The third element of folk song shows again a great advance, for instead of the mere howl of pleasure or pain, we have a more or less exactly graded expression of feeling.  In speaking of impassioned speech I explained the relative values of the inflections of the voice, how the upward skip of the fourth, fifth, and octave indicates the intensity of the emotion causing the cry.  When this element is brought into music, it gives a vitality not before possessed, for by this it becomes speech.  When in such music this inflection rhymes with the words, that is to say, when the speech finds its emotional reflection in the music, we have reached the highest development of folk song.  In its best state, this is immeasurably superior to much of our “made” music, only too often false in rhythm, feeling, and declamation.

Among the different nations, these three characteristics often become obscured by national idiosyncracies.  Much of the Chinese music, the “Hymn to the Ancestors,” for instance, seemingly covers a number of notes, whereas, in fact, it belongs to the one-note type.  We find that their melodies almost invariably return to the same note, the intervening sounds being more or less merely variations above and below the pitch of the principal sound.  For example: 

    [Figure 13]

Hungarian folk music has been much distorted by the oriental element, as represented by the zingari or gypsies.  The Hungarian type of folk music is one of the highest, and is extremely severe in its contours, as shown in the following: 

    [Figure 14]

The gypsy element as copied by Liszt has obscured the folk melodies by innumerable arabesques and ornaments of all sorts, often covering even a “one-note” type of melody until it seems like a complicated design.

This elaboration of detail and the addition of passing and ornamental notes to every melody is distinctly an oriental trait, which finds vent not only in music but also in architecture, designing, carving, etc.  It is considered by many an element of weakness, seeking to cover a poverty of thought by rich vestments.  And yet, to my mind, nothing can be more misleading.  In spite of Sir Hubert Parry and other writers, I cannot think that the Moors in Spain, for instance, covered poverty of thought beneath superficial ingenuity of design.  The Alhambra outdoes in “passage work,” in virtuoso arabesques, all that an army of Liszts could do in piano literature; and yet the Arabs were the saviours of science, and promoted the greatest learning and depth of thought known in Europe in their time.  As for Liszt, there is such an astounding wealth of poetry and deep feeling beneath the somewhat “flashy,” bombastic trick of speech he inherited, that the true lover of music can no more allow his feelings to be led astray by such externals than one would judge a man’s mind by the cut of his coat or the hat he wears.

Thus we see the essence of folk song is comprised in the three elements mentioned, and its aesthetic value may be determined by the manner in which these elements are combined and their relative preponderance.