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 M U SIC THEORY, A N ALY SIS, A N D SO C IETY

Robert R Morgan is one of a small number of music theorists writing in English who treat
music theory, and in particular Schenkerian theory, as part of general intellectual life. This
volume of previously published essays encompasses a broad range of issues, including
historical and social issues, and is of importance to anyone concerned with modem Western
music. His specially written introduction treats his writings as a whole but also provides
additional material relating to the articles included in this volume.
 ASHGATE CONTEMPORARY THINKERS
ON CRITICAL MUSICOLOGY

The titles in this series bring together a selection of previously published and some unpublished
essays by leading authorities in the field of critical musicology. The essays are chosen from
a wide range of publications and so make key works available in a more accessible form.
The authors have all made a selection of their own work in one volume with an introduction
which discusses the essays chosen and puts them into context. A full bibliography points the
reader to other publications which might not be included in the volume for reasons of space.
The previously published essays are published using the facsimile method of reproduction to
retain their original pagination, so that students and scholars can easily reference the essays
in their original form.

Titles published in the series

Music, Performance, Meaning
Nicholas Cook

Reading Music
Susan McClary

Sound Judgment
Richard Leppert

Music, Structure, Thought

James Hepokoski

Musical Belongings
Richard Middleton

Sounding Values
Scott Burnham

Musical Style and Social Meaning

Derek B. Scott

Music-in-Action
Tia DeNora

Music Education as Critical Theory and Practice

Lucy Green

The Work of Music Theory

Thomas Christensen

The Politics of Musical Identity

Annegret Fauser
Music Theory, Analysis, and Society
Selected Essays

ROBERT P. M O R G A N
YaleUniversity, USA

ASHGATE CONTEMPORARY THINKERS

ON CRITICAL MUSICOLOGY

O Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X 14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2015 Robert P. Morgan

Robert P. Morgan has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to
be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

ISBN 9781472462541 (hbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015932190

 Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction ix

Principal Writings xvii

PART ONE SCHENKERIAN AND OTHER THEORY

1. Dissonant Prolongation: Theoretical and Compositional Precedents (1976) 3

2. Schenker and the Theoretical Tradition: The Concept of Musical Reduction (1978) 47

3. Schenker and the Twentieth Century: A Modernist Perspective (2002) 73

4. Musical Time/Musical Space (1980) 101

PART TWO MUSIC ANALYSIS

5. Chopin’s Modular Forms (2008) 115

6. Circular Form in the Tristan Prelude (2000) 135

7. Ives and Mahler: Mutual Responses at the End of an Era (1978) 171

8. Chasing the Scent: The Tonality in Liszt’s Blume undDuft (1997) 181

9. Two Early Schoenberg Songs: monotonality, multitonality, and schwebende

Tonalitat (2010) 197

10. “The Things Our Fathers Loved”: Charles Ives and the European tradition (1997) 215

11. On the Analysis of Recent Music (1977) 239

PART THREE MUSIC AND SOCIETY

12. Tradition, Anxiety, and the Current Musical Scene (1988) 263

13. Secret Languages: The Roots of Musical Modernism (1984) 289

vi MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY

14. “A New Musical Reality”: Futurism, Modernism, and “The Art of Noises” (1994) 309

15. Rethinking Musical Culture: Canonic Reformulations in a Post-Tonal Age (1992) 333

Index 353
 Acknowledgements

The chapters in this volume are taken from the sources listed below. The editor and
publisher wish to thank the original publishers and copyright holders for permission to use
their material as follows:

“Dissonant Prolongation: Theoretical and Compositional Precedents”, Journal o f Music

Theory, 20/1 (Spring, 1976), pp. 49-91. The journal is presently published by Duke
University Press.

“Schenker and the Theoretical Tradition: The Concept of Musical Reduction”, College Music
Symposium, 18/l(Spring, 1978), pp. 72-96.

“Schenker and the Twentieth Century: A Modernist Perspective”, Reprinted from Music
in the Mirror: Reflections on the History o f Music Theory and Literature fo r the Twenty-
first Century (2002), pp. 247-74, edited by Andreas Geiger and Thomas J. Mathiesen. By
permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright © 2002 by the University of
Nebraska Press.

“Musical Time/Musical Space”, Critical Inquiry, 6/3 (1980), pp. 527-38. Copyright © 1980
The University of Chicago.

“Chopin’s Modular Forms”, in Robert Curry, David Gable and Robert L. Marshall (eds.)
Variations on the Canon (2008), pp. 185-204. University of Rochester Press.

“Circular Form in the Tristan Prelude”, Journal o f the American Musicological Society, 53/1
(Spring, 2000), pp. 69-103. Copyright © 2000 by the American Musicological Society.
Published by the University of California Press.

“Ives and Mahler: Mutual Responses at the End of an Era”, 19th-Century Music, 2/1
(July, 1978), pp. 72-81. Copyright © 1978 by the Regents of the University of California.
Published by the University of California Press.

“Chasing the Scent: The Tonality in Liszt’s Blume und D u ft\ in James M. Baker, David
W. Beach and Jonathan W. Bernard (eds.), Music Theory in Concept and Practice (1997),
pp. 361-76. University of Rochester Press.

“Two Early Schoenberg Songs: monotonality, multitonality, and schwebende Tonalitaf\ in

Jennifer Shaw and Joseph Auner (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Schoenberg (2010),
pp. 53-67. Copyright © 2010 Cambridge University Press.
viii MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY

“‘The Things Our Fathers Loved’: Charles Ives and the European tradition”, in Philip
Lambert (ed.), Ives Studies (1997), pp. 3-26. Copyright © 1997 Cambridge University Press.

“On the Analysis of Recent Music”, Critical Inquiry, 4/1 (Autumn, 1977), pp. 33-53.

“Tradition, Anxiety, and the Current Musical Scene”, in Nicholas Kenyon (ed.), Authenticity
and Early Music (1988), pp. 57-82. By permission of Oxford University Press.

“Secret Languages: The Roots of Musical Modernism”, Critical Inquiry, 10/3 (March, 1984),
pp. 442-61. Copyright © 1984 The University of Chicago.

“‘A New Musical Reality’: Futurism, Modernism, and ‘The Art of Noises’”, Modernism/
Modernity, 1/3 (1994), pp. 129-51. Copyright © 1994 The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Reprinted with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press.

“Rethinking Musical Culture: Canonic Reformulations in a Post-Tonal Age”, in Katherine

Bergeron and Philip V. Bohlman (eds.), Disciplining Music: Musicology and Its Canons
(1992), pp. 44-63. Copyright © 1992 The University of Chicago.
 Introduction

Although I was trained as a composer (at Princeton University, AB in 1956, the University of
California, Berkeley, MA in 1958, and again at Princeton, MFA in 1960, Ph.D in 1969), I have
always been interested in writing. I started my professional writing career in 1963 when I
began my first academic position at the University of Houston, composing program notes for
the Houston Symphony Orchestra and articles for Opera Cues, the magazine of the Houston
Grand Opera Association. Shortly following 1966, after having been asked by Patrick Smith,
then book editor for Musical America, to write a review of four books on 20th-century music,
I was invited by Peter Smith, record-review editor for High Fidelity (published at that time
jointly with Musical America) to become a regular reviewer for his journal, which I readily
accepted. I continued writing for High Fidelity for some years, including the time following
my move to Temple University in Philadelphia in 1967.
While at Temple I began writing longer articles for Patrick Smith’s new journal The
Musical Newsletter, which he also edited; and these represented my first truly professional
pieces. The first article (at least completely original one), however, that was accepted by a
well-known journal was on the writings of the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen,
published by The Musical Quarterly in 1975. Thereafter I devoted less time to composing
and more to writing about music; and by 1979, after moving to The University of Chicago,
I had essentially stopped composing and was hired by them as a music theorist. Since I had
received tenure by that time, I was able to write on any subject about which I felt reasonably
comfortable, and continued to do so during my ten years in Chicago and in my final position
at Yale University. I retired from Yale in 2006; but since my health remained good, I kept
publishing up to the present time (and, I trust, beyond). In addition, I have written a great deal
for more general audiences.
Though my writings as a whole (including eight books, three original and five edited)
have thus been wide-ranging, they have remained closely tied to music theory and its related
areas: stylistic and historical studies, and the connections between these and social issues.
For the purposes of this collection, I have divided the fifteen articles chosen into three parts
under the headings: Schenkerian and Other Theory, Music Analysis, and Music and Society.
But since all three of these overlap significantly, the articles could easily be placed under
different headings and in a different order.
Beginning with the first part, its title alone indicates that I have written much about
Schenker, including six articles and one book that deal explicitly with him and his theory, plus
a number of others that at least mention him and touch upon his work. Three of the former
have been chosen for inclusion in this initial part: “Dissonant Prolongation: Theoretical and
Compositional Precedents” (1976), “Schenker and the Theoretical Tradition: The Concept
of Musical Reduction” (1978), and “Schenker and the Twentieth Century: A Modernist
Perspective” (2002). The first presents my initial attempt to expand Schenker’s repertoire to
X MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY

