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HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

VOL.     I. 


:'t-  re-    ' 

A 


HISTORY  OF  MUSIC, 


BV 


J  O  W  X     F  R  K  U  E  R I C  K     ROW  BO  1'  H  A  M. 


9 


^  / 


IN     THREE     VOLUMES. 


VOL.     I. 


LONDON: 

TRUENER  &  Co.,  LUDGATK  HILL 
1885. 


(The  rigid  (f  transhuion  is  reserved. J 


CONTENTS 

OF 

VOLUME     THE     FIRST. 

BOOK    I. 

PREHISTORIC  MUSIC. 

INTRODUCTION.  ...  Page  xi. 

CHAPTER     I. 
THE  DRUM    STAGE.  Page     i. 

CHAPTER     II. 
THE    PIPE   STAGE.  Page     35. 


VI  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER     III. 

THE   VOICE.  Page    70. 

CHAPTER     IV. 
PIPE  RACES  AND  LYRE   RACES.     Page  139. 

CHAPTER     V. 
THE     LYRE     STAGE.  Page  151. 


APPENDICES. 

APPENDIX    A.  '     . 

On  tJie   Three  Stages  in  Central  Africa,  and  especially 

the  Lyre  Stage.  PAGE  185. 

APPENDIX    B. 

On  Darwin's  Theory  of  the  Origin    of  Vocal  Mnsic. 

Page  188. 
appendix  c. 

O71  Darzvins   Theory    of  the  Origin    of  Instriinie^ital 

Music.  Page  188. 


CONTENTS.  Vli 

BOOK     II. 

THE  MUSIC  OF  THE  ELDER  CIVILISATIONS 

AND 

THE  MUSIC  OF  THE  GREEKS. 

THE  LYRE  RACES, 

CHAPTER     I. 
THE    EGYPTIANS.  Page  193 

CHAPTER     n. 
THE  ASSYRIANS  AND  HEBREWS.    Page  235 

THE    PIPE    RACES. 

CHAPTER     III. 

THE  CHINESE,  INDO-CHINESE   AND 

OTHER  MONGOLOIDS.  Page  285. 


BOOK  I. 

PREHISTORIC     MUSIC. 


A 

HISTORY    OF    MUSIC. 

BOOK  I. 
PREHISTORIC     MUSIC. 

INTRODUCTION. 


Music  is  a  Dualism.  It  is  formed  of  the  conjunction  of 
two  elements — the  one  purely  musical,  the  other  poetical — 
the  one  sensuous,  the  other  spiritual  or  intellectual^ — the  one 
owing  its  origin  and  development  to  Instruments,  and  based 
on  the  mere  animal  delight  in  Sound  ;  the  other  owing  its 
origin  and  development  to  Language,  and  based  on  the 
fusion  of  the  Emotional  and  Intellectual  sides  of  man's 
nature.  The  object  which  the  historian  of  Music  must  set 
before  him  is  to  trace  the  goings  on  of  these  two  elements, 
at  first  far  apart  and  moving  in  separate  orbits — to  show  how 
their  paths  gradually  approached  each  other — how  a  mutual 
attraction  was  set  up,  till  at  last  they  were  necessarily  drawn 
into  the  same  plane  of  revolution.  Here  is  the  geniture  of 
a  New  Music. 

He  must  then  go  on  to  show  how  the  union  is  so  com- 
plete, that  the  Instrument  can  lose  its  original  characteristics, 
and  become  the  exponent  of  the  Poetical  and  Spiritual  side 
of  the  Art,  while  the  Voice  can  in  like  manner  be  the 
interpreter  of  the  Sensuous  and  merely  Musical  side.  How 
the  organs  of  utterance  may  for  ever  vary,  but  how  what 
they  utter  never  varies.     How  the  Sensuous  and  Spiritual 


I  Intellectual,  because  of  its  Form  (beings  expressed  by  words),  Spiritual, 
because  of  its  Matter  (being  the  same  with  the  Matter  of  Poetry). 


xii  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

elements  act  and  react  upon  one  another.  How  sometimes 
one,  sometimes  the  other  is  lord  of  the  conjunction — some- 
times both  are  so  exquisitely  blended  that  we  are  tempted 
to  exclaim,  '  Flere  at  last  is  perfect  proportion  !  In  this 
symmetry  and  harmonious  play  we  hail  the  climax  of 
the  Art's  development'  But  further  he  must  proceed  to  ac- 
count psychologically  for  these  epochs  of  preponderance 
and  equilibrium.  He  must  show  why  some  nations  are 
naturally  disposed  to  develop  the  Sensuous  element  at  the 
expense  of  the  Spiritual,  and  other  nations  to  develop  the 
Spiritual  at  the  expense  of  the  Sensuous.  And  finally  he 
must  show  how  these  two  elements  of  Music  answer  to  the 
two  grand  ultimate  divisions  of  the  human  mind,  and  how 
hence  two  great  Schools  of  Artists,  sometimes  shading  off 
into  one  another,  sometimes  in  direct  antagonism,  have  ever 
existed  from  the  first  glimmerings  of  the  Art's  history  in  un- 
broken succession  to  the  present  time.  These  are  the  objects 
which  a  historian  of  Music  must  set  before  him,  and  these  I 
shall  attempt  in  the  ensuing  pages  however  imperfectly  to 
accomplish. 

n. 

I  propose  to  commence  by  considering  what  I  have 
termed  the  Sensuous  side  of  the  Art.  Not  because  I 
would  imply  that  it  came  into  being  before  the  Intellect- 
ual side — the  case  being  exactly  the  reverse — but  because, 
in  all  strictness,  it  is  the  more  specially  Musical  of  the  two. 

Musical  Instruments,  though  their  varieties  may  be 
counted  by  hundreds,  are  yet  readily  reducible  under  three 
distinct  types  : — I.  the  Drum  type;  II.  the  Pipe  type;  III.  the 
Lyre  type.  Under  the  first  head  fall  drums,  rattles,  gongs, 
triangles,  tam-tams,  castanets,  tambourines,  cymbals— in  a 
word,  all  instruments  of  Percussion.  Under  the  second  head 
fall  flutes,  hautboys,  clarionets,  bassoons,  horns,  trumpets, 
trombones,  bugles— all  Wind  Instruments.  And  under 
the  third  head  fall  all  Stringed  Instruments,  comprising  the 
harp,  lyre,  lute,  guitar,  the  violin  (with  all  its  varieties),  the 
mandolin,  dulcimers,  pianos,  &c.,  &c.  Now  these  three  types 
are  representative  of  three  distinct  stages  of  development 
through  which  Prehistoric  Instrumental  Music  has  passed 
— and  the  stages  occur  in  the  order  named.  That  is  to  say, 
the  first  stage  in  the  development  of  Instrumental  Music 
was  the  Drum  Stage,  in  which  Drums,  and  drums  alone 
were  used  by  man  ;  the  second  stage  was  the  Pipe  Stage, 
in  which  Pipes  as  well  as  Drums  were  used  ;  the  third  stage 


INTRODUCTION.  Xlll 

was  the  Lyre  Stage,  in  which  Lyres  were  added  to  the 
stock.  And  as  in  the  Geological  history  of  the  globe,  the 
Chalk  is  never  found  below  the  Oolite,  nor  the  Oolite  below 
the  Coal,  so  in  the  Musical  History  of  Mankind  is  the  Lyre 
Stage  never  found  to  precede  the  Pipe  Stage,  nor  the  Pipe 
Stage  to  precede  the  Drum  Stage. 

That  this  should  be  the  order  of  development  seems 
natural,  if  we  consider  the  mechanical  complexity  of  the 
Instruments  themselves.  The  Drum  is  evidently  the  sim- 
plest of  all ;  the  Pipe  is  more  complex  than  the  Drum ;  but 
the  Lyre,  which  consists  of  strings  bound  round  pegs  and 
strung  on  a  frame,  is  the  most  complex  of  all. 

In  keeping  with  this  is  the  fact  ihat  savages  sometimes  have 
the  Drum  alone,  but  never  the  Pipe  alone,  or  the  Lyre  alone  ; 
for  if  they  have  the  Pipe,  they  always  have  the  Drum  too ;  and 
if  they  have  the  Lyre,  they  always  have  both  Pipe  and  Drum, 

Meeting  at  the  bottom  of  the  ladder  with  the  Veddahs 
of  Ceylon, I  the  Mincopies  of  the  Andamans',^  and  the 
inhabitants  of  Tierra  del  Fuego,^  who  have  no  musical 
instruments  at  all,  we  find  the  Drum  to  be  the  only  musical 
instrument  known  among  the  Australians,4  the  Esquimaux,^ 
and  the  Behring's  Nations  generally,^  the  Samoyedes  and 
the  other  Siberian  tribes, 7  and,  until  a  comparatively  recent 
date,  the  Laplanders.^ 

With  the  Polynesian  Malays 9  and  the  Papuans^o  the  Pipe 
/ ^ 

I    Tennent's  History  of  Ceylon.  2  Mouat's  Andaman  Islands. 

3  Narrative  of  the  Surveying  Voyage  of  H.M.SS.  Adventure  and  Beagle. II. 

4  Eyre's  Discoveries  in  Central  Australia,  II.  pp.  228,  2.  237.  32  331.  Grey's 
Journal  of  Two  Expeditions  of  Discovery  in  N.W.  and  W.  Australia.  II.  p. 305. 

5  Parry's  2nd  Voyage,  p.  530.  Crantz, History  of  Greenland.  I.  p. 171. 

6  Whymper's  Alaska,  p.  143.  He  is  speaking  particularly  of  the  Malemutes 
and  Kaveaks,  but  his  remarks  apply  to  all  the  Behring's  Nations. 

7  Richardson's  Polar  Regions,  p. 335.  Smith's  AA^onders  of  Nature  and  Art. 
London.  1803.  II.  pp.  277,  264,  &c.  8  That  is  to  say  until  within  200  years 
ago.  See  Scheffer's  History  of  Lapland. 

9  For  the  Society  Islands,  see  Captain  Cook's  Voyages.  Published  by  John 
Tallis,  I.  p.  87.  For  the  Navigator  Isles,  Tui-ner.  Nineteen  years  in  Polynesia. 
p.  211.  For  the  Friendly  Iples,  Cook.  I.  p.  427.,  and  in  the  common  edition,  1st 
Voyage,  p.  397.  See  also  Mariner's  Tonga  Islands.  II.  214.  218.  For  the  Mar- 
quesas, Melville's  Life  in  the  Marquesas,  p.  185.  For  the  Sandwich  Islands, 
where,  however,  the  Pipe  is  absent.  Cook  II.  250.  And  for  the  Maories  of  New 
Zealand,  who  are  the  most  advanced  of  all,  Captain  Cook.  I.  196.  and  Infra,  p. — 
And  cf.  generally  Ellis'  Polynesian  Researches,  p.  282.  sqq.  Of  Ellis'  book 
I  regret  I  have  been  under  the  necessit}''  of  employing  two  separate  editions  in 
the_ course  of  this  work,  nor  am  I  in  a  position  to  say  to  which  of  the  two  the 
various  references  particularly  belong. 

10  For  the  Papuans,  see  Williams'  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  I.  163.  Turner's 
Nineteen  Years  in  Polynesia,  p.  90,  cf.  Infra,  p. — Jukes' Voyage  of  H.M.S.  Fly. 
(for  the  Erroob  Papuans),  II,  176.  (for  the  Papuans  of  New  Guinea),  I.  274,  and 
plate  I,  277.  Cf.  Rosenberg's  Niev/-Guinea.  p.  93.  And  for  the  Drum  Form  in 
the  Papuan  Archipelago,  Shouten's  Voyage  in  Purchas  His  Pilgrim^s,  1. 2.  100. 


\ 


XIV  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

makes  its  appearance,  while  in  no  single  instance  is  the 
Drum  found  wanting.  The  same  holds  good  of  the  South 
American  Indians.  Both  Pipe  and  Drum  are  in  use  among 
the  tribes  on  the  Upper  Amazon, ^  the  Indians  of  the  Rio 
Negro  2  and  the  Uaupes,^  the  Tupis,4  the  Omaguas  ^  and 
neighbouring  tribes,^  the  Artaneses,7  and  Yucunas,^  the 
Itatines,9  and  generally  the  rest  of  the  Brazilian  tribes  ;  ^° 
the  aborigines  of  Guiana,ii  the  Aymara  Indians  of  Bolivia 
and  Peru, 12  ^^g  Huacho  Indians  of  Peru,i3  the  Abipones  of 
Paraguay,i4  the  Patagonians.^S  These  are  all  the  cases  I  have 
examined  in  South  America,  and  they  all  yield  the  same 
result — that  is  to  say,  the  Pipe  is  nowhere  to  be  found 
without  the  Drum  being  likewise  present.^^  And  what  is 
true  of  the  South  American  Indians  is  equally  true  of  the 
North  American  Indians.^^ 

But  where  the  Lyre  appears,  there  both  Pipe  and  Drum 
are  also  found  as  its  never  failing  complements,  as  with  the 
Dyaks  of  Borneo,^^  the  Khonds.of  Khondistan,i9  the  Finns,2o 
the  Tartars,2i  the  Cossacks,^^  the  Turcomans,23  the  Hindus,^^ 


1  Bates'  Amazons,  II,  20r.   Wallace's  Travels  on  the  Amazon,  504. 

2  Wallace's  Travels  on  the  Amazon,  259.  3     lb.  282. 

4    Bates' Amazons,  1, 311.         5.     Southey's  History  of  Brazil,  I,  89,  90. 

6  lb.  84,  95.  Orellana,  in  his  Narrative  of  his  Expedition  down  the  Maraiion, 
speaks  of  one  of  the  tribes  having  'three-stringed  rebecks. '(!)  But 
such  a  statement  is  of  little  value  in  presence  of  oveiwhelming  evidence  to  the 
contrary,  and  must  be  classed  with  Orellana's  other  fictions,  unless  we  imagine 
in  his  defence  that  he  has  been  misled  by  the  caracasha.  (de  qua  vid.  infra,  p. — ) 

7  Southey  I.  139.  8  lb.  III.  720.  9  lb.  I.  341.  10  lb.  I.  206,  which 
bears  out  Bates'  general  remark  about  the  Tupis. 

11  Brett's  Indian  Tribes  of  Guiana,  320,  154,  (plate). 

12  Forbes,  On  the  Aymara  Indians,  in  Transactions  of  the  Ethnological 
Society,  for  1869,  p.  233.        13  Stevenson's  Travels  in  South  America,  I.  403. 

14  Dobrizhoft'er's  History  of  the  Abipones,  II,  70,  209,  217. 

15  Narrative  of  the  Surveying  Voyage  of  H.M.SS-  Adventure  and  Beagle 
II,  p.  162.  R.  Brown's  Races  of  Mankind.  Art.  Patagonians.  plate.  Musters' 
At  Home  Among  the  Patagonians,  p.  77,  16    Cf.  Infra,  p. — 

17  Catlin's  North  American  Indians,  I,  238,  243.  Schoolcraft's  History  of  the 
Condition  and  Prospects  of  the  Indian  Tribes  in  the  United  States,  II,  514.  III. 
486.  Catlin  even  speaks  about  'luteS'  being  found  among  them,  but  though 
he  mentions  'lutes '  twice  in  his  book  (I,  142.  &  I,  38.),  he  goes  into  no  details, 
nor  even  includes  them  in  his  list  of  N.  Ameiican  instruments.  But  to  this  ex- 
istence of  '  lutes  '  among  the  North  American  tribes  Schoolcraft  says  No,  and 
certainly  his  appears  the  more  probable  view,  as  it  is  the  common  one. 

18  Marryat's  Borneo  and  the  Indian  Archipelago,  pp.  84.  133  (plate).  St. 
John's  Life  in  the  Forests  of  the  Far  East,  I.  118. 

19  Campbell's  Narrative  of  Thirteen  Years'  Service  among  the  Wild  Tribes 
of  Khondistan,  pp.  16.  164.  20    Pinkerton,  I.  473. 

21  Mary  Holderness'  Notes  relating  to  the  Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Criin 
Tartars,  Clarke's  Travels  in  Russia,Tartary,  and  Turkey,  316.  New  Edinbui  gh 
Review,  1822.  P-SiS. 

22  Atkinson's  Travels  on  the  Upper  and  Lower  Amoor,  p.  167. 

23  Chozdko's  Popular  Poetry  of  Persia,  pp,  62.  419. 

24  New  Edinburgh  Review,  1822,  p,  525. 


INTRODUCTION.  XV 

and  the  nations  of  History.^ 

These  facts  would  seem  to  do  much  towards  confirming 
the  opinion  that  the  Drum  is  the  oldest,  the  Pipe  the  next, 
and  the  Lyre  the  youngest  of  the  three.  But  there  is  another 
reason  why  we  should  adopt  a  chronology  which  assigns  the 
seniority  to  the  Drum.  Archaic  types  are  preserved  in  the 
amber  of  Religion.  Remnants  of  antiquity  remain  in  ritual 
long  after  they  have  disappeared  from  ordinary  usage,  and 
by  turning  to  the  ritual  observances  of  nations  we  find  the 
oldest  forms  of  things  and  customs.  This  species  of  dem- 
onstration has  before  now  been  employed  with  the  happiest 
results  in    relation    to  savage  races,^  and 

The  Evidence  of  Ritual 

may  perhaps  be  questioned  not  in  vain  on  the  point  at 
present  under  consideration.  As  far  as  it  is  possible  to 
gather,  the  instrument  of  ritual  among  savage  races 
is  invariably  the  drum.  The  fetich  ceremo-ny  among 
the  Camma  negroes,  which  Du  Chaillu  mentions,  is  a  case  in 
point,3  and  other  instances  of  the  use  in  Africa  occur  in  the 
works  of  travellers.  Throughout  the  South  Sea  Islands  the 
Drum  is  the  instrument  of  the  priests.4  Catlin  mentions  it  as 
appropriated  to  religious  ceremony  among  the  Assineboins,^ 
Mandans,6  Crows,7  and  Sioux,^  and  his  assertion  may  be 
extended  to  all  the  North  American  Indians.9  It  is  the 
instrument  of  the  priests  in  Guiana, ^°  and  forms  an  essential 
element  in  the  ritual  of  the  Patagonian  wizards  j^^  similarly 
used  among  the  Abipones^^  ^nd  other  S.  American  tribes, ^3 
particularly  the  Guaycurus,  at  that  beautiful  ceremony  with 
which  they  every  morning  welcome  and  adore  the  rising 
Sun.i"^   'phe  Drum  is  depicted  on  the  walls  of  the  holy  places 


1  If  the  reader  care  to  pursue  the  inquiry  among  those  semi-civilised  nations 
which  meet  us  on  the  threshold  of  History,  such  as  the  Celts  for  instance,  it 
will  only  be  to  iind  that  what  is  true  of  others  is  likewise  true  of  them.  For 
the  three  Forms  among  the  Celts,  see  Jones'  Welsh  Bards,  folio.  90.  In 
ancient  Scotland,  lb.  75.  Buchanan's  History  of  Scotland.  Lib.  I.  Proceedings 
of  Scottish  Society  of  Antiquaries.  January,  1880.  In  Ireland,  Jones,  lb.  and 
Transactions  of  Royal  Irish  Society,  VIII.  Antiquities,  p.  11.  (which  proves  that 
the  Pipe  Form  was  known).  Africa,  of  which  it  will  be  noticed  there  has  no 
mention  been  made,  is  for  certain  reasons  reserved  for  separate  consideration, 
and  will  form  the  subject  of  an  Excursus  at  the  end  of  this  Book. 

2  By  Professor  Tylor  in  his  Primitive  Culture.  3  Du  Chaillu's  Equatorial 
Africa,  p.  241.  4  Ellis'  Polynesian  Researches,  I.  282.  5  Catlin's  North 
American  Indians,  I.  55.        6    lb.  126.        7    lb.  i8q.        8    lb.  238. 

9    De  qua  vide  infra.  10    Purchas  His  Pilgrimes.  IV.  1274. 

II     Falkner,  quoted  in  Surveying  Voyage  of  H.  M.  SS,  Adventure  and  Bea- 
gle.   11.262.  12    Dobrizhoffer,  History  of  the  Abipones.  11.65.  84.  278-9. 
13    De  qua  vide  infra,  14    Southey's  History  of  Br^tzil.  I,  121, 


XVI  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

in  the  ruined  temples  of  Copan  and  Palenque  ;  i  and  not 
to  speak  of  its  use  in  ritual  among  the  Peruvians  ^  and 
Mexicans,^  a  glance  at  ancient  nations  will  remind  us  of 
the  Sistrum  of  the  Egyptian  priests,  and  the  cymbals  of  the 
Assyrian  and  Hebrew  priests.  And  coming  down  to  a  later 
date  we  shall  find  the  case  precisely  the  same.  With  the 
Greeks,  for  instance,  the  Drum,  in  its  various  forms  of  drumj 
tambourine,  cymbal,  and  rattle,  was  regularly  employed  at 
the  Cotytia  and  Bendideia  of  the  Thracians,4  the  Orphic 
rites,s  by  the  Corybantes,  Cabeiri,  Idsean  Dactyli,  and  Cur- 
etes  at  the  rites  of  Cybele  and  the  Idaean  Zeus,6  and  at  the 
rites  of  Dionysus.7 

The  next  species  of  evidence  I  shall  consider  is 

The  Evidence  of  Mythology. 
The  legends  of  savages,  as  far  as  I  have  been  able  to 
gather  any,  all  testify  to  the  high  antiquity  of  the  Drum,8 
and  one  famous  legend  in  such  a  marked  degree  that  I 
cannot  possibly  omit  it  here.  The  North  American  Indians 
make  the  Drum  contemporaneous  with  the  Deluge.  When 
the  waters  of  the  Deluge  began  to  subside,  they  were  drawn 
off  into  4  Tortoises,  each  Tortoise  receiving  the  waters  of 
one  quarter  of  the  world.  And  these  Tortoises,  besides 
serving  as  reservoirs,  served  also  as  Drums  for  men  to  play 
on,  by  striking  their  backs  with  drumsticks.  In  remem- 
brance of  this  event,  the  Eeh-teeh-Kas,  or  Sacred  Drums  of 


1  Catherwood  and  Stephens'  Travels  in  Central  America,  Chiapas,  and  Yu- 
catan. See  the  Plates.  That  the  Pipe  Form  was  known,  and  that  the  priests 
could  have  used  it  had  they  chosen,  is  proved  from  a  bas-relief  on  a  Pyramid  in 
Palenque  of  a  figure  blowing  a  Pipe  or  Horn.  lb.  p.  353.  plate  I. 

2  Pedro  Pizarro.  Descubrimento  y  Conquista  del  Piru.  MS.  Garcilasso. 
Commentarios  Reales.  II.  XXIII.  p.  49.  i.  b.  and  2.  a. 

3  Kingsborough's  ^Antiquities  of  Mexico.  Clavigero,  Storia  antica  del 
Messico.  4    Strabo.  X.  HI.  16.  5    lb.  6    lb.  X,  III.7.  11. 

7  Plutarch  De  Iside  LXIX.  p.  378.  At  the  Dionysiac  Rites  the  Pipe  was 
also  added.  De  qua  vide  infra,  p —  An  examination  of  Legal  formularies,  which 
are  also,  like  Religious  Ceremonies,  a  repository  of  the  old,  would  no  doubt 
yield  a  similar  result.  Thus  Thornton  tells  us  in  his  History  of  China  that  the 
phrase,  "ELeihyuen,"  by 'which  the  officers  call  attention  in  the  Chinese  l.iw 
courts,  means  literally,  '  Strike  the  Drum '.  Throughout  Africa  scarcely  any 
legal  formulary  without  drum-beating  forming  a  special  clause  in  it.  At  the 
paying  of  the  hongo  or  tribute,  the  Drums  beat  tlie  '  satisfaction '  e.g.  at  M' 
gonga  (Spelce's  Source  of  the  Nile.  p.  121.)  and  at  Uzinza(Ib.  126.  cf.  also  T31, 
133,  148,  149).  A  performance  with  Drums  and  drumsticks  formed  part  of  an 
old  ceremony  of  swearing  fealty  at  Karague.  (lb.  244-245).  In  many  ol  ihe 
African  tribes  the  Drum  is  the  badge  of  Royalty  like  our  Sceptre — which 
also  points  to  the  great  antiquity  of  the  form.  Livingstone's  Mi^sionarv 
Travels  in  S.  Africa,  p.  281.  Cameron'-^  Across  Africa,  passim.  But  I  Jiuve 
neither  looked  much  into  this  species  of  evidence  nor  do  I  attach  much  value  to  it, 
8    Infra,  p. 


INTRODUCTION.  XVU 

the  Medicine  Mysteries,  are  always  4  in  number,  made  of 
buffalo-skin  sewn  together  in  the  form  of  a  tortoise,  and  each 
of  them  filled  with  water. ^ 

But  the  Evidence  of  Mythology  is  chiefly  valuable  for  the 
hints  it  gives  us  about  the  order  of  succession — I  am  now 
speaking  of  the  mythology  of  civilised  peoples.  And  it  is 
singularly  confirmatory  of  our  view  that  whenever  a  definite 
sequence  is  alluded  to  in  legend,  or  can  be  gathered  from  it 
by  the  comparative  method,  the  Lyre  is  always  made  to 
follow  the  Pipe,  and  the  Pipe  to  follow  the  Drum.  Minerva 
invented  the  Flute,  but  afterwards  threw  it  away  because 
it  distorted  her  features, — and  took  to  the  Lyre  instead. 
When  Apollo  received  the  Lyre  from  Mercury,  he  praised 
the  wonderful  sound  which  neither  gods  nor  men  had  heard 
before,  y6'7''  up  till  then  he  had  been  contented  with  the  anioj^ous 
sighing  of  the  Fhite.'^  The  struggle  between  the  two  instru- 
ments for  supremacy  is  adumbrated  in  the  legends  of  Apollo 
and  Marsyas,  and  Apollo  and  Pan,  and  it  is  in  keeping  with 
our  theory  that  in  both  cases  the  contest  ended  in  the 
victory  of  the  Lyre  over  the  superannuated  Pipe,  Marsyas 
being  flayed  for  his  impertinence,  and  Midas  but  an  ass  for 
awarding  the  palm  to  Pan.3  But  long  before  Athena's  Flute 
or  Apollo's  Lyre  was  heard,  Music  had  come  into  being  with 
the  cymbals  of  the  Curetes,  says  the  legend  in  Herodotus,^ 
and  from  these  simple  elements  all  Greek  music,  it  avers,  was 
subsequently  derived.     This  is  a  plain  enough  suggestion 


}  See  Catlin's  N.  American  Indians,  1,163,158,135,177.  4  is  a  sacred  number 
with  the  N.  American  Indians  (see  lb.  180,  181),  and  this  legend  of  the  Drum- 
Tortoise  is  connected  with  the  most  precious  arcana  of  a  faith,  for  the  antiquity 
of  which  and  its  many  points  of  resemblance  to  the  Religion  of  the  Ancient 
Mexicans  see  Humboldt's  Researches  concerning  the  institutions  &c.,  of  the 
Ancient  Inhabitants  of  America.  II.  n.  cf.  also  Schoolcraft's  Account  of  the 
lorquois  Cosmogony.  I.  316. 

2  ^avfiaairjv  yap   t-tjvSe   ver](j)aTov   ocrcrav   a/covw, 
rjv   ov  TrwTTori  (j)riiut   ^ariinevai   ovre  tlv    avSpwv, 

oure  Tiv    aOavarwv,   o'i  'OAuftTrm   ^(Ljuar    exovaiv 

Koi   jag   Ijh)   MovcrycTiv   'OXvinrid^^^aaiv   OTrrjdog, 
rrjcn   X'^P^'^   '^^  fxiXovai   Kal   IfupoHQ  jSpojuog  avXwv. 

Hymn  to  Mercury,  443. 

3  Calamis  agrestibus  insonat  ille 
Barbarico que  Midan delenit  carmine. 

^  ^    ^    ,  Ovid,  Metam.  XL 

.   4    I  cannot  find  the  passage  m  Herodotus^  but  my  authority  for  the  quotation 
is  Dr.  Burney,I.  261. 


XVIU  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

that  the  Drum  was  the  oldest  form  ;  and  the  idea  is  kept  up 
in  the  story  in  Floridus  Sabinus,  which  makes  the  first  music 
ever  heard  in  the  world  to  have  been  the  music  of  the  anvil. 
The  passage  in  the  Bacchae  of  Euripides,  which  alludes  both 
to  Drum  and  Pipe,  will,  I  think,  be  allowed,  without  much 
pressing,  to  concede  the  seniority  to  the  former.^ 

The  legends  of  Egypt  tell  the  same  tale  as  those  of  Greece. 
Osiris  invented  the  Flute,  and  Isis  the  Sistrum  ;  but  it  was 
the  Egyptian  Hermes  or  Thoth,  a  deity  of  later  date  than 
either  of  these,  who  was  credited  with  the  invention  of  the 
Lyre.2  And  Indian  legend  keeps  up  the  order  of  succession. 
Vishnu  was  the  inventor  of  the  Trumpet,  and,  in  his  avatar 
as  Krishna,  of  the  Flute,  but  it  was  Nareda,  the  son  of  Brah- 
ma, who  belongs  to  the  second  generation  of  gods,  that  first 
invented  the  Lyre.3 

Droppings  out. 

This  is  a  thing  which  sometimes  happens,  that  one  of  the 
Forms  drops  out  of  use.  Thus  we  have  evidence  of  the 
existence  of  the  Drum  Form  in  Lapland  from  time  im- 
memorial ;  and  we  know  for  a  fact  that  Drums  were  used 
there  as  late  as  1600.^  Yet  by  1732  the  Drum  had  died 
out  so  completely  that  Linnaeus,  who  travelled  through 
Lapland  in  that  year,  could  write,  "  The  Laplanders  know 
no  musical  instrument  except  the  Lur  (a  sort  of  trumpet), 
and  pipes  made  of  the  bark  of  the  quicken  tree  or  mountain 
ash."  5  The  Bushmen  of  South  Africa  are  another  instance 
in  point,  for  though  Chapman  asserts  that  they  have  no 
instruments  but  pipes  and  horns,^  Burchell  who  travelled 
at  the  beginning  of  this  century  testifies  to  the  existence  of 
the  Drum  among  them  at  that  time.7  The  Muras  of  the 
Amazon  have  at  the  present  day  no  instrument  but  the 
Horn  ;  8  but  the  fact  that  they  are  a  Tupi  tribe,  and  that 
all  the  Tupi's  have  the  Drum,  seems  to  prove  that  this 
solitary  exception  is  a  case  where  the  Drum,  from  some  cause 
or  other,  has  dropped  out  of  use.     The  same  method  of 


I    Euripides,  Bacchae,  125.        2  See  Dr  Bumey,  194, 

3  Coleman's  Mythology  of  the  Hindus,  pp.  7.  15.  pi,  12.  fig.  2, 

4  Scheffers'  History  of  Lapland,  p.  58.  5  Linnaeus'  Tour  in  Lapland, 
II.  51.  6  Chapman's  Travels  into  the  Interior  of  S.  Africa,  i:  But  cf. 
Infra,  p.           7    Burchell's  Travels  in  the  Interior  of  S.  Africa,  II.  87. 

8    Bates'  Amazons,  II.  10. 


INTRODUCTION.  XIX 

reasoning  may  be  applied  to  the  Caishanas,  who  at  the 
present  day  know  no  instrument  but  the  Pipe.^  Only  400 
in  number  they  are  an  insignificant  branch  of  the  Shumanas, 
who  along  with  the  Passes,  Juris,  Mauhes,  and  Tucunas  form 
a  network  of  intimately  connected  tribes.  Now  all  these 
tribes  have  the  Drum.  It  is  therefore  highly  probable  that 
the  Caishanas  at  one  time  had  it  too.^  In  the  same  way, 
in  the  teeth  of  the  fact  that  both  Drum  and  Pipe  were  known 
to  the  Celts,3  we  find  both  instruments  to  have  dropped  out 
completely  in  Iceland  and  Shetland,  and  the  only  form 
known  there  three  hundred  years  ago  to  be  the  Lyre.^ 

It  will  be  noticed  that  if  a  dropping  out  occurs,  it  is 
always  the  Drum  which  drops  out  in  presence  of  the 
Pipe,  and  the  Pipe  and  Drum  in  presence  of  the  Lyre. 
And  since  there  is  no  instance  on  record  of  the  Pipe  giving 
place  to  the  Drum,  or  the  Lyre  giving  place  to  either  of 
them,  it  looks  much  as  if  the  Drum  Stage,  the  Pipe  Stage, 
and  the  Lyre  Stage  were  three  J^ro^resszve  stages"  of  musical 
development. 

The  Embryology  of  the  Art  ends  with  the  evolution  or 
introduction  of  the  3  forms  of  instrument ;  but  in  order  to 
discover  what  laws  governed  the  development  of  the  embryo, 
we  may  be  allowed  to  avail  ourselves  of  any  hints  which  the 
history  of  the  full-fledged  Art  has  to  offer ;  and  when  we 
bear  in  mind  that  the  strolling  Pipers  had  spread  all  over 
medieval  EurOpe  long  before  the  strolling  fiddler  was  heard 
of,  5  and  that  the  Drummers  and  Trumpeters  formed  res- 
pectable and  influential  guilds  before  the  time  of  either  ;  6 
that  the  history  of  the  Modern  Orchestra  has  proceeded  on 
the  same  principle — regular  orchestras  in  the  i6th  century 
consisting  of  12  wind  and  percussion  instruments  to  2  strings, 7 
in  the  17th  century,  of  25  wind  and  percussion  to  19  strings,^ 


I  lb.  ^76.  2  If  these  tribes  are  Tupis,  as  I  believe  they  are,  it  will  lend 
additional  weight  to  the  argument. 

3  Supra  p. — note.  It  is  a  known  fact  that  the  earliest  colonists  of  Iceland  were 
Celts.  Peschel.  Vollcerkunde.  p.  28. 

4  Von  Troil's  Letters  on  Iceland  in  Pinkerton.  I.  652.  My  assertion  as  to 
Shetland  is  an  inference  from  tlie  fact  tliat  the  only  word  for  a  musical  instrument 
inthe  Shetland  dialect  isLangspel — a  sort  of  harp.  SeeEdmonstone's  Glossary 
of  the  Orkney  and  Shetland  dialect,  p.  64. 

5  Kostlin's  Geschichte  der  Musik  I.  ii.  2.  3.  cf.  Becker's  Hausmusik  in 
Deutschland.  p.  18.        6  Reissman's  Geschichte  der  Musik.  II.  18.  Becker  lb. 

7    Breudel's  Geschichte  der  Musik.  p.  77.  8    lb. 


XX  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

but  by  the  time  of  Beethoven,  of  only  14  wind  and  percussion 
to  47  strings;  that  the  history  of  the  Composite  Instruments 
tells  the  same  tale,  the  Organ,  the  Composite  Pipe,  coming 
first,  and  attaining  its  full  maturity,  before  the  Piano,  the 
Composite  String,  had  well  commenced  its  existence,^ — 
I  think  these  hints,  conjoined  with  the  bearing  of  the  facts 
mentioned  before,  will  go  to  confirm  our  original  position 
as  to  the  order  of  the  3  Stages  in  the  development  of  Pre- 
historic Music,  the  Drum  Stage,  the  Pipe  Stage,  and  the 
Lyre  Stage,  which,  it  seems  to  me,  are  to  the  Musician  what 
the  Theological,  Metaphysical,  and  Positive  Stages  are  to 
the  Comtist,  or  the  Stone,  Bronze,  and  Iron  Ages  to  the 
archaeologist.  And  what  their  import  particularly  is,  it  will 
be  my  object  in  the  ensuing  pages  to  show.  ^ 


1  The  Organ  began  its  development  in  the  ist  century,and  reached  its  maturity 
about  the  beginning  of  the  i8tli  century.  The  Harpsichord  and  Virginal  in  their 
very  rudest  form  cannot  be  put  back  earlier  than  the  middle  or  at  the  utmost 
the  beginning  of  the  i6th  century.  Nothing  was  done  on  the  Harpsichord  until 
the  time  of  young  Scarlatti  and  old  Bach,  that  is  till  the  beginning  of  the  i8th 
century.  _   The  Piano,  as  is  larown,  was  not  till  later. 

2  This  may  perhaps  be  the  place  to  remark  that  I  have  hitherto  used,  and 
shall  continue  to  use  the  term  '  Music  '  indifferently  for  Instrumental  Music  or 
Vocal  Music,  or  in  that  general  application  which  includes  them  both,  leaving 
the  reader  to  gather  from  the  context  which  way  is  meant ;  but, as  a  rulfe,  I  shall 
not  fail  to  prefix  a  distinguishing  epithet  whenever  there  seems  any  danger  of 
ambiguity. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    DRUM    STAGE. 

The  history  of  savage  races  is  a  history  of  arrested 
developments.  We  have  solved  problems  which  they 
have  failed  to  solve,  vanquished  difficulties  which  they 
have  flinched  at — and  our  development  has  been  more 
rapid  than  theirs.  The  dawn  of  history  in  the  hoary 
civilisations  of  Egypt  and  Assyria,  which  seems 
twilight  to  us,  is  radiance  compared  to  their  gloom. 
We  stand  to  them  hke  beings  of  another  universe. 
But  there  is  httle  doubt  that  before  that  twilight  began 
to  glimmer,  we  were  plunged  in  darkness  as  deep  as 
theirs,  and  we  groped  our  way,  like  them,  step  for  step. 
In  their  often  ineffectual  struggles  to  realise  the  beautiful 
and  the  good  we  may  see  enacted  over  again  the  struggles 
of  our  common  ancestor — Man.  And  we  cannot  but 
sympathise  with  them  in  their  naive  efforts  to  realise 
these  things  and  more  especially  the  first ;  for  the  good 
always  contains  an  alloy  of  self-interest  which  the 
beautiful  is  virgin  of.  While,  again,  how  small  a 
margin  is  left  for  the  aesthetic  instinct  in  the  harsh 
practical  rounds  of  their  every  day  life.  Their  rude 
tattooing,  their  coarse  drawn  figures,  the  knobs  on 
their  simple  pottery,  their  rough  carvings  on  their 
clubs,  coarse  and  rude  though  they  be,  yet  speak  in 
high  terms  the  unquenchable  belief  that  Man  has 
nobler  powers  in  him  than  his  daily  life  calls  forth 
and  separate  the  savage  from  the  animal  by  as  wide 
a  gap  as  galaxy  is  from  galaxy.  Yet  we  are  apt  to 
undervalue  and  even  scoff  at  these  rude  efforts  after 
Art,    when   in    reality   we    should   view    them    as   giant 

B 


2  HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

strides  in  the  march  of  the  human  mind  that  can 
never  be  equalled  again.  For  take  this  Art  of  Music. 
Roll  back  Symphony,  Opera,  Oratorio,  Beethoven, 
Bach,  all  the  great  men  that  have  lived  for  the 
art ;  violin,  dulcimer,  drum,  every  musical  instrument 
ever  invented — all  the  kindred  arts ;  all  the  culture 
and  civilisation  that  have  grown  up  cheek  by  jowl 
with  the  art  itself — roll  back  all  these  into  primeval 
night,  and  leave  as  the  only  factor  standing — a  Man. 
Given  then,  a  Man  and  the  Universe.  The  problem 
is — How  should  this  man  proceed  to  the  manufacture 
of  Music  ?  Surely  he  would  be  the  greatest  musician 
of  the  world  who  could  manage  to  hammer  aught 
musical  out  of  this  reeking  Chaos.  To  get  at  this 
substance,  Sound,  hidden  away  as  it  was  in  the  womb 
of  uncreated  things,  needed  a  passion  for  it  greater 
than  has  since  been  known  on  earth.  The  savage, 
who  for  the  first  time  in  our  world's  history  knocked 
two  pieces  of  wood  together  and  delighted  himself 
with  the  sound,  was  a  finer  musician  than  the  master 
of  the  Symphony.  In  that  wonderful  brain  lay  the 
potentiality  of  unknown  celestial  harmony ;  all  Form, 
all  Melody  lay  in  embryo  there ;  and  though  niggard 
Nature  denied  him  the  scope  she  has  since  given  to 
worse  men,  she  could  not  forbid  him  from  instituting, 
as  it  were  upon  the  altar  of  Simplicity,  the  great  Art 
of  Sound,  to  be  bequeathed  by  him  as  a  precious  heirloom 
to  his  fellow  man,  till  happier  times  should  do  it 
justice. 

Mere   Sensuous  delight  in  Sound  ^  then  I  take  it   has 
much  to  do  with  the  origin  of  Instrumental  Music.     But 


I  Which  is  a  property  of  human  nature — a  fact  which  can  best  be 
proved  negatively  by  imagining  the  misery  of  deafness,  or  the  horrors  of 
eternal  silence. 


THE      DRUM      STAGE.  3 

it  is  not  the  whole  account  of  the  matter  by  any  means. 
There  are  many  sounds  in  Nature  that  are  pleasing  to 
the  ear  of  man.  The  twittering  of  birds,  the  rustling 
of  leaves,  the  gurgling  of  brooks,  have  provoked  the 
encomiums  of  poets.  Yet  none  of  these  has  ever  so 
powerfully  affected  him  that  he  has  surmised  the 
existence  of  something  deeper  in  them  than  one 
hearing  would  suffice  to  disclose,  and  has  endeavoured 
by  imitating  them  to  familiarise  himself  with  their 
nature,  so  he  may  repeat  the  effect  at  his  own  will 
and  pleasure  in  all  its  various  shades.  These  sounds 
with  that  delicate  instinct  which  has  guided  him  so  nicely 
through  this  Universe  of  tempting  possibilities  he  chose 
deliberately  to  pass  over."  He  heard  them — with 
pleasure,  it  may  be.  But  man  is  not  a  child.  Mere 
pleasure  may  be  the  pursuit  of  the  moment,  but  it  has 
never  been  elaborated  into  a  system. 

Nor  could  degrees  of  pleasure  be  a  sufficient  account  of 
matter.  Another  factor  must  be  added.  Pleasure  must 
possess  some  aesthetic  value,  There  must  be  a  secret 
there  to  fathom,  a  mystery  to  unravel  before  he  would 
stoop  to  consecrate  his  glorious  powers  to  its  serious 
pursuit. 

And  there  is  a  kind  of  sound  which  exactly  possesses 
these  qualities — a  sound  fraught  with  seductive 
mystery — a  sound  which  is  Nature's  magic,  for  by  it  can 
dumb  things  speak. 

So  when  that  strange  and  curious  man  struck  together 
his  two  pieces  of  wood,  he  had  other  aims  than  his  own 
delight — he  was  trying  to  re-create  a  something  that 
had   bewildered   him,    he   was   trying   to   peer   with  his 


I  Nor  do  such  sounds  appear  to  possess  any  charm  for  the  savage  mind, 
Cf.  Williams'  Fiji.  And  even  in  historic  times  it  was  not  till  the 
sentimental  phase  of  Latin  culture  set  in  that  poets  began  to  admire 
them. 


4  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

simple  eyes  into  one  of  Nature's  mightiest  secrets. 
The  something  he  was  trying  to  re-create  was 
Rhythmic  Sound — on  which  roots  the  whole  Art  of 
Music.  Instinctively  he  had  divined  the  potentiality 
from  among  the  mass  of  non-potentialities,  and  out 
of  the  gamut  of  Nature's  sounds  the  Father  of  the 
Art  had  distinguished  the  ^Esthetic  Sound. 

What  then  is  the  aesthetic  value  of  Rhythmic  Sound  ? 
This  question  we  can  answer  as  little  as  he  could.  We 
can  only  say  vaguely  that  it  has  a  unifying  power,  that  it 
is  a  formative  principle  which  once  enthroned  as 
supreme  has  a  tendency  to  subordinate  all  other  kinds  of 
sound  to  its  influence,  and  being  thus  definiteness  amidst 
flux  offered  a  locus  standi  for  a  parley,  so  to  speak,  and 
eventually  for  the  construction  of  a  regular  Art  on  its 
basis.  But  if  wild  man  had  not  nosed  it  in  Nature's 
labyrinth,  all  the  aesthetic  speculations  of  civilised  man  had 
never  been  able  to  divine  and  turn  to  use  this  indwelling 
power,  which  they  can  now  so  readily  account  for.  At 
the  best  their  logic  can  but  ratify  his  guess,  that 
Rhythmic  Sound  is  the  only  sound  in  Nature  that  is 
valuable ;  and  that  ah  the  rest  of  nature's  sounds, 
eminently  what  is  called  Nature's  Melody,  as  the 
warbling  of  birds  and  so  on,  are,  for  all  practical 
purposes,  not  worth  a  fig.^ 

Now  the  discovery  of  this  grand  axiom,  the  starting 
point,  as  we  may  call  it,  of  the  Art  of  Music,  we  have 
loosely  ascribed  partly  to  man's  unerring  intuition,  partly 
to  a  sensuous  delight  in  mere  sound,  and  partly  to  that 
tantalising  mystery  which  pulsates  in  every  stroke  of 
Rhythmic  Sound,  which  led  man  on  to  probe  the  matter 
to  its  very  bottom  to  try  and  discover  what  of  good  or 


I  By  Rhythmic  Sound  I  understand  that  kind  of  sound  which  produces 
its  effects  by  variety  of  measure,  or  variety  of  force,  not  by  change  of 
note. 


THE      DRUM      STAGE.  5 

evil  lay  hidden  therein.  This  latter,  as  I  take  it,  was  the 
grand  motive  power  throughout.  Without  it,  Music  had 
been  the  mere  bagatelle  of  the  hour.  But  with  it,  there 
was  promise  of  something  serious  resulting. 

For  the  existence  of  a  mystery  puts  the  Intellect  on  its 
honour,  so  to  speak,  to  ferret  it  out,  and  this  impressment 
of  the  Intellect  into  the  service  immediately  confers  the 
Freedom  of  Esthetics  on  what  otherwise  would  be  a 
mere  amusement,  and  raises  it  at  once  and  for  ever  to 
the  dignity  of  an  Art. 

Now  what  is  this  mysterious  differentia  of  Rhythmic 
sound,  as  we  find  it  in  Nature,  which  separates  it  so 
widely  from  non-Rhythmic  sound  of  every  description  ? 
In  one  word,  the  innuendo  of  design.  The  dripping  of 
water  at  regular  intervals  on  a  rock,  the  regular  knocking 
of  two  boughs  against  one  another  in  a  wood,  are  of  a 
totally  different  order  of  sound  to  the  continual  chirrup 
of  birds  or  the  monotonous  gurgling  of  a  brook.  They 
seem  to  have  an  object  in  them  which  the  latter  have  not. 
The  savage,  who  as  yet  had  not  separated  himself  from 
nature,  had  not  realised  his  own  objectivity,  but  felt 
himself  a  part  of  the  wood  he  walked  in,  of  the  ground  he 
lay  on,  and  was  ready  to  concede  even  to  inanimate 
objects  under  certain  reservations  a  conditional  sort  of 
life — he,  I  say,  would  be  little  disposed,  if  not  mentally 
unable,  to  try  and  account  for  such  sounds  by  natural 
causes,  but  would  see  in  them  rather  unreasoning  objects 
uttering  for  once  the  voice  of  reason,  would  regard  them 
as  a  quaint  cabala  which  meant  perhaps  a  great  deal  if  he 
had  only  the  wit  to  understand  it.  And  when  such 
sounds  came  unexpectedly  on  his  ear  in  lonely  places,  in 
the  midst  of  a  forest  solitude,  they  would  make  an 
irresistible  appeal  to  his  imagination,  and  he  would  attach 
still  more  significance  to  them  than  before.  And  from 
his  standpoint  his  simple  logic  led  him  to   a   perfectly 


D  HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

rational  conclusion.  For  if  articulate  speech  (/xepoTroji/ 
dvOpwTTiDv)  is  the  badge  of  reason,  which  distinguishes  the 
reasoning  man  from  the  inarticulate-speaking  (infmts)  and 
unreasoning  child,  on  precisely  the  same  grounds 
Rhythmic  Sound,  which  is  the  Articulate  speech  of  Nature, 
connotes  some  reason  in  the  utterance  which  the  chaotic 
babel  of  non-rhythmic  sound  is  utterly  and  entirely 
destitute  of.  So  the  pother  and  the  roar  of  the  hurricane 
the  man  would  listen  to  with  dismay,  but  not  with 
curious  sympathy.  But  when  the  confused  roar  gave 
place  to  regular  gusts,  he  would  think  it  was  the  Great 
Spirit  who  spoke. 

Now  though  I  am  very  far  from  saying  that  such  an 
advanced  idea  was  necessarily  present  in  the  mind  of 
the  rude  savage  who  constructed  the  first  rhythmic 
instrument  out  of  his  two  pieces  of  wood,  yet  there  was 
a  confused  notion  of  the  presence  of  a  mystery,  which 
baffled  his  simple  mind  and  extorted  a  kind  of  reverence. 

