Tone and Tune in West African Music

Abstract

In the main, two aspects have been brought up so far in order to clarify the relationship between word and tone: the musical expression of the word-meaning and the influence of the rhetorical patterns on the forming of the tune. The connections of the speech-vowels with the individual tones of the tune have been investigated to a far smaller extent, as for example the sequence of the sounds a di e i, i e a ii (Es war als hitt' der Himmel die Erde zart gekiisst) which in Schumann's Mondnacht is so closely connected with the line of the tune that the song loses one of its most characteristic features in translation into another language. This loss proves that there is an element in the connection of speech-vowel and musical tone, that is of decisive importance for the relationship between tone and tune (Wort-und Melodieton). The realm, in which this phenomenon becomes most apparent and can be understood in its principle, is the music of the tone languages, because in those languages the meaning of a word depends to the largest extent on the ascending or descending linguistic intonation. Thus if a word is to be grammatically intelligible, the individual syllables cannot be sung arbitrarily high or low. Speechtone and musical tone must be definitely correlated. If these two tones were always parallel in movement, the music of the tone languages would furnish only a special case. Since, however, speechand musical intonation may also contradict each other under certain rhythmical and dynamic conditions, the investigation of the music of the tone languages leads to results that are of essential importance for all research in the relationship between word and tone. The results of these investigations have been published by the author (1942 and 1950). In the meantime Rev. A. M. Jones took up the problem again (1959), developing a theory which disagrees with the older hypothesis of M. Schneider in so far as it deals with the explanation of those cases, in which the basic parallelism of tune and speechtone is interrupted. While Schneider (1942) explains these deviations by means of the rhythmical process, Jones rejects this explanation in favor of an interpretation by means of the free development of the tune, without asking though, to what extent the speechtones, changed by the music, remain intelligible.