include pieces he did not accept into his own canon, in this case works determined mainly—
and in some cases entirely—by what I call “dissonance prolongations”: extensions completely
based upon what would, according to traditional 18th and 19th century harmonic procedures,
have been considered dissonant chords. Since the article deals primarily with 19th-century
works, however, five of the six prolongations considered, not coincidentally, involve the
only two dissonant chords widely accepted in traditional harmonic theory: the diminished
and augmented triads. In addition, the article reveals that Schenker himself, though no doubt
inadvertently, suggested a partial way of dealing with such music on his own terms. The
second article traces precedents for Schenker’s concept of musical reduction, focusing upon
three developments that took place in earlier Western music history: diminution theory,
which had a long tradition going back at least to the 13th century but became particularly
important during the 16th to 18th centuries; the theory of figures, also notable during the 16th
to 18th centuries; and the theory of functional tonality, which flourished in the 18th and 19th
centuries.
Thus the first two articles indicate that there were close connections between Schenker’s
own ideas and those of his European past, and, certainly in his own mind, between the
synthetic concepts of musical composition and the reductive ones of musical analysis. The
third, on the other hand, stresses the contemporaneity of his thought, revealing its strong
relations to various 20th-century developments, showing that his theory, despite having
been intended for a limited number of common-practice pieces, was influenced by such
contemporary thinkers as the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure,
and the sociologist Georg Simmel. But all three articles clearly indicate that Schenker did not
develop in a vacuum, whatever other theorists might say, but was able to lean upon a number
of well-developed traditions in both musical and non-musical thought. By integrating these
various strands into a fully developed theory, moreover, he managed to completely transform
them, conferring upon them a new and unexpected life.
As is evident from these articles, my interest in Schenker has been largely guided by an
effort to make his work more accessible to the contemporary mind (something also evident
in extended portions of my recent book on the theorist). The part’s fourth article, “Musical
Time/Musical Space (1980),” also deals with what might be seen as a Schenkerian question:
whether music should be viewed as a static or active process. (Schenker himself attempted
to create a balance between the two, shaping his theory as a layered analytical conception
with a “background” that was always the same but a “foreground” that remained close to the
varied surfaces of actual compositions. As a consequence, he was able to view music at once
as fixed and invariable but also as reflecting its changing nature.) Yet the article itself views
the spatial idea as a general problem relevant not just to Schenker but to all music theories,
where pitch invariably tends to be considered in “registrar terms; and it mentions him only
sporadically.
The second part, Music and Analysis, is the largest one and comprises seven articles
dealing with analysis as a more collective endeavor. Of these, six are themselves analytical
in focus (although they take quite different approaches), while the seventh deals with
musical analysis more generally (and as applied to more recent music). The first three
consider compositions composed during the 19th- and 20th-century (one being devoted to
a particular piece), and assume a basically non-Schenkerian approach: “Chopin’s Modular
 INTRODUCTION xi

Forms” (2008), “Circular Form in the Tristan Prelude” (2000), and “Ives and Mahler: Mutual
Responses at the End of an Era” (1978). The first two deal with problematic formal issues
in two 19th-century composers: Chopin and Wagner. Whereas the former may at first sight
seem to be one who remains essentially within the framework of normal formal processes,
Chopin proves to be one of the most remarkable formal innovators of his time. Moreover, the
techniques he used to develop modular, or circular, forms are requisite if the formal nature of
his work is to be fully comprehended. Wagner, on the other hand, is widely recognized as a
major formal innovator of his time; and the Prelude to Tristan und Isolde, if approached from
a traditional formal point of view, ranks among his most recalcitrant works. The article thus
attempts to identify what is formally unusual in the Prelude, taking as a point of departure the
analysis by Alfred Lorenz, who was at least partially cognizant of the unprecedented nature
of its construction. The third article, on the other hand, deals more generally with the music
of two basically 20th-century composers, Ives and Mahler, and treats their work as a whole.
(At the time in which this article was written, there was a widespread tendency to emphasize
Mahler at the expense of Ives.) By discussing their music collectively, it aims to consider the
two composers more comprehensively than in the first two articles, with particular emphasis
on their similarities: a shared interest in treating music spatially, the favoring of complex
overall textures, a reduction of importance in individual parts, the use of completely diatonic
materials, and the quotation of music of a popular nature (in Ives often well-known hymns
and folksongs).
Although the next three articles once more use Schenkerian analysis, they are again
designed to extend Schenker’s repertoire to include works from the second half of the 19th
and first part of the 20th century that he would have rejected: “Chasing the Scent: Tonality in
Liszt’s Blume and D u ff (1997), “Two Early Schoenberg Songs: monotonality, multitonality,
and schwebende Tonalitat” (2010), and “The Things Our Fathers Loved: Charles Ives and
the European Tradition” (1997). The first examines a song composed by Liszt in 1860,
whose elusive tonality cannot be adequately interpreted by normal common-practice (and
thus Schenkerian) means. It contains two graphs of the piece, both of which favor a reading
viewing A^ as tonic but take into consideration contradictory formal features. Despite this,
however, neither reading is unproblematic; for Liszt’s piece stands on the fringes of tonality,
using a tonal vocabulary that is still triadic but that makes the work seems to “float” as
if suspended in midair. (There are, for example, two extended segments—the introduction
and the climax—that are entirely octatonic in organization, yet the piece seems otherwise
to avoid octatonicism completely.) The second article includes a general consideration of
Schoenberg’s writings on tonality, but illustrated—and questioned—by the analysis of two
early songs by Schoenberg himself, both of which belong to his Op. 6 song set but were
composed in 1903 and 1905 respectively. (The latter is discussed at length by Schoenberg
in both his Harmonielehre and his Structural Functions o f Harmony.) Though both songs
are still tonal in orientation, the first remains closely tied to its tonic, prolonged, however, in
a decidedly idiosyncratic way, while the second resolves its dominant (to the tonic) only in
the very last measure. The third article, from 1997, is loosely based on one originally written
in German and published there in 1990. It analyzes a well-known song by Charles Ives
completed in 1917 (although earlier sketches date back to 1905), focusing on the composer’s
heavy reliance upon, yet obvious discomfort with, standard European models. Its form, for
xii MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY

instance, is closely related to the antecedent-consequent period, but that form is entirely
rethought in Ives’s own terms; and its multi-tonal implications, when analyzed from a quasi-
Schenkerian perspective, require that his techniques be fundamentally altered.
In other words, all three of these Schenkerian articles use methods that, though related to
the theorist, far transcend his own techniques and beliefs about music. The three composers
considered, all of whom wrote music located at tonality’s edges, were required to adjust
their approach so as to accommodate non-conventional practices, resulting in the fact that
Schenkerian analysis required radical reconsideration. The part’s seventh (and last) article,
entitled “On the Analysis of Recent Music” (1977), deals, as its title suggests, with the
analysis of what at the time was considered new music. It thus applies a much more flexible
(and anti-Schenkerian) approach. Its main argument is that in this music the relation between
analysis and musical system has been totally changed: in many recent works there is no
longer a common system (such as tonality) on which they are based, but only a uniquely
defined and highly personalized set of musical assumptions. As a result, the analysis of such
music must rely in part on what the composer thought and wrote about the work in order
to adequately understand how it was composed and what it was intended to express. One
consequence is that the analysis of this music can no longer pretend to be, as a between-
the-wars “new critic” might have argued, exclusively devoted to the work itself (which is
a fundamentally Schenkerian idea, by the way) and thus entirely devoid of the composer’s
own knowledge. This article thus reveals my ambivalence toward Schenker, who—in any
case—would not have deigned to analyze such music at all. By examining a wide range of
composers— including figures such as Boulez, Ligeti, Carter, Xenakis, Crumb, and Cage—
the article reveals the extent to which musical systems had become analogous in function to
“programs” in 19th-century musics.
Music and Society, the last of the three parts, has (like the first) only four articles, although
I feel certain that, whether explicitly mentioned or not, the significance of social context
applies to virtually everything I have written. My work has always assumed a necessary
connection between musical and social thought, and thus it has always been concerned with
extramusical ideas. But in these last four articles, social concerns are at the forefront. The first
two, “Tradition, Anxiety, and the Current Musical Scene” (1988) and “Secret Languages:
The Roots of Musical Modernism” (1984), were written while I was at The University of
Chicago. The first considers the “authentic performance” movement, especially prominent at
the time, which perhaps seems at best tangentially connected to my principal concerns. But
my interest in, and dissatisfaction with, the authenticity idea was primarily connected with
the then-current culture of the contemporary classical music world, to which it was closely
related; and that has been something that consistently ranked among my primary interests.
My belief that the art of performance, a deeply cultural phenomenon, necessarily reflected
current thought about music and music history, was an essential part of my approach. The
article’s main point, moreover, was that we have evidently been forced by music’s recent
history to accept an altered way of thinking about such things as tradition, influence, pluralism,
museum culture, and interpretation itself. Yet such ideas require acceptance according to only
one view of contemporary music, and this meant that the authenticity movement could hardly
claim— as it seemed to do—to be “the only way.” The second article considers the impact of
19th-century Germanic ideas about music on the evolution of Scriabin’s and Schoenberg’s
 INTRODUCTION xiii

musical style, a matter that was also high on my list of historical concerns. I was convinced
that Schoenberg’s early belief in musical composition as both intuitive and unconscious was
inherited from his immediate past (a world in which he matured), and that this had a profound
effect upon his decision, before 1910, to give up all tonal controls, as well as somewhat
later (and primarily negatively), his invention of the 12-tone system. Schoenberg’s musical
evolution must thus have been very “natural” for him, since it was closely tied to one of the
leading ideas of the aesthetics of his youth: that music, having become rigidly formalized,
could attain “freedom” only by accepting absolute purity and avoiding all association with
the “real” world and with tradition. As a consequence, music, stripping itself of connections
with ordinary reality and the past, could become like a “secret language,” allowing it to be a
model for all the arts, musical and otherwise.
The part’s final two articles, “‘A New Musical Reality’: Futurism, Modernism,
and Russolo’s ‘The Art of Noises’” (1994) and “Rethinking Musical Culture: Canonic
Reformulations in a Post-Tonal Age” (1992), were written shortly after I went to Yale in 1989
and are quite different from the preceding two. The first deals with a single composer, Luigi
Russolo, and his extraordinary influence (over an extended period of time) on the course
of music history. His belief that “noise” should be incorporated into music as its primary
element (replacing pitch), as well as his construction of special instruments (intonarumori)
to perform this music, had a profound impact upon later generations of composers, especially
the Americans Henry Cowell, Harry Partch and John Cage. Though not trained as a musician,
but primarily as an inventor and painter, Russolo became the leading musical figure of the
Italian Futurists, writing one of their most famous manifestos, “The Art of Noises.” That this
pamphlet appeared in 1913, roughly at the same time as the traditional system of tonality came
under heavy assault, was hardly a coincidence; and that it was written to accompany several
of Russolo’s own compositions, including The Wakening o f a Great City and A Meeting o f
Motorcars and Aeroplanes (though only the opening page of the former was preserved),
composed for noise generators (which, like the music, have also subsequently disappeared),
added significantly to its fame. The next—and final— article is particularly wide-ranging,
considering in general the question of musical canons and the need for their reformulation
in light of significant changes in the “post-tonal” world. A central aspect of this need was
the introduction of noise and indeterminacy in music, the result above all of John Cage’s
innovations. That the influence was not limited to Cage, however, is evident in the pluralistic
cast of so much recent music, especially in its widespread use of popular and ethnic sources
(perhaps also employed to strengthen the music’s appeal to a broader audience). This has
completely transformed the current musical scene, which, despite its inclusion of a more
traditional line, has developed into something that must be considered radically new.
These fifteen articles, though presenting only a partial selection of my total written output,
have been chosen because they provide a reasonable reflection of the main currents of my
work and because their date of publication is more-or-less equally distributed throughout my
career. Although they obviously do not give a total picture of the work, they indicate its main
direction and provide a good sense of what I have tried to accomplish. They are not complete,
but are thus nevertheless representative.
xiv MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY

The rest of this introduction is devoted to my complete written work, which not surprisingly
deals largely with the same areas mentioned previously: music theory and the history of
19th- and 20th-century music. All of my books, for example, fit comfortably within these
two parameters. Perhaps most important is the W. W. Norton book on Twentieth-Century
Music, published in 1991 and bearing the subtitle A History o f Musical Style in Modern
Europe and America. Written with advanced undergraduate and graduate music students in
mind, it was for some twenty years a standard textbook in contemporary music. And though
it was written from a largely modernist point of view, this was by no means exclusively the
case (as a number of its critics have claimed), for it attempted to cover all the main lines of
“classical” musical developments in the contemporary world as they appeared at that time.
It thus concentrated upon those figures who seemed especially prominent then, but without
making any claim to cover the entire spectrum of music, either stylistically or geographically.
And although it dealt primarily with figures like Mahler, Debussy, Stravinsky. Schoenberg,
Berg, Webern, Berg, Bartok, Boulez, Stockhausen, Cage, and Carter, it was not limited to
these exclusively. In the following year it was joined by the Norton Anthology o f Twentieth-
Century Music, which included essays on each of the pieces it contained; and six years later by
another Norton volume entitled The Twentieth Century, with writings by well-known figures
who were concerned with music composed during this century. The latter was included in
the second edition of Oliver Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History (originally published
in one volume by Norton in 1950, but without any material on the 20th century), appearing
in 1999 in six separate volumes under the general editorship of Leo Treitler. (Each of these
volumes, however, had its own editor; and while my book on 20th-century writings was of
course completely new, the others contained many changes as well and were considerably
longer than the original.) All three of my Norton books are still available today, and remain
reasonably popular (though the anthology does not include a single female composer, an
absence I now very much regret).
Two additional edited books also deal with some aspect of 20th-century music. The
second of the two, Modern Times. From World War I to the present, which came out in
1993, was published by Macmillan as Vol. VIII in the series Man and Music under Stanley
Sadie’s general editorship. It includes an introduction on “The Modem Age,” a sort of 30-
page synopsis of my 1991 Norton book. Yet the book is quite different from the earlier one.
Not only is the majority of authors English, but, except for my introduction, all chapters
but one are geographical in organization; and there are, in addition, no musical examples,
whereas the earlier book had many. And in 1985 I co-edited with David Gable, then a student
at The University of Chicago, a volume on a leading twentieth-century composer, Alban
Berg, Historical and Analytical Perspectives, published by Oxford University Press. It too
had a chapter by me, on “The Eternal Return: Retrograde and Circular Form in Berg,” which
treated Berg’s more-or-less complete (but small) output with regard to his use of retrograde
form, in his case virtually habitual.
I also brought out two volumes of essays by my Princeton mentor Edward T. Cone: Music:
A View from Delft. Selected Essays, published in 1989 by The University of Chicago Press,
and Hearing and Knowing Music. The Unpublished Essays o f Edward T. Cone, published
in 2009 by Princeton University Press. Though both were intended as a tribute to Professor
Cone, whose work and belief that music occupied a central role in intellectual affairs were
 INTRODUCTION xv

major factors in shaping my own career, these two books were in fact quite different: the first
a selection of Cone’s many articles that appeared in print up to its date of publication, and
thus had only to be chosen and reprinted as they were (thanks to Professor Cone’s great gift
as a stylist); and the second a collection of unpublished essays written during Cone’s final
years, given mostly as informal talks and often left in unfinished state, thereby requiring
considerable time to be put into publishable form.
My most recent book is also original and was published in 2014 by Cambridge University
Press. It is again concerned with Schenker and entitled Becoming Heinrich Schenker. Music
Theory and Ideology, dealing with his development as seen through his complete published
work, as well as with the influence of Schenker’s ideology on his theory. The latter influence,
inherited from both 19th-century Germanic views of the art and more contemporary
developments (especially structuralism and the theory of layers), accounts in no small
measure for both the theory’s originality and its problems. The book also attempts to provide
a more objective view of Schenker than has generally been the case, praising him for what he
accomplished but condemning him for his inevitable limitations. He provided a unique way
of looking at music, but it is one that is extremely restricted in scope.
As for the articles not included in this volume, they too can be placed in the same categories
previously mentioned. As this collection itself indicates, however, there is more emphasis
in the earlier writing on 20th-century composers (not surprisingly, given my compositional
background), while there is more in the later ones on theoretical matters related to late 19th-
and early 20th-century literature. Several important articles belonging to the second area
have not been included, such as “Spatial Form in Ives” of 1977, “Notes on Varese’s Rhythm”
of 1979, and “Symmetrical Form and Common-Practice Tonality” of 1998. But in all I have
tried to show how composers found it necessary to reach beyond tonality in search of new
approaches (“spatial,” “rhythmic,” or “symmetrical”) to organize their music.
In yet another article not included, however, “The Concept of Unity and Musical Analysis”
of 2003, I suggested that an obsession with newness could lead analysts to significant
misreading of traditional compositions, especially with regard to their tendency toward
disunity. (The five theorists discussed in this article were invited—and four accepted—to
respond to my remarks, with their responses published in a subsequent volume of the same
journal.) In addition there has been a significant number of reviews, some quite lengthy, such
as the two article-reviews: “Are There Two Tonal Practices in 19th-Century Music?,” written
in 1999, and the 2005 review of the Cambridge History o f Western Music History, edited by
Thomas Christensen. Again, not surprisingly, both fit comfortably within the two categories
listed above, the first dealing with a knotty theoretical question related to 19-century music
and the second with problems having to do with music theory’s overall history.
In summary, then, my written work has been unusually wide-ranging but at the same time
concerned with a relatively small number of closely connected questions. This is seen with
special clarity in the present collection, where all articles, though they have been arranged
under three different headings, are cut very much from the same cloth. They deal with matters
that are at once theoretical and musical, abstract and practical; and most of them involve the
perceived threat, if not the actual loss, of 18th- and 19th-century tonality. And this raises a
crucial question: What are composers to do when they become convinced that music has
left them empty handed? This question, or similar ones, led to Stavinsky’s neo-classicism,
xvi MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY

Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system, Bartok’s adherence to folk music, Stockhausen’s reliance

on mathematics, Ligeti’s use of a private Gradus ad Pamassum, Crumb’s symbolic notation,
Reich’s turn to the “purity” of minimalism, Oliveros’s improvisations, and Cage’s outsider
music (a list that could easily be extended, virtually without end). Wherever one looks in
more recent compositions, one finds the determination to seek new ways of dealing with old
compositional problems, and this idea has consistently affected my work.
 Principal Writings

Books

Twentieth Century Music: A History o f Musical Style in Modern Europe and America (New
York: W.W. Norton, 1991).
Translated in Spanish by Patricia Sojo as La Musica del Siglo X X (Madrid: Ediciones
Akal, S.A. 1994).
Chinese translation by Chen Hongyi, Gan Fangmeng, Jin Yini, and Liangging (Shanghai:
Shanghai Music Publishing House, 2014).
Anthology o f Twentieth-Century Music (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992) (includes analytical
and interpretive commentary totaling 60,000 words).
Translated in Spanish by Patricia Sojo as Anthologia de la Musica del Siglo X X (Madrid:
Ediciiones Akal, SA: 1998).
Becoming Heinrich Schenker: Music Theory and Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014).

As Editor

Music: A View from Delft. Selected Essays o f Edward T. Cone (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1989). ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, 1991.
Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),
co-edited with David Gable.
Modern Times. Man and Music Vol. VIII (London: Macmillan, 1993).
Strunk Readings in Music History: The Twentieth Century (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997),
Leo Treitler, general editor.
Hearing and Knowing Music: Unpublished Essays o f Edward T. Cone (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2009).