Now  the  bare  possibility  of  surmising  the  existence  of 
a  mystery  implies  that  nascent  activity  of  the  Intellectual 
faculties,  which  in  course  of  time  develops  into  the  Search 
for  the  Cause  (das  C ausalitdtsbedurfniss) ,  and  takes  its 
place  as  an  inseparable  adjunct  of  human  nature  under 
the  form  of  the  Religious  Sense.  And  when  we 
remember  the  significant  fact  that  those  peoples,  who  are 
destitute  of  any  religious  ideas,  the  Veddahs,  Mincopies, 
and  Fuegians,  are  also  the  very  ones  who  alone  of  all 
mankind  are  destitute  of  any  Instrumental  Music,  and 
the  further  fact  that  where  we  find  the  germs  of  the 
religious  sense  appearing,  as  in  Australia,  '  there  also 
we  find  the  germs  of  Instrumental  Music — I  think  we 
shall  be  disposed  to  allow  that  the  beginnings  of  both  go 
together,  and  are  referable  to  the  same  origin. 


I    Peschel's  Volker-kunde,  p.  353. 


THE     DRUM     STAGE.  7 

II. 

For  what  man's  intellect  cannot  explain,  his  imagina- 
tion is  apt  to  extol  ;  and  hence  is  generated  that  feeling 
of  reverence  for  the  object  that  so  perplexes  which 
speedily  develops  into  its  worship  as  a  Fetich.  And  what 
more  likely  to  command  this  reverence  than  the  semi- 
rational  deliveries  of  Rhythmic  Sound?  A  block  of  wood 
shaped  into  the  figure  of  a  man  was  a  marvellous  mimicry 
of  life  truly,  and  worthy  of  all  veneration.  But  a  Drum 
was  more  than  mimicry^t  was  actual  speaking  life,  and 
according  to  the  cunning  with  which  it  was  struck  might 
yield  articulate  language.  Here  was  an  idol  better  than 
the  former,  for  it  lived  and  spoke,  and  might  be  an 
oracle  in  time  of  trouble.  Hence  arose  in  various  parts 
of  the  world  an  organised  system  of  religion,  in  which  the 
Drum  was  worshipped  as  a  God. 

The  great  seat  of  Drum  Worship  was  South  America. 
Even  at  the  present  day  it  is  to  be  found  in  full  vitality 
in  the  interior  of  Brazil,  ^  but  a  hundred  years  ago  it 
could  be  said  that  '  the  Drum  was  the  only  object  of 
worship  from  the  Orinoco  to  the  La  Plata.'  ^  This  is  two 
thirds  of  South  America,  and  as  it  is  more  than  probable 
that  Patagonia — as  we  shall  see  hereafter — should  be 
added  in  too,  this  would  make  the  area  of  the  cult  nearly 
co-equal  with  that  of  the  continent.  The  precise  form 
of  the  fetich,  though  it  belongs  to  the  genus  "  Drum,"  is 
yet  strictly  of  the  Rattle  species.  The  Maraca,  as  it  is 
called,  is  a  hollow  gourd,  with  small  stones,  or  hard  corn- 


1  Ausland,  1872,  p.  684. 

2  Southey,  History  of  Brazil  I.,  202.  The  reader  who  would  examine 
the  original  authorities  for  this  statement  may  turn  to  the  works  of 
Vasconcellos,  De  Lery,  Piso,  Monardes,  Marcgraff,  to  the  Noticias  do 
Brazil,  etc  ;  Into  two  or  three  of  these  I  have  looked  and  find  Southey 's 
statement  perfectly  carried  out. 


5  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

seeds  inside  it,^  generally  the  former,  which  rattle  when 
it  is  shaken.  It  is  fixed  on  a  staff,  which  is  stuck  in  the 
ground,  and  the  people  fall  down  before  it  and  worship 
it.^  It  is  supposed  to  be  able  to  predict  the  future,  and 
is  consulted  on  all  occasions  of  importance,  such  as  the 
celebration  of  festivities,  or  the  eve  of  a  battle  ;  and  the 
actions  of  the  people  are  regulated  by  the  replies  which 
the  rattle  makes.  "  The  Brasilians  have  their  Caraibes," 
writes  an  old  author,^  "  who  travel  through  the  villages, 
making  the  people  believe  that  they  have  communication 
with  spirits,  through  whose  means  they  can  not  only  give 
them  victory  against  their  enemies  ;  but  also  that  of  them 
depends  the  fertility  or  sterility  of  the  ground.  They 
have  commonly  a  certain  kind  of  rattles  in  their  hand, 
which  they  call  maraca,  made  with  the  fruit  of  a  tree  as 
big  as  an  ostrich's  egg,  which  they  make  hollow  as  they 
do  here  the  bottles  of  the  pilgrims  that  go  to  St.  James. 
And  having  filled  them  with  small  stones  they  make  a 
noise  with  them  in  their  solemnities  like  the  bladders  of 
hogs ;  and  going  from  town  to  town  they  beguile  the 
world,  telling  the  people  that  their  Devil  is  within  the 
same.  These  maraca  or  rattles,  well  decked  with  fair 
feathers,  they  stick  in  the  ground  the  staff  that  is  through 
it,  and  do  place  them  all  along  and  in  the  midst  of  the 
houses,  commanding  that  meat  and  drink  be  given  to 
them.  In  such  wise  that  these  cogging  mates,  making 
the  other  poor  idiots  to  believe,  as  the  sacrificers  of  the 
idol  Bel  did  heretofore  (of  Whom  mention  is  made  in  the 
history  of  Daniel)  that  these  gourds  do  eat  and  drink  in 
the  night ;  every  householder  giving  credit  thereto  doth 


1  p.  Gumilla  El  Orinoco  ilustrado,  I,  g,  91. 

2  See  Hans  Stade's  Narrative  of  his  captivity  among  the  Tupinambas, 
which  Southey  compresses. 

3  The  voyages  of  Mons.  de  Monts,  Mons.  du  Pont  Grave,  and  Mons.  de 
Poutrincourt  into  La  Cadia.     In  Earl  of  Oxford's  Collection  II,  p.  862. 


THE     DRUM     STAGE.  Q 

not  fail  to  set  near  these  maraca,  meal,  flesh,  fish,  and 
drink,  which  service  they  continue  by  the  space  of  fifteen 
days  or  three  weeks ;  and  during  that  time  they  are  so 
foolish  as  to  perswade  themselves  that  in  sounding  with 
these  maraca  some  spirit  speaketh  unto  them,  and 
attribute  divinity  unto  them  in  such  sort  that  they  would 
esteem  it  a  great  misdeed  to  take  away  the  meat  that  is 
presented  before  these  fair  Bels  ;  with  which  meats  those 
reverend  Caraibes  do  merely  fatten  themselves,  and  so 
under  false  pretexts  is  the  world  deceived."  ^  A  tendency 
to  anthropomorphism  may  be  noticed  in  the  offering  of 
meats  and  drinks  to  the  maraca,  which  \re  sometimes 
pushed  in  at  a  slit  cut  in  it  for  the  purpose,  to  represent 
a  mouth.  And  again  in  the  substitution  of  .human  hair 
for  feathers  as  a  covering  for  its  head.  ^  So  with  a  stick 
stuck  through  it  to  represent  a  body  and  legs,  we  have  a 
rude  representation  of  a  man.  Should  we  then  be 
justified  in  referring  it  to  the  same  category  as  the 
ordinary  idol  ?  By  no  means.  For  we  have  news  of 
this  maraca  long  before  the  anthropomorphic  tendency 
set  in,  and  it  could  be  easily  proved  that  the  hair,  and 
the  mouth  and  the  stick  are  but  the  tags  and  additions  of 
later  times,  and  that  the  original  form  was  a  simple  gourd 
rattle.3  The  only  feasible  explanation  is  that  this  strange 
race  who  deified  it  and  with  whom  the  cult  lingered  so 
long    were    from    the    first    peculiarly,    even    morbidly 


1  At  the  same  time  we  must  not  imagine  for  a  moment  that  there  was 
any  conscious  deception  in  the  matter.  "  Alle  Beobachter  fremder 
Menschenstamme,"  writes  Peschel  (Volker  Kunde,  2S0)  "  versichern  uns 
iibereinstimmend,  dass  die  Zauberarzte  selbst  zu  den  Betrogenen  gehoren 
und  fest  an  ihre  Kiinste  glauben.  So  Dobrizhoffer  in  Bezug  auf  die 
Abiponen  (Geschichte  der  Abiponer,  IL,  gi)  und  Mariner  (Tonga  Inseln,  I, 
p.  102)  in  Bezug  auf  die  polynesichen  Bewohner  der  Freundschafts- 
gruppe."  2   Hans  Stade. 

3  Brett's  Indian  Tribes  of  Guiana,  p.  401,  Cf,  also  Hans  Stade's 
Narrative,  p.  145.  "  They  believe  in  a  thing  like  a  pumpkin  about  the  size 
of  a  half  quart  pot." 


10  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

susceptible  to  the  mysterious  influence  of  Rhythmic 
Sound,  that  their  simple  logic  went  astray  in  its  effort  to 
penetrate  the  cause,  till  at  last  they  surrendered  them- 
selves blindly  to  the  influence,  as  to  some  higher  power, 
which  domineered  because  it  nonplussed  their  reason.^ 

A  modified  form  of  Drum  worship  obtained  through  the 
length  and  breadth  of  Lapland  as  late  as  two  hundred 
years  ago  ^  — so  little  modified,  however,  as  to  argue 
incontestably  an  anterior  stage  when  the  pure  form  of 
the  cult  prevailed.  Though  when  we  first  get  accounts 
of  the  Lapland  sorcerers,  they  had  ceased  actually  to 
worship  the  Drum,  had  already  learnt  that  their  fetich  was 
something  weaker  than  themselves,  which  might  be 
controlled  and  made  to  do  their  bidding,  yet  the 
supernatural  powers  which  they  supposed  to  dwell  in  the 
instrument,  and  the  excessive  veneration  with  which  they 
regarded  it,  clearly  point  to  some  antecedent  stage  not 
unlike  the  Maraca  cult  of  the  Brazilians.  "  It  is  always 
kept  hidden  in  some  secret  place,  wrapt  carefully  up  in  a 
lambskin,"  writes  Scheffer.  "  It  is  held  so  sacred  and 
holy  that  they  suffer  no  maid  that  is  marriageable  to 
touch  it ;  and  if  they  remove  from  place  to  place,  they 
carry  it  last  of  all,  because  they  believe  that  if  any  one, 
especially  a  maid  that  is  marriageable,  follow  the  same  way, 
they  would  in  three  days  fall  into  some  desperate 
disease."  3     Here  is  a  curious  fact.     Why  the  presence 


1  A  subtle  speculator  might  find  the  explanation  in  a  Realistic  (I  am 
using  the  word  in  the  medieval  sense)  cast  of  mind,  which  viewed  Sound 
as  a  concrete  existing  entity  ;  and  worshipped  it  in  a  convenient  and 
manageable  symbol  under  the  form  of  the  maraca.  For  further 
particulars  about  the  maraca,  Cf  Osorio's  History  of  the  Portuguese,  II, 

100. 

2  Scheffer's  History  of  Lapland,  p.  58. 

3  lb.   p.    53.     For   another   evidence   of  its   sanctity  Cf  the  elaborat 
directions  for  its  construction.     "It  must  be  made  either  of  pine,  fir,  or 
birch  tree,    which    grows  in  such  a  particular  place,  and  turns   directly 
according   to   the    Sun's   course ;  which  is  when  the  grain  of  the  wood, 


THE     DRUM     STAGE-  11 

of  a  marriageable  maid  should  be  considered  to  profane 
the  Drum,  we  cannot  conjecture — but  that  there  is 
something  more  than  chance  to  do  with  it  we  may  rest 
assured,  when  we  find  that  the  same  idea  prevailed 
among  the  Brazilians — whenever  the  Maraca  was  to  be 
consulted,  all  women  being  jealously  excluded.'  But  this 
excessive  veneration  was  but  the  natural  consequence 
of  the  supernatural  powers  which  were  supposed  to  be 
inherent  in  the  Drum,  and  which  the  Drum  was 
suppossd  to  confer  directly  on  its  possessor — thus 
differing  in  no  way  from  the  crudest  type  of  Fetich. 
Without  his  Drum  the  Lapland  sorcerer  was  powerless  : 
but  with  it,  and  by  its  aid  alone,  he  could  do  all  his 
wonders.  He  could  project  his  soul  to  far  distant 
countries,  send  it  riding  through  the  air  or  travelling 
under  the  earth,  while  his  body  lay  in  a  trance  in 
Lapland ;  he  could  predict  the  future,  especially  could  he 
foretell  "  what  the  success  in  hunting  will  be";  "if  a 
tame  reindeer  be  lost,  he  can  tell  how  they  may  get  him 
again  ;  "  he  could  predict  whether  the  net-fishing  would 
be  successful,  or  even  if  a  sick  man  would  recover.  And 
closely  connected  with  this  vaticination  as  to  the  result 
of  diseases,  came  the  further  power  of  being  able  to  cure, 
or  even  to  cause  those  very  diseases  the  result  of  which 
he  could  predict,  which  in  its  turn  implied  a  means 
of  communication  with  spirits ;  for  in  every  corner  of  the 


running  from  the  bottom  to  the  top  of  the  tree,  winds  itself  from  the  right 
hand  to  the  left.  From  this  perhaps,  they  believe  this  tree  very 
acceptable  to  the  Sun,  which  under  the  image  of  Thor  they  worship  with 
all  imaginable  devotion.  The  piece  of  wood  they  make  it  of  must  be  of 
the  root  cleft  asunder,  and  made  hollow  on  one  side,  upon  which  they 
stretch  a  skin  to  the  other  side,"  &c.,  &c.     lb.  p.  47. 

I  Southey  I.,  202.  And  before  the  priests  approached  the  village, 
where  a  maraca  ceremony  was  to  be  held,  it  was  incumbent  on  the  women 
to  "  go  from  house  to  house  confessing  their  sins  against  their  husbands 
and  demanding  forgiveness  of  them,"  lb. 


12  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

globe,  illness  and  even  death  are  attributed  by  uncivilised 
man  never  to  natural  causes,  but  invariably  to  the 
influence  of  evil  spirits.  ^  Now  this  means  of 
communication  the  Drum  was  peculiarly  supposed  to 
give.  Hence  one  of  its  chief  uses  was  to  "  ascertain  the 
pleasure  of  the  Ghosts  or  Sitte  what  kind  of  sacrifice 
they  want,"  and  not  only  could  it  communicate  with 
the  Ghosts,  but  also  directly  with  the  Gods  themselves, 
and  eminently  the  two  chief,  Thor,  and  Storjunkar; 
and  ascertain  their  pleasure  in  like  manner.  ^ 

Now  compare  this  with  what  we  know  of  the  Maraca. 
The  Laplanders  used  the  Drum  to  find  out  what  sacrifice 
their  Gods  desired.  But  the  Brazilians,  who  believed 
"that  their  Devil  dwelt  in  the  Maraca"  offered  sacrifice  to 
the  Maraca  itself.  The  Laplanders  believed  that  the 
Drum  put  them  in  communication  with  spirits,  and  had 
the  power  to  predict  the  future.  "  Once  in  the  year  " 
runs  Hans  Stade's  narrative,  "  the  Payes  visited  the 
settlement.  They  pretended  a  Spirit  had  come  from  the 
remotest  parts  of  the  world,  which  gave  them  power  to 
make  the  Maraca  answer  questions  and  predict  events." 
Particularly,  if  we  remember,  the  Drum  could  foretell  ^ 
what  the  success  would  be  in  hunting.  And  this  was  one 
of  the  fortes  of  the  Maraca  too.  For,  "  the  Tupinambas 
spoke  to  their  rattles  as  oracles,  and  thanked  them  for 
having  said  that  they  should  return  with  prey.'" 

Here  are  strange  resemblances,  not  only  in  the  general 
object  of  the  cult,  but  in  the  pbculiar  powers  which  were 
accredited  to  the  Fetich.  But  stranger  things  remain 
behind.  For  though  Lapland  and  South  America  have 
been  indicated  as  the  great  seats  of  Drum  Worship,  this  is 
but  saying  that  it  lingered  longest  there.  But  it  was  not 
confined  to  there  by  any  means.     For  stretching  in  an 


I    Peschel's  Volkerkunde,  p.  276.  2  Scheffer,  42-3. 


THE      DRUM      STAGE.  I3 

unbroken  line  along  the  entire  extent  of  Northern  Siberia 
to  Behring's  Straits,  passing  over  into  the  New  World, 
trending  right  into  Greenland,  and  descending  in  full 
force  through  the  whole  of  North  America,  interrupted 
for  a  moment  by  the  ancient  civilisations  of  Mexico  and 
Yucatan,  but  taking  up  the  running  again  at  the  Orinoco 
and  never  stopping  till  it  gets  to  the  very  bottom  of 
Patagonia,  does  an  unbroken  series  of  traces  of  the  same 
idea  extend,  and  so  unmistakeable  is  the  family 
resemblance,  that  if  the  scratchings  and  groovings  of  the 
rocks  are  sufficient  evidence  to  warrant  the  assumption 
of  a  Drift  Period  in  the  Geological  history  of  the  globe, 
the  constant  repetition  of  the  same  phenomena  through 
all  the  countries  here  enumerated  would  seem  to  warrant 
the  direct  conclusion  that  from  the  North  Cape  down  to 
the  Straits  of  Magellan,  at  some  period  or  other  in  the 
history  of  mankind,  an  organised  system  of  Religion 
prevailed  in  which  the  Drum  was  worshipped  as  a  God/ 

Bearing  in  mind  the  magic  powers  of  the  Drum — the 
power  of  communicating  with  spirits,  which  must  be 
strongly  accented  since  the  other  powers  in  a  manner 
flow  from  it ;  of  predicting  the  future,  particularly  the 
success  in  hunting ;  of  curing  and  causing  diseases  ;  of 
projecting  the  spirit  out  of  the  body  that  it  may  ride 
through  the  air  or  dive  beneath  the  earth — let  us  see  how 


I  In  detail.  Traces  of  Drum  Worship  are  to  be  found  among  the 
Lapps  (ut  supra) ;  the  Finns  (M.  Regnard  in  Pinkerton  I  178.) — who  make 
the  bridge  over  to  Asia — the  Yakouts  in  both  their  branches,  the  Batilinski 
and  Khangalasski ;  the  Samoyedes  (Smith's  Wonders  of  Nature  and  Art,  II. 
iv.  277:);  the  Jakutskoi  (ib.)  ;  the  Koreki  (ib.  244.)  (which  brings  us  to 
Kamstchatka) ;  the  Kamtschadales  (Coxe's  Account  of  the  Russian  Dis- 
coveries between  Asia  and  America,  p.  339)  ;  crossing  over  to  North  America 
by  ivay  of  the  Fox  Islands  (ib.  note  on  p.  229)  ;  the  Esquimaux  (Crantz 
loc  cit.  infra) ;  the  North  American  Indians  (Infra)  ;  the  South  American 
Indians,  that  is  to  say  the  Indians  of  Guiana  (Purchas  His  Pilgrimes  IV. 
1274),  the  Brazilians  (Supra)  the  Paraguayans  (Dobrizhoffer  II.  73,  etc.), 
the  Patagonians  (Infra). 


14  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

far  the  Drum  is  credited  with  the  same  properties  over 
the  area  we  have  sketched  out  as  the  seat  of  its  cult. 

"  The  Patagonian  wizards,"  we  are  told  by  Falkner, 
"  beat  drums  and  rattle  hide-bags  full  of  shells  or  stones, 
and  pretend  to  see  into  other  regions  under  the  earth."^ 
And  again,  "  The  wizard  shuts  himself  up  secluded  in 
a  corner  of  the  tent.  In  this  seclusion  he  has  a  small 
drum,  one  or  two  round  calabashes  or  bags  of  dry  hide 
with  small  sea-shells  in  them,  and  some  bags  with  spells. 
He  begins  by  making  a  strange  noise  with  his  drums ; 
after  which  he  feigns  a  fit,  and  to  struggle  with  the  demon 
that  has  entered  him"  ^  &c. 

This  is  plainly  the  magic  trance  of  the  Laplanders 
which  is  repeated  among  the  Samoyedes,  with  the 
genuine  Lapp  addition  of  the  disappearaace  of  the 
wizard,  3 — and  in  some  cases  with  the  attainment  of  the 
power  of  prophecy  as  its  consequence.  4  Among  the 
North  American  Indians,  also,  the  Jeesukawin  or 
Prophetic  Art  ^  is  attained  by  similar  means — that  is 
to  say,  by  the  agency  of  the  Drum.  "  I  told  them 
to  build  the  Jee — suk — aun  or  prophet's  lodge,"  said 
Catherine  Wabose  in  her  narrative  to  Mrs.  Schoolcraft, 
"  and  when  it  was  finished  the  entire  population 
assembled  round  it,  and  I  went  in  taking  only  a  small 
Drum.  I  immediately  knelt  down,  and  holding  my  head 
near  the  ground,  in  a  position  as  near  as  may  be 
prostrate,  began  beating  my  Drum,  and  reciting  my 
songs  or  incantations.  The  lodge  commenced  shaking 
violently  by  supernatural  means.     This  being  regarded  by 


I    Quoted    in    the  Narrative    of    the    surveying    voyages    of    H.M.S. 
Adventure  and  Beagle,  II.  162.  2   Jb. 

3  Cf.  Certain  Notes  of  Master  Richard  Johnson  in  Pinkerton,  I.  63. 

4  The  Voyage  of  Sir  Hugh  Willoughby  and  others    to  the  Northern 
Parts  of  Russia.     In  Pinkerton,  I.  38. 

5  Schoolcraft,  I.  359,  389. 


THE      DRUM      STAGE.  1 5 

me,  and  by  all  without,  as  a  proof  of  the  presence  of 
the  Spirits  I  consulted,  /  ceased  beating  and  singing.^'  The 
narrative  then  goes  on  to  say  that  the  first  question 
about  which  she  was  requested  to  consult  the  Spirits 
"  was  in  relation  to  game,  and  where  it  was  to  be  found." 
The  spirit's  reply  apparently  was  so  far  correct  that  it 
procured  her  the  reputation  of  a  prophetess  for  the  rest 
of  her  life.^  The  Greenlanders,  however,  with  whom 
the  Drum  is  used  to  summon  up  the  Torngaks  or 
familiar  spirits,  are  not  so  indulgent  to  their 
necromancers,  who  are  required  to  give  constant 
exhibitions  of  their  powers,  if  their  credit  is  to  be 
kept  up,  and  till  the  very  last  "  if  an  Angekok  (or 
wizard)  drum  ten  times  in  vain  for  his  Torngak;  he  must 
resign  his  office."^ 

If  the  Drum  is  used  by  the  Greenlanders  to  summon 
up  spirits,  it  is  employed  by  the  Samoyedes  to  drive 
them  away.  At  a  Samoyede  funeral  the  magician 
attends  and  beats  a  drum  in  order  to  prevent  the  spirit 
of  the  deceased  from  troubhng  his  surviving  relations. 3 
And  to  the  same  belief  in  its  power  to  drive  away 
spirits,  is  to  be  ascribed  the  practice  of  the  Jakutskoi 
and  Koreki  sorcerers  beating  on  the  drum  "  in  order 
to  drive  away  distempers"  ^  which  is  carried  to  its  height 
among  the  North  American  Indians  with  whom  the 
Drum  is  the  great  specific  in  the  healing  art,  the 
dernier  ressort  when  all  the  simples  of  the  physician 
have  failed  to  effect  a  cure.  ^  The  knowledge  of  its 
proper    use    (for  which    an    elaborate    ceremonial    has 


1  Schoolcraft,  I.  394. 

2  Crantz,  History  of  Greenland,  I.  212. 

3  Smith's  Wonders  of  Nature  and  Art,  IV.  277.     London,  1803. 

4  lb.  264,  266,  Cf.  Supra. 

5  Cf.  the   answer  to   the   memorandum  of  questions,   "How  do   they 


l6  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

been  devised)  '  is  confined  to  the  Medawin,  a  guild  of 
of  magicians  who  "  pervade  the  whole  body  of  the 
tribes  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  and  from  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the  Arctic  Ocean."  ^ 

These  are  but  a  few  instances,  and  some  of  them  not 
the  most  telling  ones  that  might  have  been  selected  out 
of  a  crowd  of  others.  Now  the  question  remains  to  be 
answered — Shall  we  let  the  matter  rest  here  ?  Shall  we 
regard  these  facts  as  merely  proving  that  a  system  of 
Drum  Worship  once  extended  over  the  two  Americas 
and  along  the  north  coast  of  Siberia,  with  its  western 
outpost  in  Lapland — and  shall  we  let  it  thus  sink  into  a 
mere  ethnological  enthymeme  to  prove  that  America 
was  peopled  by  the  Mongoloid  nations  of  Northern 
Asia  ? — or  shall  we  extend  our  original  assertion,  and 
regard  the  worship  of  the  Drum  as  a  form  of  Fetichism 
to  which  the  whole  human  race  have  at  one  time  been 
enslaved.  That  the  Drum  figures  conspicuously  in  the 
Religious  ceremonies  of  all  races  of  mankind  as  we 
have  noticed  in  the  Introductory  Chapter  may  be  taken 
to  point  strongly  this  way,  and  if  we  were  to  rewrite 
that  paragraph  here  from  the  present  point  of  view, 
there  are  many  remarkable  facts  that  might  be  brought 
to  light.  But  not  to  weary  the  reader  by  deploying 
a  phalanx  of  old  references  over  again,  I  shall  merely 
refer  him  to  them,  and  shall  content  myself  with  pointing 
out  the  more  obvious  traces  of  this  Fetichism  which 
were  to  be  found  in  Europe  until  quite  recently,  and 
some  of  which  are  to  be  met  with  under  our  very 
nose    at  the   present  day.      For   after   the   smelting   of 


treat  fevers,"  &c.,  Schoolcraft,  II.  179. 

1  For  a  full  description  of  this  ceremonial  see  Schoolcraft  I.  360,  sqq. 

2  lb.  p.  358.     And  everything  which   is  true  of  the  Medawin  may  be 
applied  to  the  Jeesukawin  (lb). 


THE      DRUM      STAGE.  I7 

metals  was  discovered,  and  man  had  conceived  the  idea 
of  making  metal  drums,  partly  because  they  were  more 
durable,  and  partly  because  they  sounded  louder;  and 
after  he  had  hit  upon  a  plan  of  saving  himself  the 
the  fatigue  of  beating  these  metal  drums — by  suspending 
the  drumstick  inside  the  Drum,  so  that  it  would  beat 
of  its  own  accord  when  the  Drum  was  shaken — after  all 
this,  I  say,  lo !  a  transformation  had  been  effected  by 
which  the  drumstick  became  a  clapper,  and  the  Drum 
became  a  Bell.  But  this  transformation  produced  no 
abatement  in  the  reverential  awe  with  which  he 
regarded  them,  and  when  we  hear  the  Bells  next 
Sunday  we  shall  understand  why  it  is  that  Bells  are 
the  peculiar  instruments  of  CJmrches — Man  still  places 
them  in  his  Temples,  and  rings  them  on  his  Holy, days 
without  knowing  that  why  he  does  so,  is  because  his 
old  savage  forefathers  used  to  worship  these  very 
Bells  as  Gods,  under  the  form  of  Drums  and  Rattles. 

The  History  of  the  Bell  is  a  perfect  counterpart  to 
the  History  of  the  Drum.  And  whoever  cares  to  peer 
into  the  records  of  that  era  of  naive  credulity  which 
we  call  the  Middle  Ages  shall  find  the  same  superstitions, 
which  were  connected  with  the  Drum,  re-appearing 
in  connection  with  the  Bell.  He  shall  read  of  Bells 
being  thought  to  speak,  of  Bells  thought  to  be  alive,  of 
Bells  dressed,  and  arrayed  with  ornaments  not  unlike  the 
Fetiches  we  are  now  considering.  Maracas  could 
influence  the  "  fertility  and  sterility  of  the  ground,"  and 
Bells  were  rung  pro  frttctibus  terrcB,  "  to  make  a  good 
.harvest."  The  Natchez  used  rattles  to  conjure  the 
weather,  ^  and  our  own  forefathers  hung  bells  in  their 
churches    "  to    break    the    thunderbolt    and    dispel    the 


I    Charlevoix  Nouvelle  France,  III.  426. 


10  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

storm."  \  The  American  and  Jakutskoi  medicine  men 
covered  their  dresses  with  little  rattles  in  order  to  spread 
the  magic  virtue  over  their  persons ;  ^  and  the  medieval 
clergy  adorned  their  copes  and  tunicles  with  little 
bells  3  because  there  was  something  "canny"  in  their 
"  tinkling  " — the  "  tinnitus  "  was  "  salutifer  "  says  the 
monkish  biographer  of  St.  Hilary  of  Aries.  The  drums 
beaten  at  Lapp  sacrifices  may  show  us  well  where  the 
sacring  bell  of  the  mass  has  come  from  ;  and  the 
Healing  drums  of  Koreki  sorcerers  appear  again  in  the 
handbells  that  curates  used  to  ring  in  the  Visitation  of 
the  Sick. 

HI. 

It  needs  but  a  little  reflection  to  see  that  these  uses 
are  one  and  all  referable  to  the  idea  that  the  instrument 
was,  in  some  way  or  other,  a  medium  for  reaching  the 
Spirits — death,  disease,  bad  weather,  all  the  calamities  of 
life,  being  regarded  both  by  the  simple  savage  and  the 
superstitious  civilised  man  as  the  direct  work  of  evil 
spirits  ;  and  good  luck,  happiness,  fine  weather  and  so 
on,  as  the  work  of  good  ones.  And  in  the  most  flagrant 
of  the  cases  we  have  noticed,  the  means  was  confounded 
with  the  end,  and  the  Drum  was  itself  regarded  as  the 
Spirit.  Which  indeed,  as  I  take  it,  was  the  original 
conception.  Fetichism  is  the  crediting  inanimate 
objects  with  life  from  the  observation  that  they  possess 
certain  properties,  which  are  generally  found  in  conjunc- 
tion with  life.  Now  what  property  more  likely  to  warrant 
the  assumption  than  the  property  of  Speech  ?  for  to  this 
in  the  end  does   Rhythmic  Sound  come.     As  long  as  the 


1  Fulgura  frango,  dissipo  ventos,  according  to  the  common  legend. 

2  Catlin's  North  American  Indians,  I.  39.     Smith's  Wonders  of  Nature 
and  Art,  IV.  266. 

3  Undique  in  capa  tintinnabula,  &c.,  says  Ducange. 


THE      DRUM     STAGE.  IQ 

cause  was  unknown,  such  would  be  the  infalhble 
conclusion.  And  even  after  the  cause  was  known,  there 
would  still  be  the  vague  idea  that  the  instrument  had  at 
least  half  the  share  in  producing  the  sound — and  that  its 
spontaneous  production  of  notes  was  quite  within  the 
range  of  possibilities.  Have  not  we  our  own  legends  of 
the  Magic  Flute,  that  played  of  its  own  accord,  and  of 

"  St.  Dunstan's  harp  that  by  the  wall 
Upon  a  pin  did  hang-a, 
The  harp  itself  with  ly  and  all 
Untoucht  by  hand  did  twang-a." 

If  our  grandfathers  and  grandmothers  were  foolish 
enough  to  believe  such  things,  how  can  we  wonder  at  the 
savage?  They  knew  too  the  philosophy  of  harps  and 
flutes — but  he  did  not  even  know  the  philosophy  of  the 
drum.  The  simplest  of  all  instruments  was  a  puzzle  to 
him.  He  could  not  conceive  how  by  striking  it  a  sound 
could  come  unless  the  drum  were  in  a  manner  answering 
back  and  giving  the  drummer  tit  for  tat.  Ask  then  this 
savage  what  made  the  drum  sound,  and  he  would  have 
told  you  that  there  was  a  spirit  inside  it,  and  that  the 
sound  of  the  drum  was  the  spirit  speaking.  That  this 
was  the  only  possible  conclusion  which  his  simple 
metaphysics  could  arrive  at,  we  know  from  being 
informed  of  his  opinion  about  that  civilised  drum  which 
our  ancestors  called  a  Bell  (cloca)  and  which  we,  without 
remembering  why,  call  a  Clock.  Here  was  the  same 
phenomenon  presented  to  him  under  a  different  form. 
And  though,  by  this  time,  these  very  savages  understood 
all  about  drums,  and  had  long  ago  passed  the  stage  of 
regarding  them  as  actual  Fetiches,  a  mere  diversity  of 
outward  form  was  sufficient  to  undo  the  results  of  the 
empirical  education  of  ages,  and  send  them  all  rolling 
back  into  their  grovelling  superstition  again.  The 
Patagonians  naturally  lead  the  van — they  thought  Captain 


20  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

Musters'  old  turnip  was  the  habitation  of  a  hidden  Spirit.^ 
The  New  Zcalanders  adored  watches  as  deities.-  The 
Ashiras  beheved  Du  Chaillu's  clock  to  be  his  familiar 
spirit  who  kept  guard  over  his  safety.^  The  King  of 
Karague  was  tremendously  affected  at  Speke's  clock — 
**his  eyes  rolled  with  every  beat  of  the  pendulum."  +  And 
Swift,  who  knew  human  nature  whether  in  the  guise  of  a 
man  or  a  Yahoo,  tells  us  that  when  the  Lilliputians  found 
Gulliver's  watch  they  considered  it  to  be  "  either  some 
unknown  animal,  or  the  god  he  worshipped.""  Now  if  it  be 
objected  that  the  wonder-working  element  here  is  the  fact 
of  the  watch  going  by  itself,  I  shall  be  content  to  find 
another  argument  by  way  of  reply.  At  the  same  time  I 
do  not  believe  this  objection  will  hold  for  a  moment, 
and  I  undertake  to  say  that  these  savages  would  still  have 
continued  to  regard  watches  as  gods,  even  after  they  had 
been  taught  to  wind  them  up  and  set  them]  going 
themselves. 

PART  II. 

In  considering  the  esoteric  spirit  of  the  Drum  Stage 
and  in  endeavouring  to  set  those  ideas  which  I  conceive 
to  underlie  the  origin  of  Music  in  as  strong  a  light  as 
possible,  I  have  been  considering  them  rather  in  the 
state  of  perfection  which  they  ultimately  reached,  as 
Drum  Worship,  than  in  the  obscure  germination  and 
slow  development  which  we  must  imagine  to  have 
preceded   such   a    climax.      For    the    most    elementary 


1  Musters'  At  home  with  the  Patagonians,  p.  182. 

2  Sir  J.  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  p.  370. 

3  Du  Chaillu,  Equatorial  Africa,  p.  412. 

4  Speke's  Source  of  the  Nile,  p.  227.  For  similar  instances  cf, 
Livingstone's  Zambesi  and  its  Tributaries,  p.  109.  Jukes'  Voyage  of 
H.M.S.  Fly,  I,  69. 


THE      DRUM      STACxE.  21 

notions  of  the  power  of  rhythm  would  be  the  first  to 
spring,  and  these  growing  and  clustering  time  after  time 
would  yet  only  after  a  long  period  be  conceived  with  suffi- 
cient intensity  to  produce  that  system  of  Fetichism  which 
seems  to  have  so  much  of  method  and  consistency  to 
commend  it  to  the  savage  mind.  Equally  slow  must 
have  been  the  development  of  the  instrument  itself,  and 
through  as  long  and  as  arduous  steps  must  we  conceive 
it  to  have  ascended  from  its  first  rudimentary  form  to 
its  perfection.  And  this  will  now  be  an  interesting  phase 
of  the  subject  to  turn  to  for  consideration — the  growth 
of  the  actual  instrument  from  simplicity  to  complexity, 
apart  from  any  side  issues  of  Fetichism  and  superstition. 
As  numerous  and  as  gradual  will  be  the  steps  of  progress 
in  this  case  as  in  that.  The  passage  of  growth  will  bear 
resemblance  in  both  cases,  and  the  steps  be  taken  with 
equal  tardiness  and  deliberation.  But  then  they  will  be 
easier  to  follow.  For  it  is  no  longer  a  question  of 
unriddling  quaint  and  dubious  ideas,  but  of  tracing 
actual  objects  which  exist  in  all  their  varieties  in 
different  parts  of  the  savage  world.  — -^ 

It  is  to  Australia,  which  has  been  happity  termed, 
"the  Asylum  for  the  Fauna  and  Flora  of  past  ages,"' 
it  is  to  the  "poor  winking  New  Hollanders,"  as  Dampier 
calls  them,  that  we  must  turn,  if  we  would  find  the  living 
resemblances  to  the  Musical  Instruments  used  by 
Primitive  Man.  In  that  tranquil  continent,  not  only  has 
the  animal  and  vegetable  world  stagnated,  but  human 
life  "set  "  early  and  was  fossilised — and  so  in  the  present 
aborigines  we  may  see  very  well  what  we  were  ages  ago. 
But  if  ages  ago  in  the  history  of  man,  it  is  only  yesterday 
in  the  history  of  the  globe,  that  we  were  "  poor  winking  " 


I    "  Ein   Asyl   fur    die    Thier-und     Pflanzentrachten     der     Vorzeit," 
(Peschel). 


22  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

fellows,  living  and  acting  much  the  same  as  the    "poor 
winking  New  Hollanders  "  of  to-day. 

Their  musical  instruments  are  all  extemporised  for  the 
occasion — thrown  away  as  soon  as  used,  most  of  them. 
Sometimes  they  beat  two  pieces  of  stick  together,'  or 
two  green  branches,^  or,  as  the  Moorunde  natives,  shake 
bunches  of  boughs.^  At  other  times  their  instruments 
are  still  more  elementary,  being  simply  those  which 
nature  has  given  them.  The  bystanders  accompany  the 
dances,  at  times,  by  stamping  their  foot  on  the  ground,"* 
or  clapping  their  hands  ^ — a  method  of  drumming  carried 
to  its  aesthetic  climax  by  the  Andaman  Islanders.  ^  This 
same  naive  use  of  "  natural  instruments  "  is  to  be  found 
among  many  tribes  far  in  advance  of  the  Australians  in 
point  of  civilisation — among  the  distingue  Makololos  of 
Africa,^  among  the  Manganjas  near  Lake  Nyassa,^  the 
Fijians,9  the  Friendly  Islanders,'"  and  others,  and  is 
highly  elaborated  by  the  Abiponian  women  of  Paraguay, 
who  "  produce  a  loud  noise  at  their  festivals  by  striking 
their  lips  with  the  palms  of  their  hands."  " 

A  considerable  advance  on  the  boughs  and  sticks  was 
made  when  spears  were  used  in  the  same  way,  '^  or  when 
the  women  *'  rolled  their  skin-cloaks  tightly  together  into 
a  hard  ball  and  beat  them  upon  their  laps  with  the  palms 
of  their  hands."  '^    This,  I  say,  is  a  considerable  advance, 


r   Eyre's  Discoveries  in  Central  Australia,  II.  228.  2   lb.,  237. 

3   lb.,  237.  4   lb.,  234. 

5  Grey's  Journal   of  Two  Expeditions  of  Discovery  in  N.  W.  and  "W. 
Australia,  II,  305. 

6  Qui    inter  saltandum    clunes    suos    more    tympanorum    palmis    et 
calcibus  vicissim  plaudunt.     Smith's  Wonders  of  Nature  and  Art,  V,  246. 

7  Livingstone's  Missionary  Travels  in  S.  Africa,  225. 

8  Livingstone's  Zambesi  and  its  Tributaries,  p.  109. 

9  William's  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  I,  144-5.  '°  Captain  Cook,  I,  427. 

11  Dobrizhoffer's  History  of  the  Abipones,  II,  62,  443.     The  Brazilian 
women  have  the  same  practice.     Purchas  His  Pilgrimes,  IV,  1294. 

12  Eyre's  Discoveries  in  Central  Australia,  II,  232.  13  lb.  22?,  231, 


THE     DRUM     STAGE.  23 

for  spears  and  cloaks  are  not  things  that  would  be 
thrown  away  the  moment  the  performance  was  over  ; 
but  once  used  and  found  effective,  the  identical 
implements  would  be  employed  over  and  over  again ; 
and  by  thus  localising  the  production  of  the  sound  to 
specific  generators,  the  first  idea  of  such  a  thing  as  a 
definite  musical  instrument  would  gradually  dawn  on 
the  human  mind. 

These  preambles,  as  we  may  call  them,  to  the 
Instrument  Proper  may  well  be  studied  in  the  clubs  of 
the  New  Caledonians,  '  the  paddles  of  the  New 
Zealanders,  ^  the  clubs  of  the  Makololos,  ^  the  paddles 
of  the  Tonga  Islanders.  ^ 

But  a  still  nearer  approach  to  the  Instrument  Proper 
was  made  when  such  a  thing  as  a  spear-board  was 
"  beaten  with  a  short  stick  held  in  the  middle."  5  For 
here  the  isolation  of  the  Sound-Generator  had  so 
far  advanced,  that  a  Generator  was  employed  "which 
required  some  practice  to  play  it,"  ^  in  preference  to 
those  ruder  sound-producers  which  required  no  practice, 
for  the  sole  reason  that  the  sound  of  the  spear-board 
was  of  a  stronger  or  finer  timbre  than  the  sound  of  the 
sticks  or  the  skin  cloaks.  7 


1  Which  they  strike  together  as  they  are  dancing,- R.  Brown.  Races 
of  Mankind. 

2  Which  they  strike  in  good  time  against  the  sides  of  their  canoes,  Cap 
Cook,  I,  196. 

3  Livingstone's  Missionary  Travels  in  S.  Africa,  225. 

4  Martin's  Mariner's  Tonga  Islands  II.  216. 

5  Grey's  Journal  of  Two  Expeditions  of  Discovery  in  N.W.  and  W. 
Australia,  II.  305.     Mariner's  Tonga  Islands,  II.  214.  6   Grey,  loc.  cit. 

7  "A  rounded  stick  was  held  in  its  centre  and  its  ends  alternately 
struck  against  the  flat  board  with  which  they  throw  their  spears. 
Athough  it  appears  so  simple  it  requires  some  practice,  and  by  young 
men  who  desire  the  reputation  of  being  exquisites  to  play  it  is  considered 
to  be  a  very  necessary  accomplishment."  Grey  loc.  cit.  In  the  Tonga 
Islands  the  spear-board  takes  the  form  of  "  a  loose  flat  piece  of  hard 
wood  (three  feet  long  and  one  and  a  half  inches  square)  fastened  only  at 
one  end  upon  another  similar  piece," 


24  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

Yet  ages  wore  away  before  any  such  thing  as  extra 
resonance  was  seriously  sought  after.  We  find  no 
actual  mechanical  attempt  after  it  in  Australia.  But 
in  the  hollow  inverted  bowl  of  the  Sandwich  Islanders, 
which  is  struck  by  the  foot,  '  we  first  find  ourselves 
in  the  transitional  stage  when  man's  attention  had  been 
called  to  the  fact  that  hollowness  is  the  first  condition 
of  resonance.  And  this  idea  is  acted  upon  and  wrought 
to  its  logical  completion  in  the  hollowed-out  logs 
which  serve  the  Samoans,  ^  many  of  the  Amazon 
tribes,  3  the  Ugoma  negroes,  "^  and  the  Fijians,  5  as 
very  good  drums. 

The  step  to  covering  these  hollowed-out  logs  with 
a  skin  head  was  a  mighty  step  in  the  History  of  Music 
and  needed  a  mighty  genius  to  make  it.  Just  so  of 
the  perfection  of  the  Rattle — from  its  rude  half- 
extemporised  form  of  a  bunch  of  hoofs,  ^  of  fruit-stones,  ^ 
of  beetles'  wings,  ^  of  nuts,  9  of  turtle-shell,  ^°  of  hard 
seeds,  "  to  its  complete  and  highly  elaborate  form  of 
a  Gourd  with  bones,  '^  pease,  '^  pebbles,  ^^  shells,  ^5  or 
fruit  seeds  ^^  inside  it ;  or  a  bag  of  dry  hide  filled 
with  pebbles.  '^ 


1  Cap.  Cook,  II.  250.  And  to  the  "  bowl  "  of  the  Sandwich  Islanders, 
we  might  add  the  "  hollowe  pumpe  "  which  Schouten  saw  in  the  Papuan 
Archipelago  which  was  played  with  a  piece  cf  stick,  and  was  in  all 
probability  a  bowl  or  something  of  that  sort.  Schouten  in  Purchas 
His  Pilgrimes,  I.  2.  100.  ' 

2  Turner.     19  years  in  Polynesia,  p.  211. 

3  Bates'  Amazons,  II.  207.  4   Cameron  Across  Africa,  I.  329. 

5  Williams'  Fiij,  I.  163.  Found  also  with  the  Friendly  Islanders, 
but  only  as  a  subordinate  form.     Cook,  I.  427. 

6  Schoolcraft,  II.  514.  7   Southey's  History  of  Brazil,  III.  720. 
8   Brett's  Indian  Tribes  of  Guiana,  320.  9   Southey,  III.  720. 

10  Schoolcraft,  II.  514.  "  Brett,  320. 

12  Tylor's  Early  History  of  Mankind,  p.  138.  13  lb. 

14  Cameron's  Across  Africa,  I.  250.  15  Tylor,  138, 

16  Dobrizhoffer.     History  of  the  Abipones,  II.  62. 

17  Catlin's  North  American  Indians,  I.  242. 


THE      DRUM     STAGE.  25 

Simple   as    the   discovery   of    such    a    form    appears 
to   us,  yet  so  mighty  an  effort  of  intellect  did  it    seem 
to  the  rude  reason  of  the  savage,  that  man   has  refused 
to    believe  that    a    being    like    himself  was    capable    of 
it.     It    was     a     God,     says     the     Guiana    legend,    that 
gave   us    our    Maraca.     As    Arawanili   was   walking   by 
the  river  side  brooding  over  the  troubles  and  miseries 
of   humanity,  a    female    form,  the    Orehu,    arose    from 
the  stream,  bearing  in  her  hand  a  small  branch,  which 
she   presented    to   him,    desiring   him   to   plant   it,    and 
afterwards  gather  its  fruit.     He  did   so,    and    the  fruit 
of  the    tree    was    the   calabash.     A    second    time    did 
she  arise  from  the  stream — this  time  with  small  white 
stones  in  her  hand,    which  she  told  him  to  enclose  in 
the    gourd.     He  did    so.     He    enclosed    the    stones    in 
the  gourd,  and  so  he  made  the  Maraca.  ' 

Hence  comes  it  that  the  Drum  is  the  great  Instrument 
of  Savage  Legend.  To  find  out  that  a  hollowed  log 
would  do  to  drum  on  was  a  discovery  within  human 
comprehension.  But  to  get  at  that  perfect  resonance 
which  a  head  of  vellum  or  skin  gives,  to  raise  the 
instrument  to  a  degree  of  perfection  which  all  the 
inventive  genius  of  man  from  that  remote  time  to 
the  present  day  has  never  been  able  to  improve 
upon — this  was  a  bound  of  intellect  possible  only 
in  a  deity,  and  the  instrument  itself  shared  the  sanctity 
attached  to  its  reputed  inventor.  Compare  that 
beautiful  Indian  legend,  related  by  Schoolcraft,  ^  where 
the  tired  hunter  lost  his  way  in  the  prairie,  and 
thought  he  heard  music  in  the  air.  "  He  listened 
attentively  and  could  clearly  distinguish  the  sound, 
but  nothing  could  be  seen  but  a  mere  speck,  like 
something    almost    out   of    sight.     In   a   short    time   it 


I   Brett's  Indian  Tribes  of  Guiana,  401.  2  1-327. 


26  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

became  plainer  and  plainer,  and  the  music  sweeter  and 
sweeter.  The  speck  descended  rapidly,  and  when 
it  came  near  proved  to  be  a  car  of  ozier  containing 
twelve  beautiful  girls,  who  each  had  a  little  drum, 
which  she  struck  with  ineffable  grace."  See  what 
these  people  thought  of  their  Drum,  when  they  made 
it  the  instrument  of  Angels  !  And  the  Caribs  and 
Tamanacs  still  show  the  Drum  of  Amalivaca  bedded 
in  the  rock,  with  which,  Amphion-like,  he  brought 
order  out  of  Chaos,  and  the  elements  into  harmony 
after  the  devastation  of  the  Deluge.  ' 

This  too  is  the  great  epoch  of  Drum  Fetichism. 
And  well  it  might  be.  For  a  bold  guess  had  done 
the  work  that  the  tentative  process  of  ages  had  failed 
to  do.  These  few  paragraphs  which  form  so  tiny  a 
part  even  of  this  chapter,  yet  represent  aeons  of  time, 
illimitable.  We  are  now  in  that  dark  strange  era 
of  man's  history  when  every  single  step  forward  meant 
a  thousand  backwards,  when  the  commonplaces  of 
our  children  were  the  hard  wrung  inductions  of  sages. 
But  at  the  same  time  it  must  be  remembered  that  in  this 
dark  period,  which  I  should  describe  as  the  first  great 
epoch  of  our  Art's  History,  as  much  real  advance 
took  place,  as  much  was  done  for  the  Art  of  Instrumental 
Miisic  as  has  been  done  from  ^ the  Invention  of  the  Drum 
to  the  present  time. 

