Thus, in this barbaric music we invariably find three principles:  1, rhythm; 2, the howl or descending scale of undefined intervals; and 3, the emotional raising of the voice.  The rhythm, which characterizes the most primitive form of song or chant, consists of the incessant repetition of a very small group of rhythmic sounds.  This incessant recurrence of one idea is characteristic of primitive, weak, or insane natures.  The second principle, which invariably includes the first (pointing to a slightly more advanced state of development), is met with in many folk songs of even modern times.  The third principle is one which indicates the transition stage from primitive or barbaric music to folk music.

To the primitive savage mind, the smallest rhythmic phrase is a wonderful invention, therefore it is repeated incessantly.  Add to that a certain joy in mere sound, and we have the howl, which certainly follows the sequence of nature, for a thunder clap, or the phenomenon of echo, is its prototype, being a loud explosion followed by a more or less regular sequence of minor reverberations.  When the accent of passion is added to these two principles—­will and nature—­we have laid the aesthetic foundation for all that we call music.[12] The example of a loud tone with gradually ascending inflections has only been found in the most perverted types of humanity; for instance, an English writer quaintly alludes to the songs of the Polynesian cannibals as consisting of “gruesomely suggestive passages of rising quarter-tones sung gloatingly before their living captives who are soon to be devoured.”

Now traces of these three elements are to be found in every folk song known, and we may even trace their influence in modern music, the lowest or most primitive being, as I have said, the “one-note” type, the next what I have called the “howl” type, the third the highest or “emotional” type.

Specimens of the first type, chants such as these [Figure 08], are to be heard in every part of the globe, the rhythmic figure being necessarily short and repeated incessantly.

The next step was a tremendous advance, and we find its influence permeating all music.  The most primitive specimens of this type we find among the Jute Indians [Figure 09], a mixture of one and two.  The same is to be found in Australia, slightly modified:  [Figure 10] The Caribs have the same song [G:  g’’ \ Chromatic g’].  We find it again in Hungary, although in a still more modified form, thus: 

    [Figure 11]

And last of all we meet with it in its primitive state in the folk song used by Bizet in “Carmen.”  We can even see traces of it in the quasi-folk song of the present century: 

    [Figure 12] etc.