Principal Articles

“Edward T. Cone: String Sextet” Perspectives of 'NewMusic, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Fall-Winter, 1969),
pp. 112-25.
“Schoenberg and the Musical Tradition” Musical Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 4 (October, 1971),
pp. 3-10.
“Rewriting Music History: Second Thoughts on Ives and Varese” Musical Newsletter, Part
I, Vol. 3, No. 1 (January, 1973), pp. 3-12; Part II, Vol. 3, No. 2 (April, 1973), pp. 15-23.
R eprinted in: Ives a nd Varese, Ian B onighton and R ichard M iddleton, eds.,
(M ilton Keynes, UK: The Open U niversity Press, 1979).
xviii MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY

“Elliott Carter’s String Quartets” Musical Newsletter, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Fall, 1974), pp. 3-11.
“Stockhausen’s Writings on Music” Musical Quarterly, Vol. LXI, No. 1 (January, 1975),
pp. 1-16.
“Dissonant Prolongations: Theoretical and Compositional Precedents” Journal o f Music
Theory, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring, 1976), pp. 49-91.
“Antonomie und Tradition—amerikanische Musik im 20. Jahrhundert” Osterreichische
Musikzeitschrift, 31, Jahrgang, Heft 10 (Oktober, 1976), pp. 471-75.
English translation: “Autonomy and Tradition—American Music in the Twentieth
Century” in English edition of this issue, pp. 7-11.
“Spatial Form in Ives” An Ives Celebration, H. Wiley Hitchcock and Vivian Perlis, eds.
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), pp. 145-58.
“On the Analysis of Recent Music” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Autumn, 1977), pp. 33-53.
“Schenker and the Theoretical Tradition: The Concept of Musical Reduction” College Music
Society Symposium, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring, 1978), pp. 72-96.
“Ives and Mahler: Mutual Responses at the End of an Era” 19th Century Music, Vol. 2, No. 1
(July, 1978), pp. 72-81.
Reprinted in Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition, Geoffrey Block and J. Peter
Burkholder, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 75-87.
“The Theory and Analysis of Tonal Rhythm” Musical Quarterly, Vol. LXIV, no. 4
(October, 1978), pp. 435-72.
“Dissonant Prolongations, Perfect Fifths, and Major Thirds in Stravinsky’s Piano Concerto”
In Theory Only, Vol. 4, No. 4 (August/September, 1978), pp. 3-7.
“Notes on Varese’s Rhythm” The New Worlds o f Edgard Varese, Sherman Van Solkema,
ed. Institute of Studies in American Music, Monograph No. 11 (New York, 1979),
pp. 9-25.
“Musical Time/Musical Space” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring, 1980), pp. 527-38.
Republished in The Language o f Images, W.J.T. Mitchell, ed. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1980).
Spanish translation by Juan Carlos Lores “Tempo Musical/Espacio Musical” Quodlibet_28
(February, 2004), pp. 57-69.
“Theory, Analysis and Criticism” The Journal o f Musicology, Vol 1, No. 1 (January, 1982),
pp. 15-18.
Reprinted and translated in Chinese by Ping Jin, in Journal o f the Central Conservatory
o f Music 4 (1995), pp. 19-20.
“The New Grove: Music of the Twentieth Century” Musical Quarterly, Vol LXVIII, No. 2
(April, 1982), pp. 262-70.
“Secret Languages: The Roots of Musical Modernism” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 10, No. 3
(March, 1984), pp. 442-61.
Reprinted in Modernism: Challenges and Perspectives, Monique Chefdor, Ricardo
Quinones, and Albert Wachtel, eds. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1986), pp. 33-53.
“John Eaton and The Tempest” The Musical Times, Vol. 126, No. 1709 (July, 1985),
pp. 397^100.
 PRINCIPAL WRITINGS xix

“Tradition, Anxiety, and the Current Musical Scene” Authenticity and Early Music, Nicholas
Kenyon, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 57-82.
“Charles Ives und die europaische Tradition” Bericht uber das Internationale Symposion
“Charles Ives und die amerikanische Musiktradition bis zur Gegenwart” Klaus Wolfgang
Niemoller, ed. (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1990), pp. 17-36.
“The Eternal Return: Retrograde and Circular Form in Berg” Alban Berg: Historical and
Analytical Perspectives, Robert P. Morgan and David Gable, eds. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1991), pp. 111^19.
“Rethinking Musical Culture: Canonic Reformulations in a Post-Tonal Age” Disciplining
Music. Musicology and Its Canons, Philip Bohlman and Katherine Bergeron, eds.
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 44-63.
“The Modem Age” in Modern Times. Man and Music Vol. VIII, ed. Robert P. Morgan
(London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 1-32.
“Coda as Culmination: The First Movement of the Eroica Symphony” Music Theory and
the Exploration o f the Past, Christopher Hatch and David W. Bernstein, eds. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 357-76.
“‘A New Musical Reality’: Futurism, Modernism, and ‘The Art of Noises’” Modernism/
Modernity Vol. 1 No. 3 (September, 1994), pp. 129-51.
“Chasing the Scent: Tonality in Liszt’s Blume und DufC Music Theory in Concept and
Practice, James M. Baker, David W. Beach, and Jonathan W. Bernard, eds. (Rochester:
University of Rochester Press, 1997), pp. 361-76.
“The Things our Fathers Loved: Charles Ives and the European Tradition”, Ives Studies,
Philip Lambert, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 3-26.
“Symmetrical Form and Common-Practice Tonality” Music Theory Spectrum (Spring, 1998),
pp. 1—47.
“Arnold Schoenberg” Encyclopedia o f Aesthetics, Michael Kelly, ed. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998), pp. 242^15.
“Brahms’s: Six Piano Pieces” Op. 118, The Compleat Brahms, Leon Botstein, ed. (New
York: W.W. Norton, 1999), pp. 195-97.
Article/Review: “Are There Two Tonal Practices in Nineteenth-century Music?” Journal o f
Music Theory (Fall, 1999), pp. 135-63.
“Circular Form in the Tristan Prelude” Journal o f American Musicological Society, Vol. 53,
No 1 (Spring 2000), 69-103.
“Schenker and the Twentieth Century: A Modernist Perspective” Music in the Mirror.
Reflections on the History o f Music Theory and Literature fo r the Twenty-first Century,
Andreas Giger and Thomas J. Mathiesen, eds. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2002), pp. 247-74.
“The Concept of Unity and Musical Analysis” Music Analysis, Vol. 22, Nos 1-2
(March-July 2003), pp. 7-50. (The five theorists discussed in this article were invited to
respond—and four accepted—and these appeared in Music Analysis (23/1-2).
Article/Review: The Cambridge History o f Western Music Theory (article/review), Thomas
Chirstensen, ed. Music Analysis, Vol 24, No 1-2 (March-July 2005), pp. 283-300.
“Schenker’s Derfreie Satz: History, Significance, Translation” Schenker-Traditionen, Martin
Eybl and Evelyn Fink-Mennel, eds. (Vienna: Bohlau Verlag, 2006), pp. 221-31.
XX MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY

“Chopin’s Modular Forms” Variations on the Canon: Essays on Music from Bach to Boulez
in Honor o f Charles Rosen, Robert Curry, David Gable, and Robert L. Marshall, eds.
(Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008), pp. 185-204.
“Two Early Schoenberg Songs: monotonality, multitonality, and schwebende TonalitaC
Cambridge Companion to Schoenberg, Joseph Auner and Jennifer Shaw, eds. (Cambridge:
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 53-67.
“Dissonant Prolongations Again: Non-Tonic Extensions in 19th-Century Music” (2014),
submitted to The Journal o f Music Theory.
 Part One

Schenkerian and Other Theory

 CHAPTER 1

DISSONANT PROLONGATION-

THEORETICAL AND

COMPOSITIONAL PRECEDENTS

It is one of the notable ironies of recent music history that

Heinrich Schenker’s concept of prolongation has supplied an
important tool for the analysis of twentieth-century music;
and furthermore, that those prolongational procedures first
pointed out by Schenker in his analyses of masterpieces of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been among
the most adaptable of the techniques associated with tonal
music to the broader context of more recent non-functional
tonality.1 Schenker conceived of prolongation solely in terms
o f a consonant, triadic background; and the technique was,
in his own formulation, strictly limited to the framework of
the functional tonal system.2 Indeed, the basis of Schenker’s
theory was rooted in his belief that the triad represented the
“chord of nature” —a God-given absolute that in its “ natural”
state existed solely as a simultaneous projection derived from
the overtone series.3 The triad could then be projected in
tim e—made horizontal, as it were—to form extended com­
positional spans; but these prolongations, whatever their
length and complexity, also acquired meaning ultimately as
temporal unfoldings of a single, consonant sonority.
4 MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY

For Schenker, the history of Western music before the

advent of functional tonality revealed a clear development
toward the only perfect system provided by nature. Post-
tonal music, on the other hand, as well as a great deal of
ostensibly tonal music by such composers as Berlioz and
Wagner, testified to an abrupt decline into chaos and deca­
dence. Schenker, in fact, was convinced that the art of music
had reached an ignominious end during the course of his own
lifetime, witnessed by his poignant dedication of the study of
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony “to Johannes Brahms, the last
of the German masters.”
Some of Schenker’s contemporaries took a more flexible
position, pointing out that much new music was not really
“atonal” in nature, but rather reflected a different kind of
tonality (with such matters as melodic and rhythmic em­
phasis, rather than the functional I-V-I progression, assuming
the principal key-defining role). Theorists have more recently
begun to point out tonality-defining prolongations in
twentieth-century compositions that form surprisingly close
parallels to earlier triadic procedures. In 1948, in a pioneering
article on Bartok, Milton Babbitt disclosed the presence of
non-triadic “harmonic regions” in this composer’s music,
regions that were “revealed by polyphonic unfolding.”
Babbitt went on to observe that these referential areas
acquired primacy not by virtue of any inherent hierarchy
within a generally accepted musical system, but solely by
“contextual” means unique to the individual compositions.4
Since the publication of Babbitt’s article, several important
books and articles have appeared providing further documen­
tation of such “dissonant prolongations” in the music of a
wide range of twentieth-century composers.5
If it is ironic that Schenker should himself provide the key
to a deeper understanding of a body of music of which he
disapproved, it is doubly so that he also indicates the lines
along which his concept of prolongation can be extended
into the area of non-functional tonality. In an analysis of
some fifteen measures from the first movement of Stravin­
sky’s Piano Concerto (Example 1, beginning with the upbeat
to rehearsal no. 33 in the revised edition of 1950), Schenker
provides a suggestive illustration of how one might approach
a non-functional, yet “ tonal,” composition.6 Schenker, to be

50
 DISSONANT PROLONGATION 5

EXAMPLE 1

Copyright 1956 by Universal Edition A.G.