Who  was  the  mighty  genius  who  ushered  in  a  new 
era,  by  placing  new  possibilities  in  the  hands  of 
Instrumental  Music  ?  And  while  he  thus  ushered 
in  a  new  era  brought  to  a  climax  and  stereotyped  for 
ever  the  powers  of  the  old  ?  We  are  curious  to  follow 
the  reasonings  in  his  mind  that  led  him  to  conceive 
the  necessity  and  to  achieve  the  possibility  of  ^Esthetic 


I   Brett's  Indian  Tribes  of  Guiana,  p.  387. 


THE      DRUM     STAGE.  27 

Resonance — far  different  from  and  far  above  the  old 
rub-a-dub  of  the  hollowed  log.  We  are  curious  to 
v/atch  him  as  he  stretches  out  his  piece  of  skin  over  the 
hoop,  and  pegs  it  down  at  the  side,  tightening  or 
loosening  till  he  gets  the  tone  he  wants,  and  perhaps 
heating  the  skin  at  the  fire  to  tune  it  aright,  as  children 
heat  their  drums  to-day.  ^ 


II. 


"  The  instrument  had  now  reached  its  perfection,  and  man 
has  never  been  able  to  improve  upon  it  since." 

Mechanical  ingenuity  might  strike  out  new  shapes — 
might  make  it  churn-shaped,  as  the  Fans  -  and  the 
Serpa  Indians  ^  make  it ;  or  hoop-shaped,  that  is  to 
say  tambourine-shaped,  as  the  Esquimaux,  +  and  other 
Behring's  nations ;  5  might  put  a  projecting  handle 
to  it  for  convenience  of  holding,  as  the  Esquimaux 
of  Greenland ;  ^  or  give  it  a  fantastic  shape,  as  the 
Papuans,  who  have  drums  shaped  like  hour-glasses  7 — 
Artistic  genius  might  adorn  it  with  devices  cut  on 
the  barrel  ^ — but  the  principle  that  the  Drum  must  be 


1  The  method  of  tuning  universal  throughout  N.  America,  Vid.  Catlin, 
also  practised  in  Africa ;  as  among  the  Balondas.  Livingstone's 
Missionary  Travels,  293. 

2  Du  Chaillu,  p.  80.  3   Bates'  Amazons,  I.  311. 

4  Parry's  2nd  Voyage,  p.  530. 

5  Whymper's  Alaska,  fp.  143.  The  tambourine  shape  is  the  form 
that  generally  prevails  through  all  the  Siberian  and  Behring's  tribes 
and  is  common  in  North  America. 

6  Crantz.     History  of  Greenland,  I.  176. 

7  Jukes'  Voyage  of  H.M.S.  Fly,  I.  176.  "Like  a  very  elongated 
hour-glass,  made  of  a  hollow  piece  of  wood  open  at  one  end,  with  the 
skin  of  a  lizard  stretched  over  it." 

8  Melville's, Marquesas,  p.  185. 


28  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

a  hollow  cylinder,  with  some  sort  of  skin  stretched 
over  the  end,  has  never  been  questioned  from  that 
day  to  this. 

"  In  the  period  that  reaches  from  the  first  extemporised 
instrument  to  the  invention  of  the  Driim  proper,  as  much 
was  done  for  Instrumental  Music  as  has  been  done  from  the 
invention  of  the  Drum  to  the  present  time.'''' 

In  the  first  place,  Rhythm,  the  basis  of  the  whole 
Musical  Art,  was  ransacked  to  the  very  bottom,  all 
its  capabilities  proved,  all  its  varieties  found  out — and 
this  was  effected  by  the  union  of  the  Drum  with 
Dancing. 

In  the  second  place,  by  the  union  of  the  Drum  with 
Song,  man  got  to  know  that  a  musical  Instrument 
was  not  a  mere  idle  toy,  nor  a  mere  dignified  Fetich, 
but  a  means  whereby  the  emotions  and  sentiment  of 
man  could  be  adequately  expressed. 

Dancing.  No  sooner  was  the  Drum  Form  fairly 
started  than  it  was  used  as  an  accompaniment  to 
the  Dance.  Alas !  to  this  fate  must  even  the  sacred 
Maraca  submit.  For  whether  some  second  Daniel 
"  tooke  pitch,  fat,  and  haire,  and  did  seethe  them 
together,  and  made  lumpes  thereof;  and  did  put  them 
in  the  mouthe '  of  'this  fair'  Bel,'"  and  so  the  great 
Maraca  burst  asunder — or  whether  that  incipient 
scepticism  which  we  already  saw  raising  its  head  in 
requiring  that  the  response  of  the  Maraca  should  be 
confirmed  out  of  the  mouth  of  sage  women,  and  by 
the  deliverances  of  dreams  ' — I  say  whether  it  was  a 
Daniel  that  broke  the  spell  drastically,  or  a  growing 
scepticism  that  sapped  it  gradually — whatever  was 
the  cause,  certain  it  '  is  that  Southey  described  the 
Indians    of  the    Amazon    as     worshipping    the  -Maraca 


I  As  supra  Southey's  Hist,  of  Brazil,  I.  204. 


THE     DRUM     STAGE.  29 

a  century  ago,  and  Mr.  Bates  found  them  bobbing  it 
about  quite  familiarly  to  accompany  their  dances 
to-day.  ' 

Now  let  us    see  what    the    effect   of  Dancing   would 
be   in   changing     the     complexion     of    Music.     In    the 
first    place  those  semi-rational  utterances  of  Rhythmic 
Sound,  which  were  at  the  best  only  of  subjective  value, 
only  decipherable  by  the  seer,  and  even  to  him   a  mass 
of     ill-arranged     hieroglyphics,     with     only     here     and 
there   an    abracadabra  worth    anything,     but    otherwise 
beginning    in    confusion    and    ending    in   confusion,    or 
rather  being  without  beginning  and  without  end,  without 
form    and  void — I  say,  when  he   had   accompanied  his    ' 
first  dance,  he  would  have  found   to    his  surprise   that 
he  had  constructed  his  hieroglyphics  into  a  Paragraph, 
that,    like    the    leaves    of    the    Sibyl,    they    had    taken 
definite  place  and  order.     And  although  the  resemblance 
would     end    here,     although    the    placing    would    give 
no  clue  to  their    meaning,  still    the    grand   fact   would 
remain  that   he    had   constructed    a  regular    Paragraph 
out    of     his     unpromising     material     with      a     definite 
beginning   and   a   definite   end.     He   had   forged   Chaos 
into    a    Stanza — and    although     perhaps     a     stanza    of 
nonsense  verses,  still  a  Stanza. 

So  far  from  giving  a  clue  to  their  meaning  this  would 
be  the  first  step  to  the  evisceration  of  mystic  meaning 
altogether — the  first  step  to  the  secularisation  of  Religion 
into  Art.  -  The  man's  thoughts  would  be  gradually 
turned  from  regarding  his  Drum  as  a  Subjective  oracle 
to  the  blither  conception  of  it  as  a  means  of  delivering 
an  Essay  in  Sound  to  his  hearers.     And  as  to  what  that 


i    Bates'  Amazons,  282. 
This  seems  the  place  to  mention  the  fact  that  the  Drum  of  Fetichism 
and  th^  Instrumental  Drum  differ  precisely  in  this,  that  the  first  is  the 
Solo  Drum,  and  the  second  the  supplied  or  accompanying  Drum. 


,.«»1»> 


30  HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

Essay  should  consist  in — that  it  should  not  be  ^.^.  an 
idle  sporting  with  Rhythmic  forms — he  would  be  taught 
by  the  further  union  of  the  Drum  with 
"^  Song,  which  would  teach  him  to  modify  the  tone  when 
the  sentiment  was  pathetic,  and  to  increase  it  when  the 
sentiment  was  passionate — to  play  agitato  and  in  tempo 
rubato  when  the',  storm  of  emotion  swept  the  singer,  and 
to  subside  into  a  rallentando  molto  when  grief  and  feeling 
checked  the  utterance.  Here  we  have  orthodox  musical 
terms  for  the  first  time  in  our  history,  and  already  we  find 
that  the  ground  principles  of  Form  are  established  and 
the  value  of  Expression  fully  recognised.  To  exhaust  the 
connotation  of  Music  we  have  only  to  add  Melody  and 
Harmony — and  this  is  why  I  said  that  as  much  was  done 
for  Music  by  this  time  as  has  been  done  in  all  subsequent 
time  to  the  present  day.  This  man  is  as  great  an  adept 
at  Expression  as  any  musician  living ;  and  he  under- 
stands what  Form  is  far  better  than  many  modern 
composers.  For  he  does  not  for  an  instant  look  upon  it 
as  an  end  in  itself,  but  merely  as  a  means  to  an  end — as 
merely  a  convenient  scaffolding  round  which  he  may 
raise  the  architecture  of  his  ideas — as  merely  the  Logic 
of  Emotion,  not  for  a  moment  as  supplying  the  place  of 
Emotion's  self. 

So,  when  out  of  company  of  the  singer,  he  may  still 
use  the  Dance  Form,  (as  indeed  the  singer  may),  but  he 
fills  up  the  naked  mould  with  thought  and  emotion,  and 
these  are  the  theme  of  his  discourse,  let  the  Paragraph  o^ 
the  Stanza  be  of  what  shape  it  pleases.  The  Esquimaux 
use  their  Drum  "  to  express  their  passions  by  ;"  '  the  Man- 
ganjas  use  it  "to  express  their  joy  and  grief — "  ^  the  grief 
of  a  savage  no  doubt  but  still  the  grief  of  a  man,  and 
every  bit  as  pure  and  every  bit  as  true  as  that  which 


I   Crantz.  History  of  Greenland,  I.  177.     2   Livingstone's  Zambesi,  501 


THE      DRUM      STAGE.  ,  3I 

mixes  in  the  civilised  emotions  of  ourselves.  "  Hear  my 
Drum  "  cries  the  North  American  brave  to  his  absent 
love  "though  you  be  at  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth, 
hear  my  Drum  "  ' — for  he  believes  he  can  show  the 
depth  of  his  affection  by  the  music  of  its  beating.  "Do 
you  understand  what  my  Drum  says  ?"  ^  cries  he  again  in 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  Wabeno,  for  he  believes  his 
Drum  can  utter  definite  thoughts.  And  the  figures  on 
the  Lapland  Drum-heads,  hints  Schoolcraft,  ^  were 
originally  placed  there  by  the  Laplander  under  the  idea 
that  the  Drum  could  express  them,  or  at  least  say  some- 
thing about  them.  And  all  Nature  is  there — all  the  great 
things  that  moved  his  simple  imagination  are  pictured 
there  on  his  Drum,  in  loving  credence  that  his  Drum  can 
tell  him  tales  about  them.  The  Sun,  the  Moon,  the 
Earth,  (and  in  symbols)  the  wind,  fire,  the  other  world, 
and  Death.  Into  this  last  great  mystery  would  he  too 
pry,  and  he  would  have  his  Drum  describe  it  to  him. 

And  as  to  the  power  of  the  Drum  for  expressing  all 
these  great  thirigs  let  us  hear  how  Catlin  speaks  of  the 
North  American  Indians  "touching  their  drums  at  times 
so  lightly  that  the  sound  is  almost  imperceptible,"  ^  or 
Crantz  speaking  of  the  Greenlanders,  "  their  peculiar  soft 
or  animated  turns  of  the  drum,  which  one  cannot  but 
admire."  5  When  man  has  only  one  instrument  at 
his  disposal  he  makes  the  most  of  it,  and  gets 
everything  out  of  it  that  can  be  got,  extracting  secrets 
from  it  that  we  should  never  give  it  the  credit  of 
possessing.  He  has  only  one  instrument,  but  he 
is  a  Master  of  it.  The  lasso  of  the  Araucanian  never 
swerves  a  hair's  breadth  from  its  object,  the  boomerang 
of    the    Australian    never     misses    its    aim.     But    with 


I    Schoolcraft,  I.  373  2    Schoolcraft,  I.  428. 

3    lb.  373.  4    Catlin,  I   244.  5    Crantz,  I.  177 


32  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

US  who  have  a  thousand  such  things  at  our  disposal, 
the  pistol  shoots  wide,  the  revolver  goes  off  before 
its  time,  the  gun  hangs  fire,  the  patent  sword-stick 
breaks.  We  are  bunglers  at  a  thousand  things — they 
are  adepts  at  one. 

III. 

As  if  man  knew  instinctively  how  the  development 
of  the  Art  of  Music  ought  to  proceed,  he  kept  it 
under  tight  rein  at  first,  and  but  seldom  let  it  out 
of  the  tutelage  of  Dancing  and  Song — and  especially 
did  he  keep  it  to  its  work  with  the  former.  Rhythm, 
as  we  have  said,  had  to  be  ransacked,  all  its  secrets 
rifled  and  made  capital  of.  And  the  deliberate 
invention  of  new  Rhythms  is  a  very  difficult  thing. 
The  greatest  modern  composers  are  sometimes  charge- 
able with  monotony  of  Rhythm — and  the  hitting 
out  of  novelties  is  the  prerogative  of  genius.  If  so 
now,  what  must  it  have  been  in  those  early  days  ? 
And  as  if  man  instinctively  felt  the  -difficulty,  he 
sent  Music  to  school  under  Dancing.  With  justice. 
For  Dancing  is  the  Kaleidoscope  of  Rhythn,  and  can 
throw  time  into  the  strangest  patterns  hy  accident, 
which  could  never  be  manufactured  by  design.  The 
ttoOl  o\  TToXts  rjBe  tokTj€<;  the  twinkling  of  the  feet,  is  the 
prolific  source  whence  Music  has  ever  drawn.  The 
Drummer  would  obviously  play  his  drum  by  the 
time  of  this  living  Metronome,  and  the  rhythms  he 
would  learn  would  be  innumerable. 

So  man  kept  Music  at  its  work,  kept  it  in  bondage 
for  a  time,  till  the  apprentice  knew  the  craft  as 
well  as  the  master.  The  Music  of  Savage  Nations  is 
instinct  with  Rhythm,  and  Rhythm  too  of  the  purest  and 
most   perfect    kind.     So   the    Music    of  the    Australians 


THE      DRUM      STAGE.  33 

is  described  as  "  in  perfect  time,"  '  of  the  Manganjas 
"  in  perfect  time,"  -  of  the  Virginian  Savages,  "  in 
excellent  time,"  ^  and  so  on. 

When  Music  had  got  thus  far  in  her  development, 
next  would  come  the  natural  wish  to  lead  the  dance 
rather  than  follow  it.  The  obvious  way  to  attain 
this  distinction  was  by  marking  the  rhythm  so  strongly 
that  the  Drum  might  preponderate  over  the  noise 
of  the  dancers'  feet,  and  have  a  little  noise  to  itself. 
So  man  set  himself  to  work  to  increase  the  resonance 
of  the  Drum,  either  by  enlarging  its  bulk,  ^  or  by 
making  a  hole  in  the  side,  5  or  by  using  particular 
kinds  of  wood  for  it,  *"  or  better  still  by  getting  a 
more  resonant  drum-head.  So  he  set  hirnself  to 
try  all  sorts  of  things  for  drum-heads.  Sometimes 
he  tried  deer-skin,  7  or  goat-skin,  ^  or  stag-skin,  ^ — 
or  he  would  try  shark  skin,  ^°or  antelope  skin,  " — or 
see  what  the  skin  of  a  whale's  tongue  ^^  would  do, 
or  vellum,  ^^  or  seal's  gut,  ^+ — or  he  would  try  the  skin 
of  a  buffalo's  neck,  '5 — or  lizard  skin  '^  or  a  piece  ot 
dried  goat-skin.  ^7  And  so  at  last  the  Drum  attained 
the  finest  resonance,  got  those  sonorous  powers  which 
we  hear  in  our  orchestras  to-day. 

But  alas !  every  blossom  contains  the  seeds  of  decay. 
Man's  path   upwards  is    beset  with  constant  dangers — 


I   Eyre,  II.  231.  2    Livingstone,  Zambesi,  109. 

3  Master  George  Percy  in  Purchas  His  Pilgrimes,  IV.  p.  1687 
"As  much  regularity  as  a  steam  engine  thumps  on  board  ship,"  says 
Livingstone  of  the  drumming  of  the  Balondas.     Missionary  Travels,  467. 

4  Infra. 

5  As  the  Balonda  negroes.     Livingstone's  Missionary  Travels,  293. 

6  As  the  Fans.     Du  Chaillu,  p.  80.  7   Du  Chaillu,  80. 

8   lb.  9   Dobrizhoffer.     History  of  the  Abipones,  II.  267. 

10  Cap.  Cook,  I.  87.  II   Livingstone.     Missionary  Travels,  293. 

12  Crantz.     Greenland,  I,  176.         i3;Ib  .         u  Whymper's  Alaska,  143 

15   Catlin   I.  163.  16  Jukes'  Voyage  of  H. M.S.  Fly,  I.  176. 

17  Marsden's  History  of  Sumatra,  p.  ifio, 

D 


34  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

pits  and  snares  encompass  it  on  every  hand.  Those 
earnest  strainings  after  perfection  resulted  only  in 
leading  him  utterly  and  wholly  astray  from  the  way 
on  which  he  had  so  fairly  started.  In  his  endeavours 
after  resonance  he  had  ventured  too  far  into  the  domain 
of  mere  Noise  to  remain  long  insensible  to  its  effects. 
He  had  laid  himself  open  to  the  epidemic  of  Uproar, 
and  bewildered  and  confused  he  resigned  himself 
to  the  plague.  And  for  a  long  vista  of  years  we  see 
him  subdued  to  the  mere  sensuous  influence  of  mere 
Sound  without  any  heed  to  whether  there  was  Rhythm 
or  Reason  in  it — beating  bellowing  tom-toms  with 
the  Camma  negroes,  '  pounding  into  roaring  drums 
with  the  Marquesans.  ^  banging  gigantic  gourds  with 
the  Ujiji  negroes,  3  and  battering  away  at  uncouth 
and  crashing  kettles  with  the  natives  of  Karague.  ^ 

Thus   what    began    as   an    Intellectual    Mystery    has 
ended  in  mere  Sensuous  din  and  noise. 

Sic  omnia  fatis 
In  perjus  ruere  ac  retro  sublapsa  referri. 


1    Du  Chaillu,  p.  201.  "    Melville's  Marquesas,  p.  185. 

3   Cameron's  Across  Africa,  I.  250.     4    Speke's  Source  of  the  Nile,  p.  243, 


THE      PIPE     STAGE,  35 


CHAPTER    II. 
THE    PIPE    STAGE. 


What  is  he  doing  the  Great  God  Pan 

Down  in  the  reeds  by  the  river  ? 
Spreading  ruin  and  scattering  ban, 
Splashing  and  paddling  with  hoofs  of  a  goat, 
And  breaking  the  golden  lilies  afloat 

With  the  dragon-fly  on  the  river  ? 

He  tore  out  a  reed,  the  Great  God  Pan, 
From  the  deep  cool  bed  of  the  river, 

The  limpid  water  turbidly  ran. 

And  the  broken  lilies  a-dying  lay, 

And  the  dragon-fly  had  fled  away, 
Ere  he  brought  it  out  of  the  river. 

High  on  the  shore  sat  the  Great  God  Pan 

While  turbidly  flowed  the  river. 
And  hacked  and  hewed  as  a  great  god  can 
With  his  hard  bleak  steel  at  the  patient  reed, 
Till  there  was  not  a  sign  of  a  leaf  indeed 

To  prove  it  fresh  from  the  river. 

He  cut  it  short  did  the  Great  God  Pan, 

(How  tairit  stood  in  the  river  !) 
Then  drew  the  pith,  like  the  heart  of  a  man. 
Then  notched  the  poor  dry  empty  thing 

In  holes  as  he  sat  by  the  river. 

"  This  is  the  way  "  laughed  the  Great  God  Pan, 

(Laughed  while  he  sat  by  the  river  :) 
"The  only  way  since  gods  began 
To  make  sweet  music  they  could  succeed." 
Then,  dropping  his  mouth  to  a  hole  in  the  reed 
He  blew  in  power  by  the  river. 


Now  though  I  love  the  Great  God  Pan,  yet  hold 
I  it  unfair  that  he  should  thus  be  paid  the  honour 
which  by  rights  belongs  to  another.  For  if  the  Great 
God  Pan  made  the  Pipe,  who  made  the  Great 
God    Pan  ?     Most    excellent    is    that    nobility    of    Man 


36  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

which  can  thus  freely  waive  the  honour  that  by  right 
belongs  to  him.  And  most  noble  that  modesty  which 
thus  explains  away  that  shrewd  invention,  thus  tacitly 
repudiates  that  glorious  imagination  to  which  the 
very  gods  themselves  owe  their  being. 

Who  was  the  mighty  genius  that  first  conceived 
the  idea  of  fashioning  a  dumb  reed  into  a  speaking 
flute  ? — We  would  fain  know  him  well,  Qui  genus, 
unde  domo, — t^oOl  ol  ttoAis  I'^Se  TOK-Tjes ;  But  he  alas  !  like 
all  the  greatest  geniuses  of  the  human  race  is  lost 
to  us  for  ever ;  '  he  is  clean  forgotten  as  a  dead 
man,  out  of  mind;'  his  very  name  has  perished. 
Who  was  the  sage  that  first  scattered  seed  on  the 
ground,  and  told  men  to  wait  patiently  for  a  crop  ? 
Who  was  the  genius  that  for  the  first  time  in  the 
history  of  man  produced  and  nursed  the  spark  of  fire  ? 
And  the  inventor  of  the  Pipe  may  claim  to  rank  with 
either  of  these.  Yet  we  know  very  well  the  Epigoni  I 
of  these  great  men,  and  pay  them  sometimes  more 
than  sufficient  •  meed  of  honour.  We  acknowledge 
loudly  that  M.  Sax  has  effected  wonderful  improvements 
in  the  clarionet,  and  we  pay  the  highest  praise  to 
Bernhard  the  German  for  inventing  the  Modern  Organ. 
But  who  was  the  inventor  of  the  simple  Pipe  ?  In 
a  similar  way,  people  almost  deify  the  discoverer  of 
the  Steam  Engine ;  and  they  think  they  are  doing 
a  very  clever  thing  in  tracing  back  the  Steam  Engine 
to  the  Tea  Kettle — forgetting  that  the  Tea  Kettle  is 
the  more  wonderful  invention  of  the  two. 


II. 


The  Pipe  Stage  speaks  of  a  far  higher  intellectual 
development  abroad  than  the  Drum  Stage  did.  Unlike 
the   Drum  which  became  out   of  the   darkness  of  nothing 


THE     PIPE     STAGE.  37 

we  can  scarcely  tell  how,  the  Pipe  was  made  consciously 
to  satisfy  purely  human  needs.  There  is  as  little  any 
question  of  a  definite  Musical  Instrument  however 
in  this  case  as  in  that,  and  to  get  at  the  beginnings 
of  the  form,  we  must  still  tread  in  other  fields  than 
those  of  Art  or  Music.  But  then  there  is  no  need  to 
turn  to  the  sphere  of  superstition  to  help  us.  For 
in  everything  that  concerns  the  Pipe  there  is  a  plain 
business-like  spirit  most  clearly  apparent,  and  so 
eminently  rationalistic  are  the  features  that  surround  it 
that  I  seem  to  find  signs  of  an  intellectual  Illumination 
as  the  concomitant  of  the  Instrument's  invention  and 
development  in  Prehistoric  Times. 

And  first  of  all  let  us  consider  the  elder  bi-anch  of 
the  Pipe  Family,  that  is  the  Horn  and  Trumpet  species 
for  there  is  good  evidence  that  these  saw  the  light 
considerably  earlier  than  the  smaller  members  of  the 
family  to  whom  the  term  Pipe  is  in  general  more 
exclusively  applied  ^ — let  us  therefore  consider  the 
Horn  and  Trumpet  species ;  and  we  shall  find  that 
among  modern  savages  the  use  of  the  Horn  is  in 
nearly  every  case  limited  to  warfare.  When  Orellana 
went  his  expedition  down  the  Maranon,  the  savages 
who  from  time  to  time  attacked  him  almost  invariably 
preluded  their  onset  by  a  tremendous  din  of  horns 
and  trumpets.  -  The  Muras,  who  were  the  scourge 
of  the  colonists  in  South  America,  would  always 
perform  a  wild  overture  on  horns  before  commencing 
their  attack.  ^  The  people  of  the  Orinoco  used  horns 
fer     a    similar    purpose.  ^     The     Samoans   blow   conch- 


I  Infra,  p.  2   Southey's  History  of  Brazil,  I.  8g,  go,  95. 

3   Southey  loc.  cit.  4   P.  Gumilla.     El  Orinoco  Illustrado. 


38  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

shells  as  a  prelude  to  the  war.  ^  The  savages  of 
Guiana  commence  their  attacks  with  a  screech  of 
horns  and  trumpets.  ^ 

Now  this  use  of  the  Horn  in  warfare  is  plainly  an 
infringement  on  one  of  the  uses  of  the  old  Drum ;  for  the 
Drum  was  supposed  "  to  give  victory  over  enemies,"  and 
doubtless  the  Horn  was  used  with  similar  intention. 
But  let  us  notice  how  much  more  rational  is  the  use  of 
the  new  instrument  than  the  old.  For  how  was  the 
Drum  supposed  to  confer  victory  ?  By  a  piece  of  pure 
Fetichistic  superstition.  It  was  rubbed  on  the  thighs  of 
the  warriors  previous  to  their  entering  battle,  and  this 
was  supposed  to  endow  them  with  irresistible  strength.  ^ 
But  with  the  Horn  there  was  no  magic  concerned ;  for 
Gideon  is  not  the  first  man  in  the  world's  history  who  has 
routed  a  host  by  a  sudden  blast  of  the  trumpets.  All 
panic  is  derivable  from  trumpet-like  sound,  if  we  may 
trust  the  derivation  of  the  word  which  refers  the  first 
panic  to  the  time  when  the  Great  God  Pan  put  to  flight 
an  army  of  Indians  by  a  sudden  shout,  just  as  he  set  the 
Titans  running  on  another  occasion,  by  a  similar  means.  4 
And  Astolfo's  horn  in  Ariosto  — 

e  di  si  orribii  suono 
Ch'ovunque  s'oda,  fa  fuggir  la  gente. 
Non  puo  trovarsi  al  mondo  un  cor  si  buono 
Che  possa  non  fuggir  come  lo  sente. 

This  passage  lets  out  the  secret.  For  it  is  this  orribii 
suono,  this  "  hellishe  sounde  " — to  borrow  an  elegant 
phrase  from  Purchas   His  Pilgrimes — which  if  dehvered 


1  Ellis'  Polynesian  Researches,  I.  283. 

2  Engel's  Musical  Instruments,  p.  70. 

3  Dobrizhoffer.     History  of  the  Abipones,  II.,  65-6. 

4  See  this  question   particularly  entered  into,  and  from    the  point  of 
view  in  the  text,  in  Polya;nus'  Stratagems. 


THE      PIPE     STAGE,  39 

in  sufficient  volume  and  with  sufficient  suddenness  will 
infallibly  produce  the  effect  that  Ariosto  speaks  of.  The 
railway  whistle  makes  us  start ;  if  we  thought  it  were 
inimically  delivered,  we  should  run. 

Now  though  we  might  well  hesitate  to  say  that  the 
savages  looked  for  a  result  so  entirely  miraculous,  we 
•may  suppose  that  their  horns  and  trumpets  were 
designed  to  increase  the  terror  of  their  onset,  and  contri- 
bute, to  say  the  least  of  it,  to  scaring  the  foe,  since  we 
find  them  all  doing  their  best  to  increase  the  sound  of 
their  horns  and  trumpets  to  unparalleled  heights,  and 
apparently  having  no  other  object  in  the  manufacture  of 
them  than  the  production  of  "  helhshe  feounde."  The 
ture  or  trumpet  of  the  Muras  has  a  most  horrible  and 
piercing  tone.  "  The  sound  of  the  conch,"  writes  Ellis 
©f  the  Conch  of  Samoa,  "  is  more  horrific  than  that  of 
the  Drum  " — in  fact  he  goes  on  to  say  that  it  is  the  most 
"  horrific"  sound  he  has  ever  heard.  "  The  sound  of  the 
botutos  "  (trumpets)  "  of  the  Orinoco  tribes,"  says  Mr. 
Engel,  "  is  really  terrific."  And  what  effect  such 
unearthly  noises  could  produce  upon  the  hearers  we  may 
judge  when  we  are  told  that  even  today  the  Spanish 
settlers  cannot  hear  the  awful  trumpets  of  the  savages 
without  falling  into  violent  agitation  and  terror.  ' 

Once  proved  efficacious  for  scaring  the  foe  what  so 
natural  that  man  should  employ  his  horn  as  a  weapon 
against  his  arch  enemies  the  spirits  ?  And  this  is  why  the 
South  African  rain-makers  blow  a  horn  when  they  conjure 
the  weather — it  is  to  frighten  away  the  evil  spirits  that 


1  Some  cases  are  to  hand  where  the  object  of  the  trumpeting  is 
expressly  stated  as  the  above,  e.g.,  Osorio's  History  of  the  Portuguese,  I. 
365.  The  Portuguese  themselves  also  used  blasts  of  trumpets  to  frighten 
the  people  of  Cochin  China  in  an  engagement  and  succeeded  in  doing  so 
lb.  187. 


40  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

cause  the  drought,  '  and  the  tribes  of  the  Amazon  in 
Hke  manner  have  their  Spirit  Music — large  trumpets  in 
sets  of  eight,  which  they  play  for  the  express  purpose  of 
frightening  away  spirits.  ^ 

Thus  the  Horn  has  been  vested  with  one  of  the 
powers  which  belonged  to  the  old  Drum.  But  it  has 
got  its  power  in  quite  a  different  way.  For  while  the 
magic  was  in  the  Drum  from  the  first,  the  Horn  has 
received  its  power  over  the  Spirits  as  an  afterthought 
and  solely  in  consequence  of  certain  effects  having  first 
been  noted  and  observed  which  it  produced  on  man. 
"There  is  a  considerable  intellectual  advance  to  be  seen 
in  the  reasoning  which  even  this  little  syllogism  implies  ; 
and  an  emancipation  from  Fetichism  is  discernible 
generally  in  the  footing  of  familiarity  which  man  now 
takes  up  in  relation  to  these  spirits — in  which  familiarity 
we  see  the  dawn  of  that  Secularism  which  now  began 
to  assert  itself  in  Life  and  Thought,  and  of  which  it  will 
be  afterwards  found  the  Pipe  family  are  the  great 
exponents. 

That  it  was  on  the  frightening  power  of  the  Horn  and 
no  other  that  man  relied  for  its  ability  to  influence  the 
Spirits  may  I  think  be  clearly  seen  from  the  ceremony 
which  is  practised  by  the  Lamas  of  Thibet  and  which 
may  be  taken  as  a  representative  of  similar  ones  among 
other  peoples.  At  stated  periods,  M.  Hue  tells  us,  4000 
Lamas  assemble  on  the  roofs  of  the  various  monasteries 
and  blow  trumpets  and  conch  shells  all  night  long.     An 


1  That  unfavourable  weather  is  attributed  by  savages  to  the  presence 
of  spirits  in  the  air  and  that  the  main  point  at  issue  is  to  frighten  them 
away  we  may  know  from  the  old  man  in  Guiana  whom  Brett  found 
beating  his  breast  and  howling  in  order  as  he  said  to  frighten  the  evil 
spirits  and  so  get  the  weather  he  wanted.  Brett's  Indian  Tribes  of 
Guiana, p.  169.  2   Wallace's  Amazons. 


THE     PIPE     STAGE.  4I 

old  Lama  gave  him  the  following  explanation  of  the 
rite  :  It  had  been  estabhshed,  he  said,  to  drive  away 
demons  by  which  the  country  had  formerly  been 
infested.  They  had  caused  all  kinds  of  maladies  among 
the  cattle ;  corrupted  the  cow's  milk ;  disturbed  the 
Lamas  in  their  cells ;  and  even  carried  their  audacity  so 
far  as  to  force  themselves  into  the  choir  at  the  hour  of 
prayer.  During  the  night  these  evil  spirits  used  to 
assemble  at  the  bottom  of  the  ravine  and  frighten 
everybody  in  the  neighbourhood  out  of  their  wits  by 
the  noises  they  made.  Till  at  last  a  learned  Lama  hit 
upon  the  idea  of  fighting  them  with  their  own  weapons ; 
and  imitated  their  cries  with  Horns  and  Conch  Shells — 
most  successfully,  apparently,  for  Hue  describes  the 
uproar  of  the  horns  united  with  the  voices  of  the 
Lamas  as  like  the  howling  of  a  multitude  of  wild  beasts. 
Since  the  institution  of  this  rite  the  demons  it  may  be 
remarked  have  entirely  vanished.  ^  The  magic  horn  of 
of  the  South  African  rain-maker  gets  its  magic  on  precisely 
the  same  terms,  for  the  louder  the  sound,  the  more 
potent  is  the  spell.  The  old  rain-maker  at  Lobore  had 
only  a  whistle,  but  when  Baker  gave  him  a  German  horn 
fitted  with  brass,  "  he  grinned  till  the  tears  ran  down  his 
cheeks,  and  said,  *  I  am  a  great  sheik  now.  There  is 
no  rain-maker  so  great  as  L'  "  ^  To  the  same  category 
must  be  referred  those  ceremonies  which  take  place  in 
many  nations  at  the  time  of  the  new  moon  or  at  an 
eclipse — in  either  case  for  the  same  reason,  and  whether 
the  spirits  are  to  be  frightened  from  the  young  crescent, 
or  from  the  sick  and  blackened  disc  they  have  bewitched, 
trumpets    will    be    equally    efficacious.      Of    these    the 


i   Hue's  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet,  and  China,  p.  21S.     Cf  also  p.  39. 
3   Ismailia,  II.  2. 


42  HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

ceremonies  of  the  Peruvians  may  be  taken  as  good 
illustrations,  of  the  ancient  Mexicans,  and  of  the  Romans 
as  described  by  Tacitus. 


III. 


The  blasts  of  the  Horn  then  "  frighten  "  away.  So  be 
it.  But  what  shall  we  say  of  that  soft  velvety  tone  that 
falls  on  the  ear  like  flakes  of  snow  on  the  air — I  mean 
that  tone  which  ripples  from  the  Flute  ?  It  was  surely 
not  ior  frightening  purposes  that  the  Flute  first  learnt  to 
lisp.  "  Frightening  "  I  venture  to  sa}',  was  an  idea  that 
was  never  in  the  head  of  its  inventor  for  a  moment. 
And  when  we  find  the  Flute  or  to  speak  more  broadly  the 
small  form  of  Pipe  brought  into  connection  with  the 
spirits,  as  it  was  articled  to  religion  among  the  Greeks 
and  Romans  as  the  instrument  par  excellence  of  ritual, 
and  in  its  composite  form  of  Organ  is  still  the  only  musical 
instrument  allowed  in  churches,  while  plainly  enough 
there  must  have  been  some  potency  attached  to  it  in  the 
first  instance  to  secure  it  this  position,  it  is  equally  plain 
that  this  potency  did  not  consist  in  an}'  assumed  power 
to  frighten  away  the  evil  spirits,  such  as  brought  the  Horn 
into  the  ritual  of  the  Lamas.  If  indeed  it  was  credited 
with  any  point  of  contact  with  the  evil  spirits  at  all, 
which  seems  to  say  the  least  of  it  problematical,  its 
power  would  rather  be  to  beguile  them  with  beauty  than 
to  expel  them  with  noise.  Shall  we  say  in  one  word  that 
it  charmed  them  away  ?  This  would  be  the  only  feasible 
explanation,  and  even  this  would  be  perhaps  almost  too 


THE     PIPE     STAGE.  43 

refined  an  idea  even  for  the  Greeks  and  Romans — savage 
nations  presenting  a  total  blank  on  the  question.  But 
it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  rather  the  opposite  ;  and  that 
the  Flute  v^as  used  to  influence  the  good  spirits  rather 
than  the  evil  ones — its  beautiful  tone  v^as  the  lure  to  woo 
the  tassel-gentles  down — like  Homer's  Kvta-a  and  Noah's 
"savoury  odour"  it  was  to  secure  the  co-operation  of  the 
gods  in  propria  persona.  So  sailors  now-a-days  whistle 
for  a  wind,  but  then  it  is  for  a  favourable  wind  they 
whistle. 

And  that  this  is  the  more  probable  explanation  of  the 
two  will  better  appear  when  we  consider  the  nature  of 
its  influence  over  Man  ;  for  it  is  with  the  Flute  as  it  was 
with  the  Horn — the  power  over  the  spirits  is  merely  a 
reflection  and  reiteration  of  some  antecedent  observed 
power  over  Man. 

What   then   was    the  effect  which    the    Flute  exerted 
over   man — in    other    words    what    was    the    origin    of 
the  flute  ?     for    the    most    characteristic    of    its    effects 
was   probably   the    original    one,    and    it    is    the    most 
characteristic     effect     that    we    would     discover.     This 
also  will  enable    us  to  see    how  the   passage  from    the 
Drum     Stage    to   the    Pipe    Stage    had    been    brought 
about ;    for   plainly   there     must    have   been    some   very 
valid  reason  abroad  why  man  should  abandon  beating 
drums  and  take  to   blowing  in   a   tube  instead.     As    to 
the   Horn,   it  is  not  so    diflicult  to  see   how   the    Horn 
perhaps    came    into   being.     For   it    came  in    answer  to 
a    want,     the     purely    practical     want     in    warfare     of 
striking    terror    into    the    foe.     And    there    is    another 
practical    want    which     the     Horn    would     supply ;     it 
would   serve    the   purpose,  when    occasion   required,    of 
a   signal.     Indeed   the   theory   that    signalling   was    the 
primary    object   of    the     Horn's    invention,    might   well 
be   put    forward,    and    evidence    in    favour   of    such    a 


44  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

view  be  found  in  the  Signal  Horn  of  the  Papuans,  ^ 
the  war  whistle  of  the  North  American  Indians,  ^  of 
th3  Mexicans,  ^  and  the  signalling  trumpets  of  the 
Itatines,  "^  etc.  But  is  there  any  purely  practical 
want  which  the  soft  velvety  tone  of  the  Flute  supplies  ? 
That  can  never  have  been  used  for  frightening  or 
for  signalling  or  for  any  purpose  of  the  sort.  And 
looking  at  it  in  its  newness,  looking  at  its  origin, 
what  could  have  induced  the  first  man  who  ever  did 
so  to  chip  and  trim  the  first  reed  with  his  knife,  or 
drill  the  first  bone,  or  bind  the  first  stalks  together, 
or  whatever  the  form  were  which  the  Flute  or  small 
Pipe  first  took,  what  induced  him  to  set  about  making 
it  in  the  first  instance  ?  What  want  had  he  which 
this  thing  could  supply  ?  The  want  of  a  toy  or 
bauble  to  amuse  himself  with  ?  Was  it  to  please 
himself  with  the  sound  that  he  became  a  pipe 
manufacturer  ?  By  no  means.  Toys  form  a  very  small 
element  in  savage  economy — they  are  the  prerogatives 
of  the  idlers  of  civilisation.  Man  had  something  else 
to  do  in  those  days  than  that  he  could  afford  to 
waste  his  time  over  toys. 

//  Alas  !  that  we  cannot  pierce  the  gloom  of  ages  to 
question  the  inventor  himself.  But  since  we  cannot  get 
at  the  real  inventor  of  the  Pipe  let  us  ask  the  question  of 
its  reputed  inventor.     The  Greeks  who  were  nearer  the 


1  Which  is  used  for  this  purpose  alone,  "die  alleen  gebezigd  wordt 
tot  het  geven  van  alarm-signalen,"  says  Rosenberg.  Reistochten  naar  de 
Geelvinkbaai  of  Niew  Guinea,  p.  93. 

2  Catlin,  I.  243.  3    Southey's  History  of  Brazil,  I.  341. 

4  Who  have  constructed  a  most  elaborate  system  of  signalling, 
"  Tubis,  tibiisque  certa  inflatis  ratione,  ita  quod  volunt  significant, 
ut  et  longe  audiantur,  et  perinde  ac  si  expressis  vocibus  loquerentur 
intelligantur.  Neque  tamen  ab  iis,  qui  eorum  linguam  norunt  quoe 
significantur  percipiuntur,  nisi  apud  eos  versati  sint."     Muratori,  I.  5. 


THE      PIPE      STAGE.  45 

first  movements  of  human  civilisation  than  \ve^  are 
assigned  the  invention  to  the  Great  God  Pan.  The  heart 
of  their  legends  is  generally  sound,  though  the  body  may 
be  fancy  work — and  by  adopting  this  method  of  inquiry 
we  may  perhaps  get  at  what  we  want.  Now  whenever 
the  great  god  Pan — the  gayest  Lothario  of  Olympus, 
the  only  one  of  the  Gods  who  ever  wooed  Diana  success- 
fully ^ — I  say,  whenever  the  great  god  Pan  comes 
prominently  forward  as  an  actor  in  the  human  drama, 
we  may  be  tolerably  ciear  as  to  what  his  motives  are  in 
so  appearing.  And  if  he  constructed  his  Pan-pipe  out 
of  the  body  of  the  nymph  Syrinx,  who  was  changed  into 
a  reed,  we  may  be  tolerably  certain  that  his  views  were 
not  limited  to  playing  a  requiem  over  her  grave,  but  that 
he  had  at  the  same  time  some  other  nymph  in  his  eye 
who  was  not  changed  into  a  reed.  If  the  metamorphosed 
Syrinx  really  gave  him  the  first  idea  of  the  instrument, 
the  utmost  we  can  do  is  to  say  in  the  words  of  King 
James  V.  of  Scotland,  about  a  totally  different  event,  "  It/ 
began  wi'  a  lass,  and  it  wull  end  wi'  a  lass." 

And  for  my  own  part  I  have  no  doubt  that  what  holds\\ 
of  the  Great  God  Pan  holds  equally  of  the  savage  who 
first  notched  or  drilled  a  reed  by  the  water-side,  and  made 
the  first  pipe  which  human  ear  ever  heard.  The  Pipe 
was  to  be  the  Lover's  tongue  by  which  he  might  dis- 
course his  passion  to  his  mistress  ;  for  he  who  through 
dearth  of  eloquence  was  unable  to  win  his  lady's  favours, 
must  bethink  him  of  some  other  soft  persuasive,  and  so 
the  soft  velvety  tone  breathed  the  passion  which  his  dull 
tongue  was  unable  to  express.  The  Flute  stood  him 
in  stead  of  a  tongue,  and  so  he  chose  by  preference  to 


^  2.Pan,  deus  Arcadiae,  captam  te,  Luna  fefellit 

In  nemora  alta  vocans  nee  tu  aspernata  vocantem. 


46  HISTORY      OF      MUSIC. 

express  himself.  Now  this  is  the  character  of  the  Artist, 
and  for  the  first  time  in  our  history — for  he  is  the  Artist 
who  chooses  some  other  medium  than  words  to  express 
his  feehngs  by,  in  whom  the  sensuous  so"  far  preponder- 
ates over  the  intellectual  as  to  render  him  conscious  of 
the  latter's  deficiency  and  oblige  him  to  search  for  some 
more  ductile,  because  more  consentaneous  medium  for 
delivering  his  ideas — it  may  be  he  chooses  colour,  or 
plastic  form,   or  sound,  but  painter,   sculptor,  musician, 

/  all  three  are  doing  the  same  thing  and  for  the  same 
reason — they  are  striving  to  express  themselves  by 
another  medium  than  Language,  because  they  feel 
they  are  not  so  strong  in  Language  as  they  are  in 
this  other  thing,  and  because  their  ideas  transmute 
themselves  more  readily  into  plastic  forms  or  into  tones 

,'    than     they  do    into    words.       Thus    is    Art    merely    a 

\  Language. 

And  so  when  social  refinement  had  reached  that  point 
that  man  ceased  to  regard  woman  as  a  kind  of  attractive 
fawn  that  was  to  be  hunted  and  made  the  property  of  the 
first  who  could  catch  her  without  any  regard  to  what   her 
feelings  on  the  subject  might  be,  when  little  by  little  he 
came  to  view  her  as  a  being  with  the  same  feelings  and 
passions    with    himself — I    say,    vv^hen    this    stage   was 
reached  in  the  evolution  of  society,  match-making  would 
lose  much  of  its  roughness  and  the  idea  of  such  a  thing 
as   courtship    would    first   dawn   on   the    human   mind 
Behold    therefore   each   man   conducting  his    courtship 
according  to  his  lights ;  and  while  some  relied  on  their 
powers  of  language,  and  others  on  extra  coats  of  paint 
to  carry  their  point,  the  musician  would  question  his  art 
as  to  what  it  could  do  to  persuade  his  fair  one.     And 
naturally  he  would  first  try  his  drum — and  that  the  Drum 
could   be   sometimes  successful   we   know  well,  for   the 
North  American  Indian  still  uses  it  in  the  Wabeno  rite 


THE      PIPE      STAGE.  47 

to  excite  the  passions  of  his  mistress  ^ — a  use  which  is 
sanctioned  by  no  less  an  authority  than  Petronius,  whose 
opinion  on  such  a  matter  ought  surely  to  be  entitled  to 
every  consideration.  ^  But  the  Drum  falHng  behind  in 
the  uxorial  race — if  indeed  it  was  ever  freely  employed 
which  is  more  than  doubtful — the  /^ovo-tKos  who  would 
a-wooing  go  was  put  to  taxing  his  brains  for  some  other 
instrument  which  would  be  more  efficacious,  and  as  a 
result  of  long  experiment  he  discovered  the  Flute.  And 
in  it  he  discovered  a  lure  which  brought  the  tassel-gentles 
flocking  to  his  side  as  we  shall  see  in  the  sequel. 

I  have  made  decided  statements  here,  and  I  shall 
proceed  to  prove  them.  The  Flute  is  not  only  the 
darling  instrument  of  those  savage  nations .  who  are 
renowned  for  their  gallantry,  but  there  are  also  cases  of 
the  original  use  of  the  instrument  surviving  in  all  its 
purity.  Among  the  North  American  Indians  we  find 
what  is  called  the  Winnebago  courting  flute.  "  In  the 
vicinity  of  the  Upper  Mississippi,"  says  Catlin,  "  a  young 
man  will  serenade  his  mistress  with  it  for  days 
together  " — (they  sit  on  a  rock  near  the  wigwam  and 
blow  without  intermission) — "  until  she  accedes  to  his 
wishes,  and  gives  him  her  hand  and  heart."  ^  "  In  the 
island  of  Formosa,"  says  an  old  Dutch  Voyager,  "they  do 
not  buy  their  wives  with  moneys  ;  and  the  fathers  and 
mothers  are  in  nowise  consulted.  But  the  young  man 
appeareth  for  many  days  before  the  hut  of  his  sweet- 
heart, and  playeth  on  a  Flute  or  little  Pipe,  tiU  she  hath 
given  her  consent  to  espouse  him,  or  told  him  he  may 


1  See  Schoolcraft. 

2  Cymbala    cum   crotalis,  pruriginis  anna,  Priapo 

Ponit  at   adducta  tympana  pulsa  manu.     Priapea  XXVII.     Cf,   also 
Apuleius.       Metam  VIII.,  p,  212. 

