Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 25.djvu/660

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514
Transactions.—Miscellaneous.

mary, ending on the keynote, complete and satisfactory. Second four all secondary, incomplete and unsatisfactory.

Slide 2: "Scots wha hae."

Slide 3: "Last Rose of Summer."

Slide 4: "Weel may the Keel row."

Slides 5 and 6: "God save the Queen."


N.B.—Only having been able to arrange seven colours with glasses to form one diatonic scale, it has been necessary to transpose each air into that one scale. With the intermediate shades, forming twelve gradations, a chromatic scale would be the result, corresponding to the twelve semitones in the octave, and these airs could be given in their own keys.

The twelve would be as follows:—


Colour ..
Note..
1.
Red.
c
2.
Red-orange
csharp or dflat
3.
Orange.
d
4.
Yellow-orange.
dsharp or eflat

Colour ..
Note..
5.
Yellow.
e
6.
Green.
f
7.
Blue-green.
fsharp or gflat
8.
Blue.
g

Colour ..
Note..
9.
Blue-violet.
gsharp or aflat
10.
Violet.
g
11.
Red-violet.
asharp or bflat
12.
Ultra-violet
b

Red.
c

Art. LXXV.—National Melodies.

By Miss Morrison.

[Read before the Hawke's Bay Philosophical Institute, 28th November, 1892.]

Plate LV.

Music is poetry in sounds; melody, sounds arranged rhythmical order. With the sounds natural to New Zealand, and the songs of different nations in New Zealand, of what character are the national melodies likely to be? To the musical artist sounds and notes for melody are to be found everywhere, as the sighing of the wind, the dash of the waves on the shore. Mendelssohn found music in the dropping of water in Fingal's Cave, and has portrayed it in his "Overture to the Hebrides." Birds have their distinct notes; but only those that have been trained by man can sing a melody. In our adopted country—New Zealand—it has seemed to me that