Reproduced with permission.

51
6 MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY

sure, employs the example as a Gegenbeispiel, and he makes

no attem pt to hide his contempt of Stravinsky’s music. Yet
the effect of his observations is to suggest striking analogies
between Stravinsky’s methods and those o f his forerunners.
Schenker remarks that the graphs are at best indications
of “what may have been dimly present in Stravinsky’s
mind.” 7 Yet, as he proceeds to point out, there do exist
horizontal prolongations of intervals (Ztige or “ spans” ),
although the spans are “ of the simplest type.” Schenker
continues: “ Is it not true that Stravinsky contradicts this
structure whenever he can: in the counterpoint of the outer
voices, [and] especially the bass, which circumvents each
articulation of the spans; further, in that he makes no dis­
tinction in the motives that would enable the spans to be
perceived in their individuality; finally, in that, by neglecting
the spans, he allows the tones to appear constantly in disso­
nant relationship to one another?” These points are then
illustrated by reference to several details in the passage: e.g.,
the third span in the top voice from A to F-sharp, whose
completion on the first beat of the third measure—and again,
after its repetition, on the second beat of the fifth measure—
is contradicted by the dissonant B in the middle voice.
But these are “contradictions” only if one assumes that
the underlying structure is—or should b e-triad ic and con­
sonant. In fact, the dissonant vertical combination A-sharp
—B—F-sharp, which occurs at these two spots, has already
appeared (transposed diatonically) several times within the
first span. It was associated with both of the preceding
“structural” notes in the descending third of the top voice:
with A on the second eighth of the upbeat (where, significant­
ly, the rhythmic layout tends to make the opening octave in
the two lower voices sound “dissonant” ), and with G-sharp on
the second eighth of the second measure, as well as on the last
quarter of this measure (where the voice exchange in the two
lower voices, and the suspended A and anticipated F-sharp
in the top voice, obscure the vertical sonority, thereby saving
the more direct statement for the “ cadential” arrival on the
next beat). The same sonority also reappears at focal points
later in the passage. It is associated with the repetition of the
third span in mm. 4-5 (here at a somewhat more background
level until it appears again explicitly at the end of the span),

52
 DISSONANT PROLONGATION 7

as well as with the final five notes of the octave span: E in

m.12 (at just the point where the opening figuration is taken
up again in all three voices), D in m.13, C in m.14 (here again
at a more background level), and B and A in m. 15.8
The main problem, then, is that Schenker analyzes the
music in terms of a consonant background; and there are
certainly other aspects of his analysis with which one might
argue (such as the importance he assigns to the IV chord).
But the point here is not to offer an alternative reading, but
to indicate the extent to which, regardless of intent,
Schenker has provided a working model for an analysis of
this music—an analysis that invokes many of the procedures
employed by Schenker in dealing with earlier music. As he
indicates, prolongation spans are present (and not just the
third spans A—F-sharp and C-sharp—A, but also the octave
span A3 —A2, suggesting that the entire passage is held
together by a more background prolongation). Indeed, it is
only a short step from this analysis to the more complex and
sophisticated ones that have appeared in recent years.9
But if Schenker’s example has unwittingly provided the
foundation for a theory of twentieth-century tonal structure
based on “dissonant tonics,” it has failed to stimulate a study
of comparable phenomena in nineteenth-century music. A
large body of music from this period, dismissed or ignored by
Schenker, does not conform to the assumptions of his
theory. And although some Schenker-derived analyses have
since been undertaken on music of this type, the basic ver­
tical sonority underlying the prolongation is always assumed
to be consonant, i.e., either a major or minor triad.10
There are, however, instances in nineteenth-century music
o f passages, analogous to those in twentieth-century music,
that appear to be based on dissonant referential sonorities.
The dissonances involved, as we shall see, are harmonies
commonly found in tonal music; yet they are nonetheless
dissonant and thus unstable. According to the traditional
view, they are incapable of generating prolongations.
Once again it is indicative of the range and suggestiveness
o f Schenker’s theoretical formulations that he himself pro­
vides the basis for an analytic approach to such passages. In
Der freie Satz, in the section on the “seventh,” there are
several examples of prolonged dominant seventh chords.11

53
8 MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY

Schenker, however, is ambivalent concerning the status of

these prolongations. Since, in his view, the dominant seventh
is “ only a means of prolongation,” it is unable “to produce a
prolongation; only its transformation into a consonance
renders a prolongation possible.” 12 Elsewhere, he states that
“an interval that is itself passing in character cannot at the
same time provide the first tone [K o p fto n] of a prolongation,
which must always be consonant.” 13 Yet the examples given
to illustrate such “ transformations of the seventh” suggest
certain inconsistencies in this regard.14 The graph of the pro­
longation of the passing seventh in Bach’s C major Prelude
from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Vol. I15 (the F in the top
voice, which in turn prolongs the larger motion from D to F),
for example, shows that the prolongation takes place entirely
in conjunction with dissonant harmonic support (Example 2).
The only major or minor triad in the passage—the C major
chord in six-four position—occurs with G in the top voice,
the upper neighbor of the more fundamental F. Thus the
dissonance has not been “ transformed into a consonance” ;
even if one wishes to consider the six-four chord as a “rela­
tive consonance,” it is shown as performing a prolonging
function relative to a conceptually prior dissonance—in which
case the consonance must be said to “resolve” to the
dissonance. And in several of the other examples, despite
intervening consonant transformations, it is the seventh
chord that represents the polar harmony defining the limits
of the prolongation.
In the analysis of the first part of the development section
(beginning with the closing measures of the exposition) of
Beethoven’s E-flat major Piano Sonata, Op. 81a,16 the domi­
nant seventh chord controls the entire passage. The temporary
stabilization of the A-flat in m.69 does not alter this, for
again the major six-three chord appearing at this point must
logically be considered on a lower structural level (and thus
subordinate, or, as it were, “dissonant” ) to the conceptually
prior dominant seventh (Example 3).
Presumably, Schenker would respond that these passages,
regardless of the nature of their individual prolongations,
represent only “passing moments” in the total piece: they are
in motion between stable harmonic regions. Thus, formally
considered, such passages normally occur in transition or

54
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 It might be said that the southern United States furnish an extreme
case of a sharply drawn color-line. This is true. But on the other hand
there is no place on earth where something corresponding to a color-
line is not drawn between two races occupying the same territory. It
sometimes happens that distinctions are diminished and faintly or
subtly enforced, as in modern Hawaii, where to outward
appearances many races dwell together without discrimination. Yet
examination reveals that the absence of discrimination is only legal
and perhaps economic. As regards the relations and associations of
human beings, the welcome which they extend or the aloofness
which they show to one another, there is always a color-line. This
means not only difference in opportunity, but difference in
experience, habit formation, practices, and interests.

41. Psychological Tests on the Sense

Faculties
This factor of experience enters even into what appear to be the
simplest mental operations, the sensory ones. The scant data
available from experimental tests indicate that a variety of dark
skinned or uncivilized peoples, including Oceanic and African
Negroids, Negritos, Ainus, and American Indians, on the whole
slightly surpass civilized whites in keenness of vision and fineness of
touch discrimination, whereas the whites are somewhat superior in
acuity of hearing and sensitiveness to pain. Yet what do these results
of measurements mean?
Vision is tested for its distance ability. The farther off one can
distinguish objects or marks, the higher one’s rating. Civilized man
reads—normally—at 14 inches. He works with sharp knives, with
machines that are exact; he is surrounded by things made with such
exact machines; he handles thin paper and filmy fabrics. His women
sew and embroider with the sharpest of needles, the finest of thread.
Everything about us tends toward close accuracy and away from the
haziness of distant observation. The savage, on the other hand, the
half-civilized person even, inspects the horizon, watches for game or
its dim tracks, tries to peer to the bottom of streams for fish. He does
not read, his needles are blunt, his thread is cord, his carving without
precision even though decorative, the lines he makes are free-hand
and far-apart. He is trained, as it were, for the usual vision tests. If
the psychologist reversed his experiment and sought the degree of
power to see fine differences at close range, it is possible that the
savage might prove inferior because untrained by his experience.
Such tests seem not to have been made. Until they are, and again
show uncivilized man superior, there is no real proof that innate
racial differences of serious moment exist.
The whole act of vision in fact involves more than we ordinarily
think. After all, seeing is done with the mind as well as with the eye.
There is the retinal image, but there is also the interpretation of this
image. A sailor descries the distant shore, whereas the landsman
sees only a haze on the horizon. To the city dweller a horse and a
cow a mile off are indistinguishable. Not so to the rancher. There is
something almost imperceptible about the profile of the feeding end
of the animal, about its movement, that promptly and surely classes
it. At still longer ranges, where the individual animals have wholly
faded from sight, a herd of cattle may perhaps be told from one of
horses, by the plainsman, through the different clouds of dust which
they kick up, or the rate of motion of the cloud. An hour later when
the herd is reached and proves to be as said, the astonished traveler
from the metropolis is likely to credit his guide’s eyes with an intrinsic
power greater than his field glasses—forgetting the influence of
experience and training.
In keenness of hearing, on the contrary, one should expect the
civilized white to come out ahead, as in fact he does; not because he
is Caucasian but because he is civilized and because the
instruments of experimentation, be they tuning forks or ticking
watches or balls dropped on metal plates, are implements of
civilization. Make the test the howl of a distant wolf, or the snapping
of a twig as the boughs bend in the wind, and the college student’s
hearing might prove duller than that of the Indian or Ainu. There is a
story of a woodsman on a busy thoroughfare, amid the roar of traffic
and multifarious noise of a great city, hearing a cricket chirp, which
was actually discovered in a near-by open cellar. Extolled for his
miraculous keenness of audition, the man in the fur cap dropped a
small coin on the pavement: at the clink, passers-by across the
street stopped and looked around.
As to the pain sense, an introspective, interpretative element
necessarily enters into experiments. What constitutes pain? When
the trial becomes disagreeable? When it hurts? When it is
excruciating? The savage may physiologically feel with his nerve
ends precisely as we do. But being reared to a life of chronic slight
discomforts, he is likely to think nothing of the sensation until it hurts
sharply; whereas we signal as soon as we are sure that the
experience is becoming perceptibly unpleasant.
In short, until there shall have been more numerous, balanced,
and searching tests made, it must be considered that nothing
positive has been established as to the respective sensory faculties
of the several human races. The experiments performed are tests
not so much of race as of the average experience and habits of
groups of different culture.

