sing in parts; that is to say, that they sung together in
different notes, which formed a pleasing harmony.

These gentlemen have fully testified, that the Friendly Islanders
undoubtedly studied their performances before they were exhibited in
public; that they had an idea of different notes being useful in
harmony; and also, that they rehearsed their compositions in private,
and threw out the inferior voices, before they ventured to appear
before those who were supposed to be judges of their skill in music.

In their regular concerts each man had a bamboo, which was of a
different length and gave a different tone; these they beat against
the ground, and each performer, assisted by the note given by this
instrument, repeated the same note, accompanying it by words, by which
means it was rendered sometimes short and sometimes long. In this
manner they sing in chorus, and not only produced octaves to each
other, according to their different species of voice, but fell on
concords, such as were not disagreeable to the ear.

Now, to overturn this fact, by the reasoning of persons who did not
hear these performances, is rather an arduous task. And yet there is
great improbability, that any uncivilized people should, by accident,
arrive at this degree of perfection in the art of music, which, we
imagine, can only be attained by dint of study, and knowledge of the
system and theory upon which musical composition is founded. Such
miserable jargon as our country psalm-singers practise, which may be
justly deemed the lowest class of counterpoint, or singing in several
parts, cannot be acquired, in the coarse manner in which it is
performed in the churches, without considerable time and practice. It
is therefore scarcely credible, that a people, semi-barbarous, should
naturally arrive at any perfection in that art, which it is much
doubted, whether the Greeks and Romans, with all their refinements in
music, ever attained, and which the Chinese, who have been longer
civilized than any people on the globe, have not yet found out.

If Captain Burney (who, by the testimony of his father, perhaps the
greatest musical theorist of this or any other age, was able to have
done it) had written down, in European notes, the concords that these
people sing; and if these concords had been such as European ears