3  Catlin's  North  American  Indians.     I,  243. 


48  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

depart  for  she  will  have  none  of  him."  '  The  ancient 
Peruvians  had  a  regular  love-language  for  the  Flute, 
and  so  powerful  an  appeal  could  it  make  to  the  female 
heart,  that  there  are  stories  of  girls  being  drawn  from 
a  distance  by  the  sound  of  the  Flute,  and  throwing 
themselves  into  the  arms  of  the  man  who  played  it.  - 
These  are  some  instances  in  point;  but  the  fact  that 
a  decided  penchant  for  the  Flute  and  a  decidedly 
amorous  temperament  seem  to  go  together  in  the  savage 
world,  hints  still  more  clearly,  I  think,  at  what  the 
original  use  of  the  instrument  was.  The  sensual 
Caishanas  of  the  Upper  Amazon  spend  their  time  in 
lying  in  hammocks  all  day  long,  playing  Pan-pipes.  ^ 
The  effeminate  Bamanwatos  will  lie  for  days  together 
playing  pipes  under  the  shade  of  the  trees.  '^  The 
voluptuous  Marquesans  and  Otaheitans  and  other 
Polynesians  are  expert  performers  on  the  Flute,  and  have 
many  varieties  of  it.  ^  While  the  continental  Malays, 
whose  temperament  is  almost  as  amorous  as  theirs,  have 
such  a  passion  for  the  instrument  that  not  content  with 
playing  on  it,  they  must  bore  holes  in  growing  bamboos  ; 
and  so-  turn  them  into  "living  ^olian  flutes."  ^  And 
perhaps  the  most  significant  fact  of  all  is  that  the  Flute 
is  the  instrument  par  excellence  of  the  Arreois,  who  in 
the  divided  attention  they  pay  to  Love  and  Art,  may  be 
said  to  bestow  at  least  a  moiety  of  that  attention  on  the 
former.  7 

The  mere  fact  that  the  Love  Call,  to  borrow  an  expres- 


1  Rechteren's  Dutch  East  India  Company's  Voyages. 

2  Garcilasso  de  la  Vega.     Commentarios  Reales.     II,  26,  53,  &c. 

3  Bates'  Amazons.     I,  376. 

4  Chapman's  Travels  into  the  Interior  of  S.  Africa.     I,  39. 

5  See  Captain  Cook.     I,  and  infra  p. 

6  Tylor's  Early  History  of  Mankind. 

7  Cap.  Cook,  I,  Ellis'  Polynesian  Researches,     I,  316. 


THE     PIPE      STAGE.  49 

sion  of  Mr.  Darwin's,  is  the  only  definite  purpose  for 
which  the  Flute  is  employed  among  savage  races, 
outside  its  employment  as  a  musical  instrument — which 
is  obviously  a  much  later  use,  for  it  could  never  have 
owed  its  origin  to  that,  nor  could  its  invention  have  been 
due  to  any  disinterested  efforts  on  the  part  of  man  to 
develop  the  Art  of  Music — the  mere  fact,  then,  of  so 
definite  a  purpose  of  employment,  is  sufficient  to 
communicate  a  peculiar  character  to  the  instrument ; 
and  if  there  were  only  these  three  instances  forthcoming 
of  its  use  as  a  Love  Call,  the  Winnebago  courting  flute, 
the  Formosa  courting  flute,  and  the  Peruvian  love 
flute,  ^  and  if  they  stood  alone  and  nothing  went  to  help 
us  eke  out  their  evidence,  if  there  were  no  Marquesans, 
or  Otaheitans,  or  Arreois  in  the  question,  and  a  dead 
blank  through  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  I  should  still  have  t 
no  hesitation  in  assigning  the  origin  of  the  Flute  to  the  1 
Love  Call,  because  its  use  as  such  is  so  singular  and  at  ' 
the  same  time  so  appropriate  that  it  could  not  be  an 
afterthought ;  while  at  the  same  time  it  points  to  such  a 
naive  and  primitive  state  of  society  that  it  could  never 
have  been  the  artificial  use  of  a  later  age  but  must  have 
been  the  natural  growth  of  an  early  one.  I  will  tell  you 
why — As  the  World  got  older  (and  this  holds  of  savages 
equally  as  of  the  civilised)  as  the  world  got  older,  women 
got  wiser,  and  were  no  longer  to  be  taken  in  by  such 
baits  as  the  tones  of  a  paltry  flute,  even  though  there  was 
true  love  behind  it.  And  little  by  little  they  made  it 
plain  that  the  only  Love  Call  that  would  woo  them 
successfully  was  a  much  more  substantial  one — Money, 
or  its  equivalent,  beads,  spike-nails,  oxen,  or  reindeer. 
And  when  once  the  genuine  mercenary  age  had  set  in. 


I  Since  writing  this  chapter  I  have  come  across  another  instance  of  the 
'  courting  flute  '  viz.,  among  the  Gila  tribes  of  North  America.  Bancroft. 
Native  Races  of  the  Pacific.     I,  549. 

E 


50  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

no  one  in  his  senses  would  dream  of  starting  such  a 
practice,  as  wooing  by  music — if  it  was  ever  started  at 
all  it  must  have  had  its  origin  long  before.  A  man  who 
went  blowing  flutes  about  the  place,  when  once  money 
and  oxen  were  in  fashion,  with  the  idea  that  he  could  win 
his  mistress  thereby,  was  little  better  than  a  fool.  As 
indeed  the  lady  in  Aristsenetus  tells  him  point  blank  to 
his  face.  "  Why  do  you  crack  your  cheeks  with  blowing 
your  pipes  under  my  windows  ?  Don't  you  know,  you 
goose,  that  a  flute  isn't  the  slightest  use  now-a-days, 
without  a  reasonable  supply  of  the  '  ready '  to  back  it 
up."  ^  Here  is  a  change  for  the  worse  in  the  fair  sex 
since  the  time  when  the  Winnebago  courting  flute  made 
female  hearts  fall  in  legions  before  it. 

This  sally  of  Aristsenetus'  makes  me  think,  on  further 

consideration,    that    perhaps    I   was   a    little    hasty    in 

assuming  a  dead  blank  throughout  the  world  about  the 

love  inspiring  power  of  the  Flute ;    for  though  his  lady 

boasts  of  being  invulnerable,  she  admits  (as  the  reader 

will  gather   by  reference  to    the  original  which  I  have 

quoted  at  the  foot  of  the  page)  that  there  was  a  time 

whenthe  result  might  have  been  otherwise,  and  when 

the  Flute  might   have  quite  overcome  her  indifference. 

So  that  perhaps  I  was  equally  hasty  in  mahgning  the  fair 

sex  as  a  body,  and  it  may  be  that  what  I  said  only  holds 

of  some  of  them  and   not  of  all.      At   any  rate,  as   a 

classical  writer  has  helped  us  so  far,  let  us  see   what 

the  Greeks  and   Romans  generally  have  to  say  on  the 

matter.     It  may  be  that  the  Flute  had  not  yet  quite  lost 

all    its   old   powers    by   their   time;    that   its   power   to 


I  In  his  fourteenth  letter,  aAAot  tov  eraipiKov  -tjSi]  fxejj.ddT]Ka  filov 
/cat  apyvptii)  twv  vewv  tov  epwra  SoKt/xa^w.  oi'Se  anAo?  eraipav 
olSe  TT porpeTretv  dpyvptov  xcupis,  tl  ovv  ixaTrjv,  &  veoi 
^La.pp'qyvvT€  ras  jvadov;  l/x<^vcrcuvTes  rij  (Tvptyyi'      k.  t.  A. 


THE      PIPE      STAGE.  51 

inflame  the  heart  was  still  recognised  and  acknowledged. 
And  the  first  glance  shows  that  we  shall  not  search  in 
vain.  For  here  she  comes,  the  Goddess  of  Love,  her 
chariot  drawn  by  sparrows — and  Flutes  play  all  the 
while.  ^  What  better  stage  manager  could  she  have  than 
Johannes  Secundus  ?  He  knows  exactly  what  is  wanted 
to  guarantee  a  conquest— and  so  he  gives  her,  as  Cupid's 
chiefest  archery,  the  Flute.  And  Aristsenetus  would 
have  approved  his  wisdom  in  so  doing,  for  he  himself 
elsewhere  testifies  to  the  power  of  flutelike  sound  in 
exciting  the  passions.  ^  For  which  reason  Plato  would 
have  banished  flutes  from  his  republic,  3  and  for  which 
reason  Cleopatra  retained  them. 

"  Her  galley  down  the  Cydnus  rowed  ; 

"  The  oars  were  silver,  which  to  the  tunc  of  flutes 

"  Kept  stroke." 

"  And  while  they  played,"  says  Dryden  in  his 
rifacimento  of  the  passage, 

"  The  hearing  gave  new  pleasure  to  the  sight 
"  And  both  to  thought." 

It  was  obviously  for  the  same  reason  that  flutes  were 
used  to  accompany  those  monstrous  orgies  in  the  circus 
of  Constantinople  in  which  the  future  empress  Theodora 
played   the   leading   role    -* — namely,    to     stimulate    the 


1  Everard  (Johannes  Secundus)  Elegies  &c,,  Suivies  des  Baisers,  II,  349. 
A  man  that  has  caught  the  spirit  of  the  ancients  so  truly  (as  witness  his 
translation  of  TibuUus)  that  he  deserves  to  rank  among  them. 

2  P.  16.  in  the  Paris  edition.  Venus  herself  was  quite  fastidious  about 
sounds,  for  no  birds  were  admitted  into  Paphos  without  first  passing  a  kind 
of  competitive  examination  in  singing  : — 

"  Quo  non  admittitur  ales 
Ni  probet  ante  suos  Diva  sub  judice  cantus," 

3  Plat.  Rep,  III.  398-9. 

4  The  Byzantines  were  renowned  for  their  passion  for  the  flute  from 
the  earliest  times,  which  ^Elian  expressly  couples  as  we  do  with  amorous- 
ness— avXov  jxev  oiKovovTiS    xaipovcn,  Kal  to    epyov   avTOts  ai'Aetcr^at 

€<TT(,  (Various  Histories,  IH,,  14). 


52  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

spectators'  passions.  No  modest  woman,  thought  Plato, 
could  hear  the  Lydian  Pipe  with  impunity.  '  And  that 
there  was  something  more  than  mere  fancy  in  this  we 
may  judge  when  we  find  Leonardo  da  Vinci  employing 
the  velvety  tone  of  flutes  as  a  kind  of  spell  to  get  that 
pose  of  Mona  Lisa's  countenance  in  which  a  refined 
sensuahty  is  the  ground  characteristic.  And  the 
practical  Romans  thought  like  the  visionary  Plato  on  the 
matter — -with  them  "flute-player"  and  "courtesan"  were 
synonymous  terms.  ^ 

The  shepherds  of  Theocritus  and  Virgil,  who  lie 
dfeaming  of  love  all  the  day  long,  toast  their  mistresses 
in  carols  of  Pipes.  "  Your  flute  it  is  that  has  won  me," 
lisps  the  boy  in  Ausonius.  "  And  I  have  a  pipe  you  can't 
resist,"  cries  Virgil's  laughing  Copa.  The  Pipe  in  fact 
was  a  regular  Love  Philtre,  and  most  apropos  was  its 
employment  at  weddings,  where  it  was  the  only  instru- 
ment used.  3  Where  love  beams  the  brightest  and  where 
it  rages  the  wildest,  at  the  nuptials  of  Lucretia  and  at  the 
orgies  of  Theodora,  running  the  whole  gamut  of  the 
passion  it  was  born  to  expound,  do  we  find  the  Flute  and 
Pipe  in  limpid  luscious  tones  distilling  love — at  all  times 
and  in  all  places  inseparable  from  it — almost  part  and 
parcel  with  it.  For  when  Venus  found  Hymen,  how  was 
he  engaged  ?     He  was  playing  the  flute  under  a  plane- 


1  Plato,  lb. 

2  Horace  Sat.  I.  2,  i.  Juv.  Sat.,  III.  63.  Plautus  Epid.,  II.  2,  36. 
Most.  IV.,  3,  21,  Stich,  II.  3,  56,  &c,,  &c.  I  will  add  an  eminently 
suggestive  passage  from  a  Greek  comic  poet,  whose  name  I  forget,  which 
alludes  to  a  popular  superstition  among  the  Greeks  that  seems  effectually 
to  clinch  the  whole  question  at  issue  : — • 

(3  Zev,  KuXov  y    ecrrlv  aTroOavetv  avXov[xevov. 
TOVTOLs  ev  aSoti   yap  jxovols  e^ovcTLa 
d(^poSta^€iv    IcTTiv. 
?    Plautus.     Casina.    IV.,  3,    Cf.  also  Euripides.    Iphigen,  in  Taur.,  367 


THE     PIPE      STAGE.  53 

tree — "  Maenalios  modos  tentabat,"  says  Claudian — and 
quite  contented  with  his  lot.  And  when  she  begged  him 
ever  so  much  to  go  to  Palladius'  wedding,  he  wanted  not 
to  go.  He  would  still  be  dallying  with  his  pipes  in  the 
shade.  For  his  love  for  them  ran  in  his  blood,  you  must 
know.  He  was  the  only  son  of  Calliope  and  she  was 
the  Muse  who  ever  played  the  pipe.  Thus  the  Muse 
who  played  the  pipe  was  the  mother  of  the  god  of 
marriage ;  and  Venus  must  needs  have  him  and  his  pipes 
or  the  wedding  would  not  be  complete. 

So  Claudian  says  that  the  Muse  who  played  the  Pipe 
was  the  mother  of  the  God  of  Marriage.  Does  he  mean 
that  the  first  use  the  Pipe  was  put  to  was  to  create 
marriage  ?  At  any  rate  he  hints  it.  And  I  ask  is  it  not 
strange  to  find  this  idea  occurring  where  it  does  ? — is  it 
not  strange  that  a  Roman  exquisite,  the  fastidious 
Claudian,  the  Gautier  of  the  Romans,  should  imagine  the 
same  dwelling-place  for  love  as  the  poor  benighted 
savages  of  Formosa  ? 

But  what  is  almost  a  fancy  to  the  refined  Claudian  is 
terrible  earnest  to  rude  Man.  "  For,"  says  Garcilasso,  "  a 
Spaniard  met  an  Indian  woman  in  the  streets  of  Cuzco 
one  night  late ;  and  would  have  taken  her  back  to  his 
lodging,  but  she  cried  out :  '  For  God's  sake,  sir,  let  me 
go  ;  for  that  Flute  which  you  hear  in  yonder  tower  is 
calling  me  with  such  passion  and  tenderness  that  I 
cannot  refuse  the  summons  of  him  who  plays  it;  for  love 
constrains  me  to  go  thither,  that  I  may  be  his  wife  and 
that  he  may  be  my  husband.'  "  ^ 


I  "  Un  Espanol  topo  una  noche  a  desora  en  el  Cuzco  una  Yndia  que  el 
conoscia,  y  queriendo  bolueria  a  sua  posada  le  disco  la  Yndia :  Sefior, 
dexame  yr  donde  voy,  sabere  que  aquella  flauta  que  eyes  en  aquel  otero 
me  llama  con  mucha  passion  y  ternuia;  de  manera  que  me  fuerca  a  yr 
alia :  dexame  por  tu  vida  que  no  puedo  dexar  de  yr  alia,  que  el  amor  me 
llena  arrastrando  :  para  que  yo  sea  su  muger  y  el  mi  marido."  Garcilasso 
Commentarios  Reales,  II.,  xxvi. 


54  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

IV. 

But  the  Pipe  can  do  more  than  express  the  language  of 
Love ;  it  can  express  that  emotion  which  is  nearest  akin 
to  Love  ;  it  can  utter  the  language  of  Grief.  at'Atm,  alXiva 
sighs  the  Pipe  in  Moschus :  and  it  wailed  with  the 
mourners  at  Roman  funerals.  But  the  love  came  first 
and  the  grief  came  second.  For  man  must  first  have 
loved  before  he  can  know  what  grief  is;  and  there  were 
no  grief  if  there  were  no  love.  So  the  Love  came  first 
and  then  came  the  grief — as  it  is  in  the  world  to-day,  so 
was  it  in  those  old  dark  times  we  write  of.  ^ 


V. 


Mr.  Darwin  finds  the  origin  of  all  Instrumental  Music 
in  the  Love  Call.  I  shall  contest  myself  with  referring 
the  Flute  and  the  Pipe  to  that  origin.  And  I  would  here 
point  out,  bona  pace,  a  fact  which  he  misses,  which  is, 
that  to  preface  love-making  by  an  overture  of  Instru- 
mental Music,  or  to  seek  to  move  the  passions  of  the 
female  by  such  a  means,  or  even  to  consider  the  wishes 
of  the  'female  at  all  in  the  matter  implies  a  far  higher 
degree  of  social  refinement  than  we  can  imagine  to  exist 
at  the  early  period  he  speaks  of — for  his  remarks  would 
apply  to  the  most  rudimentary  species  of  the  drum  form. 
And  we  are  credibly  informed  that  the  "  winking  New 
Hollanders,"  who  are  the  living  representatives  of  that 
early  period,  are  notorious  not  only  for  the  ardour  with 


1  For  the  use  of  the  Pipeas an  instrument  of  mourning,  Cf.,  Ovid's  well- 
known,  Cantabat  msestis  tibia  funeribus,  Cicero,  Legg,  II.,  24.  Statins 
Theb,  v.,  120.  St.  Isidore's  remarks  in  his  Origins,  III.,  &c.,  Cf.,  also  St. 
Matthew  IV.,  23,  Quum  venisset  Jesus  domum  principis  synagogae 
vidissetque  ti  bicines,  &c.,  and  for  some  interesting  details  Buxtorf's 
Lexicon  to  the  Talmud,  pp.  766,  ^524. 


THE      PIPE      STAGE.  55 

which  they  prosecute  their  addresses,  but  for  the 
suddenness  with  which  they  begin  them,  nor  is  any 
instance  to  be  found  in  which  a  prelude  of  instrumental 
music  was  thought  necessary  to  overcome  the  coyness  of 
the  fair. 

VI. 

At  the  same  time  there  is  this  other  point  of  difference 
between  us  :  while  he  would  make  Instrumental  Music — 
drumming  namely  on  a  tree,  or  a  hollow  substance — a 
lure  universally  employed  by  man  as  a  Love  Call,  I 
regard  it  in  the  form  of  a  Flute  or  Pipe  (for  earlier  than 
that  I  cannot  go.) — as  a  lure  employed  only  by  a  certain 
few — and  those,  the  guild  of  Artists ;  for  I  certainly 
cannot  imagine  any  such  condition  of  things  as  men 
playing  Pipes  all  the  world  over  to  procure  wives.  If  it 
were  to  procure  mates,  as  by  Darwin's  theory  it  would 
be,  the  case  would  be  very  different,  and  it  might  be 
rationally  argued  that  when  half-human  man  paired,  he 
might  contrive  his  pairing  as  some  birds  do,  who  drum 
on  trees  or  with  their  wings  to  fascinate  the  female.  ^ 
But  though  this  were  true  of  the  Drum,  which  I  do  not 
admit,  the  Pipe  Love  Call  implies  a  different  state  of 
things  altogether — implying,  as  I  take  it,  the  existence  of 
the  Artist  character  in  the  world,  for  the  Pipe  takes  some 
skill  in  the  performance  of  it  (which  Darwin's  Drum  does 
not).  And  now  for  the  first  time  in  the  annals  of  Music 
we  come  across  Virtuosos.  The  first  Virtuoso  in  the 
world's  history  was  own  brother  to  the  Indian  boy  in 
Catlin,  -  who  played  a  mystery-whistle,  which  required 
long  and  incessant  practice  to  produce  any  sound  at  all— 
and  played  it  so  beautifully  that  the  hearers  were  at  one 


1  Vide  Appendix,  B. 

2  Catlin's  North  American  Indians,  I.,  342. 


56  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

v^ith  old  Anthony  Munday  as  to  the  "soul-ravishing, 
delicious  sound  Of  instrumental  music."  This  same 
Indian  boy,  I  have  no  doubt,  applied  his  mastery  of 
technique  to  the  Winnebago  courting-flute  when  he  went 
a-wooing ;  and  carried  off  his  bride  from  a  crowd  of 
rivals.  Thus  in  the  Pipe  Stage — and  it  is  in  this  that  its 
importance  consists — not  only  do  we  find  the  first  traces 
of  the  genus  "Artist"  ;  but  we  findt  hat  Music  has  at  last, 
as  the  Germans  would  say,  "getreten  ins  Leben  " — it  has 
ceased  to  be  a  mere  Fetich,  a  mere  sound-producer,  a 
mere  time-marker ;  and  has  insinuated  itself  into  the 
Life  of  Man,  to  tell  the  tale  of  his  love  and  of  his  grief, 
to  be  one  more  voice  in  the  great  choir  of  Human 
Expression  that  ascends  to  the  stars  and  is  our  spiritual 
world. 


VII. 


Directly  Music  began  to  be  human,  it  began  to  be 
esoteric.  The  Virtuosos  made  it  so.  Had  it  remained 
in  its  simplicity,  it  would  have  had  a  larger  audience  ; 
but  it  would  never  have  had  great  men  among  its 
priesthooxi. 

But  esotericism  was  a  necessity  on  other  grounds. 
If  it  was  to  accompany  human  life,  its  progress  must 
be  an  ever  growing  complexity.  The  progress  of  life 
is  simply  the  progress  from  simplicity  to  complexity. 
And  the  progress  of  Music  must  be  the  same  too. 
Half  a  dozen  words  will  suffice  the  child ;  but  ten 
thousand  will  not  serve  the  man  in  whom  the  ages  meet. 

VIII. 

But  I  warn  you  we  must  not  expect  too  much 
from    these    primitive    virtuosos.      They  were  the    first 


THE      PIPE     STAGE.  57 

of  the  breed ;  they  had  nothing  to  go  upon,  no  past 
to  fall  back  on,  no  pole-star  to  steer  by  except  their 
own  feelings  of  the  moment.  So  they  rang  the 
changes  on  the  few  notes  their  pipes  possessed, 
"running  their  fingers  at  random  over  the  stops" 
as  the  Marquesan  girls,  '  or  pouring  a  ceaseless  shower 
of  notes,  like  Pan  in  Lucretius,  ^  hiding  the  monotony 
under  rapidity  of  execution,  but  in  any  case  guided 
solely  by  their  feelings,  and  exhibiting  their  virtuosity 
only  in  the  character  of  the  wildest  Improvisator!.  ^ 

As  to  what  their  music  actually  was,  their  Syrinxes 
will  tell  us  pretty  plainly ;  for  while  a  hundred 
successions  of  notes  might  be  played  on  a  pipe  with 
four  or  five  stops,  the  Syrinx  is  naturally  most  often 
played  from  end  to  end,  and  the  ordinary  run  of  the 
melody  is  pretty  clearly  laid  down  when  once  the  pipes 
have  been  bound  together,  so  that  one  of  these  Syrinxes 
is  to  us  as  good  as  a  piece  of  savage  music,  noted  down 
by  the  savage  himself,  and  by  examining  the  melody 
which  is  made  by  blowing  it  from  end  to  end, 
we  can  see  clearly  enough  what  sort  of  Melodic  Ideal 
floated  in  the  head  of  the  man  who  made  it ;  for 
clearly  though  virtuosity  might  vary  the  strain,  the 
melody  of  the  connected  pipes  from  one  end  to  the 
other  would  always  be  the  grand  subject,  the  theme 
par  excellence,  the  piece  de  resistance  with  which  the 
concert  was  opened  and  closed. 


1  Melville's  Marquesas,  251, 

2  Unco  ssepe  labro  calamos  percurrit  hiantes 

Fistula  sylvestrem  ne  cesset  fundere  Musam.  The  Greek  KO.TavTXwv 
would  express  the  whole  of  the  last  line  and  would  exactly  convey 
what  I  assume  to  be  Pan's  object  in  non  cessare  playing. 

3  Certainly  not  trying  to  give  illustrations  of  some  primitive  scale,  as 
Professor   Traill   in   his   Dissertation   on   an  Ancient    Peruvian    Musical 
Instrument  (Transactions  of  Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh,  Vol.  XX.  p.  i, 
would  seem  to  think  they  did. 


58  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

The  notes  of  a  Peruvian  Syrinx  : — 


:=]==:^: 


The  notes  of  a  Syrinx  from  the  Tonga  Islands 


Another  : —  3 


i 


s 


E 


— I 1 1 1 i 1 ^ 1 — 


Another  : —  ^ 


:^:^f=P=^=ff=^: 


:f- 


-H- 1 1 1 F- 1 1 L- 


:t_:=^_=z=tz=t:=t=^=t=t: 


These  show  clearly  enough  what  we  want  to  know. 
And  I  think  I  am  right  in  regarding  them  merely  as 
waifs — specimens  of  the  melody  which  delighted  the 
savage  mind,  consisting  in  mere  random  successions 
of  notes,  pressed  into  the  service  of  human  feeling  to 
utter  its  language  artistically ;  and  deriving  their  import 
and  only^  value  from  that — I  say,  I  think  I  am  right 
in  so  regarding  them,  rather  than  in  approaching  them 
with  a  set  of  a  priori  theories  in  my  head,  and 
endeavouring  to  find  in  these  unsophisticated  strains 
proofs  of  some  primitive  scale,  or  to  distort  and  strangle 
them  into  tetrachords.  s  Let  them  go,  and  rank  with 
garlands  and  glances  and  whatever  else  man  voices  his 
emotions  by. 


I    Traill,   Dissertation    on   an   ancient   Peruvian    Instrument.     Trans- 
actions of  Royal  Soc.  of  Edinburgh,  XX.,  Pt.  i. 

a   Engel's  Music  of  the  Most  Ancient  Nations,  p.  12.         3   lb:        4   lb. 

5   Quanto  praestantius  esset 

viridi  si  margine  clauderet  undas 

Herba,  nee  ingenuum  violarent  marmora  tophum. 


THE     PIPE     STAGE.  59 

With  regard  to  the  instruments  themselves,  the 
Horn,  I  take  it,  is  the  patriarch  of  the  group,  being 
a  chose  d'tdilite  in  its  origin  and  thus  furthest  removed 
from  the  Artistic,  though  at  the  same  time  we  must 
remember  that  even  the  "  frightening "  Horn  has 
a  dash  of  the  aesthetic  about  it,  implying  a  rude 
appreciation  of  some  of  the  secrets  of  the  emotional 
nature  in  man — we  might  almost  say,  implying  a  study 
of  it.  We  find  the  Bechuanas  studying  it  and  that 
too  con  amove,  for  "  they  delight  in  blowing  their 
discordant  reed  trumpets,"  says  Chapman,  "  and  keep 
it  up  for  the  pleasure  of  the  thing  all  night  through."  ^ 
It  is  almost  unnecessary  to  remark  that  the  fact  of  the 
Horn  having  so  much  Fetichism  chnging  to  it,  which 
obviously  points  to  its  existence  at  a  time  when  the 
cloud  of  Fetichism  in  the  world  darkened  the  sun,  is 
alone  sufficient  to  establish  its  claims  to  the  patriarchate 
of  the  Pipe  Family.  ^ 

With  regard  to  the  other  forms  of  the  Pipe,  if  we 
wish  to  determine  their  chronology  precisely,  it  might 
be  fairly  argued  that  the  Syrinx  came  first,  because  to 
imagine  the  note  inseparable  from  the  reed,  and  to 
think  that  a  fresh  note  meant  a  fresh  reed  seems  the 
most  simple  way  of  looking  at  the  question — the 
knowledge  of  the  effects  of  perforation  being  more 
recondite,  and  therefore  presumably  coming  later. 
This  is  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Engel.  For  my  own  part, 
looking  at  things  rather  by  what  they  meant  than  by 
what  they  actually  were,  I  should  be  inclined  to  place 


1  Chapman's  Travels  into  the  Interior  of  S,  Africa,  I.  272. 

2  A  claim  that  cannot  be  impugned  when  there  is  a  piece  of  historical 
evidence  to  back  it  up;  for  the  Abipones  were  well  acquainted  with  the 
Horn  when  Dobrizhoffer  first  went  among  them,  but  had  never  seen 
such  a  thing  as  a  Flute  till  he  showed  them  one.  Hist,  of  Abipones, 
II.  139- 


6o  HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

the  signal-whistle  with  one  stop  next  in  order  after 
the  Horn — (why  "with  one  stop"  and  what  this  signifies, 
I  will  notice  further  on) — and  to  imagine  a  pause  at 
this  whistle  for  some  time  to  come.  For  I  cannot 
see  what  Man  would  want  with  Pan-pipes  (or  a  number 
of  holes  in  his  whistle)  until  the  poetical  and  emotional 
elements  in  his  character  began  to  germinate,  and 
clamoured  for  expression.  I  had  much  rather  imagine 
that  the  knowledge  of  perforation  came  early  in  answer 
to  a  want — viz.,  the  want  of  a  signal. 

I  do  not  intend  however  to  go  into  the  minutiae  of 
the  subject,  and  shall  content  myself  with  bare 
generalities — regarding  the  Pipe  family  as  a  crop  that 
grew  up  together — I  cannot  say  which  stalk  appeared 
first,  but  I  know  that  not  one  appeared  till  the  Drum 
was  in  every  man's  hands,  and  that  they  all  appeared 
before  such  a  thing  as  a  Lyre  was  thought  of. 

One  word  about  the  Flute  before  we  have  done. 
Strange  as  it  may  seem,  it  is  nevertheless  highly 
probable  that  the  Flute  was  first  played  by  the  nose. 
This  at  least  is  the  manner  of  playing  which  prevails 
in  the  Society  Islands,  ^  the  Friendly  Islands,  ^  the 
islands  of  the  Samoan  group,  ^  the  Marquesas,  4  and 
generally  throughout  Polynesia,  ^  which  is  par  excellence 
the  Home  of  the  Flute.  I  will  not  pause  to  notice 
what  a  marvellous  proof  this  would  be  of  the  Love 
origin  of  the  Pipe,  if  the  supposition  could  be  fairly 
made  out,  since  it  would  show  that  softness  and 
sweetness  were  the  desiderata  from  the.  very  first. 
But  I  will  not  pause  to  push  forward  this  piece  of 
evidence    so    late    in  the   day,  though   I    am   somewhat 


I    Cap.  Cook,  I.  45.     2  427.     3  Ellis'  Polynesian  Researches,  I.  2S4,  &g. 
4    Melville,  p.  251.  5    Ellis,  loc.  cit. 


THE      PIPE     STAGE.  6l 

loth  to  let  it  go.  I  will  only  point  to  the  fact  that 
to  play  the  Flute  with  the  nose  is  certainly  the  most 
natural  way  of  playing  it,  as  a  glance  at  any  unfortunate 
who  is  playing  the  Flute  with  his  mouth  will  presently 
reveal  to  us.  That  idiotic  grimace  into  which  he 
is  compelled  to  contort  his  features,  and  because  of 
which  Greek  sculptors  were  afraid  to  represent  their 
Flute-players  in  flagranti  delicto — that  grimace  means 
a  highly  artificial  pose  of  the  features,  and  we  may 
be  sure  that  anything  highly  artificial  is  not  primitive. 
At  the  same  time  while,  grimace  and  all,  long  practice 
is  necessary  before  the  art  of  blowing  the  flute  with 
the  mouth  can  be  even  tolerably  acquired,  it  can 
be  played  easily  at  the  first  attempt  by  blowing  with 
the  nostril,  the  breath  coming  from  thence  at  the 
precise  angle  necessary  to  produce  the  tone. 

The  locus  classicus  for  the  Nose-flute  is  Hermann 
Melville's  Marquesas,  p.  251.  "  The  nose-flute  is  longer 
than  an  ordinary  fife  ;  is  made  of  a  beautiful  scarlet 
coloured  reed ;  and  has  four  or  five  stops  with  a 
large  hole  near  one  end,  which  latter  is  held  just 
beneath  the  left  nostril.  The  other  nostril  being  closed 
by  a  peculiar  movement  of  the  muscles  about  the  nose, 
the  breath  is  forced  into  the  tube,  and  produces  a 
soft  dulcet  sound."  ^ 

For  details  respecting  the  structure  of  the  Pipe 
let  the  reader  turn  to  Spencer's  Travels  in  Circassia, 
Marsden's  History  of  Sumatra,  Clarke's  Travels  in 
Tartary,  Garcilasso's  Commentarios  Reales,  Charlevoix' 
Nouvelle  France.  There  he  shall  read  of  Syrinxes 
made  of  stone,  of  Flutes  with  holes  above  and  below, 
of   Flutes   with   great    sticks    through    them,    of    silver 


1    In  other  parts  of  Polynesia   it  is  usual  to    close   one    nostril   with 
the  thumb — this  screwing  of  the  nose  seems  peculiar  to  the  Marquesans, 


62  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

pipes  which  the  Circassians  play,  of  Horns  made  of 
earthenware,  and  greater  rarities  than  these  I  can 
promise  him  if  he  will  spend  a  little  trouble  in  iH,e 
research.  All  the  technical  details  too  about  the  m- 
of  a  Flute  and  a  Pipe  and  why  it  is  they  soun^t 
when  you  blow  into  them  are  most  admirably  and 
minutely  treated  in  that  interesting  work,  Taylor's 
Art  of  Flute  Playing. 

IX. 

There  will  be  no  objection,  I  hope,  to  us  now  setting 
a  piece  of  Archeology  to  Music. 

Let  us  apply  some  of  the  results  arrived  at  in  this 
chapter  to  the  history  of  Man  as  we  read  it  in  celts 
and  arrow-heads.  Let  us  for  a  moment  enter  the 
kitchen-middens  of  Musical  History  by  the  help  of 
the  light  we  have  thus  far  gained. 

A    FANTASIA    ON    THE    CAVE    MEN. 

Skulls,  vertebrae,  sterna,  scapula,  radii  and  ulne, 
humeri,  tibiae,  fibulae,  metacarpal  bones,  carpal  bones, 
and  metatarsal  bones  are  our  subjects  now,  and  it 
is  our  office  to  try  and  breathe  into  these  dry  bones 
the  breath  of  life — skulls,  vertebrae,  sterna  and  the 
others  all  lying  cheek  by  jowl  with  the  bones  of  hyenas, 
bears,  reindeers,  wolves,  and  elephants,  aurochses, 
elks,  and  woolly-haired  rhinoceroses,  in  caves  in 
England,  France,  Belgium,  and  many  other  places, 
but  particularly  in  France  where  most  has  been  done 
to  throw  light  upon  them.  Waifs  they  seem  to  be 
out  of  a  shadowy  past,  but  as  we  piece  them  together 
that  past  condenses  and  we  see  ghosts — the  dry  bones 
mere   bones    no   longer,  but  solemn    deputations    from 


THE      PIPE     STAGE.  63 

Death's  House  of  Commons  with  whom  it  is  our  sacred 

'  ^.uty    to    confer.      Alas !     to    this    osseous     Parliament 

V.  .  too  shall  be  returned :    we  are  safe  of  a  seat  there. 

,,  who  made  a  drinking-cup  out  of  a  human  skull — 
,^^u  have  only  to  dig  a  few  feet  down  at  Newstead, 
and  he  shall  furnish  you  with  an  excellent  drinking-cup 
now.  But  Man  will  not  suffer  man  thus  to  die.  And 
as  surely  as  that  great  man  lives  and  will  live  for 
ever  in  the  Heaven  of  human  memory,  so  surely 
will  man  never  rest  till  he  has  forced  the  unwilling 
past  to  render  up  all  her  secrets  and  tell  him  how 
he  came  here  and.  what  he  was  thousands  of  centuries 
ago ;  till  that  great  day  shall  arrive  when  Pantheons, 
and  Mythologies,  and  Creations  will  crumble  into 
dust,  and  moving  in  the  blank  space  behind  them  all 
he  shall  see  the  reflection  of  himself. 

I  want  to  draw  a  picture  of  these  Cave  Men ;  and 
particularly  is  it  into  the  emotional  side  of  their 
nature  that  I  want  to  pry,  for  with  that  is  our  Art 
mainly  concerned.  We  know  much  about  them  already. 
We  know  for  instance  that  they  fished  and  hunted, 
ate  horse-flesh  occasionally,  ^  cooked  their  food,  ^ 
sewed  their  clothes,  ^  dressed  their  leather,  ^  tattooed 
themselves ;  s  and  further  than  this  that  the  women 
worked  embroidery,  ^  the  men  gambled  with  dice, 
scored  their  games,  7  and  probably  kept  reckonings.  ^ 

These  are  the  secrets  we  learn  from  flint  flakes  and 
choppers,  scrapers,  bone  needles,  harpoon  heads, 
skewers,  bodkins,  and  notched  horn  tally  sticks.  But 
what  they  teach  us,  as  will  be  'seen,  refers  only  to  the 


1  Boyd  Dawkins'  Cave  hunting,  p.  132. 

2  Boyd  Dawkins  Cave  hunting,  340.  3    lb.  341,  4    lb. 
5    Lartet  and  Christy's  Reliquiae  Aquitanicse,  p,  137.          6  lb.  136. 

7   lb.  189.  8  lb.  192-3. 


64  HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

outer  shell  of  life,  and  does  not  touch  its  inner 
pulsations  at  all. 

Now  let  me  bring  forward  my  flint  flakes,  choppers, 
scrapers,  arrowheads,  which  consist  of  bone  pipes  or 
whistles  as  they  are  called  (Alas !  that  my  stock  should 
be  limited  to  one  species,  but  musical  instruments 
are  very  perishable  things,  and  only  when  made  of 
some  very  hard  and  durable  substance  would  there 
be  the  slightest  likelihood  of  their  surviving).  Bone 
pipes,  then,  some  with  no  stops,  ^  others  with  one,  - 
two,  three  3  stops  (this  latter  giving  four  distinct 
sounds)  4 ;  one  that  I  have  seen  and  believe  to  be 
a  genuine  specimen  with  four  stops — these  are  the 
data  we  have  to  go  upon.  5 

Now  without  discussing  the  number  of  stops  yet  (for 
this  as  I  have  mentioned  before  is  a  highly  important 
question,  and  I  purposely  passed  it  over  then  in  order  to 
reserve  the  discussion  of  it  for  this  section) — to  what 
fact  does  the  mere  existence  of  a  Pipe  of  any,  sort  point  ? 
It  points  to  the  existence  of  the  Drum.  And  the 
existence  of  the  Drum  means  a  long  period  of  Drum 
Fetichism  which  may  still  linger  in  the  air  even  when  the 
Pipe  Stage  has  been  reached,  as  in  the  case  of  the  South 
Americans ;  but  even  if  the  Cave  men  had  got  the 
better  of  it  by  the  time  we  find  them,  we  must  inevitably 
assume  an  antecedent  period  when  they  may  have  been 
as  deeply  bit  with  it  as  the  Laplanders  or  the  Samoyedes 
or  even  these  very  South  Americans.  And  what  a  world 
of  speculation  does  this  open  up  ?     Did  the   Cave  Men 


1  Either  of  the  strict  whistle  form,  or  of  the  Flute  form,  to  which 
belongs  the  specimen  figured  in  the  Reliquiae  Aquitanicag,  p.  40,  pi.  V. 
B.  Fig.  21.  made  of  the  first  Phalangeal  Bone  of  the  hind  foot  of  a 
Reindeer,  p.  44.  2   lb.  p.  40,  infra. 

3   Engel's  Musical  Instruments,  p.  10.  4   lb. 

5    See  also  Veron's  L'Esthetique,  I.  5,  i,  &c. 


THE      PIPE     STAGE.  65 

ever  adore  the  Rattle  ?  Did  they  ever  foretell  the  future 
by  the  Drum  ;  or  drum  up  Torngaks  from  the  other 
world  like  the  Esquimaux  of  to-day  ?  There  is  great 
likelihood  that  they  did. 

But  what  tale  have  the  Pipes  to  tell  on  their  own 
account  ?  First  of  all  take  the  simple  unstopped 
Whistles.  What  was  the  object  of  these?  M.  Lartet 
says  they  were  used  in  hunting  animals.  But  what  for  ? 
To  call  the  dogs  ?  Dogs  were  not  domesticated  then.  ' 
What  else  for  then  ?  As  a  signal.  Perhaps — but  signal- 
whistles  among  savages  generally  have  two  notes,  that  is 
to  say  one  stop.  For  what  else  then  might  they  have  been 
used  ?  They  might  have  been  used  as  Rain-Whistles — 
or  rather  we  should  say  Weather- Whistles  (since  fine 
weather  and  not  rain  was  the  desideratum  then)  for 
this  is  the  great  purpose  for  which  savages  employ  the 
unstopped  Whistle.  And  if  these  Cave  Men  were  super- 
stitious enough  to  hang  Bears'  teeth,  ^  and  Wolves' 
teeth,  5  and  magic  stones  '^  round  their  necks  as  amulets, 
depend  upon  it  they  were  superstitious  enough  to 
imagine  that  they  could  procure  the  weather  they  wanted 
by  frightening  away  the  evil  spirits  with  a  cat-call. 

As  to  the  one-stopped  whistle — that  obviously  enough 
was  used  for  signalling,  for  so  it  is  universally  employed 
by  savages — because  being  one-stopped  it  gives  the 
two  notes  which  are  necessary,  the  first  for  sounding  the 
advance,  the  second  for  sounding  the  retreat.  Such  is 
the  war-whistle  of  the  North  American  Indians,  which 
Catlin  describes,  s  of  the  Ancient  Mexicans,  and  others.  ^ 

But  when  whistles  had  more  than  one  stop — in  which 
case  we  elect  to  call  them  Pipes.     What  earthly  use  had 


1    Lubbock's  Prehistoric  Times.  2    Reliquiae  Aquitanicas    p.  46,  41. 

3   lb.  lb, 

5    Catlin's  North  American  Indians,  I.,  243.  &   lb. 


66  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

Man  for  a  number  of  holes  in  a  Pipe  ?  One  was  enough 
for  signalHng,  and  never  an  instance  is  to  be  found  where 
savages  use  more  than  one.  What  then  induced  him  to 
go  on  perforating  his  Pipe  with  holes,  and  adding  new 
notes  to  it  ?  What  use  had  he  for  the  many-stopped 
Pipe  ?     What  use  but  one  ! 

"  O  Venus,  regina  Cnidi  Paphique," 
Thou  too,  then,  wert  in  the  Caves.  And  these  rude 
Cave  Men  had  elevated  hist  into  Love.  In  spite  of 
avalanches  and  deluges  human  nature  was  still  a- 
thriving.  "  The  giants  fought  with  the  Gods,"  says  the 
Scandinavian  Edda,  "  and  while  they  fought  men  sighed 
and  groaned  at  the  mouths  of  their  caves."  Everything 
was  against  Man ;  but  still  he  struggled  on,  and  lo  !  his 
furrowed  brow  is  wreathed  with  the  flowers  of  sentiment, 

X. 

I  will  not  let  my  fancy  run  away  with  me  any  further 
nor  speculate  how,  if  he  had  many-stopped  pipes,  he  had 
also  syrinxes,  and  flutes  and  reed  pipes,  all  of  which  like 
his  drums  soon  crumbled  into  dust,  and  nothing  remained 
but  the  hard  imperishable  bone  to  tell  his  tale.  This 
little  bone  pipe  was  to  be  his  skald,  and  it  tells  his  tale 
clearly  enough  if  we  will  but  hearken.  And  we  may 
notice,  en  passant,  that  this  bone  pipe  of  the  caves  is  the 
exact  counterpart  of  the  Deerskin  or  Winnebago  courting 
flute  which  is  in  all  strictness  a  whistle  made  of  a  small 
bone  of  the  deer  or  the  bone  of  a  turkey's  leg. 

It  is  difficult  in  the  face  of  these  surmises  to  accede 
without  reluctance  to  the  ordinary  theory  which  sees 
the  antitype  of  the  old  Cave  Man  in  the  Modern 
Esquimaux — for  in  that  case  we  must  assun;ie  a  retro- 
gression has  taken  place,  the  Esquimaux  having  no 
instrument  but  the  Drum,  and  being  totally  unacquainted 


THE      PIPE      STAGE.  67 

with  every  form  of  Pipe.  And  though  the  Chinese  of 
Borneo  might  be  quoted  as  an  instance  of  retrogression,  ' 
it  is  only  that  they  construct  their  instruments  more 
uncouthly  than  of  yore;  they  have  not  lost  the 
knowledge  of  any  of  the  ground  Forms.  When  man 
once  gets  hold  of  a  piece  of  vital  knowledge  he  never  lets 
it  go — he  may  neglect  it,  but  he  will  not  lose  it. 

XI. 

We  have  discussed  the  effects  of  the  Horn  and  Pipe 
on  man  ;  but  if  we  step  into  that  borderland  between 
truth  and  fable,  we  shall  find  animals  affected  by  them 
too.  The  Pied  Piper  of  Hammelin,  one  out  .of  many 
who  occur  in  Medieval  legend,  -  eased  various  potentates 
of  bats  and  gnats  and  the  good  town  of  Hammelin  of 
its  rats  by  playing  his  Pipe  which  the  creatures  followed. 
"  The  dog,  the  hare,  the  wolf,  the  lamb  are  much  affected 
with  the  sound" — says  old  Burton;  "  Harts,  hinds,  and 
horses  exceedingly  delighted  with  it ;"  bears,  also,  it 
seems  ;  and  if  whales  are  deaf  to  the  sound  of  the  little 
pipe,  and  can  only  be  moved  by  the  blast  of  a  trumpet,  ^ 
we  must  remember  that  blubber  and  pachyderm  are 
marvellous      non-conductors — unless     it     be     that     in 


1  R.  Brown  on  Possible  Variations  in  the  form  of  Implements.  In 
Lartet,  p.  302. 

2  See  Kostlin's  Geschichte  der  Musik.     p  68. 

3  Burton  says  of  whales  (in  his  Anatomy  II.,  2.  63,  note)  that  they 
come  and  show  themselves  dancing  at  the  sound  of  a  trumpet.  He 
quotes  Carew  of  Anthony,  his  Survey  of  Cornwall,  in  support  of  his 
statement,  but  I  may  mention  that  neither  of  the  two  places  quoted,  35,  i, 
and  154,  2,  say  anything  about  whales.  It  is  seals  that  Carew  speaks  of. 
I  happen  to  be  acquainted  with  the  book  and  know  that  Carew  does  not 
mention  whales  once  all  the  way  through.  At  the  same  time  I  have  no 
doubt  that  Burton  had  another  passage  running  in  his  head  at  the  time, 
and  has  referred  it  to  Carew  by  an  oversight.  For  the  effect  of  Music  on 
fishes  in  general,  see  Casaubon's  Discourse  of  Credulity  and  Incredulity, 
where  the  whole  subject  is  treated  at  length,  "^ 


68  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

Brobdingnag     any     punier     pipe     is     ineffectual,     since 
elephants  also,  while  turning  up  their  trunks  in  contempt 
of  flute  or  whistle,  are  powerfully  moved  by  the  sound 
of  a  Horn.  ^     It  is  with  the  music  of  their  pipes  that  the 
Indian   snake-charmers   fascinate   the  hooded    snake   or 
naja ;  -  and  Chateaubriand  speaks  of  a  rattlesnake  being 
fascinated  in  Canada  by  the  sound  of  a  flute.  3     Whether 
these  stories  are  true  or  false,  there  is  this  much  consis- 
tency about  them — they  all  proceed   on   the  hypothesis 
that  if  any  effect  is  to  be  produced  on  animals  the  Pipe 
is  the  instrument  to  be  employed,  and  not  the   Drum  ; 
there  are  no  instances  that  I  know  of  where  the  Drum  is 
supposed  to  affect  animals.    Yet  it  affects  man  powerfully 
enough,  to  judge  from  our  last  chapter.     We  should  be 
glad  to  know  therefore  why  there  is  no  story  on  record 
of  animals   being   affected   by  it   too.      The   answer   is 
obvious.     The   Drum  with  its   Rhythmic  Sound  affects 
the     Intellect :      we     have    described     it    beginning    as 
"  an  intellectual  mystery."      The  Pipe  whether   as  the 
Martial  Horn  or  as  the   Love  Call,  affects  the  Senses. 
Man  has  this  dualit}^  of  Nature — an  Intellectual  Nature 
and   a    Sensuous  Nature.      But   Animals  are  Monophy- 
sites — they  have  only  a  Sensuous  Nature.   .  And  though 
the   Drum,  as  we  have  seen,  when  its  dynamical  value  is 
i  creased  becomes  "a  sensuous  stimulant,^'  yet  man  with  his 
eye  rather  on  the  original  than  the  derived  qualities  of 
the   instrument  was   right   in   assuming  an    Intellectual 
virtue  to  be  the  basis  of  its  power.     And  for  this  reason, 
as   I   take    it,   he    denied   that    animals  could   feel    its 
influence. 

Now  if  the  Drum  is  the  instrument  of   Rhythm,  the 


1  Sandys  and  Forster's  History  of  the  Violin,  p.  3. 

2  For  a  circumstantial  account  see  Forbes'  Oriental  Memoirs,  I.,  4^. 

3  Autobiography,  II.,  9, 


The    pipe    stage.  6g 

Pipe  is  the  instrument  of  Melody.  Melody  therefore 
appeals  to  the  Senses  :  Rhythm  appeals  to  the  Intellect. 
But  this  is  only  true  of  Rhythm  in  its  nakedest  form — 
mere  Rhythm  with  the  least  possible  dynamical  value  ; 
for  directly  the  Drum  aspires  to  an  accession  of  strength 
and  thunders  out  the  rhythms  (degenerating,  as  we  have 
seen,  into  thundering  out  mere  thunder  and  drowning 
rhythm  altogether)  it  becomes  as  Sensuous  as  the  Pipe, 
even  more  so,  for  it  awakens,  one  might  almost  say  it 
exasperates  the  Senses  into  a  plethora  of  life  ;  while  the 
Flute  and  Pipe  gloze  and  lull  them. 


76  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 


CHAPTER   III. 
THE      VOICE. 

The  first  language  that  man  spoke  was  not  a  language 
of  words,  but  a  language  of  gestures.  It  was  a  language 
for  which  the  whole  body  was  the  tongue  ;  and  all  the 
resources  at  the  command  of  the  body,  that  is  to  say, 
gesticulation,  mimicry,  inarticulate  cries  and  facial 
expression  were  set  into  motion  to  give  adequate 
utterance  to  the  thought  that  demanded  exposition. 
The  nod,  the  beck,  the  shrug,  the  wink,  the  frown — and 
in  the  case  of  cries,  the  scream  of  fear,  the  roar  of  rage, 
the  exclamation  of  joy,  the  shout  of  triumph,  the  laugh 
of  pleasure — these  still  remain  as  old  landmarks  to  show 
us  what  lias  been,  and  if  we  construe  them  aright  they  are 
the  debris  of  a  vast  system  of  speech  which  expressed 
with  a  life-like  reality  everything  which  at  that  early 
period  demanded  expression. 

