meaning resides in their musical elements. It is pathetic to
notice how late scientific recording has come to the task of
preserving this unique folk art. Of course the earlier four-part hymn harmony versions were travesties of the real folk
renditions. All competent students agree in the utter distinctiveness of the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements
in this music. However, there is a regrettable tendency, though
a very natural one in view of an inevitable bias of technical in-
terest, to over-stress as basically characteristic one or other of
these elements in their notation and analysis. Weldon Johnson thinks the characteristic beauty of the folk song is harmonic,
in distinction to the more purely rhythmic stress in the secular
music of the Negro, which is the basis of "ragtime" and "jazz”;
while Krehbiel, more academically balances these elements, regarding the one as the African component in them, and the
other as the modifying influence of the religious hymn. “In
the United States,” he says, “the rhythmic element, though still
dominant, has yielded measurably to the melodic, the dance
having given way to religious worship, sensual bodily movement to emotional utterance." But as a matter of fact, if we
separate or even over-stress either element in the Spirituals,
the distinctive and finer effects are lost. Strain out and emphasize the melodic element a la Foster, and you get only the
sentimental ballad; emphasize the harmonic idiom, and you
get a cloying sentimental glee; over-emphasize the rhythmic
idiom and instantly you secularize the product into syncopated
dance elements. It is the fusion, and that only, that is finely
characteristic; and so far as possible, both in musical settings
and in the singing of the Negro Spirituals, this subtle balance
of musical elements should be sought after and maintained.
The actual mechanics of the native singing, with its syllabic
quavers, the off-tones and tone glides, the improvised interpolations and, above all, the subtle rhythmic phrase balance, has
much to do with the preservation of the vital qualities of these
songs.
Let us take an example. There is no more careful and appreciative student of the Spirituals than David Guion; as far as is possible from a technical and outside approach, he has bent