42. Intelligence Tests

If this is true as regards the sense faculties, it might be expected
to hold to a greater degree of those higher mental faculties which we
call intelligence; and such is the case. Intelligence tests have been
gradually evolved and improved, the best known being the Binet-
Simon series. These are arranged to determine the mental age of
the subject. Their most important function accordingly has been the
detection of defective adults or backward children. During the World
War, psychological examinations were introduced on a scale
unheard of before. The purpose of these examinations was to assign
men to the tasks best commensurate with their true abilities;
especially to prevent the unfit from being entrusted with responsibility
under which they would break down and bring failure on larger
undertakings. Men subject to dizziness were to be kept from flying;
those unable to understand orders, out of active line service. The
tests throughout were practical. They tried to decide whether a given
man was fit or unfit. They did not pretend to go into the causes of his
fitness or unfitness. This is an important point. Whatever illumination
the army intelligence tests shed on the problem of race intelligence
is therefore indirect. Different racial or national groups represented in
the examinations attain different capacity ratings, but there is nothing
in the results themselves to show whether they are due to racial or
environmental factors. Evidence on this point, if it can be derived at
all from the tests, has to be “analyzed out.”
In general, examinees in the United States were rated by being
assigned, on the basis of their scores, to grades which were lettered
from A to E, with plus and minus subgrades. The most
comprehensive presentation of results is to express the percentage
of individuals in each group that made the middle grade C, better
than C, and worse than C. On this basis we find:

Group and Number of Individuals Below C C Above C

Englishmen, 411 9 71 20
White draft generally, 93,973 24 64 12
Italians, 4,007 63 36 1
Poles, 382 70 30 (.5)
Negroes generally, 18,891 79 20 1

These figures at face value seem to show deep group differences

in intelligence; and these face values have been widely accepted.
The reason is that they flatter national and race egotism. To be sure,
the Englishmen in the American draft make a better showing than
the drafted men at large; but this has been complacently explained
by saying that the English represent in comparative purity the Anglo-
Saxon or Nordic stock which is also the dominant strain among
Americans, but which has been somewhat contaminated in their
case by the immigration of Latins and Slavs, who rate much lower,
as shown by the Italians and Poles tested. Lowest of all, as might be
expected, is the Negro. So runs the superficial but satisfying
interpretation of the figures—satisfying if one happens to be of North
European ancestry.
But there is one feature that raises suspicion. The Italians and the
Poles are too close to the Negroes. They stand much nearer to them
in intelligence, according to these figures, than they do to the white
Americans. Can this be so—at least, can it have racial significance?
Are these Mediterraneans, descendants of the Romans, and these
Alpines, so large a strain of whose blood flows in the veins of many
white Americans, only a shade superior to the Negro? Scarcely.
“Something must be wrong” with the figures: that is, they contain
another factor besides race.
A little dissection of the lump results reveals this factor. The
northern Negro far surpasses the southern in his showing. He gets
ten times as high a proportion of individuals into the above-average
grades, only half as many into the below-average. Evidently the
difference is due to increased schooling, improved earning capacity,
larger opportunity and incentive: social environment, in short. So
strong is the influence of the environment that the northern Negro
easily surpasses the Italian in America.

Negroes, 5 northern states, 4,705 46 51 3

Italians, 4,007 63 36 1
Negroes, 4 southern states, 6,846 86 14 (.3)

Evidently the psychological tests are more a gauge of educational

and social opportunity than of race, since the Italian, although
brunet, is of course a pure Caucasian.
This conclusion is reinforced by another consideration. The type of
test first used in the army had been built up for reasonably literate
people, speaking English. Among such people it discriminated
successfully between the more and the less fit. But the illiterate and
the foreigner knowing no English failed completely—not because
their intelligence was zero, but because the test involved the use of
non-congenital abilities which they had not acquired. A second set of
tests, known as Beta, was evolved for those who were obviously
ineligible, or proved themselves so, for the old style of test, which
was designated as Alpha. The illiteracy of the subjects given the
Beta test was in most cases not an absolute one. Men who could not
write an intelligible letter or read the newspaper or who had had only
half or less of the ordinary grammar school education, together with
aliens whose comprehension of English remained imperfect, were
put in the group of “illiterates” or badly educated. Separating now the
literates from the illiterates among a number of racial, national, or
sectional groups, we find:

Alpha Test: Literates

Englishmen, 374 5 74 21
White draft generally, 72,618 16 69 15
Alabama whites, 697 19 72 9
New York negroes, 1,021 21 72 7
Italians, 575 33 64 3
Negroes generally, 5,681 54 44 2
Alabama negroes, 262 56 44 (.4)
Beta Test: Illiterates
White draft generally, 26,012 58 41 1
Italians, 2,888 64 35 1
New York negroes, 440 72 28 0
Poles, 263 76 24 (.4)
Alabama whites, 384 80 20 0
Negroes generally, 11,633 91 9 (.2)
Alabama Negroes, 1,043 97 3 (.1)

It must be borne in mind that the two groups were not set apart as
the result of tests, but that the two tests were devised to meet the
problem of treating the two groups with reasonable uniformity. The
point was to find the excellent man, and the unfit man, with the same
degree of accuracy whether he was literate or illiterate. When found,
he was assigned to the same grade, such as A, or D—, whether his
examination had been Alpha or Beta.
Now let us observe some of the figures. The New York negro is
nearly on a par with the Alabama white, among literates, and a bit
ahead of him among illiterates. Approximately the two groups come
out the same; which means that bringing up in a certain part of the
country has as much to do with intelligence, even in the rough, as
has Caucasian or colored parentage.
 The literate negroes of the draft, irrespective of section, slightly
surpass the illiterate whites.
In every case the literate members of a race or nationality make a
far better showing than the illiterate.
It is now clear also that the important factor of education enters so
heavily into the first figures cited that they can mean little if anything
as to inherent capacity. Of the Englishmen tested, nine-tenths fell in
the literate group; of the Poles, a fifth; of the Italians, a seventh. In
the draft generally, nearly three-fourths of the whites were literate; of
the negroes, less than a third.
In short, in spite of the fact that the Beta test was intended to
equalize conditions for the illiterate and semi-illiterate, the
outstanding conclusion of the army examinations seems to be that
education—cultural advantage—enormously develops faculty.
Is there anything left that can positively be assigned to race
causation? It may be alleged that within the same section the white
recruits regularly surpass the colored. Alabama whites may rate
disappointingly, but they do better than Alabama negroes; New York
negroes show surprisingly well, but they are inferior to New York
whites; illiterate whites from the whole country definitely surpass
illiterate negroes; and still more so among literates. But is this
residuum of difference surely racial? As long as the color-line
remains drawn, a differential factor of cultural advantage is included;
and how strong this is there is no present means of knowing. It is
possible that some of the difference between sectionally and
educationally equalized groups of whites and negroes is really innate
and racial. But it is also possible that most or all of it is
environmental. Neither possibility can be demonstrated from the
unrefined data at present available.

43. Status of Hybrids

In nearly all tests of the American Negro, full bloods and mixed
bloods are not discriminated. Evidently if races have distinctive
endowments, the nature of these endowments is not cleared up so
long as individuals who biologically are seven-eighths Caucasian are
included with pure Negroes merely because in this country we have
the social habitude of reckoning them all as “colored.”
On the other hand, an excellent opportunity to probe deeper is
being lost through the failure to classify tested colored people
according to the approximate proportion of Negro blood. Suppose for
instance that on a given examination whites scored an average of
100 and Negroes of 60. Then, if this difference were really due to
race, if it were wholly a matter of superior or inferior blood, mulattos
should average 80 and quadroons 90; unless intelligence were due
to simple Mendelian factors, in which case its inheritance would tend
to segregate, and of this there is no evidence. Suppose, however,
that instead of the theoretically expectable 80 and 90, the mulattos
and quadroons scored 65 and 68. In that event it would be clear that
the major part of the Negro’s inferiority of record was due to
environment; that the white man’s points from about 70 up to 100
were clearly the result of his superior social opportunities, whereas
the range between 60 and 70 approximately represented the innate
difference between Negro and Caucasian. This is a hypothetical
example, but it may serve to illustrate a possible method of attacking
the problem.
There are however almost no data of this kind; and when they are
obtained, they will be subject to certain cautions upon interpretation.
For instance, in the army examinations one attempt was made to
separate a small group of colored recruits into a darker-skinned
group, comprising full blooded Negroes and those appearing to be
preponderantly of Negro blood; and a lighter complexioned group,
estimated to contain the mulattos and individuals in whom white
ancestry was in excess. The light group made the better scores. In
the Alpha test for literates it attained a median score of 50, the dark
Negroes only 30; in the Beta tests for illiterates, the respective
figures were 36 and 29.
The caution is this. Is the mulatto subject to any more
advantageous environment than the full blooded Negro? So far as
voting and office-holding, riding in Pullman cars and occupying
orchestra seats in theatre are concerned, there is no difference: both
are colored, and therefore beyond the barrier. But the mulattos of
slavery days were likely to be house servants, brought up with the
master’s family, absorbing manners, information, perhaps education;
their black half-brothers and half-sisters stayed out in the plantation
shacks. Several generations have elapsed since those days, but it is
possible, even probable, that the descendants of mulattos have kept
a step or two ahead of the descendants of the blacks in literacy,
range of experience, and the like.
It is impossible to predict what the social effect of miscegenation
will be. The effect undoubtedly varies and must be examined in each
case. Thus, Indian half-breeds in one tribe may usually be the result
of wholly transient or mercenary unions between inferior whites and
debauched native women and may therefore grow up in an
atmosphere of demoralization to which the full blooded Indian is less
exposed. This demoralization would, to be sure, affect character and
not intelligence as such; but it might stand in the way of schooling,
and otherwise indirectly react on measurable traits of mind. In
another tribe or section of a tribe, to the contrary, the half-breed
might normally grow up in the house of a permanently settled white
father, a squaw man, and in that event would learn English better, go
to school earlier, and in case of a test therefore achieve a higher
rating than the full blood.