If  a  haze  hung  over  the  origin  of  Instrumental  Music, 
the  origin  of  Vocal  Music  is  enveloped  in  a  pitch  black 
fog.  If  man  was  a  savage  when  he  invented  the 
Drum,  he  sang  before  he  was  a  human  being— that  is  if 
we  regard  Speech  as  the  differentia  of  humanity;  for 
though  in  tracing  back  Instrumental  Music  we  at  last 
come  to  a  point  where  it  stops  for  good,  meeting  with 
tribes  of  men,  and  these  the  most  degraded,  who  have 
no  Instrumental  Music  ;    in  tracing  back  Vocal  Music  on 


THE     VOICE.  71 

the  contrary  we  never  come  to  a  stop  ;  for  the  Mincopies, 
the  Fuegians,  the  Botocudos,  the  Veddahs,  all  of  them 
sing,  and  we  can  go  even  lower  still  till  we  get  to  singing 
apes,  and  singing  gibbons,  ^  and  by  a  stretch  every 
animal  in  creation  that  has  a  voice  may  be  said  to  sing — 
for  they  utter  their  emotions  by  means  of  their  voice, 
and  that  is  what  singing  ultimately  comes  to.  It  will  be 
seen  then  that  singing  must  have  a  different  origin 
altogether  from  Instrumental  Music  ;  indeed  it  agrees 
with  it  in  nothing  except  in  the  bare  general  fact  that  the 
Voice  like  the  Instrument  produces  tones — and  both 
producing  the  same  thing,  tones,  have  a  tendency  in  the 
Universe  to  come  together  after  a  time,  and  having  come 
together  to  influence  one  another.  But  in  their  origin 
(and  that  is  what  we  are  concerned  with  now)  they  were 
utterly  and  entirely  distinct.  The  very  tones  agreed  in 
nothing  but  in  being  tones ;  for  while  the  tones  of  the 
savage's  instrument,  his  pipe  for  instance,  were  a  mere 
haphazard  capricious  jingle,  expressive  in  their  entirety, 
certainly,  of  a  definite  frame  of  mind,  but,  taken 
severally,  mere  random  sounds,  the  tones  of  the  voice 
were  each  of  them  individually  charged  with  meaning; 
each  shade  of  tone  meant  a  corresponding  shade  of 
thought.  And  while  Instrumental  Music  was  a  language 
in  the  sense  that  all  Art  is  a  language,  Vocal  Music  began 
as  a  language  in  the  strictest  signification  of  the  word. 
And  while  the  rnen  who  employed  Instruments  to  express 
their  emotions  by  were  Artists,  since  they  preferred  some 
other  medium  than  language  to  express  themselves  by, 
those  who  employed  the  Voice  so  were  not  artists,  for 
they  were  only  using  the  ordinary  means  of  expression 


i    Darwin's  Descent  of  Man.     p. 


72  HISTORY     OP      MUSld. 

which  every  man  on  the  face  of  the  earth  at  that  time 
employed.  ^ 

The  first  language,  then,  that  man  spoke  was  a  language 
of  gestures  and  cries,  these  gestures  and  cries  being  in 
the  first  instance  but  reflex  actions,  that  is  to  say  con- 
tractions, whether  of  the  muscles  that  contribute  to  the 
production  of  the  voice,  or  of  other  parts  of  our 
organism,  produced  by  the  motor  nerves  reflecting  from 
a  ganglionic  centre  the  impressions  made  on  the  sensory 
nerves.  There  was  a  preliminary  period  therefore  in  this 
language  when  these  gestures  and  cries  were  merely 
understood,  (just  as  a  child  or  a  dog,  says  M.  Veron,  will 
understand  the  face  and  voice  of  an  angry  man)  and  not 
consciously  employed  as  a  vehicle  of  expression.  But 
this  conscious  employment  came  at  last,  and  the  cry  and 
gesture  language  which  then  grew  up,  rudimentary  and 
inadequate  as  it  may  appear  to  us,  yet  covered  the  entire 
ground  of  human  consciousness  at  that  primitive  period. 
For  it  enabled  man  to  express  his  wants  and  his  feelings 
perfectly,  and  if  it  came  to  narrative,  its  resources  could 
be  eked  out  by  mimicry. 

But  as  man's  sphere  of  experience  gradually  extended 
and  his  ideas  became  more  complex,  he  began  to  find 
that  this  old  body-language  grew  daily  less  and  less  able 
to  render  with  due  precision  the  thought  which 
struggled  for  expression.  At  the  same  the  very 
extension  of  his  knowledge  brought  his  logical  and 
intellectual  faculties  more  into  play,  and  enabled  them 
gradually  to  disengage  themselves  from  the  naive 
confusion  of  his  infant  mind  and  to  assert  their  title  to 
monopolise  expression.  We  need  not  here  go  into  the 
question  of  the  Origin  of  Language.    It  will  be  sufficient  if 


I    For  the  discussion  of  the  question  of  Gesture-Language,  see  Tyler's 
Primitive  Culture,  I,  Chap.  5. 


fHE    voiCfi.  73 

we  keep  in  mind  that  it  was  the  child  of  the  intellect  ;  as 
to  how  particularly  it  arose,  whether  the  principle  of 
symbolism  had  already  got  recognition  in  the  gesture- 
language,  and  was  thence  transferred  to  the  word- 
language;  or  whether  words  are,  so  to  speak,  the  gestures 
of  the  intellect,  which  when  once  it  moves  must  be 
creative  and  stereotypographic — this  need  not  concern 
us.  We  have  only  to  note  the  consequence  of  the  rise 
of  word-language,  which  was  this — that  little  by  little 
it  usurped  the  whole  domain  of  gesture-language. 
Mimicry  was  the  first  to  give  way,  for  its  role,  Narration, 
was  a  work  of  far  less  labour  when  sustained  by  language, 
at  the  same  time  that  narration,  referring  to  what  is 
passed  and  over,  is  less  ruffled  by  the  gales  of-  emotion, 
and  therefore  the  most  akin  to  the  purely  intellectual. 
But  not  only  was  narration  to  be  handed  over  to  the  new 
agency  henceforward  :  feeling  and  passion  too  were  to 
take  an  intellectual  livery :  the  hitherto  inarticulate 
language  of  emotion  was  to  be  transmuted  into  words. 
And  this  tendency  has  reached  its  climax  to-day  when  we 
word  reflex  sounds.  ^ 

Henceforth,  then,  gestures  and  cries  ceased  to  be 
the  actual  exponents  of  thought,  and  were  humbled 
into  being  "  the  commentaries  on  the  thought."  -  But 
there  was  this  difference  in  their  commenting.  While 
gestures  were  only  an  occasional  commentary,  the  cry 
or  vocal  sound,  as  we  must  call  it  now,  being 
indispensable    to     the    word,    was     and     is    a    running 


I  Interjections  are  reflex  Sounds  (See  Steinthal's  Psychologie  und 
Sprachwissenschaft,  Berlin,  1871,  p.,  376).  But  if  you  frighten  a  German 
he  will  cry  "Jesus!"  And  a  Frenchman  will  exclaim  "  Mon  Dieu." 
Compare  "Good  Heavens!"  "Dear  me,"  &c.  Pure  Interjections  all 
of  them,  yet  even  in  these  the  intellect  must  interpose.  Oaths  belong  to 
the  same  category  and  illustrate  the  same  principle. 

3  Herbert  Spencer's  Essay  on  the  Origin  and  Function  of  Music 
in  the  Westminster  Review. 


74  HISTORY      OF      MUSIC. 

commentary.  What  sort  of  a  commentary  ?  An 
emotional  and  ethical  one.  The  tone  in  which  a  word 
is  uttered  tells  what  the  heart  and  the  conscience 
think  of  that  word.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  it  is  so 
difficult  to  tell  a  good  lie,  without  considerable  practice 
in  the  art.  And  for  the  same  reason  it  is  so  difficult 
to  ape  a  calm  delivery  when  we  are  agitated — the 
words  may  be  the  most  tranquil  in  the  dictionary, 
but  it  is  ten  to  one  that  all  their  edges  are  ruffled 
by  the  tone  they  are  spoken  in.  Hence,  that 
words  can  conceal  thought  is  only  true  when  they 
are  written  words.  The  practised  diplomatist  may 
deceive  inexperienced  people  like  us;  but  he  will  be 
infallibly  detected  by  another  lying  diplomatist  as 
practised  as  himself.  Bear  in  mind  that  we  are  all 
of  us  bilingual.  Every  word  we  utter  has  a  shadowy 
companion  that  means  as  much  and  is  understood 
every  bit  as  well  as  the  great  bunch  of  vowels  and 
consonants  that  goes  with  it.  The  fact  being  that  we 
have  inherited  two  languages  from  our  ancestor, 
Man — one  a  tone  language  which,  so  to  speak,  he 
got  from  Nature,  like  all  other  animals;  the  other  a 
word  language  which  he  made  for  himself.  And  the 
former  as  an  independent  mode  of  utterance  is  not 
yet  obsolete,  though  we  appeared  to  hint  as  much  a 
page  back.  Even  yet  there  is  a  great  deal  of  feeling 
that  will  not  go  into  words  without  a  remainder, 
Oar  transports,  our  despair,  our  love,  our  ecstasy  of 
hope  often  refuse  to  be  filtered  through  the  medium 
of  Language.  When  we  talk  like  a  petit-mattre  on  the 
death  of  some  respected  personage,  our  volubility  is 
surprising ;  words  rise  up  in  a  ceaseless  flood  and 
are  as  rapidly  rattled  off  the  tongue.  But  when  we 
grieve  in  earnest  we  are  forced  to  fall  back  on  the 
old  passionate    sob,    the  old-fashioned  wail  with  which 


tHE     VOICE.  75 

thousands   of  centuries  ago  our  old  barbarous  forefathers 
gave  voice  to  their  woe.  \ 

Still  for  all  that,  the  text   of  the  dirge  is   not  a  sob, 
but     "  Come    away,    death,"    or    "  Requiem    aeternam.'' 
That     is    to    say,    for    all    practical    purposes    the    two 
languages    are    indissolubly  united,  just    as    the    artists 
in  them  were    at  first  one,   till    by  leaning  to  the  tone 
language  the  one  grew  into  a  Musician,  and  by  leaning 
to    the  word    language    the    other    grew    into    a    Poet. 
For  all  practical  purposes  the  tone  and  the  word    are 
knit  together,  and    the    tones  will  be   simply  the  exact 
moral  and  emotional  reflections  of  all  good  and  honest 
words — of  all  words  that  are  not  lies.     And  it  is  because 
the  Tone    depends   so    entirely  on  the   Word   which   in 
its    turn    depends    on    the    Thought    for    its    being,    its 
texture,  and  its  character,   that  I  have  ventured  to  call 
Vocal   Music  the  Intellectual  side  of  Music    as  opposed 
to   Instrumental  Music,  the    Sensuous  Side,    where    the 
tone    is     free     from     such    slavish    dependence.       And 
further  it  is  because  the  Tone  is  so  terribly  fettered  at 
every    hack    and   turn    by   the  Word    to  the    prejudice 
of  free    euphony,  that    I    have    called  Vocal    Music  the 
Unmusical     Element ;     in    opposition    to    Instrumental 
which    I     call     the     Musical     Element,    because    every 
advantage  that  free  euphony  can    have    is  there  given. 
It  will  be  my  purpose  to  show  how  in  course  of  time 
that    was    developed    into  Vocal    Music  which   at    first 
was  an  integrant  part  of  ordinary  Speech. 

For  all  practical  purposes,  then,  the  tone  and  the 
word  are  one — the  tone  being  the  commentary  on 
the  word.  But  now  let  us  consider  what  a  marvellous 
weight  the  Subject  has  in  the  matter,  and  how 
sometimes  in  consequence  the  words  swallow  up  the 
tone,  and  sometimes  the  tone  swallows  up  the  words* 
When   we   talk   of    common   subjects,    of  subjects   that 


76  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

do  not  interest  us,  the  tone  we  use  is  purely  mechanical 
and  inexpressive.  It  is  merely  the  flooring  for  our 
garrulous  words  to  run  on  ;  it  has  no  part  in  them. 
This  is  what  we  term  Ordinary  Speech,  and  here  the 
words  swallow  up  the  tone.  But  suppose  we  are  much 
interested  in  what  we  are  saying,  we  very  soon  abandon 
our  mechanical  tone  then.  In  our  anxiety  to  make 
every  syllable  tell,  we  employ  every  variety,  every  shade 
of  tone ;  for  we  are  backing  up  our  words  by  our  feelings, 
the  head  by  the  heart.  And  so  the  old  language  of 
feeling  is  unconsciously  brought  into  requisition,  and 
we  draw  on  it  more  and  more  as  our  interest  or 
excitement  increases.  Till  at  last  when  it  comes  to  any 
highly  impassioned  utterances,  we  are  all  tone.  Now 
this  second  branch  of  Speech,  where  the  tone  swallows 
up  the  word,  we  may  call  Impassioned  Speech  and 
we  may  well  contrast  it  with  Ordinary  unimpassioned 
Speech  in  its  musical  aspect.  And  we  shall  find  that 
Impassioned  Speech  approaches  as  near  to  singing 
as  Ordinary  Speech  recedes  from  it ;  for  to  make 
the  tone  of  no  account  and  the  mere  words  everything 
is  as  opposite  to  the  nature  of  singing  as  could  well 
be  imagined,  but  Impassioned  Speech  which  lays  all 
the  stress  on  the  tone  comes  very  near  to  the  nature 
of  it.  And  besides  that,  do  we  not  raise  our  voices, 
under  the  influence  of  emotion,  into  an  exalted  tone  ? 
and  pass  from  high  to  low  and  from  low  to  high, 
contrasting  our  shades  of  feeling  by  means  of  genuine 
musical  intervals  ?  And  we  have  a  tendency  to  dwell 
on  emphatic  words — this  being  the  italics  of  expression^- 
and  in  so  dwelling  on  words  we  poise  the  voice  on 
tones  and  bring  out  without  knowing  it  genuine  musical 
notes.  Impassioned  Speech  indeed  is  wreathed  in 
Music.  And  without  going  any  further  I  may  avow 
it    here    as    Music's    parent.     And    to    state    the    case 


THE     VOICE.  77 

precisely  I  will  lay  down  the  following  position  about 
the  origin  of  Vocal  Music : — Vocal  Music  arose  mediately 
from  Utterance,  which,  when  languaged,  is  Speech ; 
but  Speech  separated  into  the  two  great  branches 
of  Ordinary  Speech  and  Impassioned  Speech,  and 
Vocal  Music  arose  immediately  from  Impassioned 
Speech.  ^ 

So  Impassioned  Speech  has  soared  aloft  as  Vocal 
Music,  while  Unimpassioned  Speech  has  remained 
grovelling  on  the  earth,  the  vehicle  of  small-talk,  scandal, 
gossip  :  the  darling  of  tea-parties  and  the  clubs.  For  be 
it  observed  that  the  moving  power  throughout  is  the 
Thought.  Only  when  fired  by  Emotion,  only  when 
inspired  by  the  Thought  can  the  Voice  take  wings  and 
become  celestial.  Joy,  grief,  love,  hope,  despair, 
heroism,  fortitude,  despite  the  universality  of  Music,  will 
ever  remain  her  favourite  themes  to  the  end,  because 
they  were  her  original  ones.  Moved  by  such  feelings  as 
these  did  primitive  man  first  raise  his  rugged  voice  in  the 
accents  of  passion  : — 

"  I  wish  for  the  speed  of  a  bird  to  pounce  on  the 
enemy.  I  look  to  the  morning  star  to  guide  my  steps. 
I  devote  my  body  to  battle.  I  take  courage  from  the 
flight  of  eagles.  I  am  willing  to  be  numbered  with  the 
slain." 

"  It  is  my  form  and  person  that  make  me  great.  I 
shield  myself  with  secret  coverings.      All  your  thoughts 


I  This  last  clause  gives  Mr.  Spencer's  position.  The  earlier  position 
advanced  in  this  chapter  of  a  language  of  sounds  being  the  embryo 
of  Vocal  Music,  and  to  which  the  expression  that  Vocal  Music  arose 
mediately  from  Utterance  may  be  , taken  to  allude,  he  would  not  allow, 
and  this  is  the  difference  between  his  view  and  Mr.  Darwin's,  for  Mr, 
Darwin  conceives  Singing  to  have  preceded  Speech. 


78  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

are  known  to  me — blush  !  I  could  draw  you  hence, 
were  you  on  a  distant  island.  I  speak  to  your  naked 
heart." 

"  I  am  rising  to  seek  the  war  path,  The  earth  and 
sky  are  before  me.  I  walk  by  day  and  night.  And  the 
evening  star  is  my  guide." 

Tune,  and  what  we  mean  by  Singing,  had  as  yet  no 
existence  when  words  like  these  were  first  heard  on  the 
earth.  Men  were  heroes  before  they  were  choristers  ; 
they  knew  love  before  they  knew  notes. 

Did  I  say  that  Impassioned  Speech  had  taken  wings 
and  flown  up  ?  But  half  remains  below — as  noble  in  its 
humanity  as  the  other  in  its  divinity,  and  showing  what 
the  angel  was  while  yet  a  man.  And  in  the  impassioned 
utterance  of  the  orator  we  may  see  to-day  what  our 
Songs  were  thousands  of  years  ago  ;  and  in  the  pleadings 
of  women  we  may  hear  them ;  and  in  the  prattle  of 
children.  And  it  is  from  rills  like  these  that  artists 
unconsciously  draw,  and  keep  the  great  truths  of  our 
emotions  alive  that  otherwise  had  long  ago  been  stifled  in 
the  loaded  air  we  live  in. 

For  indeed  if  Song  were  suddenly  banished  neck  and 
crop  from  the  earth  and  all  its  traditions  with  it,  we 
should  be  hard  put  to  restore  it  again ;  and  should  pro- 
bably remain  songless  till  the  end  of  time.  For  the 
fount  of  Song  has  been  dried  up  in  the  drying  up  of  the 
emotions  which  centuries  of  civilisation  have  not  passed 
over  our  heads  without  accomplishing.  We  have  not 
that  plethora  of  feeling  which  could  produce  an  embryo 
Art  as  the  mere  effusion  of  nature.  But  with  primitive 
man  the  emotional  far  overtopped  the  intellectual ;  and 
along  with  a  far  smaller  stock  of  words  at  his  disposal 
than  we  have,  he  had  a  far  stronger  desire  to  make  his 
words  tell.  How  much  greater  the  tax  therefore  that 
would  be  put    upon  the   tone.      Hence   the   Australians 


THE     VOICE.  79 

have  been  described  as  "  a  nation  of  singers,"  ^  which 
merely  means  that  their  words  are  accompanied  by  a 
most  impassioned  dehvery.  Hence  the  otherwise 
inexpHcable  fact  that  savages  can  extemporise  song 
after  song  with  the  greatest  ease ;  ^  which  is  but  saying 
that  they  express  their  thoughts  in  highly  impassioned 
tones. 

But  still  for  all  thit  Impassioned  Speech  is  not  Singing, 
and  the  points  of  difference  between  the  two    are    too 
many  to  need  enumerating.     In  singing  we  use  the  whole 
range  of  our  voice  ;  in  speaking  we  use  only  a  part  of  it. 
When  we   sing  we  single  out   certain  tones   and  keep  to 
them  ;    when   we    speak  we  flounder  about    at  random, 
making   mincemeat    of    tones,   and   never    resting   for  a 
moment    on    any    of    the    bits.        The    more    obvious 
differences  I  will   not  speak  about,  for  it  is    quite  plain 
that  there  is  a  wide   distinction  between  the   two.     And 
though  many  of  the  extemporised    songs    (so   called)    of 
savages,    as     travellers     admit,    are     merely    pieces    of 
impassioned    declamation,    there    are    quantities  of  well 
attested  savage  songs  which  will  by  no    means  admit   of 
this  explanation,  and  approach  far   more  nearly  to    our 
own  songs  than  many  of  us  are  aware  of.      The  break 
between    Impassioned    Speech    and    Song    is   as    cleanly 
made  with  savages  as  it  is  with  us ;  and  if  Song  is  the 
child  of  Speech  it  has  been  begotten  in  some  far  more 
primitive   state   than   what   we   find   the    savages    in   of 
to-day.     It  behoves  us  then  to  consider  what  influences 


1  Grey's  Journal  of  Two  Expeditions  of  Discovery,  II. 

2  All  travellers  testify  to  the  fact,  eg.,  the  Souriquois  extemporised 
many  songs  in  praise  of  Mons.  de  Poutrincourt ;  the  Botocudos  in  praise 
of  the  Prince  of  Neu-wied ;  the  Fijians  also,  &c.,  &c.  Cf.  also  Eyre's 
remark  in  his  "Discoveries,"  p.  239,  and  particularly  Grey's  Journal,  I, 
292- 


8o  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

were  at  work  with  Primitive  Man  to  convert  Impassioned 
Speech  into  Song  Proper.  And  it  seems  to  me 
that  there  were  certain  influences  at  work  from  a 
very  early  period  indeed.  And  the  first  and  most 
important  was  the  influence  of  the  Story. 

For  in  the  calm  evenings  and  amidst  the  glow  of 
the  camp  fires  had  it  ever  been  man's  wont  to 
dedicate  the  thin  margin  of  leisure  which  fringed  his 
daily  toil  to  ennobling  his  thoughts  and  recreating  his 
spirit  with  hearing  and  reciting  the  deeds  of  the  past. 
Or  it  might  be  the  events  of  the  chase  that  took  place 
during  the  day,  or  the  exploits  of  the  war-trail,  or  the 
story  of  some  old  vendetta  and  how  it  was  fulfilled.  ' 
These  things  then  were  told  round  the  camp  fires  or  in 
the  gloom  of  the  caves,  and  little  by  little  the  Story  began 
to  take  its  place  as  one  of  the  recognised  forms  of  human 
expression.  x\nd  whether  it  were  that  Narrative,  being  as 
we  have  remarked  the  strictly  Intellectual  department  of 
expression,  would  allow  but  little  scope  for  the  Emotional 
commentary — the  inflections  of  the  Voice — to  assert 
itself;  or  that  unity  of  subject  in  the  narration  would 
engender  unity  of  vibration  in  the  tone  ;  or  whether, 
putting  it  more  popularly,  the  wish  to  avoid  fatiguing  the 
voice  were  the  reason,  or  the  desire  to  make  it  carry 
further  ^ — whichever  we  may  choose  as  the  efficient 
cause,  they  are  all  equally  true  explanations  of  the  grand 
fact  that  now  occurred,  namely,  that  in  telling  the  Story, 


1  For  the  love  of  story-telling  which  often  amounts  to  a  passion  among 
savages,  instances  are  to  be  found  in  the  works  of  nearly  all  travellers. 
Du  Chaillu  describes  the  Shekianis  as  sitting  up  round  their  watch  fires 
till  two  or  three  in  the  morning  reciting  stories;  Bowdich  the  Fantees 
in  the  same  manner  (Mission  to  Ashantee,  p.  449).  So  Bates,  Eyre,  and 
many  others. 

2  Which  is  the  acknowledged  reason  among  the  Australians.  Grey's 
Journal,  II.,  253. 


THE      VOICE. 


8i 


men  got  the  habit  of  confining  the  voice  much  to  one 
note.  And  in  the  rise  and  development  of  Story-telling, 
we  hail  the  rise  of  the  Chant. 

Now  what  would  be  the  practical  effect  of  the  Chant, 
or  as  we  would  rather  say,  of  the  practice  of  Intoning,  on 
the  behaviour  of  the  Human  Voice  ?  Its  practical  effect 
would  be  to  correct  that  fluctuation  and  unsteadiness  of 
tone,  that  floundering  about  and  never  settling,  which  is 
so  essentially  the  characteristic  of  Speech.  This  I  say 
would  be  gradually  overcome  by  that  habit  of  dwelling  on 
one  particular  tone  which  was  created  by  the  exigences 
of  Story-telling.  And  only  after  such  a  habit  had  been 
engrained  in  man  for  ages,  would  such  forms  as  this  : — 


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HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 


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which  might  perhaps  with  greater  propriety  be  subdivided 
into  still  smaller  intervals,  so  : — 


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83 


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&c. 


Only  I  say  after  a  long  apprenticeship  to  the  Chant 
would  all  the  enharmonic  edges  and  tags  be  rubbed  off, 
and  the  genuine  Musical  Note  stand  out  in  full  relief — 
being,  in  reality,  the  sentence  of  feeling  as  a  word  is  a 
Sentence  of  Thought. 

For  just  as  the  unit  of  expression  in  language  is  the 
Sentence,  so  in  Music  the  unit  of  Expression  is  the 
Phrase.  One  word  taken  by  itself  means  nothing,  and 
one  note  means  as  little.  The  single  word,  being  a 
meaningless  thing,  can  never  have  been  the  starting  point 
of  language,  nor  can  the  single  note  have  been  the 
starting  point  of  Music.  But  if  each  single  word  is  really 
a  decayed  sentence,  and  was  a  complete  sentence  to 
begin  with,  ^  then  it  is  a  very  different  thing.  And  just 
as  each  word  was  once  a  sentence  in  language,  so  was 
each  note  in  Music  once  a  phrase.  Between  each  of 
those  things  we  call  tones  there  are  one  hundred  possible 
fractions  on  any  of  which  the  voice  can  as  well  poise 


I  Waitz  who  was  a  Student  of  the  Master  Science  and  therefore  not 
hampered  by  the  Philological  Dogmatic,  was  the  first  to  offer  this  solution 
of  the  Origin  of  Language.  And  his  views  have  been  developed  and 
confirmed  by  an  eminent  Philologist,  A.  Sayce, 


84  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

itself  as  on  that  particular  hundred  and  first  one  which 
we  have  selected  as  the  note,  and  all  of  which  we  run 
and  scramble  through  backwards  and  forwards  whenever 
we  open  our  lips  to  speak.     So  that  it  seems  to  me  that 


what  we^call  G    #^    ^    -      is  the  decayed  or  compressed 


t^' 


form  of  the  original  phrase 


i 


JL  1. 

2  2 


-t^*<        ft^r>^ 


¥ 


X^  X3^ 


for  this  is  how  we  should  speak  at  that  pitch.  And  I 
think  that  the  unsteadiness  in  the  ejaculation  of  this 
sentence  would  gradually  be  corrected  by  the  influence 
of  the  chant  till 


:=:=q=:^=zizi:=^==qzz==i=zzq: 


was    consolidated  or  if   you  like  until   it    decayed   into 


Nor  is  this  view  by  any  means  a  fanciful  one ;  for  let 
alone  the  natural  evidence  which  Speech  to-day  furnishes 
us  with,  we  have  living  testimony  to  this  primitive  form 
of  Note  in  the  Music  of  the  Maories  of  New  Zealand,  just 
as  we  have  living  testimony  to  the  Sentence  Word  in  the 
dialects  of  North  and  South  America.     For  the  Maories 


I  Carpenter  tells  us  in  his  Physiology,  p.,  752,  that  there  are  one  hun- 
dred possible  intervals  between  each  tone.  Madame  Mara  could  sing 
every  one  of  them. 


THE     VOICE. 


85 


are  unable  to  sing  one  clear  note  as  we  do,  and  then 
another,  passing  from  note  to  note,  and  making  their 
phrases  out  of  these,  but  each  note  is  itself  the  phrase. 


Where   we    should  chant    simply     ^ 

i^         H    it'        i# 


they 


mai  pukeMna 

I 

And    they   give 


pu  -    ke -  hi    -  na 


is 


ib 


:3|— — I [- 1 1 —     where     we    should    intone     it 

Ka  -  ko  -  ki    -     -    mai 


i 


S 


and 


ib 


i^ 


-^ — 
Kakokimai 


^-=>=1 >     |>      l^^=N-^      for 


our 


Ke  -  i 


a  -  ku  -  ka -  mo 


s> 

Keiakiikamo 


and 


is 


i 


Yn — i** — ^' — ^ — 1»» :    \     I       S-; — I***  :    I        1       k  i — ^ 


ka        ke  -  tc  ■  -    i    -   ti       Ta    - 


Tna-pe 
where  we  should  simply  chant  it 


hau 


i 


s 


==5t 


Tnapeka  ketei  •  ti     Ta   ■   hau 
or  very  likely  j^       ~ 


I    J.     Davies     oil    Maori     Music    in    ;Grey's    Polynesian     Mythology 
Appendix. 


86  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

Now  if  we  were  allowed  to  take  this  Maori  phrase  as 
in    reality   one    Phrase    Note   we   might   find   in    it   the 
Musical     brother    to    the    Cherokee     Sentence     Word, 
Winitawtigeginaliskawhingtanawneletisesti,    which    although 
it  means    "  They  will  now  have  finished   their   compli- 
ments to  you  and  me  "  is  but  one  single  word  and  only 
an   exaggerated   type  of  what   constantly  occurs    in  the 
Cherokee  language.      But  without  wishing  to  push  the 
thing    to     the     verge    of    burlesque     by     quoting     any 
exceptional  instances  such  as  these,  and  preferring  rather 
some  simple  instance  as  the  ancient  Mexican  Nischotshite- 
moa,    "  I    gather   flowers,"    or    the    Nahuatl    Nihniktia, 
"I  kill  it"    or   the    Latin  Amaho,    "1    am   coming  into 
love  "  {ama  fio)  or    the  Greek  8tSoj/xt  "  there  is    a  giving 
by  me,"    as  an  illustration,   I  wish  to  put  forward  the 
theory  that  the  Note  in  Music  has  had  the  same  history 


as  the  Word  in  Language  and  that    F H  ^"^ 

were  first  heard  in  the  world  as 

U 11^ 1— — I  I— ^    and 


"cy- 


j-J-    V  ^-  gJ-  ^- 

by  which  I  intend  to  represent  the  unsteadiness  of  tone 
in  which  the  Voice  began  to  attach  itself  to  the  central 
pivot.  And  these  scrambles  or  jumbles  of  sound  were 
as  good  musical  phrases  as  any  that  delight  us  to-day, 
and  were  the  natural  form  in  which  the  Voice  showed 
itself  before  it  had  been  trained  to  a  strict  and  true 
intonation  by  the  long  continued  influence  of  the  Chant. 
Which  is  but  another  way  of  saying  that  the  Phrase 
gradually  lost  its  meaning  as  a  phrase  and  faded  into  the 
Note,    as    the    Sentence   Word    lost   its    meaning   as   a 


THE     VOICE,  87 

sentence  and  faded  into  the  Root ;  and  henceforth  Roots 
themselves  had  to  be  combined  into  new  Sentences  and 
Notes  to  be  combined  into  new  Phrases.  And  this  is  an 
account  of  the  Osteology  of  Song. 

But  there  is  no  need  to  jump  the  period  of  transition 
which  I  have  now  alluded  to,  for  we  can  follow  the 
process  of  change  step  by  step.  And  first  of  all,  men 
were  contented  with  One  Note.  The  Spoken  Phrase  at 
the  normal  pitch  of  the  Speaking  Voice  would  of  itself 
easily  shake  down  into  this  one  note  under  the  influence 
of  the  Chant,  and  for  a  time  there  is  no  reason  why  one 
note  should  not  have  Vbeen  completely  sufficient.  A  long 
time  indeed  must  have  elapsed  before  tone  itself  could  get 
to  be  looked  on  as  a  subject  for  objective  treatment,  and 
until  that  time  came,  one  note,  which  admitted  all  the 
expression  and  all  the  varieties  of  inflection  of  the  spoken 
phrase  and  was  indeed  precisely  the  same,  barring  a 
greater  steadiness  of  intonation,  was  quite  capable  of 
meeting  all  the  demands  which  the  broad  and  simple 
emotions  of  man  at  that  time  laid  upon  music.  In  this 
way  it  came  to  pass  that  the  first  Musical  Note  which 
was  ever  heard  in  the  world  was  G,  '  and  for  a  very  long 
time  indeed  the  whole  musical  art  lay  in  embryo  in  that 
note.  At  the  present  day  the  songs  of  savages  are  nearly 
all  at  this  pitch,  that  is  to  say,  with  G  for  the  key  note, 
and  those  savages  who  have  only  one  note  in  their  music 
always  have  G  for  that  one  note.  The  living  illustrations 
of  the  primitive  period  we  are  now  speaking  of  are  those 


1  Gardiner,  however,  who  is  the  patriarch  of  all  such  speculations, 
would  have  preferred  F.  He  conceived  F  to  be  the  normal  note  of 
the  human  voice,  and  for  the  following  reason :  he  used  to  go  into  the 
gallery  of  the  Stock  Exchange  and  listen  to  the  hum  of  the  voices 
beneath  him,  and  he  always  found  that  the  hum  after  some  little  time 
"  amalgamated  perceptibly  "  into  one  long-drawn  note  which  was  always 
F     (Music  of  Nature,  p.  250). 


88  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

people  who  are  generally  looked  upon  as  in  the  lowest 
stage  of  human  development,  the  inhabitants  of  Tierra  del 
Fuego.  Their  Singing  is  almost  indistinguishable  from 
ordinary    Declamation,    and     both    are    on     one    note, 


G,    the    men    sing  Q and     the    women 


j^     ^  an    octave    higher   than   the   men.  ^      Yet 

tJ 

although  the  Fuegians  receive  great  praise  for  the 
correctness  with  which  they  intone  their  note,  ^  it  is 
plain  that  there  is  a  remarkable  unsteadiness  sometimes, 
but  it  is  such  an  unsteadiness  as  may  be  taken  as  a  fair 
proof  of  an  anterior  stage  when  their  G  was  not  a  note 
but  a  Phrase.     For  one  of  their  songs  is 


Yah  mass  scoo  nah  yah  mass  scoo  nah  yah  mass  scoo  nah   yah  mass 

[-'P=P=#"-^=^=tf3i=P"-#--«=P=it-P?=fe=#:jJE=:^z: 


scoo  nah   yah  mass  scoo  nah  yah  mass  scoo  nah  yah  mass  scoo  nah 

which  if  it  were  accurately  written,  we  might  judge  on 

the  analogy  of  the  Maori  songs  would  be 

i 

Z5r._^    ^  i^i^r   r  ^r-i:e=^-g=r-^-r-r-^^r-r— 


Yah  mass     scoo  nah    yah  mass  scoo  nah    yah  mass    scoo    nah 
IXZi 


yah  mass  scoo  nah     yah  mass 


I:  Drayton  is  somewhat  vague  in  this  particular,  for  after  mentioning 
G  as  the  note  of  declamation,  he  elsewhere  prefers  G  sharp,  in  which 
indeed  he  writes  their  song  (Wilkes'  United  States  Exploring  Expedition, 
I.  152. 

"  When  the  chief  made  an  harangue,  he  spoke  in  G  natural,  and  did 
not  vary  his  voice  more  than  a  semitone.''     lb. 

3   This  is  Mr.  Drayton's  notation,     lb.  p.  125. 


THE     VOICE. 


89 


that  is  to  say,  a  swaying  of  the  voice  about  the  note  G, 
rather  than  the  actual  intonation,  of  the  semitone, 
G,  G  sharp.  ^ 

But  there  is  one  song  of  the  Fuegians  in  which  they 
get  beyond  their  one  note  and  its  attendant  semitones  or 
demitones  and  that  is  ths  following  : — 


-^  tf»  r 


^  t^i»     g: 


:!=; 


Ha     ma      la 


ma      la 


Ha     ma     la 


Ha    ma      la 


^-^  r.  f.  f.  f  \f   r  f  r  r  t 


0        la     la     la     la        la       la     la     la     la     la 

So  that  we  must  admit  that  even  the  Fuegians  are 
getting  beyond  the  One  Note  period  in  Music,  and  we 
must  find  the  rest  of  our  evidence  about  that  period  in 
Survivals  among  the  songs  of  other  savages  who  are 
at  a  much  higher  stage  of  musical  development.  And  I 
think  the  following  song  of  the  Feegee  Islanders  may 
serve  as  a  very  good  illustration  of  the  One  Note 
Period  : — 


((*3:  ^  r  r 

^    ^    ^    ^ 

K 

'W ft    *    it    ^     ^     \ 

p-i 

^     ^     ^     i 
^    ^    ^    ^ 

--bg-feii  i  1    1 

\ ^-^-^-4 \ 

^     ^     ^     ^     ^    p 

E[ 

which  is  amoebaean,  for  two  singers  answer  one  another 
in  it. 

Or  this  snatch  of  an  Esquimaux  song, 


t    At   any  rate  they   were  able   to    imitate   the   enharmonic    interva 
that  were  produced  on  a  violin  string  by  the  finger  being  slid  down  it. 

2  Wilkes'  United  States  Explaining  Expedition.     I.,  125, 

3  Wilkes,  III,,  189. 


(^0 


HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 


:W~W~W^ 


:£g=l'^    ^    k^ 


*    ^    ^ 


V    V    ^    \/- 


Ah      am  -  na     a  -  ya      A  -  ya    am  -  na     Ah 


-W 

M- 


li^ 


A-yi 


Ah 


"y  ^  -1*-^- 


'^   '^  \^  \^-- 


Am  -  na    a  -  ya 


Or  a  similar  passage  in  a  medicine  song  of  the  North 
American  Indians, 


-^    -^    --^    --^    -^    -g^    -^    -^ 

And  in  another  medicine  song,  the  constantly  repeated 
phrase 


p^^^ 


or  the  very  developed  phrase  in  a  song  of  the  Australians, 
which  is  quite  half  the  whole  song 


Ear-ra-bu-la  bar-ra-ma  man-gi-ne  wey  en-gii-na  bar-ra-bu-la  bar-ra-ma 

Such  passages  as  this  I  say,  which  are  of  constant 
occurence  in  savage  songs,  taken  along  with  the  abundant 
testimony  of  travellers  to  the  monotonous  character  of  all 
savage  singing,  for  Bowdich  who  gives  us  some  very 
tuneful  specimens  of  Ashantee  and  Fantee  song  says  that 
on  the  whole  their  singing  is  not  to  be  distinguished  from 


I  Parry's  Voyages,  IL  I  have  a  theory  about  this  song,  viz.,  that  the 
other  notes  which  occur  in  the  course  of  it  are  rather  to  be  considered 
the  natural  falling  of  the  voice  from  pitch;  and  I  imagine  it  ought  to  be 
considered  in  its  entirety  as  virtually  a  One  Note  song. 

3   Wilkes'  United  States  Exploring  Expedition,  IV.,  399. 

3    V/ilkes,  IV.,  399.         4    Quoted  in  Engel's  National  Music,  p.  26. 


THE      VOICE.  gt 

monotonous  recitative,  '  and  Williams  says  of  the  Fijians 
that  their  singing  is  all  on  one  note,  ^  and  Wilkes  of  the 
Samoans  and  Sandwich  Islanders  in  like  manner,  Sagard 
of  the  Aoutmoins,  ^  and  Cook  of  the   New  Zealanders,  ^ 
so  that  it  seems    to  me  that   in  the   few   specimens  of 
savage  song  which  we  have  to  work  on  we  have   only  the 
melodious  snatches  that  caught  the  ear,  while  the  great 
mass  of  unmelodious  song  is  unhappily  unreported — but 
without  going  into  this  question  I   say  that  the  frequent 
one  note  phrases,  and  these  one  note  songs,  together  with 
the  natural  genesis  that  we  must  assume  of  song  from 
Declamation,  seem  to  me  to  go  far  to  bear  out  the  idea 
that  the  history  of  Vocal  Music  commenced  with  a  One 
Note  Period  of  which  the  modern  Fuegians  are  "as  near  as 
possible  the  living  examples. 

Now  the  practical  effect  of  Chanting  on  Impassioned 

Speech  would  be  ever  more  and  more  to  isolate  the  tone 

from  the  words  ;  and  the  struggling  into  being  of  the  One 

Note   would    bring   the    isolation    clearly   before     men's 

minds.     So  that  we  may  expect  that  the  next  step  would 

be  to  treat  the  Tone  objectively,  to  make  it  the  subject 

matter  of  Art.     Men  would  get  to  enjoy  the  sound  of 

Jtself  and  study  to   give  it  variety.     And  while  this  object 

would  be  first  secured  by  variety  of  rhythm,  to  which  I 

shall    presently  allude    at    some    length,    the    tendency 

would  undoubtedly  be  set  on  foot  which  would  ultimately 

result  in  the  addition  of  another  note  to  the  compass  of 

the  Chant.     A  One  Note  Period  would  be  succeeded  by  a 

Two  Note   Period.      And  of  this  Two  Note  Period  we 

have  some  admirable  examples. 


1    Bowdich's  Mission  to  Ashantee,  p.  364. 
3   Williams'  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  I.,  163. 

3  Un    bruit   fort   bas   comme   vous   diriez    le    murmure   de   cetix    qui 
barbotent  leurs  heurs. 

4  "A  low  and  plaintive  monotonous  chaunt." 


9^  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

I  have  already  alluded  to  the  Two  Note  song  of  the 
Fuegians  whom  we  found  on  the  verge  of  the  Two  Note 
Period,  but  here  is  perhaps  a  better  illustration. 

A  Song  of  the  Brazilians. 


This  is  the  song  that  De  Lery  heard  them  singing  when 
he  looked  through  the  top  of  the  tent  and  saw  them 
sacrificing  to  the  Maraca.  There  were  500  or  600  men 
singing  it,  and  he  describes  the  sound  as  of  indescribable 
sweetness  ^ 

The   song   of    the   African    slaves    in    Rio   is   another 
instance 


-^^ 


n)j.<^^rj.^'jrj.^^r   j_._^j=g: 


And  a  song  or  rather  the  greater  part  of  a  song  of  the 
Samoans: — 


m 


.  ^    ^ 


l^^i     -f     i      l/l^i     !     i     !     \   ■  \^  ^- 


/>V>     f> 

* 

-^- 

*    a>    P' 

s — ^- 

A     »     i*     ^     *-  *   -w    \' 

\9ji     r         !          ,          1        ;        ;                     1            1         ,'         1         1         1         ;         f         1 

1 

1 

y  /*  ' 

1      1 

{>      U*      L<<      U'      l>      L<i 

If  these  people  can  be  content  nowadays  with  two 
notes  in  their  songs,  we  may  see  that  there  is  nothing 
improbable  in  the  assumption  that  there  was  a   period 


1  J'en  demeuray  tout  ravi ;  mais  aussi  toutes  les  fois  qu'il  m'en 
souvient,  le  coeur  m'en  tressaillant  il  me  semble  que  je  les  aye  encores  a 
mes  oreilles.     De  Lery's  Histoire  de  TAmerique,  ch.  i6. 

2  Wilkes'  United  States  Exploring  Expedition,  I.,  53. 

3  Wilkes'  II.,  134. 


THE     VOICE. 


93 


and  probably  a  very  long  period  in  the  history  of 
Primitive  Man  when  the  whole  resources  of  Vocal  Music 
consisted  of  two  notes.  For  it  is  by  these  slow  steps 
that  things  are  made.  And  no  one  who  knows  from  what 
patient  and  humble  beginnings  those  bright  and  glorious 
things  we  enjoy  have  struggled  up,  will  refuse  to  go  with 
me  in  my  endeavour  to  piece  Music  together  bit  by  bit. 

After  a  Period  of  Two  Notes  then,  there  came  a  period 
of  Three  Notes.  One  more  note  was  added  to  the 
compass  of  the  Chant,  and  as  was  natural  it  was  the  next 
note  above.  And  now  there  was  the  prospect  of  many 
melodious  changes  being  rung.  For  the  feeling  for 
melody  came  later  than  that  of  rhythm  and  was  making 
itself  felt  now.  In  the  One  Note  Period  the  variety,  if 
much  were  attempted,  could  only  be  gained  by  rhythmic 
means,  and  in  this  particular  there  may  have  been  much 
attempted.  In  the  Two  Note  Period  also  the  same 
means  would  principally  be  employed.  But  when  Three 
Notes  came  to  be  used,  there  was  the  temptation  to  gain 
the  variety  by  the  Melody,  and  at  the  same  time  there 
was  the  Melodic  geist  abroad;  of  which  the  Three  Notes 
were  themselves  the  result. 

I  am  not  making  any  reservations  when  I  speak  of 
Melody.  It  was  probably  in  emulation  of  a  certain 
Canadian  Song  that  Rousseau  was  tempted  to  write  his 
Melody  on  Three  Notes.  And  though  the  savage  songs 
which  I  shall  now  quote  cannot  be  expected  to  appeal 
very  strongly  to  our  ear,  the  marvellous  difference 
between  these  and  the  Two  Note  ones  on  the  last  page 
will  be  at  once  apparent ;  and  it  will  also  be  plain  what  a 
complete  reformation  the  mere  addition  of  one  note  to 
the  existing  two  would  work  in  the  art  of  Music.  For  in 
addition  to  the  scope  it  would  give  to  Melody  to  assert 
itself,  three  notes  would  form  a  Scale,  which  I  take  in 
the  meanwhile  may  be  described  very  well  by  Burnouf's 


94  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

definition  of  a  literary  form,  ce  qui  a  un  commence- 
ment, tin  milieti,  et  une  fin  ^  which  applied  to  music 
would  mean  that  the  melody  by  progressing  from  its  base 
to  its  extremity  through  some  intermediate  sound  is 
enabled  to  make  a  distinct  fall  to  its  base  again,  and  so 
secure  that  symmetry  of  outline  and  repose  at  the  end  of 
the  song,  which  the  ear  soon  gets  to  require — although 
this  definition  may  have  to  be  modified  perhaps  hereafter 
in  order  to  admit  two  notes  to  the  honour  of  a  scale. 

Now  since  I  have  at  last  got  to  the  question  of  the 
Scale,  and  the  Scale  as  we  understand  it  is  to  Music  what 
the  sum  total  of  its  Roots  is  to  a  language,  and  at  the 
same  time  it  is  very  important  for  students  of  Music  to 
see  how  those  roots  we  use  to-day  and  call  the  scale  have 
been  got  together,  I  will  take  the  liberty  to  write  my 
instances  henceforward  in  the  scale  of  C,  in  order  to  make 
this  point  clear.  I  will  transpose  all  the  songs  into  the 
scale  of  C- — for  it  is  a  mere  question  of  pitch  that  makes 
them  written  by  travellers  in  any  other — and  it  will  be 
principally  from  G  or  F  that  I  shall  have  to  transpose, 
so  that  C  may  well  stand  as  the  probable  equivalent  of  G 
or  F,  only  for  the  benefit  of  using  a  common  standard 
and  also  of  employing  the  simplest  and  typical  notation, 
the  equivalent  will  often  have  to  be  put  for  the  reality. 

For  by  taking  an  ideal  pitch  such  as  C  and  reducing  all 
songs  to  it  we  shall  be  able  to  compare  the  occurrence  of 
the  Semitones  in  each,  which  is  a  most  important  thing ; 
and  we  can  talk  more  freely  and  lucidly  of  the  Semitone 
between  E  and  F,  and  B  and  C,  than  if  we  had  to  alter 
our  wording  every  time  and  speak  now  of  the  semitone 
between  B  and  C,  and  E  and  F  sharp,  and  in  the  next 
breath  of  the  semitones  between  A  and  B  flat  and  E  and 
F,  which  would  mean  the  same  but  appear  different,  and 


I    Burnouf's  Essai  sur  le  Veda,  p.,  71, 


THE     VOICE.  95 

this  would  be  most  confusing.  So  we  will  take  C  as  our 
ideal  pitch,  and,  whatever  the  key  actually  be,  we  will  let 
C  stand  for  its  first  note,  D  for  its  second,  E  for  its  third, 
and  so  on,  for  if  we  were  to  follow  the  notation  of 
travellers  as  I  say  who  write  the  tunes  at  the  exact  pitch 
they  were  sung  in,  we  should  be  encumbered  with  a 
ceaseless  complication  of  Modern  scales  such  as  E,  four 
sharps,  G  flat,  six  flats,  &c.,  which  we  could  never  see  light 
through.  So  whether  the  songs  were  in  A  flat  or  G  flat 
or  E  flat  or  whatever  they  are,  we  will  consider  them  all 
in  the  colourless  scale  of  C.  I  will  however  always  add  in 
a  note  at  the  foot  of  the  page  from  what  Tonic  the  tune 
is  reduced. 

-  The  Melodiousness  then  that  is  introduced  into  Music 
by  the  addition  of  a  third  note,  that  is  of  E,  to  the  existing 
C  and  D,  will  be  at  once  apparent  when  I  quote  some  of 
the  songs  of  savages  which  may  serve  as  illustrations  of 
the  Three  Note  Period,  among  which  I  shall  endeavour 
to  exhibit  some  specimens  from  tribes  who  have  at  the 
present  day  no  more  than  three  notes  to  bless  themselves 
with. 

