Payette enterprise. (Payette, Canyon Co., Idaho) 1909-1935, 1920-07-29

Characteristics OF western INDIANS
and Of the Egyptian.
Last week 1t was Malay cycle
short time before 1t was the Japanese
tone-poem, and next week and the
week after perhaps the league OF piano
playing nations will be the richer by
the rhapsodies and the dance poems
of the Incas, who might be supposed
to be q civilization so old and so fed
up with the changes in culture that
they would have forgotten all the
tunes they ever knew, says the New
York Evening Sun.
But through the indefatigable efforts
of one Carlos Valderrama, a Peruvian
pianist, the ancient and unimpaired
Inca melodies have been unearthed
from the Peruvian jungle. And for
all who may care to come and hear
them, he has embodied them in COM
positions which simulate exactly the
strange and savage Inca harmonies,
both those which have come down
from the centuries of that civilization,
and those which show the influence
of the Spanish conquest.
Not So Easy as Some.
The Inca melodies which Mr.. Val
derrama has taken down and harmon
lied in his compositions have not come
to him as easily as those Of the sands
and the desert schools Of American
t., 3 CT No IL
so that in proportion as the Inca melo-
dies were hard to get, they are vivid,
highly colored and suggestive of the
intricate tribal culture of the people.
The Incas do not hang around the
coast of Peru waiting for the Peruvian
artist ana cosmopolite to study their
culture.
They have carried themselves and
their customs into the remote recesSeS
of the Peruvian forests. Mr.. Valdez
rama spent several months cutting his
way through the undergrOwths, and
he spent likewise a couple Of years
studying the language-which is en-
titled Quecha-with the natives OF
Cajamarca, Peruvian Indians, who are
descendants from the original Incas.
Their music, says Mr.. Valderrama,
who was brought up to be an engineer,
but whose talents have led him into
the ways of a musician, has the same
melancholy rOmanticiSm which Is char
acteristic of the western Indian, of the
Egyptian, of the South Sea islander
and of most primitive civilizations.
SkiIIfuI in Harmonization.
Where the progress of the Peruvian
art differs from other primitive must
cal outburSts is in their skillful har-
nomination. Their Instruments are all
of the reed and the powerful drum,
but they have produced so many differ
ent types and they have harmonized
them so cleverly that they can pro-
duce the effect of full orchestra.
The flute and an instrument called
the clarinet-which, however, is moth |
ing like clarinet-are their favOrites |
All of their compositions are written, |
Of course, in the minor, like most prim- |
tive peoples; their scale is usually |
pentatonic, but they vary 1t by skill |
full use of the semitone. All In all, |
these Peruvians seemed to have chased |
after Debussy and the rest of them
as fast as they might be expected to ]
with the instruments of their culture. !
Mr.. Valderrama has attempted to
arrange for the piano a long list Of |
compositions which reproduce exactly |
the tOnal efforts of the Peruvian In
dams Mt all the significant episodes of
their history and through the daily
ritual of the savages' life, beginning,
of course, with the Salute to the
Morning SUM-"
In fact, he has written down in one
rhapsody not merely the Incas' eight
hour day, but In an Inca-Spanish rhap-
sody the struggle and the roar Of
the Spanish invasion. Modern music
seems a little tame and exotic after
listening to the downfall and the mar
tyrdom of the harmonized Incas.