MUSIC'S MOTHER-TONE AND TONAL ONOMATOPY. PRELUDE. BSERVE how the whole orchestral throng clusters about her; OBS caresses her: how the mischievous little bows catch up her apron-string and prance out with it, then come back and loll at her knee, and look up into her eyes, and whisper her name; how the clarinets seize and sound that name deeply, then scurry with it along the tone-fence, pretending that they are going to jump off, as do those orchestral big boys-the contra-bassi; how the 'celli-bows first give it an inflection of filial love, then utter a sigh of romantic susceptibility, as they saunter towards the tone-bridge, over which they seem ready to vault at beauty's command; how the lowing horns echo that name; how magically it makes the fiery trumpets, the phlegmatic trombones, and even those orchestral athletes-the prosaic bass-drums as well as the chattering group of aspiring flutes and pert piccolos and cry-baby hautboys and quacking fagottos properly decorous in the midst of their wildest fun, the surge and swirl of which only the master's baton can hush, with its apparently unwelcome signal for taking up their respective burdens of labor and care. This hush often makes me wish-as did that Eastern potentate, who found this topsy-turvy, seething mass of sounds so indescribably charming-to encore it. Music's mother-tone is man's mother-tone; the original vowel sound, the primitive A (Ah)—the first, simplest, easiest of all vocal utterances the onomatopic vocable for mother. Man, to intensify its love-symbolism in verbal expression, gave it the verbo-consonantal prefix, M-Ma: and children verbally melodised and sweetened this symbolism by iteration-Mama. Good examples of the use of Ma may be found in the simple, verbo-tonal, slumbersome lullabies of the primitive Esquimaux. Man idealised the mother-tone in tonal speech by adding thereto tonal consonants, chosen because of their being onomatopic of his numerous mother-needs; and, as the demands of his varied emotions for æsthetic media of musical utterance grew, he sought for other tone-vowels, consonants, tone-combinations, tone-sequences, until these tone-language materials joined, blended with each other, took shape, coherence, symmetry, and music became his vernacular tongue. Naturally onomatopy has had much to do with this musical evolution; as, with its simple cries, men everywhere naturally express their feelings; which cries, as the crying one's desire to be heeded by the listener increases in intensity; or, as one phase of his emotion merges into another, are reduplicated, inflected, or joined to other sounds within his vocal command, in alliterative concord or otherwise, for the purpose of deepening the impression of the affection to which he is then giving vocal utterance, upon the listener; and that in tones, phrases, strains, tone-movements, of whatsoever kind they may be, this onomatopic element must be present, if we would have the tone-language closely, correctly, intimately, satisfactorily subserve its purpose as such. The mere mechanical reiteration of the name of the Vaishnavic god, Hari, in which the A-tone is chief, secures admission to the Vishnu's heaven. In the early Hebrew tonal accents and indeterminate notation we find numerous onomatopic suggestions which are clearly in line with and illustrative of the originally tentative condition of the tonelanguage; this notation of a flexible tonality allowing of as widely different tonal interpretations, changes, as does, verbally, the Aryan tongue, from which sprang the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German; and our own copious English has more sounds than symbols. The wonderfully intellectual Egyptians, by their use of an indeterminate notation, confessed their need for a notation other than that whose signs are of fixed notes, as well as for tonal onomatopy; and Moses doubtless obtained suggestions, through his musical culture in the Pharaonic court, which caused the Hebrews to meet the onomatopic exigencies in their song-services by their indeterminate notation, with its oral amendments, qualifications, accents, thereby rendering their music so variable, that-chameleon-like-it took the tonecolor of whatever land they sojourned in,-a habit initiated by their Egyptian captivity. Man etherealised the verbal with the tonal, artistically, and extended, when so doing, onomatopy from the spoken to the sung; causing it, naturally, to dominate the constructive art-growth and scientific evolution of music, its essence being the unobstructed semblance of sound to sense; a semblance vastly superior to that of words, because unembarrassed by verbal dross. Read this fine verbo-onomatopic excerpt from Southey: How does the water Rising and leaping, Sinking and creeping, Dividing and gliding and sliding, And falling and brawling and sprawling, And bubbling and troubling