extant, still practised music in the world. Since they had no form of writing or notation, oral tradition was the only means of retaining and inculcating their lore, and music therefore provided the essential mnemonic medium. As such it was invested with the utmost power, secrecy, and value.37
Bruce Chatwin, in his fascinating book The Songlines, demonstrates how songs served to divide up the land, and constituted title-deeds to territory. Each totemic ancestor was believed to have sung as he walked and to have defined the features of the landscape in so doing. Song was the means by which the different aspects of the world were brought into consciousness, and therefore remembered. As Chatwin observed, aboriginals used songs in the same way as birds to affirm territorial boundaries. Each individual inherited some verses of the Ancestor’s song, which also determined the limits of a particular area. The contour of the melody of the song described the contour of the land with which it was associated. As Chatwin’s informant told him: ‘Music is a memory bank for finding one’s way about the world.’38
When the tribe met to sing their own song-cycle on ritual occasions, song-owners had to sing their particular verses in the right order. Songs also transcended language barriers and constituted a means of communication between individuals who could not communicate in other ways.
When a culture is under threat, music may become even more significant. Bruno Nettl, Professor of Musicology and Anthropology at the University of Illinois, discussing the music of the Flathead Indians, suggests that
the uses of music in Flathead culture are mainly to accompany other activities, perhaps in order to validate them as done in a properly Flathead fashion … Music supports tribal integrity when many peoples, whites and other Indian tribes, because of the onset of modernization and Westernization, come into a position of influencing the Flathead.39
E. O. Wilson, the Harvard socio-biologist, writes that, in primitive cultures,
Singing and dancing serve to draw groups together, direct the emotions of the people, and prepare them for joint action.40
One joint action for which sounds produced by musical instruments may help to prepare people is that of warfare. Attacks upon enemies are often initiated by blowing horns and trumpets which both arouses the aggressiveness of the attackers and is supposed to terrify the enemy.
The Muras and other tribes of the Orinoco region performed wild overtures on horns before commencing their attack; the Samoans blew conch-shells, and the savages of Guiana began their advance with a screech of horns and trumpets.41
Such sounds are also used to frighten away evil spirits.
Music can sometimes symbolize rebellion. It may be permissible to express anti-government attitudes in songs, the words of which would invite arrest if they appeared in a newspaper article. Under some regimes, night-club satirists are given a licence denied to the ordinary citizen. The song ‘Lilliburlero’ became an epitome of anti-Catholic sentiments, and is said to have contributed to the revolution of 1688 and to the subsequent defeat of James II at the Battle of the Boyne.
Continuity and stability are served by tunes which everybody knows; but music can also create new patterns of joint experience. Blacking gives examples of African drum patterns which when combined and performed by several players can create new cultural products.
Through musical interaction, two people create forms that are greater than the sum of their parts, and make for themselves experiences of empathy that would be unlikely to occur in ordinary social intercourse.42
The mnemonic power of music is still evident in modern culture. Many of us remember the words of songs and poems more accurately than we can remember prose. That music facilitates memory has been objectively confirmed by the study of mentally retarded children who can recall more material after it is given to them in a song than after it is read to them as a story.43
Some people who are primarily interested in classical music are disturbed to find that they recall the words and lyrics of popular songs more easily than they remember the music which means most to them. I think this is because popular songs are simple, endlessly repeated and difficult to avoid. This also accounts for their nostalgic quality. Anniversary ‘evenings out’ are seldom accompanied by the ‘Eroica’. Repetition can make any type of music memorable. Professional musicians, especially conductors and instrumental soloists, are required to remember huge quantities of classical music, and can usually do so without too much difficulty because they have studied it and played it repeatedly.
In Western societies the importance of music as a means of defining and identifying a culture has declined, but it has not disappeared. Particular pieces of music continue to be associated with particular societies, and come to represent them in the same way as a national flag. ‘They are playing our tune’ is a phrase which can have a much wider significance than our habitual reference of it to the courtship memories of a mated couple. In Britain we never refer to ‘God Save the Queen’ as ‘our tune’; nevertheless it symbolizes the structure of our society and the allegiance which is still expected of us. It is ironic but not inexplicable that in the USA the same tune is used for ‘My Country, ‘tis of Thee’. To play the hymn ‘Abide With Me’ at football matches is in dubious taste; but those who join in singing it feel an enhanced sense of joint participation, even if they do not believe the words which they are singing, or subscribe to the Christian beliefs which the hymn expresses.
It is not surprising that Church leaders have doubted whether the feelings which music arouses are genuinely religious. Music’s power to fan the flame of piety may be more apparent than real; more concerned with enhancing group feeling within the congregation than with promoting the individual’s relation with God. St Augustine reveals that he was so entranced by the pleasures of sound that he feared that his intellect was sometimes paralysed by the gratification of his senses. On the other hand, the beauty of music could also aid the recovery of faith.
So I waver between the danger that lies in gratifying the sense and the benefits which, as I know, can accrue from singing. Without committing myself to an irrevocable opinion, I am inclined to approve of the custom of singing in church, in order that by indulging the ears weaker spirits may be inspired with feelings of devotion. Yet when I find the singing itself more moving than the truth which it conveys. I confess that this is a grievous sin, and at those times I would prefer not to hear the singer.44
It will never be possible to establish the origins of human music with any certainty; however, it seems probable that music developed from the prosodic exchanges between mother and infant which foster the bond between them. From this, it became a form of communication between adult human beings. As the capacity for speech and conceptual thought developed, music became less important as a way of conveying information, but retained its significance as a way of communicating feelings and cementing bonds between individuals, especially in group situations. Today, we are so accustomed to considering the response of the individual to music that we are liable to forget that, for most of its history, music has been predominantly a group activity. Music began by serving communal purposes, of which religious ritual and warfare are two examples. It has continued to be used as an accompaniment to collective activities; as an adjunct to social ceremonies and public occasions. We share these functions of music with pre-literate cultures. In our society, one cannot imagine a Coronation or a State funeral taking place in the absence of music. We know less than we would like about what musical activities went on in the past in private houses; but it is important to recall that the modern concert, in which instrumental music is performed in a public concert hall as a separate entity unaccompanied by voices and in the absence of any ceremony, was not a prominent feature of musical life in England until the late seventeenth century. Since then, music as a distinct form in its own right has continued to grow in importance. During the same period, the performer has become more sharply differentiated
