remark made by Pietro Mascagni:[309]

[Footnote 309: The Evolution of Music from the Italian
Standpoint, _in_ the Century Library of Music, XVI, 521.]

"The feeling that a people displays in its character, its
habits, its nature, and thus creates an overprivileged type
of music, may be apprehended by a foreign spirit which has
become accustomed to the usages and expressions common from
that particular people. But popular music, [being] void of
any scientific basis, will always remain incomprehensible to
the foreigner who seeks to study it technically."

When we consider that the Chinese find pleasure in musical
performances on instruments that divide the scale into
intervals less than half a step, and that the Arabian musical
scale included quarter-steps, we shall be obliged to admit
that this statement of Mascagni is not merely a fling at our
musical science.

Here are introduced the words and notes of a musical
recitation done after the manner of the hula by a Hawaiian
professional and his wife. Acquaintance with the Hawaiian
language and a feeling for the allusions connoted in the text
of the song would, of course, be a great aid in enabling one
to enter into the spirit of the performance. As these
[Page 155] adjuncts will, be available to only a very few of those who
will read these words, in the beginning are given the words
of the oli with which he prefaced the song, with a
translation of the same, and then the mele which formed the
bulk of the song, also with a translation, together with such
notes and comments as are necessary to bring one into
intellectual and sympathetic relation with the performance,
so far as that is possible under the circumstances. It is
especially necessary to familiarize the imagination with the
language, meaning, and atmosphere of a mele, because the
Hawaiian approached song from the side of the poet and
elocutionist. Further discussion of this point must, however,
be deferred to another division of the subject:

_He Oli_

Halau[310] Hanalei i ka nini a ka ua;