[89]
Rhythm is the most primitive element of music, and the most fundamental.
Wallaschek, in his book on _Primitive Music_, and most other writers on
the subject are agreed on this point. "Rhythm," remarks an American
anthropologist,[90] "naturally precedes the development of any fine
perception of differences in pitch, of time-quality, or of tonality.
Almost, if not all, Indian songs," he adds, "are as strictly developed out
of modified repetitions of a motive as are the movements of a Mozart or a
Beethoven symphony." "In all primitive music," asserts Alice C.
Fletcher,[91] "rhythm is strongly developed. The pulsations of the drum
and the sharp crash of the rattles are thrown against each other and
against the voice, so that it would seem that the pleasure derived by the
performers lay not so much in the tonality of the song as in the measured
sounds arrayed in contesting rhythm, and which by their clash start the
nerves and spur the body to action, for the voice which alone carries the
tone is often subordinated and treated as an additional instrument." Groos
points out that a melody gives us the essential impression of a _voice
that dances_;[92] it is a translation of spatial movement into sound, and,
as we shall see, its physiological action on the organism is a reflection
of that which, as we have elsewhere found,[93] dancing itself produces,
and thus resembles that produced by the sight of movement.
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