the clever devices developed a t the Iowa Laboratory meet the requirements. The fact that similar mechanisms have been developed elsewhere, although a t the expense of much less mobility of apparatus and even greater cost, does not detract from the achievement of Dr. Metfessel. Anthropologists have long recognized that the phonograph method alone is inadequate. Many types of me- chanical apparatus for recording and transcribing have been examined for many years, in the hope of finding more accurate and practicable methods, not only from the standpoint of cost in money, but in time, which is an essential factor. That the

110 A h f E R I C A N ANTIIROPOLOGIST [N. s., 3 3 , 1931

present form of this new apparatus does not meet all the practical requirements, does not prevent anthropologists from hailing it with interest and appreciation as the forerunner of what, i t is to be hoped, will evolve into something more adaptable to their particular needs.

Dr. Metfessel’s book contains many graphs of sections of songs recorded by the wave method, some accompanied by ordinary notation, some not, and by other analytical features. There are series of motion picture strips, depicting changing facial expression of the singers, taken synchronously with the song records. Each song example is accompanied by detailed discussion.

The author has been able to isolate certain vocal ornaments which, he leads his readers to infer, would not be heard unless the reader had before him a visual record of what was happening, as well, which seems a little peculiar. Throughout the book Dr. Metfessel is prone to class the ears of all musicians as crassly incapable of finer perception and to consider that those trained in European music invariably interpret pitches intermediate to European chromatics in terms of the nearest of these. This may be true of numbers who claim a knowledge of music and is notori- ously true of many concert singers, but is not applicable to many instrumentalists and to hundreds of naturally gifted people. He states that probably somc of the vocal ornaments are not confined to negro singing, but are characteristic of it as contrasted with artistic singing. He says “The question as to which of these pat- terns just described are distinctively African Negro must await phonophotographic studies of European and African folk song.”

Discussing scales, the author is inclined to believe that intervals, the limits of which in the course of repeated appearance during a song tend to center a t certain points, are intended to be defined by these points. He thus accounts for an “inten- tional” neutral third, the upper limit of which lies midway between a major and minor third above the lower. This is a favorite point of discussion and speculation by many students, who have not relied on visual records to observe this interval. Before considering it to be intentional in the particular song or songs in which it was observed, i t seems to me that studies should be made (1) on the degree of ease with which a given type of third may be sung. It may be that minor thirds are more often perfectly reproduced than major, a t least with some individuals, and that certain factors tend to influence the singing of major thirds toward neutral. In years of teaching and chorus and glee club work, I have noted that thirds tend to give trouble, even with trained singers of a certain type. (2) One of the conditions affecting proper pitching of tones from the standpoint of the melody, is its accom- panying text, with its word intonation. The relation of phonetics and language to tone production in song is a subject about which practically nothing is known a t present and which, it seems likely, is very important. (3) The propensity to “under- sing” certain intervals, perhaps notably the third, may also be the result of emo- tional disturbance, or even that of bad air. (4) It should also be kept in mind that any interval in a song, except the first and last, is indissolubly linked, each of its delimiting tones serving as one limit of the intervals lying on either side of it. Such modifications of pitch from European standards as may be observed, not only in

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primitive, but in artistic singing, may thus apply as much to the surrounding in- tervals as to the one under discussion, and either of the surrounding intervals, in its own nature, may affect the rendition of the one in question. The pitch may be influenced, much as stellar bodies are pulled in space by the presence of other bodies, by the general direction of the melody and the prominence of certain of its tones, or by a tendency on the part of the singer to attenuate or actuate melodic curves.’

H. H. ROBERTS

A n Introduction to Social Anthropology. CLARK WISSLER. (New York : Henry Holt & Co., 1929. X, 392 pp.)

A cursory inspection of Dr. Wissler’s latest book might suggest that it is a work of the order of Tylor’s Anthropology, the chapter headings indicating such topics as “The Economic Base,” “Marriage,” “Animism,” “Magic,” etc. Actually, the author’s purpose, as explicitly set forth in the Preface, is a quite different one. He has written a text for students of the social sciences not specializing in anthro- pology but eager to acquire “a minimum of descriptive data and as comprehensive an interpretative view as time permits.” Dr. Wissler solves his problem by “pre- senting the research leads of anthropology in their historical sequences.”

Accordingly, the chapter on “The Tribe” begins with references to Morgan, Maine, Bachofen, and McLennan; “Relationship Systems” with Morgan; “My- thology” with the Grimm brothers, Max Miiller, Kuhn, and Brinton. Naturally no two anthropologists would agree as to either the topics that should be stressed or as to the comparative importance of “research leads.” Personally I am not preju- diced against the study of kinship terms, but I consider it odd that a whole chapter should be devoted to it. On the other hand, the the slighting of technology and the omission of art seem inexplicable in view of the important results achieved by the ethnographic approach and Dr. Wissler’s own contributions to these depart- ments of our science.

In the judgments on specific points of anthropological fact and theory there are naturally some that provoke dissent. To the reviewer the exclusive emphasis on primitive culture in the initial definition of anthropological aims seems exaggerated (14 ff., 55), being logically unwarrantable and even practically impossible a t times. In setting the upper population limit of the political primitive a t 2,000 souls (36) Dr. Wissler evidently forgets dozens of African cases. In the South Seas-con- trary to a statement restricting the culinary art to women (59, 156)-men are known to prepare meals quite regularly. Unless my authorities have been super- seded, rye and oats do not date back to the Neolithic in Europe (69). I think it is unfair to say that anthropologists are not interested in political organization (130). The dearth of relevant material for America owing to changed modern conditions seems to have misled the author here; the Polynesian and African data

H. H. Roberts, Variation in Melodic Rendition as an Indicator of Emotion. Psycho- logical Review, 34: 463-471, 1927.