And  as  the  first  specimen  I  will  take  a  song  of  the 
negroes  in  South  America  whose  music  is  characterised 
by  this  peculiarity,  that  "  the  notes  seldom  vary  above 
a  3rd  from  the  key."  ' 


-■  yan       a         a        Pa  -   ra   can  -  tar   sen 


1  In  the  extended  version  of  this  song  in  Wilkes,  however,  there  is  an  F, 

2  Reduced  from  G, 


96  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

Part  of  a  celebrated  Feegee  song 


m 


^g^zrj^  .^ — ^N-^ — S.  =^=^H — h — ^— ^-H-^ — M^=^ 


to  -  a   ku  -  la      ka    tau-  si  -  ta   -  ka  -  re        se  -  in-kun-dra 


WE^ 


^^=X- 


-a^—^ — w- 


^^-^ 


i:^^=z^v:z^ 


^ — ^— ^ — ^ 


t.1 


sa  -  lu     sa  -  lu     ni    vu  -  thu    ma  -  ke  -  ve     va  -  ke 


A  song  of  the  Amhara  Nubians  who  as  far  as  I  have  been 
able  to  find  never  exceed  the  three  note  compass  in  their 
songs : — 


;=^-" 


F^=ri^ 


^^- 


==1: 


:q^: 


:q^ 


:i:^ 


^^i:^ 


i^:*^ 


— I — I — 1«^ — j- 


J     -S- 


^- ^  j*^  v-^-9:^^ 


:^: 


^r^ 


The  same  remark  applies  to  the  Gonga   Nubians. 
Another  Nubian  song  : — 


O     -     ya       A  -   ly    -   meh,      0      -      ya       Se   -    li    -     neh, 


i 


-9 — ^— » — » 


ra      A   -   ly    -    meh,      0 


va       Se  -    li 


neh. 


A  song  of  the  Samoans  :- 


1  Reduced    from   F.     (Wilkes  III.,   245). 

2  Reismann's  Geschichte  der  Musik,  I.     Reduced    from  G. 

3  Ambros  Geschichte  der  Musik,  I.,  11.     Reduced  from  G, 


THE     VOICE. 


97 


(A  whoop.) 


q»,__is   N    S=:]*i=iK — ^: 


^-g. ^. —. 


^   ^   0   a-4- 


^■i.~>r~ls~>~l>~1vzqi: 


^rT;^rTi^  ^    J    J.  J 


«7 


— 1».=>=I!»^ 


This  last  song  will  let  us  into  the  secret  how  the  Three 
Note  Scale  would  become  extended.  The  whoop  it  is 
true  does  nothing  definite  towards  extending  the  scale,  for 
it  simply  raises  the  voice  an  octave,  and  then  the  scale 


would  merely  repeat  itself  ^^=p!zig~^ 


But  it  will 


afford  us  a  suggestion  towards  explaining  the  next  step 
which  occurred  in  the  History  of  Vocal  Music,  for  strange 
to  say  the  next  phase  of  development  which  the  scale 
passed    through    was    not   as    we     might    imagine    the 


addition    to 


?^ 


of  the  next    note  above. 


-c^— gy 


,    but  the  superposition  of  a  new  and  smaller 


scale   of  TviO   notes 


3 — -^r-        on  the  old  scale. 


fe3= 


f 


ig.-c^ 


And  of  this  we  have  positive  evidence, 


1    Wilkes,  II.,   134, 


98 


HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 


not  merely  from  the  songs  of  savages,  but  from  the 
musical  systems  of  the  civilised  nations  of  antiquity,  in 
all  of  which  without  exception  there  are  obvious  traces  of 
a  well  defined  Scale  of  Five  Notes 


i 


^=.i\z=:^-■m-^ 


:^: 


though  many  of  them  had  grown  out  of  it  in  practice 
at  the  time  we  first  come  across  them.  Now  this 
scale  of  Five  notes  is  plainly  not  one  scale  but  two 
scales  side  by  side.     And  I  shall  henceforth  describe  it 

as  such.     I  shall    call   the  scale,    3£ ^zzg      |~ ,     the 

Great  Scale,  and  the  scale,     Ji. — ^z::^^     ,    the    Little 

Scale.  And  I  shall  say  that  the  next  step  in  the 
History  of  Vocal  Music  after  the  evolution  of  the 
Three  Notes  or  Great  Scale  was  the  superposition  of 
Two  N^ew  Notes  or  the  Little  Scale  at  an  interval  above. 
Now  how  are  we  to  explain  this  peculiar  fact — why  was 
there  an  interval  left  between  the  two  ?  As  to  why  G  or 
the  5th  above  the  tonic  of  the  old  scale  should  naturally 
be  selected  as  the  starting  point  of  the  new  one  is  not  so 
difficult  to  see.  For  the  5th  is  the  great  interval  we  use 
in  speaking.  Whenever  we  emphasise  a  word  forcibly 
or  speak  in  the  accents  of  passion — and  this  is  when  we 
particularly  make  the  voice  bound  from  the  ordinary  rut 
of  two  or  three  contiguous  notes  which  it  generally 
travels  in — I  say,  when  we  take  an  interval  at  all  in  our 
speaking  we  almost  invariably  take  a  5th.  In  extreme 
cases,  which  would  be  the  civilised  parallel  to  the  Samoan 


THE     VOICE.  99 

war  whoop,  we  take  an  8ve.  But  it  is  generally  the  5th, 
or  the  5th  ten  times  as  often  as  any  other.  So  that  why 
the  Voice  when  it  got  to  move  with  freedom  away  from 
the  sterotyped  compass  of  3  notes  should  naturally 
ascend  to  the  5th,  or  to  put  it  otherwise,  why  the  Little 
Scale  should  begin  at  the  5th  above  the  tonic  of  the  old 
one,  is  as  I  say  not  so  difficult  to  see.  But  why  there 
should  be  any  beginning  at  all,  why  the  two  new  notes 
should  not  have  been  joined  on  to  the  E,  as  the  E  was  to 
the  D,  and  the  D  to  the  C,  why  there  should  be  an  actual 
break  between  the  New  Scale  and  the  Old,  is  difficult  to 
see.  And  it  seems  to  me  that  the  real  explanation  is 
this,  that  though  it  seem  a  break  to  us  it  was  in  reality 
no  break  at  all ;  that  the  ear  had  got  so  dulled  to  the 
appreciation  of  minute  intervals  under  the  influence  of 
the  steady-going  monotone  of  the  Chant,  and  the  Voice 
itself  so  incapable  of  taking  them  for  the  same  reason, 
that  the  step  from  E  to  G  seemed  no  larger  to  the  ear 
than  the  step  from  D  to  E ;  and  that  if  we  would  write 
the  Five  Notes  in  their  true  notation  we  mUvSt  write  them 
thus : — 


i 


Sf  J  J^3 


:s^ 


and  then  if  the  question  were  of  joining  on  this  series  to 
another  series  an  octave  higher,  the  same  remarks  which 
apply  to  the  E  and  G  would  apply  to  the  A  and  the  new 
C  thus : — 


^^^i^^^P 


&c. 


This  is  a  way  of  explaining  that  curious  phenonomon, 
the  Five  Note  Scale,  though  as  it  is  only  a  theory   I  shall 


100  HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

prefer  not  to  press  it,  but  shall  continue  to  regard  the  Five 
Note  Scale  as  in  reality  two  scales  existing  side  by  side,  the 


Great  Scale  — — i—    and  the  Little  Scale  _^   !      i 


And  I  shall  go  on  to  give  them  each  their  characters. 
I  shall  call  the  Great  Scale  the  Declamatory  Scale,  and 
the  Little  Scale  the  Emotional  Scale  ;  for  I  think  that 
when  the  Voice  was  only  rhetorically  declaiming  it 
would  confine  itself  naturally  to  the  normal  reciting  note 
of  the  Human  Voice  and  the  two  notes  above  it,  which 
though  I  am  representing  them  here  as  C  D  E  would  in 


Normal  Reciting 

reality  be  ^°*^ 


:^ 


Iz: 


or 


Konnal  Reciting 
_        note. 


-jcii 


for  the  women.     And  only  when  under  the  influence  of 
occasional  emotion  would  it  soar  up  to    ^~        —      or 


Sl 


So  that  we  may  apply  yet  another  termin- 


ology to  our  two  Scales,  and  call  the  Great  Scale  the 
Ordinary  Scale,  and  the  Little  Scale  the  Occasional  Scale, 
which  whether  it  is  entirely  true  or  not,  is  at  any  rate  an 
offer  at  the  truth,  for  we  may  be  sure  that  as  little  in 
Music  as  in  anything  else  has  any  spice  of  random  got 


THiE     VOICE.  lOI 

an  entry.  Every  stitch  of  man's  fair  vesture  teems  with 
meaning.  Each  note  in  the  gamut  he  has  had  a  reason 
for. 

Now  I  have  said  that  traces  of  the  Five  Note  Scale  are 
to  be  met  with  in  the  Music  of  all  the  civilised  nations  of 
antiquity.  Some  of  these  are  only  expiring  traces  as  we 
may  imagine,  as  in  the  case  of  the  ancient  Egyptians 
where  there  is  very  little  evidence  of  its  existence,  for 
they  were  at  a  high  pitch  of  musical  development  when 
we  first  find  them.  In  the  case  of  the  Assyrians  the 
evidence  is  thicker,  although  they  too  had  long  passed  the 
Five  Note  stage  when  we  first  come  across  them.  But 
in  the  case  of  other  ancient  nations  the  records  of  whose 
music  are  better  preserved  than  theirs  the  testimony  is 
clear  enough.  The  most  ancient  scale  of  the  Greeks,  the 
scale  of  Olympus  and  Terpander,  consisted  only  of  five 
notes.  ^  The  ancient  forms  of  all  the  Modes,  about 
which  we  are  most  explicitly  informed,  were  nearly  all  of 
five  notes  with  a  break  in  the  middle.  ^  The  Music  of 
the  Ancient  Hindus  is  in  an  excellent  state  of  preservation 
and  affords  many  instances  of  the  Five  note  scale.  The 
modes  Velavali,  Hindola,  Malavastri,  Gandi  Dhanyasi, 
&c.,  are  all  Five  note.  Then  there  are  the  Basques  of 
Musical  History,  a  nation  living  in  the  heart  of  Modern 
Europe  and  preserving  in  their  music  the  most  authentic 
traces  of  the  Five  note  scale — I  mean  the  Scotch.  About 
these  people  and  how  it  is  they  have  preserved  the  old 
scale  longer  than  the  rest  of  the  civilised  world  I  shall 


t  Mr.  Engel  founds  his  presumption  that  the  Assyrians  had  only  five 
notes  in  their  music  on  the  following  reasons  : — A  pipe  found  at  Babylon 
whose  notes  he  conceives  a  direct  suggestion  of  a  five  note  scale  (see 
infra,  Note  on  an  ancient  Assyrian  Musical  Instrument)  ;  the  number  of 
strings  in  the  dulcimers,  ten,  which  he  holds  as  making  the  two  octaves, 
five  notes  in  each. 

2   That  is  the  scale  of  Olympus,  cf.  infra,  p.  3    Infra,  p. 


102  HISTORY    OF     MUSIC. 

have  a  word  to  say  further  on.  But  the  best  evidence 
to  th  e  Five  note  scale  is  that  afforded  by  the  Chinese,  who 
at  the  present  day  use  no  other.  And  the  same  remark 
appHes  to  the  Indo-Chinese  likewise.  So  that  it  seems 
we  have  plenty  of  proof  of  the  existence  of  a  primitive 
form  of  Musical  Scale  among  mankind,  which  consisted 
of  a  group  of  three  tones  and  a  group  of  two  tones 
separated  from  one  another  by  the  interval  of  a  tone  and 


a  half,  as  it  may  be  written      jH5 — il=ij=:^    gi — c^ 


which  in  one  word  is  the  modern  diatonic  scale  with  the 
fourth  and  seventh  omitted.  And  how  this  peculiar 
scale  arose,  and  how  it  is  really  two  scales  side  by  side,  I 
have  endeavoured  to  show. 

Now  it  has  always  struck  me  that  considering  who  those 
nations  are  that  have  not  risen  above  the  Five  note  scale  to 
the  present  day,  I  mean  the  Chinese  and  Indo-Chinese — 
for  I  will  as  little  take  my  Basques  into  account  when  I 
am  generalising  broadly  like  this,  as  a  philologist  would  take 
his  Basques  if  he  were  generalising  on  the  raison  d'etre  of 
Incorporating  Languages — so  I  say  it  has  always  struck 
me  that  considering  who  the  Chinese  and  Indo-Chinese 
are,  there  must  be  some  mysterious  connection  between 
the  Five  Note  Scale  and   Monosyllabism.     And   I   have 
thought   that   the   same     "  want "    which    prevents    the 
Chinese  and  Indo-Chinese  combining  their  Monosyllabic 
roots   into   a   genuine   two   syllable  word   also   prevents 
them  combining  those  sets  of  musical  roots,  the  Great 
Scale   and   the    Little   Scale,    into   a    genuine    Diatonic 
Scale  as  other  nations  have  done,  by  the  insertion  of  a 
fourth  and    seventh,  but  instead  of  that  they   allow  the 
two  Scales  to  remain  isolated  from  one  another.     And 


THE     VOICE.  103 

SO  we  may  dub  their  music  with  the  same  name  that 
Philologists  apply  to  their  Language,  and  say  it  is  an 
Isolating  Music. 

For  to  strike  parallels  between  Music  and  Language  is 
not  merely  admissible  but  seems  in  a  manner  to  be 
obligatory  on  us.  And  perhaps  when  we  do  so  we  are 
not  merely  striking  parallels  but  unearthing  secret 
connections.  When  we  find  for  instance  a  highly 
civilised  nation  like  the  Chinese  content  for  ever  with 
five  notes  in  their  scale,  and  on  the  other  hand  a 
primitive  uncivilised  people  such  as  the  Australians  are, 
already  in  possession  of  the  full  Seven  Note  diatonic 
scale  such  as  we  use  to-day;  and  turning  to  the  languages 
of  these  two  peoples  find  the  Chinese  language  so 
bare  and  naked  as  we  know  it,  destitute  of 
all  inflections,  of  all  verbal  structure,  and  indeed 
of  all  distinction  between  substantive  and  verb  at  all, 
but  the  Australian  language,  in  utter  contrast  to  this, 
in  a  most  highly  inflectional  condition,  '  possessing 
ten  cases  for  its  substantives,  three  numbers,  singular, 
dual,  and  plural,  with  a  verb  as  rich  in  tenses  as  the 
Latin,  having  terminations  for  the  dual  too,  and  three 
genders  for  the  third  person,  and  having  in  addition 
to  the  active  and  passive,  reflective,  reciprocal, 
determinative,  and  continuative  forms — I  say,  what 
can  we  do  with  such  a  surprising  comparison  as  this 
before  us  than  assume  an  a  priori  Poverty  in  the 
invention  and  combination  of  sounds  on  the  part  of 
the  Chinese,  and  a  proportionate  fertility  on  the  part 
of  the  Australians — Phonetic  Poverty  and  Phonetic 
Wealth    we    might    call    it — and     this    shining    through 


1    I   am    taking  the   dialect   of  the  most    degraded   of  the   Australian 
tribes,  the  inhabitants  of  King  George's  Sound,  for  my  illustration.  - 


164  History    of    music. 

would  affect  the  production  of  Musical  Sound  as  much 
as  of  Linguistic  Sound,  and  this  would  be  why  the 
Chinese  had  only  a  broken  scale  of  Five  notes  and 
the  Australians  a  complete  scale  of  Seven.  I  might 
quote  the  Itelmes  of  Kamstchatka  as  another  set  off 
against  the  Chinese,  and  the  Polysynthetic  uncivilised 
races  are  another  good  example,  all  of  whom  have  a 
richer  scale  than  the  Chinese,  and  what  will  be  plain, 
a  much  richer  language.  But  on  the  other  hand  it 
might  be  argued  that  the  Chinese  language  has  attained 
its  present  position  by  the  influence  of  Phonetic  decay, 
and  that  perhaps  their  scale  has  become  degraded  in 
the  same  way — that  if  Polysynthesis  is  the  beginning 
of  language,  then  the  earlier  we  go,  not  the  later  we 
travel,  we  may  expect  to  find  the  scales  the  richer,  and 
that  indeed  the  history  of  the  Note,  which  first  appeared 
as  a  rich  cluster  of  small  intervals  and  was  afterwards 
degraded  into  the  naked  note,  would  make  in  the  same 
direction.  And  so  the  oldest  kind  of  scale  would  be 
the  Enharmonic  scale  of  Speech,  and  this  would  next 
pare  down  to  the  Seven  note  Diatonic  Scale,  and 
after  that  would  come  the  Five  note  scale  which  is  really 
the  youngest  of  all,  as  Monosyllabism  in  Speech  has 
been  compared  to  a  battered  old  peak  that  has  borne 
the  storms  of  ages  and  has  had  all  its  edges  and  angles 
worn  away  by  the  weather.  But  it  seems  to  me  that 
the  evidence  for  such  a  view  would  be  weak  in  the 
meantime,  and  would  have  to  be  strained  very  much 
to  force  such  a  view.  So  that  in  the  meantime  the 
History  of  Music  is  not  ripe  for  such  a  theory.  And 
although  I  have  taken  cuttings  from  it  in  speaking  of 
the  Evolution  of  the  Note,  I  shall  not  carry  it  any 
further  than  that ;  but  adopting  Whitney's  view  of  the 
Evolution  of  Language,  that  Monosyllabism  is  the 
earliest  accessible    form    in  which    language    appears,    I 


THE      VOICE.  105 

shall  treat  the  Five  note  scale  in  the  same  way,  and 
regard  it  as  essentially  older  and  more  primitive  than 
the  Seven  note  scale,  to  which  indeed  all  the  positive 
evidence  we  have  seems  to  point.  And  I  shall  carry 
on  Whitney's  view  in  all  its  strictness,  and  as  he 
says  that  all  Language  passes  through  three  stages,  the 
first,  Monosyllabic,  or  Isolating  we  will  call  it,  the 
second,  Agglutinative,  and  the  third.  Inflectional,  so  will 
I  say  that  all  Music  passes  through  three  similar 
stages  in  its  evolution  of  the  Scale,  the   first,  Isolating, 

z^iiziizl:     j   .^.    g;l~    where    the    Great    Scale    and 
-:B~^r-^^ 

the  Little  Scale  remain  isolated  from  one  another,  as  is 
found  in  the  most  ancient  music  of  the  nations  of 
antiquity,  the  music  also  of  many  savages,  and  of  the 
Chinese;  and  that  the  next  stage  is  the  Agglutinative 
Stage  when  these  two  scales  are  agglutinated  by  the 
msertion  of  the  fourth 


, 1 ! 1 -H- 

1 1 —4 y^ &- 


-C>— — ^^^ 


and  that  last  of  all  comes  the  Inflectional  Stage 


=:^- 


when  by  the  insertion  of  the  seventh  the  scale  is 
enabled  to  pass  naturally  to  the  8ve  above,  and  to 
modulate  to  a  new  scale  on  the  keynote  of  its  fifth. 

And  that  this  is  the  real  history  of  the  scale  all  evidence 
tends  to  show,  for  all  the  songs  of  savages  fall  easily 
into  these  three  great  groups — Isolating,  Agglutinative, 
and  Inflectional.     But  what   may  well  astonish  us  is  to 


_/ 


I06  HISTORY    OF     MUSIC. 

find  that  the  first  which  we  should  expect  to  contain  the 
largest  stock  on  the  contrary  contains  the  smallest, 
and  that  if  we  want  examples  of  the  Isolating  Scale 
we  must  go  to  the  primitive  Music  of  civilised  races, 
not  to  modern  savages.  For  the  Isolating  Scale  is  as 
rare  with  them  as  monosyllabism  is,  both  having  been 
lightly  passed  through  perhaps  as  merely  Transitional 
Epochs — and  though  Philology  has  not  yet  explained 
her  part  of  the  question,  we  may  speculate  as  to  ours, 
that  since  they  are  both  the  same  sign  of  difficulty  or 
poverty  of  expression,  which  is  the  constant  concomitant 
of  power  of  action,  ^  those  men  who  raised  themselves 
by  toil  and  action  to  civilisation  suffered  from  this 
difficulty,  but  those  who  were  content  to  dispense  with 
that  toil  and  remain  little  above  the  state  they  began 
in,  excelled  in  copiousness  of  words  no  less  than  they 
did  in  poverty  of  deeds. 

But  what  specimens  there  are  of  the  Isolating  Scale 
in  savage  music  these  we  will  now  give.  (And  the 
Indians  of  Guiana,  the  Fullah  negroes,  some  tribes 
in  the  Soudan,  and  also  some  few  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  tribes  whose  names  I  cannot  certainly  give  and 
merely  speak  of  them  from  hearsay  are  all  we  can 
refer  to  the  Isolating  Stage  ^)  : — 


()      S  # .   J      I        K    i        N    !        I,>  J       ^'^  > 


-d N- 


i 


^-J—:^Jrr:^JrT:^~^ 


kv  TToXijxoi  dyopy  8e  t  dfieivoves  hen  Kal  aAAoi 
2   Fetis   notices  this   fact   about   the   Fullah   negroes   and   those   that 
follow,  that  they   have   only   five   notes   in   their   scale.     Histoire  de  la 
Musique.     With  regard  to  the  Indians  of  Guiana  I  have  noticed  it  myself. 


THE     VOICE. 


107 


Xhis  is  a  very  good  example  of  the  Isolating  Stage.  ' 
Here  is  a  song  from  the  Soudan  : — 


i 


N     N 


l\)      N   '^     ^ 


S^ 


S     N 


;^>=:iv 


^i^^- 


^if=it- 


And  let  us  notice  how  large  the  intervals  are  to  what 
we  have  been  hitherto  accustomed  to  ;  and  this,  I  take 
it,  is  a  characteristic  of  the  Isolating  Stage,  which  also 
is  the  characteristic  of  the  Music  of  the  Chinese. 

Here  is  a  song  of  the  Fijians,  and  though  the 
Fijians  themselves  are  in  the  Agglutinative  Stage,  this 
song  is  here  given  because  it  seems  so  obvious  a  survival 
of  that  earlier  stage  of  Isolation  : 


Vi  -   na  -  ka     vi    -    na-ka    vi   -  na  -  ka     vi    -    na-ka 

For  the  same  reason  we  may  write  down  this  other 
Isolating  Melody,  which  is  a  Fetich  Hymn  of  the 
Fantees : — 


m 


x=^=^ 


~ir*~^ 


=N-^ 


n 

A  -  fi    nai  -  e  pwae  -  e          gnorwoora  a  -  fi   nai  -  e  pwae  -  e 

y      IS    ?    fr   ft   Is 

/f           S>S!>!^1^.         I».r- 

r  > 

^     '     d    *    ^            ^ 

1*1     >    ^    K    n      k.      IS  IS '  ~ 

v-.| ; 

•            •          •ill 

J  -     r  J     ^    ^  ^ 

*' 

•    ^     • 

-J-  *  •  -  J-  ^   J-  -J^- 

gnonvoora  a  •  fi  nai  -  e  pwae-e        gnor-woo-ra  morbce  gnor-woora 


I    The   rest    of  the    music    from    which     this  is    selected    is    however 
Agglutinative.     Not  so  however  with  the  next  instance.  Wilkes  I.,  53. 
-  Ambros.  Geschichte  der  Musik,  p.  11. 

3  Wilke's  United  States  Exploring  Expedition,  III.,   56. 

4  Bowdich's  Mission  to  Ashantee,  p.  364. 


€> 


108  HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

And  this  Fetich  Hymn  is  particularly  interesting  to  us. 
For  the  ordinary  music  of  the  Fantees  is  in  the 
Inflectional  Stage — it  has  the  ordinar}^  seven  notes  in 
its  scale.  But  the  Fetich  music  uses  only  the  five 
notes  of  the  Isolating  Scale.  Now  if  we  have  been 
right  before  in  considering  Religion  as  the  repository 
of  the  old,  we  might  well  argue  that  in  the  case  of  the 
Fantees  we  have  ocular  demonstration  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Musical  scale,  and  that  their  Fetich 
Music  preserves  the  form  in  which  all  their  music 
once  was  cast. 

These  are  the  few  examples  we  have  been  able  to 
gather  of  the  Isolating  Scale  among  Savage  Nations. 
But  of  the  Agglutmative  Scale  on  the  contrary  there 
are  numerous  examples,  for  it  divides  the  honours  with 
the  Inflectional  Scale  as  the  common  scale  of  savage 
nations.  In  the  Agglutinative  Stage,  then,  are  the 
Bushmen,  the  Esquimaux,  the  Fiji  Islanders,  the 
Samoans,  the  Friendly  Islanders,  most  of  the  North 
American  Indians,  the  Brazilian  tribes,  the  Laplanders.^ 
All    these     nations    then    make    use   of  but    six    notes 


S-^- 


-^—cJ. 


and  I  will  go  on  to  give  some  specimens  of  their  Music. 

But  before  doing  so  it  will  be  well  to  take  into 
account  the  influence  of  Dancing  on  Song.  For  we 
have  considered  the  influence  of  the   Chant  in  turning 


t  That  is  to  say  gathering  from  the  very  few  specimens  I  have  been 
able  to  see  of  Lapp  Miisic,  e.g.,  in  Jones'  Musical  Curiosities  and 
elsewhere.  The  references  in  the  other  cases  will  be  taken  up  as  we 
meet  them.  The  doubtful  one  in  the  list  is  the  Exquimaux.  Though 
most  of  their  songs  are  strictly  six  note,  and  all  have  the  six  note  feel, 
there  is  one  in  Parry  in  which  the  seventh  is  used  and  I  am  not  certain 
if  I  have  not  seen  another. 


THE      VOICE.  log 

Speech  into  Song,  but  all  this  while  there  has  been 
this  other  influence  at  work,  and  we  have  not  yet  taken 
any  account  of  it.  And  yet  its  effects  have  been  very 
marked  indeed.  For  perhaps  more  strongly  noticeable 
than  the  steadiness  of  the  notes  in  all  these  specimens 
of  primitive  Song  is  the  Rhythmic  character  which 
they  all  possess,  and  which  would  of  itself  be  sufficient 
to  separate  them  from  all  Declamatory  Speech.  Now 
this  Rhythmic  character  is  due  to  the  influence  of 
Dancing".  For  men  singing  when  they  were  dancing 
would  naturally  accommodate  their  song  or  their  speech 
to  the  beats  of  their  feet.  And  so  accommodating 
them  they  would  bring  two  species  of  Rhythm  to 
bear  upon  their  song.  For  in  every  Dance  there  are 
two  kinds  of  Rhythmic  movement — there  is  the  Rhythm 
of  the  Steps  and  there  is  the  Rhythm  of  the  Motions, 
Foot  Rhythm  and  Figure  Rhythm  we  may  term  them. 
And  we  will  first  speak  of  Foot  Rhythm. 

That  gay  flinging  about  the  feet,  which  we  call 
Dancing,  and  which  differs  from  walking  and  running 
in  being  so  gloriously  objectless,  for  we  walk  to  reach 
a  certain  place  and  we  run  to  get  there  the  faster, 
but  in  dancing  we  take  all  the  trouble  for  nothing— 
so  Dancing  being  as  I  say  a  frolic  of  the  body  or  the 
wanton  enjoyment  of  motion,  expresses  itself  by  a  certain 
movement  of  the  feet  which  is  peculiarly  its  own,  and 
must  have  been  natural  to  it  from  the  very  first.  The 
step  and  the  stride  belong  to  the  Walk ;  but  the  property 
of  the  Dance  is  the  Skip. 

Now  since  the  Skip  consists  of  a  heavy  beat  of  the 
foot  followed  by  a  light  one,  let  us  see  how  this  would 
affect  the  Voice.  The  Voice  would  be  thrown  in  the 
fetters  of  an  artificial  emphasis,  for  it  would  emphasise 
the  syllable  on  which  the  heavy  beat  of  the  foot 
occurred   and   leave   unemphasised    the   syllable   of    the 


no  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

light  one.  And  this  it  would  do  despite  itself;  and 
since  it  would  naturally  sing  one  syllable  to  each  beat 
of  the  foot,  a  swing  of  alternate  light  and  heavy 
syllables  would  be  the  natural  form  into  which  the  Voice 
would  fall  whenever  it  joined  company  with  the  dance. 
So  a  chant  melody  like  this : — 


q==1=4— q: 


-— 1 — ^ 1 — m — ^ ^ — ^ — • 1 — ^ 1 — m — ^ 1 — ^ 1— 


q--j==jz:qzz:1z=j=q=q=:]: 
S    ^     S     J,    4     •    J.    J     # 


=z]=^--^==^=qzz:1z=1=q=iq=:]=z1=^z=q=z1z=ij= 


would  under  the  influence  of  the  dance  become 


i 


S 


E^-j — p^i     r  — 1»-^     r  I — fi-^ — ^z-j-zK^: 


t 


^ 


But  besides  the  Skip,  which  I  take  to  be  the  general 
and  typical  motion  in  Dancing,  there  are  other  motions 
which  would  come  quite  as  natural  and  are  perhaps 
equally  primitive,  though  they  seem  all  more  or  less  to 
be  derived  from  the  Skip.  There  is  the  Shuffle,  which  I 
take  to  be  skipping  without  moving  from  the  place.  For 
when  we  shuffle  we  make  the  same  alternation  of  long 
and  short  that  we  do  in  skipping,  but  with  this  difference 
that  we  do  not  move  from  the  place,  and  this  further 
difference  that  the  short  and  long  are  both  delivered  by 
the  same  foot,  for  first  one  foot  throws  off  a  short  or  hght 
beat  with  the  ball  of  the  foot  and  then  a  long  or  heavy 
one  with  the  whole  sole  on  the  ground,  and  then  the 
other  in  like  manner,  so  that  the  rhythm  is  precisely  the 
same  as  in  skipping,  only  in  shuffling  the  light  beat  seems 
naturally  to  come  first  of  the  two,  but  in   skipping  the 


THE      VOICE.  HI 

heavy  beat,  for  starting  in  skipping  with  the  weight  of 
the  body  on  the  foot  that  leads,  and  skipping  straight 
along,  we  naturally  keep  the  weight  of  the  body  on  the 
same  foot  all  the  time,  and  thus  the  leading  foot  will 
always  give  the  heavy  beat  while  the  second  foot  will  give 
the  supplementary  short  one.  But  in  shuffling  and 
performing  both  beats  with  the  same  foot,  it  is  impossible 
to  perform  the  heavy  beat  first,  as  we  may  well  know  by 
trying ;  but  the  light  beat  must  come  first  and  then  the 
heavy.  So  that  if  we  may  express  the  rhythm  of  the 
skip  by_  x^,  we  must  express  the  rhythm  of  the  shuffle  by 
^_.  And  what  shall  we  say  of  the  Trip,  which  is  the 
Moving  Shuffle,  for  in  the  Trip  each  foot  makes  a  short 
and  long,  and  still  the  body  moves,  going  straight  along 
as  it  does  in  skipping  ?  And  then  there  is  what  we  may 
call  the  Double  Skip,  which  gives  quite  a  new  rhythm, 
for  it  is  a  development  of  the  Skip  and  consists  in  Right 
heavy,  left  light,  right  heavy ;  Left  heavy,  right  light,  left 
heavy,  which  we  may  express  thus_^^_,  and  which 
though  perhaps  somewhat  complex  in  the  describing 
comes  as  natural  to  a  dancer  as  a  stride  to  a  walker. 
Indeed  all  these  steps  are  what  our  own  children  use  as 
soon  as  they  have  learnt  to  walk  and  run,  and  are  there- 
fore easy  and  natural  and  without  doubt  almost  as 
primitive  as  walking  itself. 

So  thus  far  we  have  four  rhythmic  movements  of  the 
feet — the  Skip,  the  Shuffle,  the  Trip,  and  the  Double 
Skip,  and  these  give  three  rhythms  :  _  v^ ,  \j  _,  and  _  v^  _ . 
And  it  should  seem  that  the  Trip,  though  naturally  giving 
the  v/_of  the  Shuffle,  may  also  be  performed  with  the 
heavy  beat  first,  like  the  Skip  is,  but  this  is  not  so 
naturally  done,  and  therefore  we  will  retain  the  Trip  in 
the  sense  of  the  Moving  Shufile  y^  _only,  which  was  the 
first  sense  we  took  it  in. 

Now  let  us  take  our  ideal  Melody  again  that  we  have 


112  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

set  to  the  company  of  skipping,   and   set  it  now  to  the 
company  of  Shuffling  or  Tripping, ^_,   and  it  is  plain 


that    instead     of      ^=ZT=j^Z3zz^:d:r— i^— F^^*^^^  &c. 
it  will  become 


f=:^;=i: 


■J.  ^    -J.  *     S  ^.    4 


'^ 


^^ 


or  setting  it  to  the  Double  skip  which  we  must  be  allowed 
to  write       \     I       P*  zl~     it  will  become  : — 


^ — I     ^  I  1     >  \    I   J  !    !     nJ'— ^ — M^ 


&c 


Now  these  are  the  three  forms  of  rhythm  that  have 
naturally  grown  out  of  a  simple  set  of  notes  by  applying 
these  different  modes  of  stepping  to  them.  But  it  is 
plain  we  have  not  yet  considered  the  full  influence  of  the 
dance  on  these  notes  if  we  content  ourselves  with  this. 
For  besides  the  steps  that  the  feet  make  in  the  dance 
there  are  the  motions  of  the  body  in  it  to  be  taken  into 
account,  that  is  to  say,  besides  Foot  Rhythm  there  is  also 
Figure  Rhythm  to  be  considered  which  plays  its  part  in 
all  these  motions  of  stepping,  that  is  to  say  except  in  the 
case  of  the  Shuffle  where  the  body  remains  at  rest ;  but 
then  the  Trip  is  the  Moving  Shuffle  and  gives  the  same 
rhythm,  and  so  the  Shuffle  Step  in  the  person  of  the  Trip 
becomes  amenable  to  the  influence  of  Figure  Rhythm 
like  all  the  rest,  and  this  it  remains  for  us  to  take  notice 
of. 


THE      VOICE. 


113 


And  what  is  the  influence  of  Figure  Rhythm  or  what 
does  it  do  to  warp  these  forms  of  notes  into  outhnes 
more  famihar  to  our  eye  than  those  they  now  appear  in  ? 
And  singhng  out  the  Skipping  form  of  dance  as  the 
simplest  one  to  show  its  influence  in,  let  us  follow  a 
dancer  skipping,  and  we  shall  easily  see  how  the  develop- 
ment of  Song  proceeded.  For  after  he  has  skipped 
forward  for  some  distance  in  any  given  direction,  he 
suddenly  pauses  and  skips  away  in  the  other,  he  goes 
backwards  and  forwards,  now  to  one  side  now  to  another, 
the  fact  being  that  the  weight  of  the  body  resting  on  the 
foot  which  leads  the  skip,  he  is  obhged  to  make  these 
frequent  changes  in  order  to  ease  it  ;  so  he  keeps  up  an 
alternation  of  right  foot  leading,  left  foot  leading,  and 
thus  he  really  skips  in  sets  of  skips  without  knowing  he 
does  so.  Now  at  the  end  of  each  set  there  is  a  step  lost, 
for  except  by  missing  a  step  there  could  be  no  change  of 
feet.  So  each  set  is  marked  off  from  the  other  by  a 
pause,  and  it  will  be  plain  what  effect  this  will  have  on 
the  song  the  man  is  singing.  For  it  will  produce  in  it  a 
rhythm  outside  a  rhythm,  so  that  a  man  skipping  to  that 
song  in  sets  of  four  skips  at  a  time  would  convert 


::^= 


-^— ^- 


^—^ 


:;i=^ 


-*— 5I: 


-^-^ — *- 


mto 


i^E==;i=q: 


^^r^ 


^i=^ 


q5«=i: 


^-li: 


^^^^^^^P 


114  HISTORY      OF      MUSIC. 

and  whether  the   Voice  ran  on  instead  of  pausing,   and 


^^"^      ^EE^       ^°^       =:^==  — 1-^=f^  for 


— h—       &c.,    in    any    case   the    melody   would   be 

cleanly  divided  into  sets  or  groups  of  notes  every  bit  as 
much,  for  the  first  of  each  group  being  the  first  skip  of  a 
new  set  would  have  a  stronger  emphasis  than  all  the 
others  that  followed,  for  the  foot  would  be  fresher  when 
it  struck  it.  And  so  the  man  would  have  divided  his 
song  into  bars,  and  his  words  he  would  have  divided  into 
lines.     This  is  how  verse  beeran. 


b' 


Now  had  I  represented 


=3i.E=  ==1:==z  =-^=1—  ^"^ 1 


by  -=3=3='  =z1=_t  ^— n-  and ^— ^— 


^ 


it  would  have  been  an  equally  good  representation,  and 
perhaps  more  historically  correct.  For  names  are  some- 
times the  best  conservators  of  the  traditions  of  the  past. 
And  as  the  term  "feet"  in  poetry  shows  us  clearly  enough 
the  source  whence  verse  has  sprung,  so  the  term  "  rest  " 
in  music  speaks  equally  plainly  of  short  moments  of 
repose  in  the  hurry  of  the  dance. 

But  a  consideration  of  the  double  skip  _  w  _  and  a 
comparison  of  it  with  the  skip  _  \j ,  makes  me  think 
that  perhaps  we  can  improve  our  account  of  "  bars  "  and 
"  lines."  For  the  motion  of  the  double  skip  is  of  so 
pronounced  a  rhythm  and  so  perfect  in  itself  that  each 
skip  makes  a  bar  without  more  ado.  I  mean  each 
double  skip  is  cleanly  marked  off  from  the  other  by  a 
new  direction  of  the  body  and  also  by  the  very  strong 


THE     VOICE. 


115 


accent  on  the  first  step  of  it,  so  that  we  are  almost  obhged 
to  bar  the  double  skip  thus  : — 


:=q: 


-:^--^z 


^~v 


EE^EEE^^ 


^=— I ^ 


-^—^ 


^~r- 


-^-v- 


-a^- 


And  the  pause  we  will  express  by  this  double  bar ;  and 
then  we  will  proceed  by  single  bars  again  till  we  come  to 
the  next  pause  which  would  be  expressed  again  by  a 
double  bar.  Now  it  is  questionable  whether  even  the 
simple  single  Skip  would  not  be  all  the  better  for  this 
method  of  treatment,  and  whether  we  should  not  more 
truly  have  expressed  in  the  modern  phraseology  that 
last  piece  of  music  on  the  preceding  page  if  we  had 
written 


and  then  the  Feet  would  have  given  the  Bars,  but  the 
Figures  the  Double  Bars  ;  and  this  would  be  all  the 
more  apposite  because  we  are  early  brought  face  to  face 
in  the  music  of  savages  with  repetitions  of  groups  of 
notes  for  which  we  must  assume  some  such  origin  as 
this,  that  is  assume  them  to  be  the  notes  of  one  Figure ; 
so  that  if  we  used  single  bars  to  express  these  groups  or 
figures  by,  we  should  introduce  the  confusion  of  many 
single  bars  of  unequal  length,  and  at  the  same  time  we 
should  leave  unremarked  the  regular  beating  of  the  feet 
which  went  on  all  the  time.  For  it  is  plain  that  the 
Figures,  or  the  intermediate  parts  between  each  pause. 


Il6  HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

might  be  protracted  to  any  length  at  pleasure.  But  the 
feet  would  probably  beat  all  through  as  they  began.  So 
we  agree  that  double  bars  shall  express  the  former  and 
single  ones  the  latter.  And  we  will  lay  it  down  that 
Figure  Rhythm  is  the  origin  of  lines  in  poetry  and  double 
bars  in  music,  and  that  Foot  Rhythm  is  the  origin  of  feet 
in  poetry  and  single  bars  in  music. 

By  the  help  of  these  considerations  we  can  now  explain 
how  forms  of  music  which  we  find  among  savages  at  a 
comparatively  high  stage  of  musical  development  have 
arisen.  For  let  us  suppose  the  following  words  as  our 
subject  matter : — 

A  te  i  china  te  looa  se  le  te  i  nei  fangooa  miawi  felow  tow  gi 
Tonga  a  we  ia  sawfoona  se  rooa  te  lo  fa  sa  sei  saw  i  foona  te  le  te  i 
nei  neaove. 

And  assume  that  the  ordinary  declamation  of  the 
human  voice  would  render  them  in  the  following 
tones  : — 


with  the  ordinary  accents  and  emphases  of  pronunciation 
which  in  my  ignorance  of  the  language  I  am  unable  to 
reproduce.  These  then  are  the  tones  of  nature,  but  by 
the  influence  of  the  dance,  see  what  a  marvellous  change 
is  introduced  !     For  let  lis  imagine  these  words  declaimed 


THE      VOICE. 


117 


by  men  who  are  dancing,  and  the  motion  of  whose  feet 
is  the  double  skip,  and  we  shall  get  the  following : — 


i 


I     1st  Figure. 


S,  t^—i^- 


A      te      i       chi  -  na   te      loo  -  a     se      le      te      i       ne  -   i     fan 


I    2nd  Figure 


-  goo  -  a  mi  -  aw  -  i     fe  -  low  tow  -  gi    Ton 


A    we 


Llil 


i   -   a     saAV  -  foo  -  na    se     r.oo  -  a     te       lo      fa    sa      se  -  i 


3rd  Figure. 


-P-s — =1^ 


:q=:iv 


T-^- 


•    tf     d- 


— I ^ 


saw     i        foo  -    na      te         le  te       i         ne    -   i 


I        4th  Figure. 


-p-^ 


lizz^: 


33 


-1 — h- 


-d — ■»- 


saw     i        foo   -   na     te        le  te       i         ne    -   i 


j  5tii  Figure. 


:^JI=:^^^ 


:q=:^ 


33 


saw     i        foo   -    na     te        le  te       i         ne   -    i 


:iiz=3=:: 


i        6th  Figure. 


w. 


-p^ 


^-wt: 


-o-^~m- 


q^=^q   I      w- 


\ 1—; 1 h 


-tf—^ — •- 


1 — i-T-g-F- 


saw  i       foo  -  na   te      le        te      i        ne  -   a  -  0    -    ve. 

which  is  precisely  the  form  in  which  the  song  turns  up  iii 
the  Friendly  Islands.  ^ 


I   Mariner's  Tonga  Islands,  II.,  339.     Reduced  from  G. 


Il8  HISTORY    OF     MUSIC. 

Meanwhile  the  words  have  shaken  down  into  Knes  : — 

A  te  i  china  te  looa  se  le  te  i  nei  fangooa  miawi  felow  tow  gi  Tonga 
A  we  ia  sawfoona  se  rooa  te  lo  fa  sa  sei 

Saw  i  foona  te  le  te  i  nei 

Saw  i  foona  te  le  te  i  nei 

Saw  i  foona  te  le  te  i  nei 
Saw  i  foona  te  le  te  i  neaove. 

Let  us  then  ask  has  not  the  dance  affected  speech  in  a 
very  marked  manner,  and  has  not  its  influence  been  more 
telling  than  that  of  the  Chant,  for  the  Chant  merely  laid 
down  a  musical  plane  for  the  voice  to  travel  on,  and  then 
left  it  to  follow  pretty  much  its  own  bent  ?    But  the  dance 
has  introduced  a  lot  of  artificial  elements  whose  tendency 
would  be  to  gain  in  complexity  every  day  and  ever  more 
and  more  to  deflect  Song  from  that  primitive  form  in 
which  it  left  the  bosom  of  Speech.      Now   I  have  not 
considered     the     influence     of     Dancing     before     now, 
because   its   influence    first  begins   to  show   strongly   in 
the    Stage     we    are    at     present    examining,    viz.,    the 
Agglutinative  Stage  ;  for  it  is  plain,  as  long  as  there  were 
only  two  or  three  notes  in  the  compass  of  the  scale,  the 
voice  would  have  had  little  opportunity  to  receive  more 
than  a  passing  influence  from  the  Dance — indeed,   the 
rhythmic  peculiarites  of  the  songs  of  that  period  might 
almost,  though  not  entirely,  be  set  down  to  the  rhythm 
of  phrases  and  sentences,  the  accents  and  quantities  of 
words,  etc.     But  after  the  Voice  ceased  to  be  tethered  so 
completely  to  the   monotony  of  the  Chant,  or  in  other 
words  when  the  Isolating  and  still  more  the  Agglutinative 
Stage  was  reached,  not    only  would  the    Voice  feel  the 
influence  of  dancing  much  more  keenly,  but  it  would  be 
able  to  respond  to  it.     For  this  is  what  the  Dance  does — 
it  sets  up  India  rubber  buffers  between  which  the  Voice 
bounds,  and  it  sets  it  on  springs  and  makes  it  springy, 
but  not  until  a  reasonable  compass  of  Notes  was  reached, 
such  as  five  or  six,  would  the  Voice  be  able  to  spring  and 


THE     VOICE. 


iig 


bound.  This  is  why  I  have  reserved  considering  the 
influence  of  the  Dance  till  the  Agglutinative  Stage. 

Now  then  when  we  turn  to  the  Agglutinative  Stage 
itself  from  this  digression  upon  Dancing  we  may  expect 
to  hear  much  more  melody  in  our  Music  than  we  heard 
before.  And  this  song  of  the  Friendly  Islanders  that  we 
have  just  quoted  is  a  good  instance  of  this  Melodiousness 
of  Agglutinative  Music,  for  there  is  far  more  melody  in 
it  than  in  anything  we  have  hitherto  considered.  But  in 
other  respects  it  is  not  a  good  example  of  the 
Agglutinative  Stage,  for  it  makes  use  of  that  new  note, 
the  fourth,  much  more  freely  than  Agglutinative  Songs 
generally  do.  For  we  generally  find  the  fourth  but 
slightly  used,  treated  that  is  as  a  passing  note,  a  mere 
bridge  from  the  Great  Scale  to  the  Little.  And  this  is 
natural  when  we  remember  that  the  fourth  seems  to  have 
come  into  being  precisely  for  this  purpose. 

For  let  us  take  another  illustration  of  the  Agglutinative 
Stage,  for  instance,  and  see  how  the  fourth  is  used  there. 


q^=J5i: 


z-^-zAz^z 


^ 


Au      ti 


ko 


Tarn-  bu    tang- ane       A 


:q*i=1: 


to  -   a    ku  -  la 


ka  -  tan-ffi, 


±=3: 


~9- 
ka 


An  -   clra      tha 


-    la 


f^- 


-0     *    ^ 


ti  -  ke  kau  ng  -  ai    tan  -gi  kou-mi  -  bau       tu 


tiz*z±!S£: 


J     r-! — \- 
?z£iJz*: 


na 


-f 1 

1 

/             •         u      i 

1           .         .           1 

1                                               IL. 

1                1.             ,                k 

1   r* 

r  ^     1     >  1    s 

**         p 

S                         ^ 

P 

P^ 

1 

a           'J 

_;         '    * 

,      s  s  ^  .^ 

^    a  0    ^ 

*   -^    *     * 

0      S    tt 

& 

S 

\r 


Se -  ni-kun -dia  -  vi -  sa- lu    sa 


I  Reduced  from  F.  Wilkes'  United  States'  Exploring  Expedition,  III.; 
245.  For  the  excellent  collection  of  music  in  that  book  we  have  to  thank 
a  member  of  the  expedition  named  Mr.  Drayton. 


T20 


HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 


It    is  not   paused  on   once.     And   in  this    it    is    scarcely 
touched  throughout  the  song : — 


-» \- 


^^^=^^SE^ 


S~-IS—?Ss^. 


:§=^d^=|*»=zM 


Or  take  that  song  of  the  Hurons  which  Rousseau  quotes, 


i 


S 


::1: 


^-J-J- 


3CI3: 


~gi-4P- 


Ca-ni-de    jou  -  ve  ca  -  ni-de  jou  -  ve     He    he     he     he     he 


=S- 


heu 


ra      heu 


on      CO        be. 


in  all  of  which  the  fourth  is  used  as  an  unemphasised 
passing  note,  a  mere  hyphen,  so  to  speak,  to  connect 
the  Great  Scale  with  the  Little.  But  when  we  find  it 
played  upon  so  forcibly  as  in  that  song  of  the  Friendly 
Islanders  : — • 


S:i3t3tdzitE3t3t 


-1^  .   S    S  i-ah—^ 


■^izS 


&c. 


shall  we  say  that  this  is  a  sign  of  the  Agglutinative  Stage 
drawing  to  a  close,  when  we  find  the  fourth  constituting 
an  integrant  part  of  the  scale  aud  used  as  freely  as 
any  other  note  in  it,  and  that  everything  is  now  ready 
for  the  next  step    in  the  development  which  consists  in 


bridging    over    the 


q=:]= 


:=|: 


:^==i: 


3-^-^-- 


to    the 


8ve  above  by  the  insertion  of 


^^ 


the  seventh  ? 


1  lb.  i8g.     Reduced  from  G. 

2  Rousseau's  Dictionary 


i 


THE    VOICE. 


121 


I  think  so.  For  one  of  the  most  striking  features  of 
the  Inflectional  Stage  is  the  stress  that  is  laid  on  this 
very  fourth.  And  besides,  there  is  another  feature  of  the 
Inflectional  Stage  still  more  remarkable,  which  we  may 
take  as  naturally  flowing  from  the  prominence  to  the 
fourth,  and  this  is,  that  that  interval  which  we  call  the 
Tritone,  and  which  has  since  become  unpleasant  to  the 


ear   of  man 


i 


f 


^\—^ —    is     in    the     first   blush    of 


Inflectionahsm  emphasised  to  a  great  degree.  So  that  in 
one  point  of  view  we  may  regard  the  Inflectional  Stage 
as  a  reaction  in  favour  of  harshness  and  force  against 
the  weakness  and  sweetness  of  the  Agglutinative  Stage, 
for  we  may  well  imagine  that  one  cause  of  the  persistency 
of  the  Agglutinative  Stage  among  some  peoples  is  the 
reluctance  to  imagine  this  grating  interval  as  a  factor  of 
every-day  Song,  or  perhaps  an  inability  to  hit  it,  which  is 
even  now  difficult  to  hit. 