44. Evidence from the Cultural Record of

Races
An entirely different method of approach to the problem of race
capacity is that of examining the cultural record, the achievements in
civilization, of groups. While this approach is theoretically possible,
and while it is often attempted, it is subject to little control and
therefore unlikely to yield dependable conclusions.
First of all, the culture history record of a people must be known
for considerable periods before one may validly think of inferring
therefrom anything as to the faculties of that people. The reason is
that active civilization, as a productive process, is slow to grow up,
slow to be acquired. Mere momentum would normally keep the more
advanced of two peoples ahead of the other for a long time. In
proportion as not nations but groups of nations were involved, the
momentum would continue for still longer periods. Civilization
flourished for some thousands of years in the Near East, and then
about the Mediterranean, before it became established with equal
vigor and success in northern Europe. Had Julius Cæsar or one of
his contemporaries been asked whether by any sane stretch of
phantasy he could imagine the Britons and Germans as inherently
the equals of Romans and Greeks, he would probably have replied
that if these northerners possessed the ability of the Mediterraneans
they would long since have given vent to it, instead of continuing to
live in disorganization, poverty, ignorance, rudeness, and without
great men or products of the spirit. And, within limits, Cæsar would
have been right, since it was more than a thousand years before
northern Europe began to draw abreast of Italy in degree and
productivity of civilization. Two thousand years before Christ, a well
informed Egyptian might reasonably have disposed in the same
sweeping way of the possibility of Greeks and Italians being the
equals of his own people in capacity. What had these barbarians
ever done to lead one to think that they might yet do great things?
To-day we brush Negroes and Indians out of the reckoning with the
same offhandedness.
In general, arguing from performance to potentiality, from
accomplishment to achievement, is valid under conditions of set
experiment—such as are impossible for races—or in proportion as
the number and variety of observations is large. A single matched
competition may decide pretty reliably as between the respective
speed capacities of two runners. But it would be hazardous to form
an opinion from a casual glimpse of them in action, when one might
happen to be hastening and the other dallying. Least of all would it
be sound to infer that essential superiority rested with the one that
was in advance at the moment of observation, without knowledge of
their starting points, the difficulty of their routes, the motive or goal of
their courses. It is only as the number of circumstances grows, from
which observations are available, that judgment begins to have any
weight. The runner who has led for a long time and is increasing his
lead, or who has repeatedly passed others, or who carries a load
and yet gains ground, may lay some claim to superiority. In the same
way, as between races, a long and intimate historical record,
objectively analyzed, gives some legitimate basis for tentative
conclusions as to their natural endowment. But how long the record
must be is suggested by the example already cited of Mediterranean
versus Nordic cultural preëminence.
The fallacy that is most commonly committed is to argue from
what in the history of great groups is only an instant: this instant
being that at which one’s own race or nationality is dominant. The
Anglo-Saxon’s moment is the present; the Greek’s, the age of
Pericles. Usually, too, the dominance holds only for certain aspects:
military or economic or æsthetic superiority, as the case may be;
inferiorities on other sides are merely overlooked. The Greek knew
his venality, but looked down on the barbarian nevertheless. Anglo-
Saxon failure in the plastic and musical arts is notorious, but does
not deter most Anglo-Saxons from believing that they are the elect in
quality, and from buttressing this conviction with the evidences of
present industrial, economic, and political achievements—and
perhaps past literary ones.

45. Emotional Bias

Inference from record to potentiality where the record of one’s own
group is favorable, and failure to draw such inference where the
achievement of other groups is superior, is a combination of mental
operations that is widely spread because it arises spontaneously in
minds not critically trained. Here is an instance:
One of the great achievements of science in the nineteenth
century was Galton’s demonstration, in a series of works beginning
with “Hereditary Genius,” that the laws of heredity apply to the mind
in the same manner and to the same degree as to the body. On the
whole this proof has failed to be recognized at its true importance,
probably because it inclines adversely to current presuppositions of
the independence of the soul from the body, and freedom of the will,
propositions to which most men adhere emotionally.
 From this perfectly valid demonstration, which has been confirmed
by other methods, Galton went on to rate the hereditary worth of
various races, according to the number of their men of genius. Here
a fallacy enters: the assumption that all geniuses born are
recognized as such. A great work naturally requires a great man, but
it presupposes also a great culture. It may be that, historically
speaking, a great genius cannot arise in a primitive degree of
civilization. That is, the kind of concentrated accomplishment which
alone we recognize as a work of genius is culturally impossible
below a certain level. Biologically the individual of genius may be
there; civilizationally he is not called forth, and so does not get into
the record. Consequently it is unsound to argue from the historical
record to biological worth. However, this Galton did; and his method
led him to the conclusion that the negro rates two grades lower than
the Englishman, on a total scale of fourteen grades, and the
Englishman two lower than the fifth century Athenian.
This conclusion has never been popular. Most people on
becoming familiar with Galton’s argument, resist it. Its fallacy is not
easy to perceive—if it were, Galton would not have committed it—
and the average person is habitually so vague-minded upon what is
organic and what is social, that the determination of the fallacy would
be well beyond him. His opposition to Galton’s conclusion is
therefore emotionally and not rationally founded, and his arguments
against the conclusion are presumably also called forth by emotional
stimulus.
On the other hand, most individuals of this day and land do
habitually infer, like Galton, from cultural status to biological worth,
so far as the Negro is concerned. The same persons who eagerly
accept the demonstration of a flaw in the argument in favor of
Athenian superiority, generally become skeptical and resistive to the
exposition of the same flaw in the current belief as to Negro
inferiority. It is remarkable how frequently and how soon, in making
this exposition, one becomes aware of the hearer’s feeling that one’s
attitude is sophistical, unreal, insincere, or motivated by something
concealed.
 The drift of this discussion may seem to be an unavowed
argument in favor of race equality. It is not that (§ 271). As a matter
of fact, the bodily differences between races would appear to render
it in the highest degree likely that corresponding congenital mental
differences do exist. These differences might not be profound,
compared with the sum total of common human faculties, much as
the physical variations of mankind fall within the limits of a single
species. Yet they would preclude identity. As for the vexed question
of superiority, lack of identity would involve at least some degree of
greater power in certain respects in some races. These
preëminences might be rather evenly distributed, so that no one race
would notably excel the others in the sum total or average of its
capacities; or they might show a tendency to cluster on one rather
than on another race. In either event, however, the fact of race
difference, qualitative if not quantitative, would remain.
But it is one thing to admit this theoretical probability and then stop
through ignorance of what the differences are, and another to
construe the admission as justification of mental attitudes which may
be well founded emotionally but are in considerable measure
unfounded objectively.
In short, it is a difficult task to establish any race as either superior
or inferior to another, but relatively easy to prove that we entertain a
strong prejudice in favor of our own racial superiority.

46. Summary
It would seem that the subject of race problems, that is, the natural
endowment of human races, can be summarized as follows:
The essential difficulty of these problems lies in the fact that the
performance of groups is the product of two sets of factors, biological
and cultural, both of which are variable and not always readily
separable.
Progress in solution of the problems will be made gradually, and
will be hastened by recognition of how few positive determinations
have been made.
 Most of the alleged existing evidence on race endowment is likely
to be worthless.
The remainder probably has some value, but to what degree, and
what it demonstrates, cannot yet be asserted.
The most definite determinations promise to eventuate from
experiment. If fully controlled experiments in breeding and rearing
human beings could be carried out, the problems would soon begin
to solve. Experiments on animals would prove practically nothing
because animals are cultureless—uninfluenced by social
environment of their own making.
Progress will be aided by increasing shift of attention from the
crude consideration of comparative lump rating of the races, that is,
their gross superiority or inferiority, to a consideration of such
specific qualitative differences as they may prove to show. The
question of finding the race in which the greatest number of
qualitative excellences are concentrated is subsequent and of much
less scientific importance.
Scientific inquiries into race are for the present best kept apart
from so-called actual race problems. These problems inevitably
involve feeling, usually of considerable strength, which tends to
vitiate objective approach. On the other hand, the practical problems
will no doubt continue to be met practically, that is, morally and
emotionally. Whether the Japanese should be forbidden to hold land
and the Negro be legally disfranchised are problems of economics
and of group ethics, which probably will for a long time be disposed
of emotionally as at present, irrespective of the possible findings of
science upon the innate endowment of Caucasian, Mongoloid, and
Negroid strains.
 CHAPTER V
LANGUAGE

47. Linguistic relationship: the speech family.—48. Criteria of relationship.

—49. Sound equivalences and phonetic laws.—50. The principal
speech families.—51. Classification of languages by types.—52.
Permanence of language and race.—53. The biological and historical
nature of language.—54. Problems of the relation of language and
culture.—55. Period of the origin of language.—56. Culture, speech,
and nationality.—57. Relative worth of languages.—58. Size of
vocabulary.—59. Quality of speech sounds.—60. Diffusion and
parallelism in language and culture.—61. Convergent languages.—
62. Unconscious factors in language and culture.—63. Linguistic and
cultural standards.—64. Rapidity of linguistic change.

