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An Analysis of 651 Maori Scales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2019

Mervyn McLean
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Abstract

In the first part of this paper, three New Zealand Maori scales and a possible fourth were derived from interval associations, using strict criteria of melodic usage. An unexplained fact is the coincidence of these three scales with the plagal forms of the medieval phrygian, ionian, and aeolian modes. Historical connection with ancient Greece seems too unlikely a hypothesis to be entertained, and exposure of the Maoris to the medieval modes through early missionary activity can also be ruled out. An alternative explanation is that the ancient Greeks and the New Zealand Maoris shared common principles in their music which led to the evolution of similar scales, but such principles seem impossible to demonstrate. The conclusion must be that there is, as yet, no acceptable explanation for the parallels observed in this paper between Maori scales and those of medieval Europe and ancient Greece.

Type
Research Article
Information
Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council , Volume 1 , 1969 , pp. 123 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 By The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 

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References

1 Mervyn McLean, “A New Method of Melodic Interval Analysis,” Ethnomusicology, X,. no. 2 (1966), 174–190.Google Scholar

2 Curt Sachs, The Wellsprings of Music (The Hague, 1962), p. 168.Google Scholar

3 Further characteristics of Maori chant style are outlined in two earlier papers by the author, “A Preliminary Analysis of 87 Maori Chants,” Ethnomusicology, VIII, no. 1 (1964), 41–48, and “The Music of Maori Chant,” Te Ao Hou, XLVII (1964), 36–39.Google Scholar

4 Throughout this paper, scale notes are referred to not in music notation but in terms of intervallic distance from the tonic. This is diagrammed in Example 1. Thus a scale with the notes A B C Dߕ, where C is the tonic, would be m3 m2 T m2.Google Scholar

5 McLean, “A New Method,” and Mervyn McLean, “Maori Chant,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Otago, New Zealand, 1965.Google Scholar

6 Four songs were somehow omitted from the song type analysis and one or two counting errors were evidently also made. Interval counts by song type therefore show slight discrepancies from those by tribe. The errors are not enough, however, to affect results seriously.Google Scholar

7 The alternative explanation that poi results might be influenced by those of Taranaki is not acceptable in view of earlier findings, on statistical grounds, that the contrary is true of interval preference (McLean, “Maori Chant,” p. 253).Google Scholar

8 Pentatonic is here used in its newly accepted sense of “five note.” The anhemitonic pentatonic with its characteristic omission of the third or fourth and seventh is foreign to Maori chant.Google Scholar

9 “Transient” is a term used by the author for notes whose duration is very short.Google Scholar

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13 The evidence put forward by S. Percy Smith in a number of publications now seems very slender, and the same is true of the work of Tregear and Newman who were the other main supporters of the theory. Edward Tregear in The Aryan Maori (Wellington, 1885), and “The Maori in Asia,” Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, XVIII (1886), 3–24, claimed to have proved a connection between Maori and Aryan languages by comparison of vocabularies. His method was lampooned by A. S. Atkinson in an article called “The Aryo-Semitic Maori,” ibid., IXX (1887), 552–576. In this article Atkinson showed that the correspondences Tregear thought he had discovered were mere surface likenesses which philology and etymology would not support. Tregear attempted a reply to Atkinson's criticism (“The Aryo-Semitic Maori: A Reply to A. S. Atkinson,” ibid., XX (1888), 400–413); but later, according to an obituary in the Journal of the Polynesian Society, XL, 244–246, he came to see that his comparisons were unsound and attempted to withdraw his book. A. K. Newman's book, Who Are the Maoris? (Christchurch, New Zealand, 1913), offers much circumstantial evidence for the theory, but it is completely undocumented and cannot be taken seriously. Recent linguistic, archaeological, ethnographic, and other evidence points to links not with India but with Southeast Asia.Google Scholar

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36 Ibid., p. 85.Google Scholar

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61 About one-fifth of the Maori scales examined by the writer did not have their finals on the tonic. Of these 48 percent had their final on the lower m2, as in the transcribed example.Google Scholar

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63 The same situation prevails in the Cook Islands today. On Aitutaki in the southern Cooks, for example, the older people sing hymns using a native polyphonic style called 'imene ('imene no te akamurianga, “hymns for worship”). The younger people sing so-called Sunday school hymns ('imene api'i Sabati) which have native texts but use European tunes. Some of the older girls are familiar with both styles and sing both with the Sunday school children and with the older people.Google Scholar

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70 The Greek mese and the Maori oro. Google Scholar