Let  us  take  this  song  of  the  Australians  as  an  iflustra- 
tion  of  the  sahent  points  of  Inflectionahsm : 


Tritone. 


|?==iz=^za 


-^ — ^—fSLZz:^. 


-! i^l^:: 


Ji—tzi2Z 


Z^ 


-ff     tf" 


121:^=1 


and  besides  the  Tritone,  how  they  dwell  on  the  fourth 


I    Wilkes  III.,  190.     Reduced  from  A 


122  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

Or  this  other  song  of  the  same  people  : — 


#-' '  ^' 


or 


In  the  Music  of  the  Ashantees  who  are  Hkewise  in  the 
Inflectional  Stage  we  have  perpetual  passages  like  this : — 


IZIJ^l 


:^=^-=:: 


:^=^^^-=±=.-^--  &,c, 


-gi- 


But  not  to  pursue  this  strange  feature  of  early 
Inflectionalism  any  further,  I  will  go  on  to  enumerate 
the  peoples  who  are  in  the  Inflectional  Stage  at  present. 
In  the  Inflectional  Stage  are  the  Hottentots,  the 
Ashantees,  the  Fantees,  the  Kaffirs,  the  Mozambique 
Negroes,  the  Goree  Negroes,  all  the- tribes  on  the  West 
Coast  of  Africa  without  exception,  and  indeed  most  of 
the  African  tribes  seem  to  be  in  the  Inflectional  Stage. 
But  outside  Africa  there  are  not  many — the  Australians, 
the  Chiquitos  of  the  Andes,  the  tribes  of  the  Rio  Negro, 


1  lb.  189.    Reduced  from  D. 

2  lb.     Reduced   from   G.     Mr.    Drayton  says  that   this   last    song   is 
perhaps  not  quite  genuine. 


THE      VOICE. 


123 


the  Itelmes  of  Kamstchatka,  and  in  a  very  peculiar 
way,  as  I  have  remarked  before,  the  Maories  of  New 
Zealand.  ^ 

It  will  be  plain  how  much  greater  freedom  the  addition 
of  this  extra  note  will  give  for  the  influence  of  the  dance 
to  assert  itself,  for  the  Voice  can  now  roam  unconfined 
through  the  whole  of  its  compass ;  and  accordingly  we 
get  in  the  Inflectional  Stage  most  profuse  illustrations 
of  dance  melodies  from  the  simple  skip  to  the  most 
complicate  threading  of  the  feet.  And  first  I  will  quote 
a  Skip  Song  of  the  Austrahans  which  is  otherwise 
remarkable,  for  the  melody  is  simply  that  of  the  Diatonic 
Scale  descending,  so  that  we  might  describe  it  as  a 
mere  wild  revelry  in  the  wealth  of  sound.  It  seems  like 
one  of  those  songs  that  they  sing  in  their  mimic  battles, 
for  two  lines  of  men  with  spears  in  rest  come  dancing 
up  towards  one  another  and  then  retreating.  And  I 
think  this  is  one  of  these  songs,  and  that  the  step  they 
use  is  the  simple  skip  _w,  which  occurs  here  in  its 
inverted  form  w  _ 


A -bang  a-bang  a -bang  a-bang  a -bang  a-bang  a-bang  a-bang  a 


>     [^     K     |»ti 


^-^*»-^*«-^i; 


:^=^: 


^:z£g=t2=t2=t^ 


--f=^ 


-*-i- 


y— t" — b*^— ^ 


•^     jJ     ^     <^~ 


^ 


^--z:^: 


gum-be  -  ry  jab    jin  gun  re  -  lab  gum-be-ry   jab    jin  gun  re-lah 
bang   a-bang  a  -  bang  a-  bang  a  -  bang  a-  bang  a  -  bang  a-  bang   a 


1  These  exhaust  the  specimens  of  savage  music  that  I  have  been  able 
to  find  in  the  books  of  voyagers.  A  more  extended  catalogue  may  be 
made  when  further  materials  are  accessible  to  the  general  student,  or  the 
interest  of  voyagers  enlisted  to  chronicle  specimens  of  savage  music  which 
many  have  hitherto  heard  without  reporting. 

2.  Wilkes,  II.,  190. 


124 


HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 


This  song  was  obtained  from  a  native  who  had  faced  a 
a  journey  of  many  hundreds  of  miles  over  scrub  and 
desert  in  order  to  teach  it  to  a  friendly  tribe. 

The  following  is  an  old  Ashantee  air  and  the  measure 
is  the  Double  Skip,  which  becomes  irregular  towards  the 
end,  and  is  also  somewhat  irregular  throughout : 


-1^ — hi — y^ ^ — 1-3 


^     ^ 


:^r 


r   ^ 


:^=P 


:^=! 


m 


-^    # 


-?« — 9>- 


i^t^: 


-r— r- 


i 


:^=l?= 


ii»»— V- 


:(«: 


>p    ^ 


-1?-^- 


^=f: 


>- 


-L*»     >* 


:?c=jE 


1i2=k 


3^^ 


«•+' — ^^ H^ ^^ ^ ?^ ^ 1^ b^ !a* fc»< tw> 1^— 

Frr£=f^--ff 

VE^-^— ^— ^— ^— ^— ^-  ->— gi— pi    g    g    g^ 

**"  >^  k   ^-f 

or  hsten  to  the  musical  Hottentots  : 

Rhythm.     Double  Skip.     2  notes  to  a  step. 


:^::tf"«'' 


1  Bowdich's  Mission  to  Ashantee,    p.,  364. 

2  Engel's  National  Music,  p.,  155.     Reduced  from  F. 


THE     VOICE. 


125 


Here  is  an  equally  pleasing  song  of  the  Goree  negroes  :- 
Rhythm.     Double  Skip.     Irregular. 


i 


W^-^ 


^2f 


But  as  a  rule  we  must  not  expect  such  regularity  in  all 
cases.  The  measures  often  become  mixed,  as  in  this 
song  of  the  Hottentots  which  is  a  compound  of  Skip  and 
Double  Skip. 

Double  Skip.  ,  /    v  1 

^^       W  —       \     -m       \J     (—1)  I 


i 


^E 


1^^ 


-^- 


2nd  Figure. 


H 1- 


3rd  Figure. 

Skip.       I 


i 


-1*-^-^- 


:^^ 


:^!=^ 


l_(w) 


--^^^-^\ 


4th  Figure.    Quite  irregular. 
Perhaps  Double  Skip. 


i 


s 


Perhaps  Skip  inverted. 


iS 


i^ 


-^- 


^- 


:^— ^ 


For,  as  I  take  it,  when  certain  sets  of  Rhythm,  which 
were  in  the  first  instance  but  the  reflection  of  the  natural 
movements  of  the   feet,  became   established   as   regular 


v/ 


(^ 


T    Engel's  National  Music,  p.,  249, 


126  HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

musical  forms,  fancy  would  do  its  best  to  throw  them 
into  new  patterns  in  order  to  produce  variety.  For  we 
must  bear  in  mind  that  the  melodies  we  have  here 
are  not  the  melodies  as  they  sprang  like  Cadmus'  soldiers 
from  the  earth.  For  those  would  die  as  quick  a  death. 
But  instead  of  that  they  are  the  melodies  which  invention 
has  formed  on  a  recognised  rh3'thmic  framework,  which 
it  has  often  taken  the  liberty  to  tamper  with.  Now  this 
deliberate  thinking  out  of  tunes  is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  of  the  many  artificial  results  which  come  in 
the  train  of  dancing.  Tune  itself  is  a  highly  artificial 
thing,  since  natural  speech  is  entirely  removed  from  it. 
But  the  deliberate  coining  of  tunes  is  more  artificial  still. 
And  yet  it  would  of  necessity  result  from  the  union  of 
Dancing  with  Speech.  For  the  regular  pauses  of  the 
dance  and  the  tripping  of  the  measure  would  very  soon 
render  extemporisation  out  of  the  question,  and  men 
would  have  to  build  their  words  before-hand  if  there  was 
to  be  any  sense  in  what  they  sang.  And  it  is  hard  if  the 
tones  the  words  were  to  be  said  in  did  not  receive  alike 
attention.  Or  perhaps  the  tones  would  simply  remain 
in  the  mind  from  the  constant  repetition  of  rhythmic 
words. 

But  where  there  was  no  rhythm  in  the  matter,  there 
would  be  no  premeditation  of  words,  and  tunes  would  be 
longer  in  coming,  and  they  would  form  themselves  rather 
than  be  consciously  formed — or  putting  it  generally, 
through  the  absence  of  rhythm  the  Voice  would  pursue  a 
far  more  natural  though  perhaps  more  homely  develop- 
ment. And  this  is  how  men  would  tell  the  Story  which 
we  agreed  was  the  progenitor  of  the  Chant. 

Shall  we  then  be  justified  in  calhng  the  Story  the  Prose 
of  Music  in  contrast  to  the  Dance  which  we  will  call  the 
Verse  ?  And  shall  we  not  say  that  such  melodies  as 
this  :— 


THE     VOICE. 


127 


jg=i*     ^-\  ^   >,   m  ^  m 


:t2=i 


±1: 


— m- m- — < 


Wa 


ich  e  .  .      e  wa 


feE?ES 


=p=^ 


it       m 


ich  e  . 


wa     -     -     ich  wa     -     -     ich 


v/ 


^-=t- 


E3Ji^-a^-^-^-^-i>^=^ 


^^—^z=M- 


2^u. i_«s — e — 0 — « — 9 — K — 49 — '^   I  a> — «=^ — 0 — ^~^ — —^- 

Chon   ga-ta  rou   ni  ge-na  ma-ni    you  ma-ni  ma  gon- da  ma  -  li 


w 


cJ  •  .^.  .^.    ^.  .J — Y      _ 


-g— 5- 


gone  clchol  le    do     dchol  le       do       Kri  schna  HI   am  -  i         dam 


~-^—&—f^- 


:^= 


p    r-"    r^    ^_p_p=:::i 


— ' ^— - — \~ 

A   -    gith   mat  -  te      Ah  -  wiih    Tu  -  pa  -  ja 


i 


— .  4 


f 


T=q=T 


^-^~z^-^. '  <^  ^  ^. 


■  -9-  -9-  -^-  -a-  -9-  ■ 


i 


*ti 1 1 — I 


4=^ 


-•-  -«-    -#-  -•- 


i 


"S    S    a 


S    ^    S 


=^ 


^=^ 


"^    ^" 


^-H-4' 


i^-  -^-  _^-  _i: 


Mi 


=l=f 


-I ^- 


g<      <^    .J.   -J-  '   ^      ^    V   -^- 


1^-      -^  -api-  -a^ 


i 


_i — I — I- 


q=T 


.        ^— ^.    _i    _^. '.J-  .J.    _J-    _^'.J.  V  -J-    -4- 


1   Wilkes  v.,  117.  3   Jones'  Musical  Curiosities. 

3  Foster's  Reise  um  die  Erde,  II.,  478, 

4  Parry's  Second  Voyage,     Reduced  from  B  flat. 


128 


HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 


^- 


F  F  r> 


S—^- 


^■=^- 


^-^ 


:^ 


^- 


=^=^ 


^ 


:^: 


^ 


-^—^- 


-^- 


:?2=^ 


q^: 


2i: 


^3: 


:^ 


:!= 


3=^= 


I  say,  shall  we  not  set  down  such  melodies  as  these  as 
Musical  Prose  in  contrast  to  those  tripping  highly 
rhythmic  melodies  we  considered  a  page  or  two  ago, 
which  we  will  call  Musical  Verse  ?  For  although  there 
is  a  certain  amount  of  rhythm  in  this  Musical  Prose, 
it  is  very  feeble  and  at  the  same  time  devoid  of  that 
typical  measure  _  \j  the  Skip,  which  we  said  was  the 
infallible  characteristic  of  the  Dance.  So  that  we  may 
lay  it  down  that  Music  has  its  Prose  and  Verse  as 
language  has :  and  that  the  Prose  is  the  outcome  of 
the  Chant,  and  the  Verse  is  the  outcome  of  the  Dance. 

And  since  the  Skip  is    essentially  triple   in    character 
(for  whether  we  write  the  bar 


\^    — 

I  -    h  J 


in  each  case  we  have  a  triple  measure)  it  is  plain  that 
the  absence  of  triple  time  will  be  one  of  the  marks  of 
Musical  Prose.  But  Common  Time  will  be  a  sign  of  it, 
or  better  still  no  time  at  all,  for  the  Chant  in  its  purest 
form  is  wholly  arrhythmic,  being  derived  as  we  have  seen 
from  Speech  and  the  Story,  where  no  rhythm  exerts  its 
force  but  only  that  loose  and  feeble  time  of  breath  marks 
and  syllabic  quantity,  which  compared  to  dancing 
rhythm  does  not  deserve  the  name  of  time  at  all.     And 


I  La  Perouse.     Voyages,  II.,  209, 


The    Voice 


129 


there  seems  no  doubt  indeed  that  many  of  the  Chant 
Songs  of  Savages  owe  what  rhythmic  character  they 
have  to  the  reporters'  hands  through  which  they  have 
reached  us,  who  being  compelled  to  adopt  the  notation  of 
Modern  Music  with  its  bars,  rests,  etc.,  have  given  them 
a  rhythmic  colouring  when  perhaps  they  least  deserved 
it.  And  there  is  no  doubt  that  if  many  of  the  savage 
songs  in  Common  Time  were  unbarred,  we  should  be 
nearer  the  form  in  which  they  were  sung  by  their  authors. 
For  take  such  a  specimen  of  Musical  Prose  as  the 
following  Chant  from  the  Soudan  : 


JIL-w=^ 


-f-f- 


1^=3= 


:^=^ 


-fe^-h- 


n^— J: 


22: 


rffzn 


±2diizs2; 


-^- 


1 — — h^ 1 


=i~ 


:^ 


^=i: 


», — K — ^s — ^    ^     — 


_^— ^—^ 


:t2=t£=tE: 


tti^zb^ 


-N     N     N 


:p:=P=P= 


^-=ir=i-- 


^--X=A-- 


-^-^oz^-- 


^=^ 


±: 


:^ 


=1; 


:e: 


-^- 


-I 1 r^ — I hrf — 9B- 


-.-A 


j-^,->- 


1^=^ 


1^=^=^: 


ntz^=it 


:^ 


:^ 


:t=t: 


$ 


trnv- 


iq^-:^ 


:^=ft 


:^=^ 


^-^-^L^^_M-iiz 


-h- 


JL   Bowdich's  Mission  to  Ashantee,  p.  449. 


130 


History    of    music. 


-.4:=:]=f*:4Mi=zt: 


■^ZZJ^-^     *_J!L 


:^: 


i 


:q: 


-ft — s- 


-->< — N- 


^W=^ 


^E^=_^: 


^=^- 


r—f—^- 


-^  \^  ^ 


s^ — ^ 


ft     ft     rr 


:p=e: 


>    <^    i^- 


:^=^=e=i=:^=;i: 


-> — pi^ 


-_^i=^z 


-^    ^    '^ 


-^=S- 


===q*r 


-> — h — ^s- 


:i=^=J= 


>     ft     ft 


-d—WJr 


ft         ft         ft 


_m — ^^ — S- 


J     ^     J     ^-^-~S- 


-^^ 


-^     f     ^ 


-* — ^- 


--1 1 ^— , 


y      tf- 


«.^ 


-*— ^ 


Here  is  the  form  to  which  much  savage  music  might  well 
be  reduced,  as  some  of  those  specimens  we  gave  a  page 
back  by  unbarring  would  become 

The  Malabar   Song. 


I 


m 


A h 


-^— :a: 


-^— i: 


The  North  American  Indian  Song. 

all  very  nearly  as  amorphous  as  the  Soudan  Chant.  But 
where  despite  the  unbarring  a  Rhythm  clearly  remains, 
as  in  that  song  of  the  Esquimaux, 


tJ 


&c. 


THE    Voice. 


lU 


which,   however   much  we  uubar   it   still   gives   the   clear 
rhythmic  phrases 


i 


&c. 


tr-^  S^^S  ^.J.V-^-    V-J-nJ-V-:^--^-;Jr.ii: 


—^         "^ — 


I  say,  we  must  describe  a  specimen  like  this  as  the  Chant 
modified  by  the  influence  of  the  Slow  Dance,  for  the 
Slow  Dance  is  near  akin  to  the  Walk,  and  we  walk  by 
Spondees.  So  to  this  influence  must  we  attribute  that 
feeble  Rhythm  we  call  Common  Time. 

Now  then  in  contrast  to  these  specimens  of  Musical 
Prose  we  will  here  exhibit  a  pronounced  specimen  of 
Musical  Verse,  and  we  shall  find  it  as  proceeding  from  a 
different  origin  of  a  totally  different  character ;  for  the 
Prose  as  we  said  is  the  outcome  of  the  Chant,  but  the 
Verse,  of  the  Dance.  And  this  is  a  song  of  the  Friendly 
Islanders  that  we  shall  give,  and  it  is  the  flower  of  Savage 
Song: 

Friendly   Islanders'    Song. 


11^=:=^: 


:^=i^- 


I^JZ^ 


0        0'    1» 


-r-r-g=*: 


=t^=i= 


Lang  -  i    my  lang  -  i       ee        tow  lang  -  i    my     laiig  -   i         ee 


I 


^^^-^: 


"9-^ 


^-W^ 


^ — ^'  ^  W- 


4^=^!=[= 


J^f-M^' 


-Ft-i — I — I — I — p- 


tow  lang  -  i    my  Lang  -  i     ee      tow  lang  -  i    my    laag  -  i 


i 


-Z^rn^iZZfrz:^ 


3BI=i^ZZ*Z=atl^ 


3tZ 


:?E=?c: 


l^t?- 


■W=^g=^—W-—W-W-''- 


-\iE=^^Ei:]ig=z\^-=i^^: 


tel-le    tel  -  le     oo  -  too    Saw  -  i     mi  -  e      tel  -  le    tel  -  le     oo -too 


:?e:*: 


?5--^: 


-V-^8— > 


jtatTM^zfSS 


:Uit 


Saw 


tel  -  le    tel  -  le      oo-too  saw  -  i     mi 


132  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

And  by  contrast  to  those  artless  utterances  of  the  Chant 
that  we  gave  a  moment  back,  there  is  something  artificial 
in  this.  But  if  artificial  how  beautiful !  What  plasticity  of 
form  is  here  !  What  a  graceful  toying  with  notes  and 
building  up  or  arranging  this  pretty  picture  in  sound ! 

Do  not  then  these  point  to  totally  different  origins,  or 
can  we  suppose  the  same  parentage  to  this  gem  of  artful 
melody  and  to  that  wild  Chaos  of  notes  which  formed 
the  Soudan  Chant  ?  I  think  no  better  examples  could  be 
taken  to  show  the  secret  constitution  of  Song,  and  how 
two  elements  have  been  at  work  to  produce  it  from  time 
immemorial,  sometimes  influencing  one  another,  but  more 
often  in  direct  antagonism,  each  pulHng  different  ways, 
and  ending  by  producing  within  Song  itself  two  well 
defined  and  contrasted  orders  of  Music  which  we  have 
styled  Musical  Prose  and  Musical  Verse,  the  first  the 
work  of  the  Chant,  the  second  of  the  Dance.  And  this  is 
how  the  Chant  and  the  Dance  influenced  one  another. 
For  first  the  Chant  laid  down  a  musical  plane  for  the 
Voice  to  travel  on,  and  then  Dancing  which  had  been 
gyrating  in  other  regions  in  company  with  mere  undis- 
ciplined Speech  came  gradually  creeping  up  to  the 
musical  plane  and  at  last  began  to  gyrate  on  it  for  good. 
This  is  how  steady  musical  notes  got  entrance  into  the 
Dance.  And  then  the  Dance  could  insinuate  its  influence 
into  the  Chant,  when  it  passed  Common  Time  into  the 
Chant  from  the  Slow  Dance.  But  these  are  two 
instances  of  contact  for  a  thousand  of  opposition.  For  it 
is  plain  they  could  never  have  worked  together,  since 
from  their  simple  forms  of  Dance  and  Story  how  different 
they  are  !  The  Dance,  frolicked  in  the  sunlight  on  the 
open  plain ;  the  Story,  told  in  the  evening  in  the  glimmer 
of  the  camp-fires  ;  the  Dance,  the  gay  and  blithesome 
side  of  life,  the  Story,  rather  its  serious  and  reflective 
side  ;    the   Dance,  the  mere  discharge  of  animal  spirits, 


THE      VOICE.  133 

the  Story,  the  careful  labour  of  the  memory  and  an  appeal 
to  the  imagination  ;  in  the  Dance  the  Senses  only 
concerned,  in  the  Story,  the  Intellect ;  the  Dance  the 
work  of  the  body,  the  Story  the  work  of  the  mind.  And 
to  bring  out  the  play  of  these  two  forces  is  what  makes 
the  history  of  Vocal  Music  so  hard  to  hit.  For  there  is 
no  question  of  stages  of  development  in  the  matter,  as 
we  cannot  speak  of  a  Dance  Stage  when  the  Dance  was 
all  in  all,  followed  by  a  Chant  Stage  when  the  Story 
supplanted  the  Dance.  There  could  never  have  been 
chronological  predominances,  but  one  influence  must 
always  have  predominated  with  some  peoples  and  the 
other  influence  must  have  predominated  with  other 
peoples.  And  then  in  the  Dance  peoples  Speech  would 
every  day  be  more  and  more  deflected  from  its  natural 
form  to  a  highly  artificial  one,  not  only  from  .the  daily 
multiplying  influence  of  rhythm,  but  also  from  the  certain 
constraint  which  the  company  of  the  Dance  lays  upon 
the  singer  in  confining  him  to  hilarious  and  festive 
subjects  and  teaching  him  to  regard  his  singing  as  an 
amusement  rather  than  the  earnest  utterance  of  his 
words.  He  would  be  taking  a  holiday  in  Sound,  and  at 
the  bottom  of  his  nature  there  would  be  a  large  fond  of 
joy  in  mere  sensuous  sound  to  help  him.  In  the  excite- 
ment of  the  Dance,  too,  his  voice  would  jump  and  skip 
and  bound,  and  little  by  little  what  was  at  first  the 
merest  indefensible  freaks  would  get  to  pass  as  sterling 
coin.  These  few  hints  will  suffice  to  show  how  Im- 
passioned Speech  would  be  deflected  from  its  original 
form  by  the  influence  of  Dancing. 

But  the  influence  of  the  Story  would  be  the  very 
reverse  of  this.  For  by  always  moving  in  the  tones  of 
Speech  it  preserved  the  original  and  natural  use  of  the 
Voice,  whose  virtue  it  is  on  all  occasions  to  make  the 
sound  dependent  on  the  sense,  to  treat  the  tone  merely 


134  HISTORY      OF      MUSIC. 

as  the  commentary  on  a  thought,  and  thus  it  secured 
the  enthronement  of  the  true  Vocal  Element  in  the 
world  of  music,  without  which  steadier  and  chastener 
music  were  a  mere  jingle  of  idle  sounds. 

Thus  the  Voice  in  its  association  with  the  Dance  has 
little  more  than  an  Instrumental  import.  Not  so  the 
Voice  in  its  connection  with  the  Story.  There,  all  evil 
influences,  if  we  may  so  term  them,  were  absent.  There 
was  neither  the  wild  gyration,  nor  the  stamping,  nor  the 
holiday  making  :  there  was  no  metre  to  make  the  voice 
unnaturally  buoyant,  no  feet  to  make  it  springy,  no  lines 
to  dock  off  the  sound  into  symmetrical  bits,  but  the 
Voice  ran  on  as  long  as  the  thought  carried  it,  and  the 
sentence  might  go  to  what  lengths  it  pleased.  Then  there 
was  the  intellectual  interest,  the  desire  to  enthrall  the 
attention,  the  inspiration  which  attention  gives,  the 
waves  of  sympathy  which  swept  the  audience,  the 
heightening  of  the  picture,  the  intensifying  the  passion — 
all  things  were  there  to  aid  the  Thought  and  nothing 
to  aid  the  Sensuous  Sound  ;  for  the  sound  was  of  no 
further  moment  than  that  it  emphasised  and  drove  the 
thought  home ;  and  each  tone  was  as  unpremeditated 
as  each  word.  All  these  things  there  were,  but  above 
all  there  was  the  Spiritual  groundwork  which  enabled 
such  things  to  be. 

iEsthetically,  then,  the  result  of  the  Story  was  to 
preserve  Nature  in  Art.  And  how  well  the  preservation 
was  effected  we  have  an  instance  under  our  eyes  which 
will  teach  us.  For  what  we  call  the  Minor  is  but  an 
artistic  embalming  of  the  language  of  Grief.  As  we  may 
presently  see  ourselves.  For  Grief  is  an  actual  nervous 
prostration,  and  it  deadens  all  that  elasticity  which  it  is 
the  property  of  Joy  to  give.  When  a  man  grieves,  his 
voice  does  not  rise  so  buoyantly  as  usual — it  droops  like 
the   spirits   do — it   is  sluggish  and  weary  and  shirks  the 


THE      VOICE.  135 

pleasant  trouble  of  free  exertion.  So  it  speaks  short  of 
its  usual  intervals,  and  in  declaiming  it  will  do  the  same. 
And  it  seems  to  me  that  this  failure  of  the  Voice,  though 
showing  through  all  the  intervals  of  the  Scale,  would  be 
likely  most  to  show  in  the  highest  note  of  it,  for  there  it 
is  that  the  effort  lies.     And  so,  if  this  be  true,  the  Great 


Scale  would    be    sung      ^ 1 |~T~i~~  instead  of 

and  the  Little  Scale    ^=^-55::z 


_^ .     Then  that  song  of  the 

d 

Samoans,  if  it  be  a  dirge,  we  shall  have  got  its  secret. 

„  I 

^=^==j=q==1 — I — I i — ^ — I      J      I     1 — I — r-=^iiqz=qi: '' 


iqziqzz: 


-^*-ii^--g-;i;-^:T^r;g--J- V  -d-  -^-j^-^r^-i^-g-' 

But  if  it  be  not  a  dirge,  we  still  might  well  imagine  that 
a  strain  of  melancholy  in  the  character  will  have  a 
similar  effect  in  subduing  the  vigour  of  the  voice ;  and 
we  will  look  for  such  an  ingredient  not  among  those  gay 
professors  of  the  Dance,  for  what  affinity  has  the  Dance 
with  melancholy  or  sorrow  ?  but  rather  among  those 
solemn-tempered     men    to    whom    is    due    the    develop- 


i   Wilkes,  II.,  13^. 


136  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

ment    of    the     Chant.       And    we     may     conclude     we 
are    on    no    idle    quest    when  we    find    the    most    careful 
of   travellers  telling  us   that  in   Samoa  all  the  intervals 
of    ordinary    speech    are    Minor,    and    all    their    songs 
but  one  or  two  we  know  are  in  the  Minor  mode.     But 
when  he    was    among    the    Friendly    Islanders,  he   did 
not  even  hear  a    minor  interval  in  their  speaking — they 
spoke  so  blithely — and  he  says  that  their  voices  are   most 
musical  and  melodious,  and  that   they  have  not  a  minor 
song   in    the    Islands.       So   that    we    may   well    imagine 
perhaps  a  radical  opposition  of  characters,  and  we  may 
suggest  that  the  Dancing  peoples  are  utterly  opposed  to 
that  sentimental   melancholy  of  expression  which  we  call 
the    Minor,   but   that    the    Chant   peoples  are  naturally 
inclined  to  it.    And  indeed  it  might  be  well  urged  that  the 
Chant  of  itself,  without  any  arriere  pensee  for  particularity 
of  character,  would  insensibly  incline  to  the  Minor.     For 
it  either  constrains  or  it   indulges  the  Voice,  say  which 
you  will,   to  a  certain  indolence,  and  so  the  free  expan- 
sion which  the  Dance  woos  to  is  never  attained  ;  and  the 
intervals  are  from  the  first  more  open  to  abbreviation. 
I  myself,  in  the  limited  observations  I  have  made,  have 
found  th'at  all  the  minor  songs  of  savages,  with  but  one 
or  two  exceptions,  belong  to  the  chant  form   exclusively, 
that   is  to  say  they  are  in   ordinary  common  time  or  no 
time,  and    are    destitute   of  the  Skip   _  w    which  is  the 
infallible  token   of  the  Dance.     But  the  Minor  is  much 
rarer    with    savages    than    the    Major.     As     civilisation 
advances  we  may  find  that  it  gets  to  be  somewhat  more 
common,  perhaps  because   those  things    which  feed  the 
Minor    become    more    common.       For    we   have    more 
sorrows  now. 

I  have  mentioned  the  Samoans,  but  the  Brazilians,  and 
especially  I  think  the  Tupinambas  will  furnish  us  with  a 
e:ood  illustration  of  a  Music  that  has  set  for  the  Minor, 


THE    VOICE. 

Here  are  some  of  their  songs  : — 


137 


Ha-lo-  et     ho     ho  he   he    ha     ha  ha-lo-et     ho    ho    he 


:q=:q=q==^: 


::t=zi: 


E  -  svis  -  Ba     hau     e  -  grio;  -  na     he     he     hu    hu      ho     ho 


i 


^^ 


:^ 


'-^    <'J    d" 


e  -  oricr  .  11a     ha    hau   hau. 


_| 1 1 ^_J ^=1: 


Ta-  me  -  i  -  a    al  -  le  -  lu  -  i  -  a    a   don  ve  -  ni  hau  hau   h^    he. 


The  Brazilians  are  in  the  Agglutinative  Stage  of  the 
Scale,  so  that  if  we  had  further  specimens  of  their  music, 
although  we  should  discover  whether  they  flattened  the 
sixth  as  they  flattened  the  third,  we  should  have  no 
chance  of  seeing  how  they  treated  the  seventh.  And 
this  will  be  an  interesting  point  to  inquire  about,  whether 
the  seventh  remains   in  its  original  form  as  a  natural,  or 


I  The  Voyages  of  Mons.  de  Monts,  Mons  du  Pont  Grave,  and  Mons.  de 
Poutrincourt  into  La  Cadia.  In  the  Earl  of  Oxford's  collection,  Vol,  II., 
861.  I  mentioned  above  that  there  was  one  exception  to  the  universal 
Major  of  the  Friendly  Islanders,  and  strange  to  say  the  exception  is  a 
song  almost  identical  with  this  first  one  of  the  Brazilians,  running  as 
follows  : — 


:q: 


=^=q=T: 


-S=:^-^:±<^z^=^^:^ 


3^: 


^t^' 


^7^-.^^^- 


Foster's  Reise  um  die  Erde,  I.,  429.  So  that  we  may  well  admire  that 
a  song  which  occurs  in  the  heart  of  South  America  should  turn  up  again 
in  a  remote  island  in  the  Pacific  Ocean.  The  last  of  these  three 
Brazilian  Songs  has  also  a  curious  history,  for  the  occurence  of  the  word 
"  Alleluia  "  in  it  gave  to  some  curious  theories  that  the  Brazilians  were 
one  of  the  ten  lost  tribes  of  Israel.  &c, 


138 


HISTORY      OF      MUSIC. 


whether  it  too  is  flattened  like  the   sixth,  in  other  words 
whether  the  savage  Minor  is  our  Harmonic  Minor  Scale 


^=q: 


-^^_J:vJqp   g 


or  whether  it  is  the  Melodic  Minor 


I V 


•J    S-  ^  "^  ^      • 


But  to  find  this  we  must  turn  to  some  tribe  that  is  in 
the  Inflectional  Stage  of  the  Scale,  so  turning  to  a  tribe 
of  North  American  Indians  who  are  in  that  stage  let 
us  see  how  the  case  stands  with  them.  And  we  shall  find 
that  both  forms  are  in  use,  for  here  they  are  both  used 
in  the  same  song 


"d^-zz^. 


mE^^ 


•-b:=j=| 1 — lJ= 


And  so  it  should  seem  that  while  the  sixth  and  third  were 
always  depressed,  the  seventh  was  left  an  open  note  and 
varied  according  to  the  mood  of  the  singer.  The  natural 
seventh 


:i= 


was  the  blither 
wording ;  •_but  this 


~^^^^M 


is  a  musical  sigh. 


En^el's  National  Music,  p.  140, 


PIPE    RACKS    AND    T.YKi:    RACKS.  139 


CHAPTER    IV. 


PIPTi5    RACES   AND    LYRE    RACES. 


Now  if  the  Story  or  Chant   is   the    exponent    of  the 
Intellectual   or    Spiritual    element    in  Vocal   Music  as  it 
appears    so   entirely   to  be,   that  is   to  say  the  element 
which  lays  the  stress    on  the   thought  to  the  prejudice 
or  neglect  of  the  sound,  then  is  the   Dance   equally  the 
exponent  of  the   Sensuous  or  merely  Musical  element — 
which    spends    all    its    delight    on    the     sound    to    the 
corresponding    forgetfulness  -  of  the   thought.     And  here 
we  see  repeated  within  one  division  of  our  art,  that   is 
to  say,  within  the  province  of  the  Voice  alone,  the  same 
antithesis  which  we  formerly  accentuated  in  the  complete  - 
Art  at  large.     For  regarding  Music  from  the  first  as  a 
Dualism  we  found  it  was  composed  of  the  conjunction 
of  two    elements,    the     one    purely    musical,    the    other  v 
poetical,  the  one  sensuous,  the  other  spiritual,  the  one 
owing  its  origin  and  development  to    Instruments    and 
based    on    the    mere    animal    delight     in     Sound ;     the 
other  owing  its    origin   and  development   to    Language, 
and  based  on  the  satisfaction  of  the  Intellectual  faculties 
in  man.     But   now   having  regarded    one    of  these   two 
great  elements  in  detail,  we  find   a  similar  antagonism 
and   a   similar   duality   making   itself  felt    again    in   the 
constitution    of   this    component   likewise,    and    keeping 
up  a  petty  reflection  of  what  occurs  in   broader  forms  in 
the  art  at  large. 


140  HISTORY      OF      MUSIC. 

Since  the  texture  of  Vocal  Music  has  yielded  so  curious 
a  result,  it  will  be  well  to  consider  if  its  antagonist, 
Instrumental  Music,  is  similarly  constituted,  or  whether 
on  the  contrary  it  forms  all  one  piece  with  no  play  of 
conflicting  parts  within  it.  And  taking  two  savage  races 
whose  Vocal  Music  has  set  for  Chant  and  Dance 
respectively,  let  us  see  what  is  their  attitude  to  Instru- 
mental Music,  for  surely  if  the  latter  is  constituted  on 
similar  lines  of  opposition,  it  will  show  its  peculiarities 
in  the  wake  of  the  former.  If  ever  a  race — speaking 
broadly  for  there  are  a  few  exceptions — could  be  said 
to  have  developed  a  unique  style  of  Song  it  is  the 
Polynesian  race  of  the  Pacific,  and  particularly  in  their 
leading  tribes  of  Marquesans,  Friendly  Islanders,  and 
Otaheitans,  whom  we  may  take  as  representatives  of  the 
rest — whose  music  is  described  on  all  hands  as  most 
melodious  and  even  symmetrical,  and  instinct  with 
rhythm,  '  founded  on  the  dance,  built  on  the  dance, 
and  indeed  as  dancers  these  people  have  no  rivals  in 
the  savage  world.  -  The  Otaheitan  dancers  Captain 
Cook  describes  with  rapture,  and  can  find  no  parallel 
to  them  but  the  best  performers  on  the  most  courtly 
stages  of  Europe.  -^  Similar  accounts  also  come  to  us 
of  other  Polynesians  no  less  than  these  we  are  selecting 
as  our  examples.  Now  let  us  see  how  the  Instrumental 
music  of  these  nations  is  characterised.  And  first, 
Polynesia  is  the  Home  of  the  Flute.J  Here,  as  nowhere 
else,  does  savage  flute-playing  attain  perfection.  And 
the  flute  and    drum    are    now    used   to    accompany  the 


r    Capt.  Cook,   I.,  98.     Ellis'    Polynesian   Researches,    IV.,   282.     Cook 
I.,  87.     Hermann  Melville's  Marquesas,  &c. 

2  The  best  proof  of  this  assertion  lies  in  the  fact  of  the  dance  having 
developed  into  the  drama  among  these  nations  alone  in  the  savage  world. 

3  Cook,  I.     The  exceptions  to  the  above  national  character  seem  to  be 
the  Samoans  and  the  Maories,  the  latter  especially. 


i 


PIPE  RACES  AND  LYRE  RACES.  I4I 

dances;  '    and    now  it  is    the   solo    Flute  we  read  of — 
the   scarlet    reed    flute    of    the    Marquesans,   played    by 
voluptuous  girls  in  their  delightful  valleys,  whose  fingers 
"  run  at  random  over  the  stops  and   charm  the  ear  with 
wild  melody"  " — the  pan  pipes  of  the   Friendly  Islanders 
that  breathe  such    delightful  music  the  merest  stranger 
is   charmed  to  listen  to  their    strains  ^ — the    flutes   and 
pipes  that   mix  their  sounds  with  the  licentious  revelries 
of  the    Otaheitans.  ^     The  drum  too  is   in    the    highest 
favour  with  these  people   and    is    developed   to    a   most 
sensuous    instrument.  (In   the    Marquesas    we    read    of 
mammoth  drums,   fifteen    feet  in  height,  5] whose  sound 
resembles  thunder,]  and  with  two  rows  of  these  playing  in 
their  midst  from  morning  till  night  the  people  will  lie 
feasting  under   the   trees   for    days   together,    as   at   the 
Feast     of     Calabashes    'which     the     traveller     Melville 
describes.  ^(In  the  Friendly   Islands  the  drums  are  so 
enormous  that  it  takes  two  or  three  men  to  move  one  of 
them  from  its  place,  j^     And  the  great  drums  of  Otaheite 
and  other  of  the  South  Sea  Islands  that  stand   eight  foot 
high  ^   and   whose    roar    is   heard    echoing   through    the 
valleys  for  miles,  have  often  been  described  by  travellers  ^. 
Such  accounts  as  these  come  to  us  of  Polynesian  Music. 
The   people   seem    to    delight    in    intoxicating   their   ear 
with    sound,    and   whether   it    is    the   bellowing   of  their 
drums,   or  the  luscious  strains  of  their  pipes,   they  are 
only  open   to  sensuous   effects  in  their  music  ;    for  what 
we  have  now  said  completes  the  picture  of  it. 


lb.  2    Melville's  Marquesas,  p.  251. 

3  Mariner's  Tonga  Islands,  I.,  330. 

4  See  Captain  Cook's  account  of  the  timorodee  dance 

5  Melville's  Life  in  the  Marquesas,  p.  185.  6     b. 

7   Cook,  II.,  113.  8    Ellis'  Polynesian  Researches,  I.,  282. 

9   Ellis  (loc.  cit.)  describes  the  terror  which  the  sound  of  these  gigantic 
drums  awakened  in  the  breasts  of  the  inhabitants. 


142  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

Let  US  now  turn  to  another  race,  the  Papuans, — in 
general  character  as  opposite  to  the  Polynesians  as  night 
is  to  day  ;  for  they  are  far  less  licentious,  '  far  more 
intellectual,  ^  "  the  only  savages,"  says  Pickering,  "  that 
can  give  a  reason,"  eminently  superstitious  and  imagina- 
tive, 3  and  generally  of  that  cast  of  character  which  we 
understand  when  we  speak  of  spirituality  of  character. 
And  their  Song  is  as  pronounced  for  the  Chant  as  the 
Polynesians'  for  the  Dance.  It  is  often  rough  and  wild, 
and  much  built  on  the  Story,  for  story  tellers  are  an 
institution  among  the  Papuans.  ^  And  for  the  form  of  it, 
among  the  Feejee  Papuans,  says  Williams,  "  the  metre 
or  the  rhythm  is  scarcely  ever  secured."  ^  "  Noch  maat 
noch  harmonic  kan  men  opmerken,"  writes  Rosenberg 
of  the  New  Guinea  Papuans,  ^  "  There  is  neither  metre 
nor  melody  in  their  songs."  And  of  other  Papuans, 
as  of  the  New  Caledonians,  ^  the  Solomon  Islanders, 
&c.,  ^  the  accounts  that  reach  us  are  similar.  Turning 
now  to  the  Instrumental  Music  of  these  people,  the 
first  thing  that  strikes  us  about  it  is  the  positive  aversion 
to  mere  noise.  In  the  Pellew  Islands  they  have  a 
substitute  for  the  drum  which  is  an  amazing  one. 
"They  hold  tassels  of  split  plantain  leaves  in  their 
hands,"  writes  Keate,  "  which  they  clash  at  certain 
intervals.  And  with  this  modest  music  they  are  always 
content."  9     In   many  parts  of  New   Guinea  the  Drum 


I  Finsch's  Neu  Guinea,  p.  loi.  Jukes'  Voyage  of  H.M.S.  Fly,  II., 
247.  For  the  contrast  to  the  licentiousness  of  the  Polynesians,  Jukes, 
lb,  246.  2   Cf.,  Wallace's  remarks  in  his  Malay  Archipelago, 

3  Williams'  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  I.,  239,  &c. 

4  Waitz.  Authropologie,  VI. 

5  Williams'  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  I.,  114. 

6  Rosenberg.  Reistochten  naar  de  Geelvinkbaai  of  Niew,  Guinea,  p. 
93.,    where   the   word    "  harmonie "    is    used    in   the    popular   sense   of 

'  pleasing  musical  effect."  7   Ellis'  Polynesian  Researches,  II. 

s    lb.  9    Keate's  Pellew  Islands,  p.  117. 


Pipe  races  and  lvre   races.  143 

has  fallen  into  disuse  altogether,  and  the  only  instrument 
employed  is  the  conch-shell  '  which  is  merely  used  for 
purposes  of  signalling.  The  same  remark  applies  to 
Tanna  in  the  New  Hebrides.  During  all  his  stay  there 
Turner  saw  no  instrument  but  the  conch-shell.  In 
Feejee  this  characteristic  comes  out  no  less  strongly. 
There  the  Drum  is  refined  into  a  most  delicate  and 
peculiar  form.  It  is  a  form  peculiar  to  Fiji,  "  is  called 
the  Ihara  and  is  made  of  the  single  joint  of  the 
Bamboo."  "  In  the  centre  a  long  aperture  is  made  from 
one  joint  to  the  other."  -  "  And  they  elicit  clear  notes 
by  striking  it  with  a  short  stick."  ^  As  contrasted  with 
this  refinement  on  the  Drum,  their  Drums  proper  are  of 
the  simplest  construction  and  greatly  deficient  in 
resonance,  being  merely  "logs  hollowed  like  a  trough"  ; 
nor  are  they  much  used  except  to  mark  the  time  for  the 
rowers,  and  at  the  straining  of  the  yaqona — a  religious 
ceremony.  '^ 

Turning  now  to  the  rest  of  their  instruments  how  do 
we  find  them  ?  The  Fijians  resemble  the  Polynesians 
in  possessing  the  Pipe,  the  Flute,  the  Pan  Pipe,  s  the 
Conch-Shell.  But  they  have  one  instrument  which  the 
Polynesians  have  not — "  a  little  Jew's  harp  ^  which  they 


1  "  Het  eenige  muziek-instrument  det  men  ziet  is  de  in  deze  gewesten 
partien  slom  gebruikelijke  trompet,  wit  een  tritonschelp  vervaardigd." 
Rosenberg,  Nievv  Guinea,  p.  93. 

2  Brown,  Races  of  mankind,  II.  32.  3    Williams'  Fiji,  I.  163. 

4  But  in  all  other  religious  ceremonies  they  are  replaced  by  the  conch 
(Williams,  I.  133),  which  en  passant  is  likewise  the  case  at  Samoa  in  the 
Navigators'  where  there  is  an  infusion  of  Papuan  elements  which  con- 
sidering its  proximity  to  Fiji  is  highly  suggestive.  The  resemblances  of 
their  vocal  music  have  been  already  noticed^and  in  their  Instrumental  it 
is  still  more  remarkable.  Not  only  havfe  the  Samoans  the  conch  of 
religion,  also  hollowed  bamboos  which  are  another  Fijian  instrument 
(Turner,  Nineteen  years  in  Polynesia,  p.  211),  but  even  the  Ihara  (Ellis, 
Polynesian  Researches,  I.  284),  which  must  be  regarded  as  a  direct 
importation  from  Fiji  seeing  that  the  Samoans  alone  of  all  Polynesian 
Malays  possess  it.  5    Dumont  d'  Urville,  Voyage  de  1'  Astrolabe. 

6   Williams'  Fiji,  I.  163. 


1    4  HISTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

twang  with  their  fingers  " — in  other  words  a  Rudimen- 
tary Lyre.  The  Polynesians  are  still  in  the  Pipe  Stage, 
the  Papuans  are  pressing  on  to  the  Lyre  Stage.  And  this 
is  the  radical  difference  between  them. 

What  then  is  this  Lyre  Stage  to  which  the  Papuans 
are  pressing  on?  It  is  the  stage  at  which  the  Voice  can 
be  used  to  accompany  the  instrument,  and  hence  its 
natural  appearance  among  these  professors  of  the  Chant. 
For  in  their  aversion  to  mere  sensuous  sound  they  give 
the  preference  to  the  plain  spoken  utterances  of  the 
Voice,  and  have  learnt  to  fashion  an  instrument  which 
the  Voice  can  domineer.  For  this  is  the  raison  d'etre  of 
the  Lyre,  to  be  an  instrument  of  accompaniment,  and 
in  fashioning  such  an  instrument  they  have  contrived  to 
tame  the  excesses  of  mere  instrumental  music  and  teach 
it  reasonable  utterance.  And  we  may  well  take  the 
Lyre  as  the  type  of  such  an  attitude  to  Instrumental 
Music,  for  in  its  very  nature  it  is  a  mere  handmaid  to  the 
words  of  the  singer,  and  the  Sensuous  Sound  as  repre- 
sented on  the  Lyre  is  in  complete  subjection  and  merely 
the  accompaniment  or  "commentary"  on  the  thoughts 
and  words  of  the  Chant  or  Song.  Shall  we  then  do 
well  to  Tiescribe  the  Papuans  as  a  "Lyre  Race"  since 
this  typical  instrument,  the  Lyre,  means  so  much,  and  is 
found  with    them  ?  ^    and    shall  we   on    the    other   hand 


I  If  it  seem  somewhat  arbitrary  to  describe  the  Papuans'  as  a  Lyre  Race, 
among  whom  only  one  solitary  instance  of  the  Lyre  form  is  to  be  found, 
viz.,  in  the  highly  rudimentary  Lyre  of  Fiji,  we  must  seek  our  justification 
in  the  fact,  that  in  considering  savage  races  we  are  considering  arrested 
developments.  And  we  must  judge  these  developments  exclusively  by 
their  tendency — not  by  what  they  are,  but  by  what  they  signify.  And  just 
as  the  occurrence  of  one  Bronze  implement  among  a  thousand  Stone 
ones — provided  its  authenticity  be  fully  attested — clearly  warrants  us  in 
referring  them  one  and  all  to  the  Bronze  age  ;  so  does  the  occurrence  of 
the  most  rudimentary  Lyre  form  among  a  heap  of  pipes  ,  and  drums 
justify  us  in  regarding  the  owners  as  essentially  a  Lyre  Race,  provided  its 
authenticity  be  fully  attested,  provided  we  have  no  ground,  that  is  to  say, 
for  suspecting  it  to  be  an  importation. 