and doubling, And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing, And this way the water comes down at Lodore." Then turn to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony: scan its scenery, hear its deep, fine-thoughted voices, all marvellously true; truer than Southey's words, or even Rembrandt's visualistic colors. The presence and power of onomatopy in music, wherein it exceeds in importance music's other rudiments, are as self-evident as are its presence and power, as a formative principle in other lan guages. To it pre-eminently indeed may be accredited music's tenacious hold on man and its profound effectiveness; and to that degree in which music is onomatopic does it serve its lingual design, and as a medium for the utterance of sentiment. It is that principle from which that tone-form which individualises, nationalises music springs, flowers, and to which we must look for a key to the primitive, radical, individual and national characteristics of music. The inspiration of its formative power in the construction of musical expressions is easily established by analysis thereof; particularly of those which are primitive and precede all acoustic science, and are unburthened or refined by the adornments of musical art, or the culture of those musicians who use them: they not being the composite heritage of many and diverse languages-a Babelbut the utterances of the original, primitive, virgin voice of man, as unchanged by the lapse of time as are man's five senses; these utterances evidencing the ever-present operation of their primitive impulses and of man's common imitative faculties. They show themselves to be the tone-germs from which are evolved the endless varieties of musical composition; germs found not only in the voice of man but in the voices of the animal kingdom at large. The mother-tone A, with the Ma, Ba, of every baby; white or black; bond or free; born of ignorant or learned parents; of the baby of all nations under the sun this cry of lamb, kid, calf, with its feline and canine modifications, is one of those germs; one which expresses a crying desire, the immediate satisfying of which is sought. This cry takes its start from the mother-tone A, whose musical notation is placed on the second space of the treble staff. This mother-desire being common among children, this mother-tone, with its consonants, their inflections and dynamic changes, becomes onomatopic; first of babyhood, then of mother-love, mother-longing, home-love, home-longing, love to others and of its cognate affections. Observe how the composer of the melody of "The Last Rose of Summer," or, of that of "Home, Sweet Home," does loving obeisance to the mother-tone. Let the reader try to sing or play either of these songs, with some other tone substituted for A, if he would realise practically its vital importance in their melodic structure; and how the fosterspirit of the mother-tone extends naturally in melodic construction, by tonal transposition,—as in the melody of "Annie Laurie”; and how it pervades all tonal matter by the operation of a basic law of tonal mammalogy. Search the musical scriptures; study the phrasings of passion in operas, for evidences of the debt dramatic music owes to onomatopy; illustrations of which cannot well be produced here, excepting by the use of music-staff, clef, notation; but which, whoever is interested therein may entertain himself rarely by finding in the works of Wagner, Verdi, and other emotional geniuses. From the works of these modern composers let him go back, step by step, to the primitive, simply formed music of all peoples, and mark how-through onomatopy and its tonal affinities-this music. is unified; and how, in the mother tone and its onomatopy, however deeply imbedded, lies the secret of music's universal heartsway. This tonal protoplast and its multitudinous progeny-their art, first empirical, then scientific- are so cadenced in the works of such composers as Beethoven and Wagner as to produce in the listener's mind pictures of their ideals etherealised to that degree which no art but music can reach. The word-creations of Homer, Shakespeare, and Dante abound in verbal onomatopy. Yet their noble sonorities cannot be said to attain that influence over the reader or listener which the tonal masterpieces of Beethoven, Wagner, or Berlioz, effect. As Mr. Gladstone assigns those poets chief honors for verbal onomatopy, I would cite these three composers as their worthy onomatopic brothers; the compositions of no others appearing to me to show a profounder knowledge of phonology, nor the carrying of tonal onomatopy further towards the state of an exact science. The more these tone-masters' works are studied, in an onomatopic regard, the more do these masters seem to tacitly confess their being hindered, in the use of tonal onomatopy by the imperfections in, |