47. Linguistic Relationship: The Speech Family

The question that the historian and anthropologist are likely to ask
most frequently of the philologist, is whether this and that language
are or are not related. Relationship in such connection means
descent from a common source, as two brothers are descended
from the same father, or two cousins from a common grandfather. If
languages can be demonstrated to possess such common source, it
is clear that the peoples who spoke them must at one time have
been in close contact, or perhaps have constituted a single people.
If, on the other hand, the languages of two peoples prove wholly
dissimilar, though their racial types and cultures be virtually identical,
as indeed is sometimes found to be the case—witness the
Hungarians and their neighbors—it is evident that an element of
discontinuous development must somewhere be reckoned with.
Perhaps one part of an originally single racial group gradually
modified its speech beyond recognition, or under the shock of
conquest, migration, or other historical accident entirely discarded it
in favor of a new and foreign tongue. Or the opposite may be true:
the two groups were originally distinct in all respects, but, being
brought in contact, their cultures interpenetrated, intermarriage
followed, and the two physical types became assimilated into one
while the languages remained dissimilar. In short, if one wishes full
understanding of a people, one must take its language into
consideration. This means that it must be classified. If a historical
classification is to be more than barrenly logical, it must have
reference to relationship, development, origin. In a word, it must be a
genetic classification.
The term used to indicate that two or more languages have a
common source but are unrelated to all others, or seem so in the
present state of knowledge, is “linguistic family.” “Linguistic stock” is
frequently used as a synonym. This is the fundamental concept in
the classification of languages. Without a clear idea of its meaning
one involves himself in confusion on attempting to use philology as
an aid to other branches of human history.
There is no abstract reason against referring to a group of
unrelated languages as a “family” because they are all spoken in one
area, nor against denominating as “families,” as has sometimes
been done, the major subdivisions of a group of languages
admittedly of common origin. Again, languages that show certain
similarities of type or structure, such as inflection, might conceivably
be put into one “family.” But there is this objection to all such usages:
they do not commit themselves on the point of genetic relationship,
or they contradict it, or only partially exhaust it. Yet commonness of
origin is so important in many connections that it is indispensable to
have one term which denotes its ascertainable presence. And for
this quality there happens to be no generally understood designation
other than “linguistic family,” or its synonym, “linguistic stock.” This
phrase will therefore be used here strictly in the sense of the whole
of a group of languages sprung from a single source, and only in that
sense. Other groupings will be indicated by phrases like “languages
of such and such an area,” “subfamily,” “division of a family,” or
“languages of similar type.”

48. Criteria of Relationship

 The question that first arises in regard to linguistic families is how
the relationship of their constituent idioms is determined. In brief, the
method is one of comparison. If a considerable proportion of the
words and grammatical forms of two languages are reasonably
similar, similar enough to indicate that the resemblances cannot be
due to mere accident, these similar words and forms must go back to
a common source, and if this source is not borrowing, the two
tongues are related. If comparison fails to bring out any such degree
of resemblance, the languages are classed in distinct families.
Of course it is possible that the reason two languages seem
unrelated is not that they are really so, but that they have in the
lapse of ages become so much differentiated that one cannot any
longer find resemblance between their forms. In that event true
relationship would be obscured by its remoteness. Theoretically
there is high probability that many families of languages, customarily
regarded as totally distinct, do go back in the far past to a common
origin, and that ignorance of their history, or inability to analyze them
deeply, prevents recognition of their relationship. From time to time it
happens that groups of languages which at first seemed unrelated
are shown by more intensive study to possess elements enough in
common to compel the recognition of their original unity. In that case
what were supposed to be several “families” become merged in one.
The scope of a particular family may be thus enlarged; but the scope
of the generic concept of “family” is not altered.
Whether there is any hope that comparative philology may
ultimately be prosecuted with sufficient success to lead all the varied
forms of human speech back to a single origin, is an interesting
speculation. A fair statement is that such a possibility cannot be
denied, but that the science is still far from such a realization, and
that progress toward it is necessarily slow. Of more immediate
concern is an ordering and summarizing of the knowledge in hand
with a view to such positive inferences as can be drawn.
In an estimate of the similarity of languages, words that count as
evidence must meet two requirements: they must be alike or
traceably similar in sound; and they must be alike or similar in
meaning. This double requirement holds, whether full words or
separable parts of words, roots or grammatical forms, are compared.
The English word eel and the French île, meaning island, are
pronounced almost exactly alike, yet their meaning is so different
that no sane person would regard them as sprung from the same
origin. As a matter of fact île is derived from Latin insula, whereas
eel has a cognate in German aal. These prototypes insula and aal
being as different in sound as they are in meaning, any possibility
that eel and île might be related is easily disposed of. Yet if the Latin
and German equivalents were lost, if nothing were known of the
history of the English and French languages, and if île meant not
island but, say, fish or watersnake, then it might be reasonable to
think of a connection.
Such doubtful cases, of which a certain proportion are likely to be
adjudged wrongly, are bound to come up in regard to the less
investigated languages, particularly those of nations without writing,
the earlier stages of whose speech have perished without trace. In
proportion as more is known of a language, or as careful analysis
can reconstruct more of its past stages, the number of such
borderline cases obviously becomes fewer.
Before genetic connection between two languages can be thought
of, the number of their words similar in sound and sense must be
reasonably large. An isolated handful of resemblances obviously are
either importations—loan words—or the result of coincidence. Thus
in the native Californian language known as Yuki, ko means go, and
kom means come. Yet examination of Yuki reveals no further
instances of the same kind. It would therefore be absurd to dream of
a connection: one swallow does not make a summer. This lone pair
of resemblances means nothing except that the mathematical law of
probability has operated. Among the thousands of words in one
language, a number are likely to be similar in sound to words of
another language; and of this number again a small fraction, perhaps
one or two or five in all, will happen to bear some resemblance in
meaning also. In short, the similarities upon which a verdict of
genetic relationship is based must be sufficiently numerous to fall
well beyond possibility of mere coincidence; and it must also be
possible to prove with reasonable certainty that they are not the
result of one language borrowing words from another, as, for
instance, English borrowed from French and Latin.
At the same time it is not necessary that the similarities extend to
the point of identity. In fact, too close a resemblance between part of
the stock of two languages immediately raises a presumption of
borrowing. For every language is continually changing, and once a
mother tongue has split into several branches, each of these goes
on modifying its sounds, and gradually shifting the meaning of its
words, generation after generation. In short, where connection is
real, it must be veiled by a certain degree of distortion.
Take the English word foot and the Latin word of the same
meaning, pes. To offhand inspection the sounds or forms of the two
words do not seem similar. The resemblance becomes more definite
in other forms of pes, for instance the genitive case ped-is or the
accusative ped-em. Obviously the stem or elementary portion of the
Latin word is not pes but ped-; and the d is closer to the English t of
foot than is the s of pes. The probability of relationship is increased
by the Greek word for foot, pous, whose stem proves to be pod-,
with vowel closer to that of English. Meanwhile, it would be
recognized that there are English words beginning with ped-, such
as pedal, pedestrian, pedestal, all of which have a clear association
with the idea of foot. All these words however possess almost exact
equivalents in Latin. One would therefore be justified in concluding
from these facts what indeed the history of the languages proves,
namely, that pedal, pedestrian, and pedestal are Latin words taken
over into English; whereas foot and pes and pous, and for that
matter German fuss, are derivatives from a common form which
once existed in the now extinct mother tongue from which Greek and
Latin and English and German are derived.

49. Sound Equivalences and Phonetic Laws

The question next arises whether it is possible to account for the
distortions which have modified the original word into foot, ped-, etc.
What has caused the initial sound of this ancient word to become p
in Latin and f in English, and its last consonant to be d in Latin and
Greek, t in English, and ss in German? To answer this seemingly
innocent question with accuracy for this one word alone would
involve a treatise on the whole group of languages in question, and
even then the causes, as causes, could scarcely be set down with
certainty. But it has proved possible to assemble a large number of
instances of parallel distortion in which Latin p corresponds to
English f, or d to t. Evidently philology has got hold of a generalized
phenomenon here. Since father corresponds to pater, full to pl-enus,
for to pro, fish to piscis, and so on in case after case, we are
evidently face to face with a happening that has occurred with
regularity and to which the name “law” is therefore applicable.
The f of foot and p of pes are both lip sounds. They differ
preëminently in that f can be prolonged indefinitely, whereas p is a
momentary sound. It is produced by closure of the lips for a fraction
of a second during which there is an interruption of sound
production, followed by a somewhat explosive release of the breath
which has been impounded in the mouth cavity. This explosion is of
necessity instantaneous. Since it is preceded by occlusion, or
stoppage of the breath, it is customary to speak of sounds produced
by a process like p as “stops.” F, on the other hand, is a “continuant,”
or more specifically a “fricative.”
The English word three begins with a sound which, although
conventionally represented by the two letters th, is a simple sound
and in a class with f in being fricative. Th is formed by putting the
tongue lightly across the teeth, just as f is made by placing the lower
lip against the edge of the upper teeth. In both cases the breath is
expelled with friction through a narrow passage. Now if the fricative f
is represented in Latin by the stop p, then, if regularity holds good,
the English fricative th ought to be represented in Latin by the stop
sound in the corresponding dental position, namely t. The Latin word
for three is in fact tres; for thin, ten-uis; for mother, mater; for thou,
tu, and so on. The regularity therefore extends beyond the limits of
the single labial class of sounds, and applies with equal force to the
dentals; and, it may be added, to the palatals or gutturals as well.
As one passes from English and Latin to German, one finds the
initial sound of the word meaning three, drei, to be somewhat