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It is cast in the natural minor diatonic scale of C-sharp, though it is strongly pentatonic in character. The rhythm is partly 5/8 and partly 4/8, but it swings along so naturally that it seems as if it could not be otherwise.
The song is cast in the scale of B minor. It is not pentatonic. The singers would employ, so an interrogation-mark is; placed below that be either A-natural or A-sharp, according to whether the scale is the natural minor or the harmonic minor, it is not possible to determine which tone the singers would employ, so an interrogation mark is placed below that note.
Rowbotham ascribes the invention of scales to those primitive musicians who, striving for greater variety in their one-toned chants, added first one newly-discovered tone, then another, and another. The pentatonic scale might have resulted from such chanting. Most of the primitive peoples of the present day do not seem to feel or "hear mentally" the half step.
It has that abandon which usually characterizes the songs of workers in the occult among primitive folk. A-sharp does not belong to this scale. There are five measures, where this note appears, but in each instance the tonality of the phrase momentarily rests in D-sharp minor, the relative of the pentatonic major of F-sharp. A-sharp belongs to this scale, but B-natural does not.
I use this term in contradistinction to "Pentatonic Character," and not in contradistinction to "Chromatic," as it is usually employed in musical literature. Melodic Structure. That form of flowing succession of tones in which the accented tones, if considered in sequence, show dominant non-adherence to chord intervals. Harmonic Structure.
By comparing this measure with the corresponding measure in each of the other three verses, it will be seen that the singers have taken great pains in those verses to avoid this note which does not belong to the pentatonic scale which they are using, evidence that they do not sense the tone in the fourth verse, where it is taken glissando. The D-flat, also foreign to the scale, occurs but once.
He has set twenty-two of Shakespeare's lyrics to music of the old English school, such as his uproarious "Let me the cannikin clink," and his dainty "Tell me where is fancy bred." "The Lark" is written in the pentatonic scale, with accompaniment for two flutes and a harp. In the same vein are various songs of Herrick, a lyrist whose verse is not usually congenial to the modern music-maker.
At three places where the singer uses one or the other of the tones foreign to the pentatonic scale, he makes half-step progressions. In the fourth line of the song we find the single instance in these records, where the performer takes an upward glissando. It is on the two-note embellishment F-natural G-flat shown in the last measure of that line.
Whether by imitation or not, the pentatonic scale of the Scotch is an intimate part of negro song. This avoidance of the seventh or leading tone is seen throughout the symphony as well as in the traditional jubilee tunes. It may be that this trait was merely confirmed in the African by foreign musical influence.
The melody may employ sparingly one or both of the two tones foreign to the pentatonic scale, and yet its pentatonic character will not be destroyed. Diatonic Character. That quality which a melody takes on when the two tones which are foreign to the pentatonic scale of the same key or tonality are freely employed.
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