PIPE  RACES  AND  LYRE  RACES.  I45 

describe  the  Polynesians  as  a  "  Pipe  Race,"  since  the 
Pipe  is  the  type  of  the  purely  Sensuous  element  in 
Instrumental  Music,  where  mere  sound  alone  is  present, 
which  may  jingle  and  wanton  as  wildly  as  it  may,  for  no 
curb  or  chastening  fetter  is  there  to  restrain  it  ?  I  think 
so,  and  let  us  add  to  each  division  what  characteristics  in 
the  remainder  of  the  Music  go  with  each,  for  with  the 
Lyre  there  go  the  Chant,  the  Voice ;  and  with  the  Pipe 
there  go  the  Dance,  the  Drum,  the  Instrument.  Now  it 
will  be  obvious  what  will  be  the  general  characteristics  of 
the  style  of  music  which  each  represent,  and  they  will  be 
two  styles  in  as  complete  opposition  to  one  another  as 
can  well  be  imagined.  For  if  the  Pipe  is  the  instrument 
of  melody,  the  Drum  is  the  instrument  of  Rhythm,  and 
Rhythm  is  further  accentuated  by  the  companionship  of 
the  Dance,  which  is  invariably  associated  with  these  two 
instruments,  so  that  to  captivate  by  Melody,  to  please  or 
even  to  intoxicate  by  Rhythm,  and  to  heighten  and  exalt 
the  mere  musical  sound  with  a  royal  contempt  for 
anything  higher  in  the  Art,  will  be  the  main  features  of 
the  music  of  our  Pipe  Race.  But  with  the  Lyre  Race 
the  contrary  will  be  the  case,  the  Rhythm  will  be  weak , 
the  Form  will  be  loose — the  nature  of  the  Lyre  militates 
against  Rhythmic  accent — and  there  is  no  Dance  to 
woo  to  Rhythm  either,  while  the  Voice  being  all  in  all 
and  contemning  the  sensuous  aids  of  Music,  will  seek  only 
to  express  in  simplicity  and  truth  the  emotions  and 
passions  of  poetry  and  the  heart.  Such  will  be  the 
characteristics  of  these  two  rival  races.  And  now 
turning  from  this  obscure  nook  in  the  Pacific  to  the 
world  at  large,  we  shall  still  find  Pipe  Races  and  Lyre 
Races.  Allowing  this  division,  I  say,  that  we  have  here 
made,  to  spread  itself  over  mankind  at  large,  we  shall 
have  no  difficulty  in  discovering  contrasted  styles  or 
forms  of  art,  reposing  on  similar  principles  of  contrast 


r 


146  HISTORY    OF     MUSIC. 

and    obviously  flowing   from    the    same    original    source. 
Although  the  absence  or  presence  of  an  instrument  can 
be  no  guide  in  judging  of  civilisation  where  all  instru- 
ments   are    known,    yet     its     indigenous     invention     or 
extrinsic  importation  will  be  a  very  good    sign,   for   all 
men  do  not  appear  to  rise  necessarily  to  the  Lyre  Stage, 
and  still  more  will  be  the   character  of  the  musics  we 
compare,  for  they  show  where  other  evidence  is  wanting 
the  things  we  want  to  know,     Thus,  for  instance,  taking 
the   Mediterranean  Races — Semites,  Hamites,  and  Indo- 
Europeans — and    placing    them    on    one    side,    and    the 
Mongoloid  races — the  Chinese,   Malays,   and   Mongols — 
on  the  other,  we  shall  again  observe  a  similar  contrast  to 
that  we  have  just  examined  between  our  representative 
savages.     For  the  Lyre  is  par  excellence  the  instrument  of 
the  former — so  much  so  that  speaking  within  the  limits 
of  history  we  may  say  there  was  never  a  time  with  them 
when  the    Lyre   was  not.      While    the    Pipe  is  equally 
the   instrument   of    the    latter,    for   while   we    have    an 
historical     account     of    the    first    introduction    of    the 
.  Lyre    into    China,    the    majority    of    the    Malays    and 
all  the  Northern   Mongols  are  ignorant  of  its  existence 
even  yet,  and  are  still  in  the    Pipe  Stage.     But  letting 
alone  the  mere  absence  or  presence  of  the  actual  instru- 
ment, as  I  say,  the  character  of  the  two   Musics  point 
unmistakeably  the  same  way.     The  conception  of  Music 
by  these  two  races  has  always   been  something  entirely 
different.     With   the    Mediterranean    races,    Music    has 
been  the  handmaid    of  Poetry,   and  kept  in  subordina- 
tion to   Language.     With   the    Mongoloid   races.    Music 
was  divorced    from    Poetry ;  and    instruments,    provided 
only  they  made  a  pretty  jingle  or  a  good  stirring  noise, 
allowed   to   run   into  what  excesses  they  pleased.     The 
Home   of  the    Lyre   was  the   Zone    of    the   founders   of 
Religions  and  of  the  fathers  of  Epic  Poetry.     The  Home 


PIPE  RACES  AND  LYRE  RACES.  1^7 

of  the  Pipe  was  with  the  discoverers  of  macadamisation 
and  tablet  printing,  the  inventors  of  gunpowder  and  the 
compass,  who  amused  themselves  with  pipe  and  drum 
after  the  business  of  the  day  was  over. 

Such  things  do  we  find  in  the  world  at  large,  and 
passing  from  races  to  nations  we  might  discover  the  same, 
for  the  division  is  a  flexible  one  and  admits  of  free 
application.  And  just  as  the  geographers  map  out  the 
world  into  Wine  Countries  and  Beer  Countries,  or  Oil 
Countries  and  Butter  Countries,  so  might  we  well  divide 
the  races  of  the  world  into  Pipe  Races  and  Lyre  Races, 
and  view  the  History  of  Music  as  the  conflict  and 
antagonism  between  two  great  styles — the  one  beset  with 
the  chacteristics  that  flow  from  the  Pipe,  the  Drum, 
the  Dance,  the  Instrument— the  other  with  those  which 
proceed  from  the  Harp,  the  Lyre,  the  Chant,  the  Voice, 
Nor  does  one  develop  into  the  other,  nor  is  one  necessarily 
a  higher  level  than  the  other,  but  they  exist  side  by 
side  in  the  world  with  a  great  gulf  between.  With  the 
invention  of  the  Pipe  the  growth  of  Instrumental 
Music  seems  with  some  peoples  to  stand  still,  and  the 
characteristics  of  the  Art  gathered  in  this  stage  of 
development  remain  uniltered  to  the  end.  If  they 
receive  the  Lyre  in  time  to  come  as  an  imported  product 
from  others,  they  may  use  it  indeed,  but  it  never  takes 
root  in  the  music.  While  with  the  Lyre  Races  that 
stage  is  early  reached,  and  its  characteristics  diffused 
through  the  music  in  like  manner. 

Thus  then  may  we  look  upon  the  Musics  of  mankind, 
and  as  we  shall  find  the  case  to  stand  at  the  zenith  of 
civilisation,  so  have  we  found  it  to  be  with  the  savage. 
And  to  what  cause  shall  we  ascribe  such  antagonism,  or 
how  make  it  a  valid  one,  unless  we  dive  beneath  the 
sheet  of  tissue  which  music  spreads  for  us  to  walk  on, 
and  recognise  in  this  opposition  of  styles  the  play  of  two 


148  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

great  forces  upon  men,  the  Sensuous  and  the  Spiritual, 
and  their  effects,  indeed,  are  better  seen  in  other  and 
perhaps  higher  things  than  music ;  but  since  they  shine 
through  all  those  manifestations  of  energy  that  together 
make  up  life,  they  are  seen  in  our  art  no  less  than 
elsewhere.  And  these  playing  upon  men,  I  say,  or  mani- 
festing themselves  through  men,  have  constituted  from 
the  first  two  grand  varieties  each  reposing  on  a  totally 
different  characteral  groundwork.  And  these  varieties 
we  may  study  now  in  races,  now  in  nations,  now  in 
individuals,  for  they  pass  by  imperceptible  modifications 
and  degrees  from  larger  circles  to  smaller  ones  and  so  on 
to  the  units  that  make  up  man.  And  there  is  the 
Sensuous  Music  which  is  the  music  of  Melody  and 
Rhythm,  the  music  of  the  Pipe  and  the  Dance ;  and  there 
is  the  Spiritual  Music,  which  is  the  music  of  Feeling  and 
Emotion,  the  Music  of  the  Chant  and  the  Lyre. 

And  to  consider  that  these  musical  features  of  diverse 
character  do  not  go  alone,  let  us  turn  for  a  moment  to 
our  typical  savages  again,  and  we  shall  find  that  the 
Sensuous  Polynesians,  which  are  the  Sensuous  Pipe  Race, 
excel  in  all  the  concomitants  of  sensuous  character — ^ 
being  as  sensual  in  their  morals  as  they  are  sensuous  in 
their  music,  '  being  excellent  adepts  at  the  plastic  arts, 
and  in  that  form  of  painting  which  is  the  only  one  a 
savage   knows,    tattooing,    being    the     tattooers    of    the 


1  "  There  is  a  scale  in  dissolute  sensuality,"  says  Captain  Cook,  speak- 
ing of  the  Society  Islanders,  "  which  these  people  have  ascended,  wholly 
unknown  to  every  other  nation  whose  manners  have  been  recorded  from 
the  beginning  of  the  world  to  the  present  time,  and  which  no  imagination 
could  possibly  conceive."  For  similar  statements  about  other  Polynesians 
see  Jukes'  Voyage  of  H.  M.  S.  Fly,  II.,  246.  Ellis'  Polynesian 
Researches,  &c. 

2  "Die      polynesischen      Malayan     iiberbieten      durch      kunstsinnige 
chnitzereien    und  Tatowirungen   leicht  alle   Papuanen."     O.     Peschel, 

Yolkerkunde,  p.  364. 


^ 


PIPE  RACES  AND  LYRE  RACES.  I49 

world,  '  covering  their  bodies  with  gorgeous  arabesques, 
revelHng  in  the  lust  of  the  eye,  and  exercising  all  the  arts 
of  an  educated  fancy  to  invent  new  combinations  of 
colours  and  lines.  -  But  with  the  spiritual  Papuans 
tattooing  is  entirely  unknown,  ^  carving  is  an  art  scarcely 
ever  practised,  ^  and  the  ascetic  severity  of  life  among 
these  benighted  savages  might  more  deserve  the  term 
of  spirituality  than  does  the  claim  of  many  modern 
nations  who  are  favoured  with  the  title.  ^  The  same 
contrast  will  therefore  doubtless  be  found  among  nation 
and  nation  in  the  civilised  world  in  like  manner,  and  we 
might  well  compare  the  Sensuous  Chinese  with  those 
typical  Semites,  the  Spiritual  Hebrews — the  Hebrews, 
whose  whole  history  is  one  long  protest  against  sensuality, 
compared  with  the  Chinese  of  whom  nothing  like  that 
could  be  said  ;  ^  the  Hebrews  whose  Intellect  was  redhot 
with  Emotion,  whence  they  came  to  be  the  fathers  of  the 
most  spiritual  religion  of  the  world,  compared  with  the 
Chinese  whose  Intellect  has  always  been  divorced  from 
Emotion,  so  that  they  could  give  birth  to  so  frigid  a 
creed  as  Confucianism,  and  naturalise  the  unpoetical 
religion  of  Buddha.  Arid  in  the  Arts  the  contrast  would 
be  still  more  strikingly  brought  out  :  the  Hebrews,  who 
had  no  plastic  Art — sculpture  was  forbidden  by  law,  and  of 
paintitig  we  hear  absolutely  nothing  ;  the  Chinese,  who 
are   adepts  in  clay  modelling,  7  the  greatest  wood    and 


I    Cf.  particularly  Melville's  Marquesas,  241,  &c. 

3  Cf.  the  account  of  the  tattooing  in  Ellis'  Polynesian  Researches,  III., 
216,  &c. 

3  Rosenberg,  Niew  Guinea,  p.,  8g.  For  the  limitation  in  Fiji  of  tattooing 
to  the  women,  and  in  a  very  singular  sense,  see  Lubbock's  Prehistoric 
Times,  p.  360. 

4  Williams'  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  I.,  112. 

5  Finsch's  Neu  Guinea,  p.,  loi.  Cook,  I.,  535.  Jukes'  Voyage  of  H; 
M.  S.  Fly,  II.,  p.  247. 

6  See  Montesqueiu's  remarks  on  this  point  in  his  Esprit  des  Lois. 

7  Davis'  Chinese,  II.,  259.     As  sculptors  of  stone  they  are  inferior. 


150  htSTORY    OF     MUSIC. 

ivory  carvers  of  the  world,  '  the  fathers  of  all  porcelain 
manufacture,  -  as  painters  particularly  as  colourists  were 
distinguished  centuries  before  the  Christian  era — fresco 
painting  being  a  very  ancient  art  among  them,  and 
engraving  in  three,  four,  five  colours  being  known  long 
before  its  discovery  in  Europe.  ^ 

In  this  way  we  might  proceed  to  generalise.  But  no 
more  at  present  will  we  do.  For  within  races  there  are 
nations,  and  within  nations  there  are  individuals ; 
tendencies  imply  reactions  ;  and  all  sorts  of  extraneous 
causes  concur  to  obliterate  the  original  lineaments  of  the 
pure  type.  They  who  draw  large  circles  must  look  to 
having  their  circles  disturbed,  and  the  making  of  a 
cosmic  symmetry  is  but  the  prelude  to  the  marring  of  it. 
Yet  since  we  shall  go  on  in  time  to  study  the  races  of  the 
earth  in  detail,  we  shall  be  none  the  worse  for  having 
drawn  bold  lines  at  first.  And  travelling  on  a  path  where 
much  that  is  new  and  strange  awaits  us,  a  familiarity 
however  slight  with  the  main  objects  on  our  way  will  be 
of  use  to  us  ;  and  then  this  previous  study  will  help  us 
all  the  more. 


1  ih  ,  238.  2  lb.,  244. 

3    Smith's  Wonders  of  Nature  and  Art,  VJ..  7«j. 


THE  LVRi:  STAC;ii.  I^I 


CHAPTER  V. 
THE  LYRE  STAGE. 

The  difference  between  the  Lyre  Stage  and  the  two 
other  stages  is  this,  that  aU  men  are  not  equally  fitted  to 
rise  to  it.  There  was  truth  in  that  old  Gnostic  who 
denied  that  the  psychic  man  could  ever  become  the  pneu- 
matic. Some  men  are  born  with  souls,  others  without  ; 
nor  can  the  united  ingenuity  of  man  introduce  a  soul 
where  nature  has  left  a  vacuum.  It  is  one  of  the  blessi- 
ings  of  civilisation  that  soul  can  be  freely  exported  and 
imported,  as  Liszt  into  London,  Beethoven  into 
Boston — handed  about  in  parcels  and  exposed  to  the 
astonished  eye  of  the  psychic,  who  otherwise  would  be  in 
total  ignorance  of  the  existence  of  such  an  article.  And 
what  we  see  going  on  to-day  went  on,  I  take  it,  though 
far  more  slowly  in  Prehistoric  Times — the  Lyre  was 
developed  at  certain  centres  and  diffused  thence  into 
psychic  un-Lyred  regions,  there  to  meet  with  the  usual 
fate  of  an  importation. 

It  was  the  dower  which  the  great  Aryan  race  brought 
to  Europe,  and  whether  they  came  as  Celts,  Slavs,  or 
Teutons,  they  came  bringing  their  lyres  with  them  to  a 
people  that  knew  not  the  Lyre.  And  similarly  the 
Hamitic  branch  of  the  Mediterranean  Race,  the 
Egyptians,  passed  down  the  Lyre,  somewhat  prematurely 
as    we    shall    see,    through    the    length    and    breadth    of 


152  tilSTORY     OF      MUSIC. 

Africa.  ^  In  a  similar  way  we  know  the  Lyre  was 
imported  into  Sumatra,  ^  and  likewise  into  Java,  ^  and 
was  very  probably  an  importation  among  the  Dyaks  of 
Borneo.  ^  To  which  we  may  add  the  existence  of  a 
large  mass  of  legends  among  various  nations  which 
connect  the  birth  of  the  Lyre  with  the  Water — an 
obvious  innuendo  as  I  take  it  at  an  importation  by  sea. 
Even  within  the  limits  of  recorded  history  we  may  see 
the  Lyre  still  migrating.  For  the  Latins  and  Samnites 
knew  no  instrument  but  the  Pipe,  till  they  were  brought 
into  contact  with  Greek  influences  at  the  south  of  their 
peninsula  that  is  to  say  till  about  500,  B.C.,  when  we  have 
excellent  proof  that  the  Lyre  was  imported  into  Latium 
from  Magna  Grsecia  along  with  other  elements  of  Greek 
Art  and  Greek  Civilisation,  s  In  the  same  way  the 
people  of  Ceylon  knew  no  instruments  but  the  Pipe  and 
Drum  till  as  late  as  161,  B.C.,  when  a  harp  is  mentioned 
in  the  chronicles  in  such  a  way  as  to  leave  no  doubt  it 
was  quite  a  recent  importation.  ^  And  here  we  may  pause 
to  notice  how  futile  would  large  generalisations  be,  unless 
the  requisite  amount  of  elasticity  were  assured  them. 
For  here  we  have  one  of  the  most  important  branches  of 
the    Aryan    family,    the    great    Latin    Race,    not    only 


1  See  Appendix  A. 

2  Marsden  s  History  of  Sumatra,  160.  Their  only  indigenous  instru- 
ments are  the  flute  and  drum. 

3  Where  it  was  brought  by  Buddhist  missionaries  from  India. 

4  Frederick  Boyle's  Adventures  among  the  Dyaks,  p.,  84.  Though  the 
Dyaks  may  lay  fair  claim  to  the  indigenous  Lyre,  and  in  the  following 
pac^es  I  have  given  them  the  benefit  of  the  doubt. 

5  (a)  From  the  fact  that  there  is  no  Latin  word  for  the  Lyre — lyra, 
cithara,  barbitos,  &c.,  being  pure  Greek.  This  stamps  the  Lyre- as  a  Greek 
importation.  {b)  From  the  fact  that  the  oldest  word  in  Latin 
for  the  Lyre,  "  fides,"  is  a  barbarous  mutilation  of  the  Greek  (xcfiLSr]  This 
ties  down  the  date  of  the  importation  to  that  period  when  so  many 
elements  of  Greek  Art  were  introduced  from  Magna  Grsecia,  in  each  case 
with  a  similar  mutilation  of  the  term.  See  Mommsen  I.,  p.  235,  sq. 
(English  translation)  where  the  whole  question  is  discussed  at  length. 

6  Tennent's  History  of  Ceylon. 


tHE    LYRiE    STAGE.  1 53 

ignorant  of  the  Lyre  when  first  we  find  them,  but  never 
taking  to  it  kindly  to  the  very  last.     After  its  introduc- 
tion it  was  still  a  despised  thing,   and   to   play  it   was 
considered  unbecoming.     Even  so  late  as  114,  B.C.,  when 
music   was   prohibited    in    Rome,    there   was   a    special 
exception   in  favour  of  the  Latin  player  on  the  Pipe,  but 
Lyre-playing  was  included  in  the  interdict.     So  that  not 
all  members  of  one  racial  family  are  equally  fitted  to  rise 
to  the  .Lyre  Stage ;  much  less    all   the  members  of  the 
human    race   at    large.     And    to    set    off    against    these 
Aryans,  we  have  on  the  other  side  among  the  Pipe  Races 
some  exceptions  too — the  Tartars,  Burmese,  and  one  or 
two    others,    who    have    achieved   the    indigenous    Lyre, 
unlike   the    rest    of  their  kith  and     kin.     But   to  mince 
with  exceptions  is  to  miss  the  joy  of  generalisation,  and 
leaving    these  things    till    they  can  be    considered     and 
explained  in   due  course,  let  us  follow  the  fortunes  of  the 
Lyre  among  its  fathers  and  begetters,  the   Mediterranean 
Races  at  large,  for  while  the  rest  of  men  were  plunged 
in   the    depths   they  raised    themselves   to   the   spiritual 
conception  of  Music,  as  they  raised  themselves  high  up  in 
other  things  as  well ;  and  to  get  at  the  beginnings  of  the 
Lyre  Stage  we  must  turn  our  eyes  on  them.     And  asking 
at  what  period  in  their   history  and   under  what  circum- 
stances the    Lyre   was    produced,  we  shall   find    that    it 
was   prodced    at   a   very    early   period    indeed,    and    the 
circumstances    we    shall    be    able    to    sketch.      For     it 
must  have  been  produced  before  the  dispersion  of  these 
races,  while  yet  Semites,  Hamites,  and  Aryans  all  dwelt 
in  one  common  home.     This  we   know  from  the  various 
members  of  these  three  groups  of  nations  whom  we  meet 
so  widely  separated  and  dispersed  at  the  commencement 
of    history   having    nevertheless    all   one   common  word 
for  "  Lyre,"  so  we  must  either  imagine  the  Lyre  to  have 
passed    from    one    to    the    other    as    a    new    invention 


154  HISTORY     OK      MUSIC. 

after  the  period  of  their  dispersion,  or  else,  what  seems 
to  me  more  probable,  to  have  been  developed  while  yet 
they  all  inhabited  the  same  home,  and  used  one  common 
language.  Now  the  name  which  the  instrument  was 
christened  in  that  night  of  antiquity,  and  which  stuck  to 
it  so  marvellously  through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  its  creators, 
was  something  like  this — and  I  am  speaking  of  what  I 
will  conjecture  as  the  earliest  form — it  was  Ben  or  Bin. 
For  in  ancient  Egyptian  the  name  of  the  instrument  is 
Ben  or  Bent,  and  in  Sanskrit  it  is  Been  or  Vina,  and  in 
Assyrian  it  appears  as  Pandura.  ^  and  in  Hebrew  it  is 
Kinnor  -  — this  last  being  Pan  or  Ben  by  the  ordinary 
change  of  p  (b)  into  k  (lupus  Aukos).  And  with  these 
we  may  well  compare  the  Arabic  Kanoon  and  the 
Modern  Egyptian  which  is  also  Kanoon.  All  of  which 
are  it  seems  to  me  traceable  to  some  original  root,  Kan, 
which  in  Sanskrit  means  "to  sing,"  and  which  in  the 
form,  Kan,  or  Ban,  formed  part  of  the  language  which  all 
these  nations  once  used  in  common.  So  that  there 
seems  very  little  difficulty  in  assigning  the  birth  of  the 
Lyre  to  the  remote  period  I  have  suggested,  for  to  insist 
that  it  was  subsequently  imported  and  transmitted  from 
one  to  the  other  after  these  nations  had  dispersed  and 
had  become  geographically  separate  and  distinct,  would 
be  I  think  to  introduce  unnecessary  complexity  into  our 
explanation.  But  where  we  have  to  do  with  a  race  of 
totally  different  blood  to  the  Mediterranean  Races,  who 
have  not  a  root  in  their  language  the  same,  and  who  yet 
for  all  that  call  the  Lyre  by  the  identical  name  which  the 
Mediterranean  Races  use — I  say,  that  in  that  case  wc 
have  every  ground  for  imagining  the  Lyre  to  be  an 
importationt  here,  and  it  is  principally  on  the  fact  that  the 


1  Bent.  Pand-ura, 

2  Pan  d-ura 

Kiiin  (d)-or  (a)     (even  the  termination  is  the  same) 


The  lyre  stage. 


03 


Chinese  call  the  Lyre  Kin,  that  I  rely  for  assuming; 
that  the  Lyre  was  imported  into  China — being  imported 
as  I  take  it  from  the  Aryans  of  India,  with  whose  Been 
or  Vina  it  is  in  respect  of  shape  and  structure  remark- 
ably similar. 

So  then  the  Lyre  was  developed  and  invented  in  that 
wonderful  Bactrian  home  of  our  ancestors  where  so 
many  great  and  beautiful  things  were  nursed  into  life. 
And  it  is  interesting  to  think  we  can  put  our  finger  on 
the  map  on  the  very  spot  where  the  Lyre  first  saw  the 
light  of  day.  And  in  studying  the  history  of  the  Lyre 
among  the  hordes  of  Central  Asia,  as  we  shall  proceed  to 
do,  we  shall  not  merely  be  studying  a  reflection  of  it, 
as  we  have  been  forced  to  do  in  the  case  of  the  Pipe  and 
the  Drum,  studying  reflections  of  them  in  out  of  the 
way  savage  mirrors,  but  we  shall  be  studying  it  in  the 
very  place  of  its  birth.  It  matters  little  that  the  present 
tenants  are  of  different  blood  to  ours.  For  has  the  air 
of  the  place  something  to  do  with  it,  or  is  it  the  nomadic 
life  that  keeps  alive  the  glorious  sentiment  of  freedom  ? 
Whatever  be  the  cause,  the  agriculture-hating,  liberty- 
loving,  fearless,  independent  Tartars,  to  use  the  words 
of  Prejevalsky,'  approach  nearly  in  character  to  the 
spirituality  of  our  own  ancestors,  when  they  had  overcome 
the  barbarous  naivete  of  the  Pipe  Stage  and  the  Drum 
Stage,  and  in  the  full  panoply  of  manhood  first  struck 
the  chords  of  the  Lyre. 

The  Tartars  are  the  Troubadours  of  Asia — and  of 
Asia  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word — penetrating  into 
the  heart  of  the  Caucasus  on  the  West,  and  stumping 
the  country  eastward  to  the  shores  of  the  Yellow  Sea. 
This,  taking  into  account  the  expanse  of  the  country 
between,    gives   their   peregrinations    an    area    of    some 


'    Lieut.  Prejevalsky's  Mongolia,  I.  i8i, 


156  HISTORY     OF     MUSIC. 

thousands  of  miles.  "The  wandering  bards  in  Circassia" 
(this  brings  Europe  too  into  the  computation)  says 
Mr.  Spencer,  "  are  generally  Calmucks."  ^  "  They  are 
often  met  with  in  Tartary,"  writes  M.  Hue;  "very 
numerous  in  China";  "  nowhere  so  popular  as  in 
Thibet."  "They  are  called  Toolholos,  and  remind  us 
of  the  minstrels  and  rhapsodists  of  Greece."  ^  Marco 
Polo  tells  us  that  the  great  Khan  had  so  many  of  these 
minstrels  at  his  court  that  in  order  to  get  rid  of  a  few 
of  them  he  sent  an  expedition  against  the  City  of  Mien 
composed  entirely  of  superfluous  minstrels.  And  when 
we  read  that  they  took  this  strongly  fortified  town, 
which,  if  it  is  to  be  identified  with  the  Modern  Ava, 
has  even  now  a  population  of  30,000,  we  may  imagine 
the  enormity  of  the  superfluity.  ^ 

Now  with  all  due  allowance  for  possible  exaggeration  in 
this  last  statement,  taken  along  with  the  others  it  certainly 
argues  at  the  least  a  tolerable  abundance  of  the  minstrel 
family,  and  what  is  more  important  a  wide-spread 
appreciation  of  them  among  the  people  at  large,  for 
passing  as  they  do  from  tent  to  tent  and  being  dependent 
for  their  living  on  the  hospitality  of  others,  without 
hearty  co-operation  on  the  part  of  the  laity  they  would 
have  vanished  long  since,  or  rather  the}'  would  never 
have  come  into  being.  And  we  have  ample  proof  that 
such  co-operation  is  always  forthcoming.  The  minstrels 
are  "the  greatest  delight  of  the  Circassians," '^  "the 
chief  pleasure  of  the  Kirghiz  hordes,"  ^  "  the  delight  of 
the     Crim    Tartars,"*^    "every    house    open    to    receive 


'    E.  Spencer's  Travels  in  Circassia,  II.,  333. 

2  M.  Hue's  Tartary  and  Thibet,  33  sq. 

3  Marco  Polo  Viaggi,  II.,  54. 

4  Spencer's  Travels  in  Circassia,  II.,  342. 

5  Atkinson's  Travels  on  the  Upper  and  Lower  Amoor.  6   Hue. 


THE    LYRE    STAGE.  I57 

them,"'  "  everywhere  a  corner  for  the  bard,"  "  everyone 

favoured    by   a   visit    from    him,"    "  all    through    Persia 

received  with  joy."  -     Often  each  chief  has  his  minstrel. 

-^When  Atkinson  went  to  visit  an  old    Kirghiz  patriarch, 

he  found  his   minstrel   sitting  before  him,  chanting  the 

great  deeds  of  his  race.     And  if  we  project  ourselves  at 

random   into  the  interior  of  a  Tartar  tent,  we  shall  find 

the  most  perfect  sympathy  existing  between  the  minstrel 

and    his   hearers.     "  He    sang   of  the    mountain    scenes 

around,"    writes    Atkinson    of    a    performance    he   was 

present  at  among  the  Kirghiz  hordes,   "  he  sang  of  the 

flocks  and  the  herds  ;  and  the  faces  of  his  hearers  were 

calm   and  unmoved.     But  when  he  began  to  recite  the 

warlike  deeds  of  his  race,  their  eyes  flashed  with  delight  ; 

as  he  proceeded  they  were  worked  up   into  a  passion, 

and  some  grasped  their  battle-axes,  and  sprang   to  their 

feet    in   a  state  of   frenzy.     Then    followed    a  mournful 

strain,  telling  of  the  death  of  a  chief,  when  all  excitement 

ceased,  and  everyone  listened  with  deep  attention."  - 

Now  this  little  extract,  besides  throwing  a  light  on  the 

point  for  which  we  quoted  it,  will  also  throw  light    on 

another  point — that  is,  the  performances  of  the  minstrels 

themselves.     And   if  we   listen   along  with    M.    Hue   to 

another  performance,  we  shall  have  a  better  idea  of  them 

still.     ''  For    as     he    was    speaking    the    minstrel    was 

preluding   on   the    chords,    and    soon   commenced    in    a 

powerful  and  impassioned  voice  a  long  poetical  recitation 

on  themes  taken  from  Tartar  history.     Afterwards  on  th9 

invitation  of  our  host  he  began  an  invocation  to  Timour. 

There  were  many  stanzas,  but  the  burden  was  always  : 

'  O  divine  Timour,  will  thy  great  soul    be    born  again  ? 

Come  back  !  come  back  !  we  await  thee  O  Timour  !  "  -* 


I    spencer,  loc.  cit.  2    Baxthausen,  Transaucasia,  346,  sq. 

3  Atkinson's  Travels  on  the  Upper  and  Lower  Amoor,  252, 

4  Hue,  p.,  31. 


158  HISTORY      OF      MUSIC. 

Now  here,  we  see,  as  the  Voice  is  everything,  the  Instru- 
ment nothing — often  not  used  at  all,  or  at  best  to  strike 
a  short  prelude,  to  be  the  flourish  of  trumpets  which 
announces  the  entry  of  the  Voice.  And  if  we  assume,  as 
we  have  reason  to  assume  that  the  primitive  method  of 
playing  the  Lyre  was  such  as  we  find  here,  we  shall  see 
why  the  Lyre  first  saw  Hght  among  the  nomadic  tribes  of 
ancient  Asia.  For  in  the  tranquility  of  the  Nomadic 
life,  there  comes  a  great  gush  of  poetry  from  the  human 
heart,  such  as  can  never  come  again  after  the  hum  of 
cities  begins  to  sound,  and  the  bustle  of  business  to 
occupy  his  mind.  And  we  shall  further  see  why  it  was 
that  the  Lyre  has  its  particular  form — strings  stretched 
on  pegs  and  twanged  with  the  fingers — in  other  v/ords 
why  such  a  form  as  the  Lyre  succeeded  to  the  Pipe, 
For  the  Pipe  bound  the  mouth — the  Lyre  set  it  at 
liberty,  and  enabled  it  to  utter  the  great  thoughts  that 
filled  the  heart.  Do  not  seek  then  to  find  the  first  idea 
of  the  Lyre  in  the  twang  of  the  bowstring  which  the 
savage  heard  as  he  shot  his  game,  as  some  have  done  ; 
for  that  would  be  to  found  all  the  poetical  branch  of 
Music  on  an  accident  ;  but  let  us  say  rather  that  man 
in  his  unerring  instinct  groped  his  way  to  the  right  thing, 
and  got  it  at  the  precise  moment  he  wanted  it,  that  is 
when  the  great  swell  of  Poetry  within  him  clamoured 
for  utterance  and  forced  him  to  invent  a  form  of  instru- 
ment which  the  Voice  could  domineer. 

For  so  far  from  being  a  connection  of  the  Bow's,  the 
Lyre  would  seem  to  be  inimical  to  it,  if  it  is  really  an  out- 
come of  the  nomadic  state,  when  bows  and  arrows  are 


I  M.  Villoteau  in  the  Description  de  I'Egypte  advances  the  theory  that 
the  Lyre  was  derived  from  the  bow.  It  was  a  hasty  generalisation  from 
the  shape  of  the  Harps  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians,  and,  barring  a  sHght 
plausibility  in  their  case,  is,  like  other  such  things,  of  little  worth. 


THE    LYRE    STAGE.  1 59 

laid    aside.     But    should     this    seem    fanciful,    we    will 
consider  the  matter  more  closely.     And  turning  to  the 
few  savages  who  are  in  the  Lyre  Stage,  we  shall  find  that 
the  Maories  could  never  have   derived  their   Lyre  from 
the  Bow,   for  they  are   ignorant  of  bows  and   arrows  in 
toto.  '     In  an  island  which   has  never  been  joined  with 
the     mainland   since   the    tertiary   period  and    therefore 
contains  no  mammals  but  such   as  have  swum  or  flown 
there,    i.e.,  rats   and   bats,  -  hunting   has  from   the  first 
been  out  of  the  question,  and  the  club  and  the  spear  have 
been   the   only  weapons  known.     In  a  similar  way  the 
Dyakes  of  Borneo  could  as  little  have  derived  their  Lyre 
from    the   bow,    for,    except  the  spear,  the  only  missile 
weapon  they  knew  at  the  time  of  their  discovery  was  the 
blowpipe.     While  among  the  Papuan  Fijians  who  on  the 
contrary  do  use  bows  and  arrows,  the  rudimentary  Lyre 
which  we  find  has  taken  a  form  in  no  way  resembling 
that  of  the  bow,   for  it   has  taken  the  form  of  a  Jew's 
Harp.     Which,  as  I  take  it,  was  the  first  and  primitive 
form  of  the  infant  Lyre,  which  thus  long  before  it  was 
consciously  fashioned  into  a  musical  instrument  existed 
in  embryo  as  an  experiment  with  vibration. 

For  those  strange  things  we  find  in  various  parts  of  the 
world,  and  which  v/e  may  call,  as  we  have  called  one  of 
them  already.  Rudimentary  Lyres,  should  rather 
perhaps  be  described  as  experiments  in  vibration  ;  for 
they  answer  no  purpose  either  of  accompanying  the  voice 
or  of  prelude  to  song,  but  are  simply  idle  experiments, 
as  I  say,  which  never  come  to  anything.  There  is  the 
Jew's  harp  Lyre  of  the  Fijians  and  the  caracasha  of  the 


1  i.e.  at  the  time  of  their  discovery. 

2  Pigs  and  dogs  have  been  imported, 


l60  HISTORY      OF      MUSIC. 

North  American  Indians,  '  the  vibrating  instruments  of 
the  tribes  on  the  Upper  Amazon,  ^  the  Jew's  harp  Lyre 
of  the  Solomon  Islanders,  3  the  vibrating  bamboo  of  the 
Carnicobarians,  +  the  bow  of  the  Hottentots.  5  And  the 
Jew's  harp,  we  know  how  it  is  played  ;  and  the  vibrating 
instruments  of  the  Amazon  tribes  are  vibrating  pieces  of 
turtle  shell,  and  similarly  the  vibrating  bamboos  of  the 
Carnicobarians  are  made  of  thin  strips  of  vibrating  cane, 
and  the  caracashas  are  notched  sticks  that  make  a 
grating  sound,  and  the  bow  of  the  Hottentots  is  a  small 
bow  which  is  struck  with  a  stick  and  one  end  of  it  held  in 
the  mouth.  "  The  tone  is  so  soft "  writes  Chapman 
"  that  it  is  completely  lost  on  the  bystanders,  and  audible 
to  no  one  but  the  performer  himself  in  whose  mouth  it  is 
held."  It  is  a  mere  idle  experiment  like  the  rest  with  a 
novel  sort  of  sound,'  and  the  experimenting  reaches 
grotesqueness  in  the  case  of  the  Patagonians  who 
attempt   to  play  the  flttte  with  the  bow.  ^ 

So  these  men,  as  I  take  it,  have  unearthed  a  great 
secret  of  Musical  Art  but  are  unable  to  turn  it  to  any 
account,  and  these  vibrational  instruments,  Jew's  harps, 
&c.,  are  the  Lyre  waiting  in  embryo  till  poetry  and 
passion  have  pierced  its  egg.  For  when  the  higher 
feelings  of  man's  nature  have  attained  such  force  that 
they  swallow  up  and  overspread  the  whole  area  of  his 
culture,  then  will  this  little   Jew's  harp  be  pressed  into 


1  Schoolcraft  I.,  311.  Some  of  the  Amazon  Tribes  have  also 
Caracashas.     Bates'  Amazon,  I.,  194. 

2  Wallace  Travels  on  the  Amazon,  282,  504.  It  may  be  questioned 
how  far  the  sistrum  of  Isis  is  a  survival  of  one  of  these  primitive  vibrating 
instruments. 

3  Ellis'  Polynesian  Researches,  II.,  54. 

4  Smith's  Wonders  of  Nature  and  Art,  V.,  263. 

5  Chapman's  Travels  into  the  Interior  of  South  Africa,  I.,  272, 

6  So  says  Musters.  At  Home  among  the  Patagonians,  p.,  77.  And  on 
p.,  1G7  he  even  gives  a  picture  of  it,  but  I  can  make  nothing  out  of  it, 


THE    LYRE    STAGE.  l6l 

the  service  of  expression,  for  its  tone  needs  but  to  be  a 
little  strengthened,  its  powers  a  little  more  developed,  to 
set  the  mouth  for  ever  at  liberty  and  enable  the  hand  to 
fling  a  graceful  appendage  to  the  song.  And  these 
secrets  man  will  discover  when  he  wants. 


II. 


The  Lyre  then  came  into  being  as  an  instrument  of 
accompaniment,  and  I  think  the  root  Kan  which  we 
agreed  was  the  original  of  Kin,  Bin,  Been,  &c., 
is  admirably  suggestive  of  this.  For  Kan  means  "to 
sing,"  and  so  the  Kin  or  the  Bin  was  the  "  singing 
instrument"  or  "the  instrument  one  could  sing  to"; 
and  in  its  rudest  form  this  Kin  or  Bin  was,  as  I  take 
it,  a  string  or  two  stretched  over  a  board  or  a  stick, 
and  twanged  with  the  fingers — a  small  light  instrument, 
that  is  to  say,  which  would  lay  the  smallest  possible 
tax  on  the  player  and  allow  him  to  give  his  best 
attention  to  the  song.  And  let  us  imagine  its  form  to 
be  the  first  easy  development  of  the  Jew's  harp  form, 
that  is  to  say,  more  like  a  Lute  than  a  Lyre,  for  the 
strings  of  the  Lute,  as  all  know,  lie  flat  down  over  a 
sounding-board,  but  the  strings  of  the  Lyre  stand  up, 
being  strung  on  a  frame.  Now  in  the  above  pages  I  have 
imitated  the  freedom  of  the  classical  writers  in  taking 
"  Lyre  "  as  a  generic  term  for  all  stringed  instruments  ; 
but  now  that  we  come  to  consider  the  subdivisions  of 
these  instruments,  I  shall  have  to  be  more  precise, 
and  must  speak  of  the  particular  species  I  have  just 
described,  as    the  True  Lyre,  in  order  to  distinguish  it 

M 


l62  HISTORY      OF      MUSIC. 

from  the  Lyre  genus,  of  which  it  is  only  one  of  the 
superior  varieties.  So  then  the  form  of  the  primitive 
Kin  was  more  that  of  the  Lute  than  of  the  True  Lyre, 
and  was  composed  of  a  string  or  two  stretched  over 
a  board  or  stick  and  pegged  down  at  the  ends,  for  this 
would  be  quite  sufficient  for  the  purpose  it  was 
intended — to  prelude  or  strike  a  note  or  two  by  way 
of  accompaniment  to  the  song.  And  then  another  string 
would  be  added  in  course  of  time,  and  then  another  ; 
for  each  new  note  meant  a  new  string,  for  the  art  of 
stopping  had  not  then  been  discovered,  nor  how  one 
string  contains  all  harmonies  as  one  ray  of  light  all 
colours.  But  each  new  note  meant  a  new  string,  and 
the  history  of  the  Pan  Pipe  repeated  itself,  in  which 
each  new  note  meant  a  new  reed.  So  strings  were 
added,  two,  three,  four,  and  then  there  was  a  pause, 
for  strange  to  say  all  the  primitive  stringed  instruments 
that  we  know  of  have  none  of  them  more  than  four 
strings  ^ :  which  whether  it  were  due  to  the  fact  of  there 
being  only  four  fingers  on  the  hand,  and  that  each  finger 
took  a  string  while  the  thumb  supported  the  board  at 
the  back,  may  admit  conjecture. 

Now  the  next  development  of  this  primitive  instrument 
or  Lute  was  to  take  the  step  by  which  the  True  Lyre 
came  into  being.  And  this  was  effected  by  cutting  away 
part  of  the  board  at  the  back  of  the  strings  and  leaving 
an  empty  space,  from  one  end  of  which  to  the  other  the 
strings   ran,    having  now  the  benefit  of  a  frame   to   be 


I  As  the  L}'re  of  the  Scythians  (Julius  Pollux)  ;  of  the  Parthians 
(Athenseus,  XIV.,  3)  ;  the  most  ancient  Greek  lyre  ;  the  tra(;iitional  lyre 
of  Orpheus.  See  Diodorus  quoted  infra,  p, — Such  modern  survivals  as 
the  lyre  of  the  Maories  (supra  p. — )  ;  of  the  Finns  (Clarke's  Travels,  III. 
439),  &c.,  &c, 


THE    LYRE    STAGE.  163 

fastened  to,  and  thus  allowing  of  being  strung  far  tighter 
than  when  they  were  merely  confined  by  pegs  at  each  end 
of  the  board.  Or  perhaps  the  object  of  the  cutting  was 
to  allow  the  strings  to  be  struck  instead  of  twanged,  and 
struck  that  is  to  say  by  something  else  than  the 
fingers,  as  a  piece  of  bone  or  metal,  for  instance,  which 
would  deal  a  sharp  blow  and  make  the  strings  sound 
louder.  The  Scythians  struck  the  strings  of  their  Lyre 
with  the  jawbone  of  a  goat,  and  the  Massagetse  struck 
theirs  with  the  splinters  of  spears,  and  perhaps  this  may 
have  been  the  reason.  But  in  any  case  the  object  of  the 
cutting  away  of  the  board  was  to  increase  the  brilliancy 
of  the  strings,  and  this  was  the  idea  of  the  Lyre.  And 
now  the  development  having  proceeded  thus  far,  instead 
of  going  on  regularly  through  the  Lyre  to  the  other 
stringed  instruments,  breaks  into  two  branches  thus  : — 


Lute 


Lyre  Lute's  other  descendants. 

I 

I 
Lyre's  descendants. 


and  I  will  sink  the  parentage  of  the  Lyre  for  the  moment 
and  regard  it  on  an  equal  footing  with  the  Lute,  and 
then  we  shall  have  the  Lute  standing  at  the  head  of  one 
of  the  two  branches,  and  the  Lyre  at  the  head  of  the 
other.  And  each  is  true  to  the  secret  of  its  constitution. 
For  the  Lute  is  the  parent  of  all  instruments  whose 
strings  are  plucked  by  the  fingers  ;  and  the  Lyre  is  the 


164  HISTORY   OF    MUSIC. 

parent  of  all  instruments  whose  strings  are  struck  by  a 
plectrum  or  hammer.  And  they  each  gave  birth  to  a 
firstborn ;  and  the  Lute  gave  birth  to  the  Harp,  and  the 
Lyre  gave  birth  to  the  Dulcimer  ;  or  in  other  words,  the 
Lute  got  its  increase  in  power  by  increasing  the  size  and 
the  tension  of  the  strings  themselves,  the  Lyre  got  it  by 
increasing  the  force  with  which  they  were  struck.  And 
this  is  how  the  Lute  gave  birth  to  the  harp.  The  stick 
or  board  on  which  the  strings  lay  pegged  was  bent  a 
little,  so  that  the  strain  might  be  divided  between  the 
pegs  and  the  board  or  stick  itself;  and  then  this 
bending  went  on  more  and  more  till  at  last  it  was  found 
that  the  strain  might  be  thrown  wholly  on  the  board  or 
stick  by  bending  it  into  the  form  of  an  arch,  and  when 
that  was  done  the  Lute  had  grown  into  a  Harp,  as  I  shall 
be  able  to  show  at  greater  length  in  future  pages.  But 
the  Lyre  never  changed  its  form,  for  it  got  its  increase  in 
power  by  different  means. 

This  parentage  of  the  stringed  instruments  I  state  here 
nakedly  without  any  proof,  because  having  studied  their 
history  among  the  oldest  nations  of  antiquity  I  have 
found  it  to  hold  generally  so,  nor  is  there  any  theory  I 
am  endeavouring  to  establish  which  should  lead  me  to 
pervert  the  truth,  since  I  cannot  even  make  a  guess  at 
the  reason  of  it  all,  but  can  only  predict  that  when  we 
come  in  due  course  to  those  ancient  nations  we  shall 
find  the  Egyptians  ignorant  of  the  Lyre  and  acquainted 
only  with  the  Lute,  which  under  their  hands  grows  into 
the  Harp — shall  we  say  that  it  puts  on  bigness  agreeably 
to  the  genius  of  its  masters,  and  that  Harps,  are  the 
Musical  Pyramids? — and  we  shall  find  the  Semites  on  the 
other  hand  knowing  only  the  Lyre,  and  how  this  grew 
among  the  Assyrians  to  the  brilliant  Dulcimer,  but  with 
the  Hebrews  remained  in  its  earlier  form,  which  though 
we  call  it  loosely  the  Harp  was  still  the  little  Lyre  ;  and 


The  lyre  stage.  165 

then  the  Aryans  in  the  third  place,  we  shall  find  them — 
the  last  to  rise  to  civihsation — contented  with  the  most 
primitive  form  of  all,  the  Lute,  which  only  at  a  late  time 
in  their  own  history  and  particularly  among  their  Celtic 
and  Teutonic  branches  pursued  its  development  to  the 
Small  Harp,  So  that  speaking  broadly  we  can  say  that 
the  Harp  is  the  Hamitic  contribution  to  the  music  of 
the  world,  and  the  Lyre  is  the  Semitic,  and  the  Lute  is 
the  Aryan  ;  and  the  play  of  importation  and  interchange 
will  be  interesting  for  us  to  watch  hereafter. 

But  if  we  would  still  study  the  early  history  of  the 
Primitive  Bin  a  little  more,  it  is  plain  we  must  turn 
from  its  developed  forms  of  Harps  and  Dulcimers,  and 
hang  a  moment  over  the  primitive  Lute ;  for  I  have 
said  somewhere  that  one  of  the  salient  effects  of  the 
Lyre  Stage  was  to  inaugurate  a  New  Music  in  the  world 
by  the  union  of  the  Voice  with  the  instrument — and 
this  we  must  spend  a  word  over.  And  then  we  have 
not  discovered  how  the  stopping  of  the  Lute's  strings 
was  first  found  out ;  and  it  will  be  hard  to  turn  back  to 
consider  these  elementary  points,  when  once  we  are 
ushered  before  that  panoply  of  beautiful  instruments, 
which  awaits  us  when  once  civilisation  begins. 

And  the  stopping  of  the  Lute's  strings  was  found  out 
as  soon  as  the  Lute  got  a  neck.  For  in  the  primitive 
form  of  a  piece  of  straight  board  with  strings  lying  over 
it  there  was  no  likelihood  that  the  art  of  stopping  would 
be  discovered,  but  the  instrument  would  be  played  as  we 
should  play  an  ^olian  harp  nowadays  (which  indeed  it 
very  much  resembled)  or  as  the  Chinese  play  their  Lute 
at  the  present  day,  resting  on  the  knee,  or  on  some 
artificial  support,  or  perhaps  on  the  left  arm,  while  the 
thumb  of  the  right  hand  steadied  it  underneath  and  the 
four  fingers  twanged  the  strings.  But  when,  for  conveni- 
ence of  holding,  one  end  of  the  instrument  was   made 


t66  HISTORY    OF    MUSIC. 

narrower  so  as  to  be  grasped  by  the  left  hand,  directly  I 
say  the  left  hand  went  round  the  strings,  it  could  not  help 
pressing  them  sometimes  as  it  held  them,  and  the 
difference  of  tone  which  the  pressure  caused  would  be  at 
once  noticed,  and  in  course  of  time  would  be  acted  on. 
And  this  is  how  the  Lute's  strings  got  to  be  stopped,  and 
the  object  of  the  neck  was,  as  I  say,  that  it  might  be  held 
better. 

And  the  New  Music  which  came  into  being  as  the 
direct  consequence  of  the  appearance  of  stringed 
instruments  in  the  world,  was  the  Music  of  Harmony ; 
and  its  spirit  was  the  disciplining  of  the  Instrumental 
by  the  reason  of  the  Vocal.  For  the  Musical  Instrument, 
which  in  the  Pipe  Stage  was  used  but  to  fling  a  cataract 
of  idle  sounds,  was  no,w  taught  to  aim  at  expressing 
actual  thought.  And  first  it  was  only  used  to  strike 
a  prelude  independently  before  the  Voice  began  to  sing. 
Yet  even  then  there  was  more  reason  in  its  utterance 
than  ever  there  had  been  in  instrument  before.  For 
it  would  necessarily  take  its  cue  from  the  words  and 
sentiment  that  were  to  follow,  and  give  the  gist  of  them 
in  its  own  loose  way  whatever  it  did.  Much  closer 
would  be  the  union  and  more  perfect  the  Harmony, 
when  that  stage  was  reached  of  which  we  have  a  living 
illustration  among  the  Khonds  of  Khondistan,  when  the 
instrument  keeps  up  a  wild  symphony  during  the  whole 
of  the  declamation^  ^  This  would  indeed  train  it  to 
reasonable  expression,  for  each  wave  of  feeling  that 
swept  the  singer  would  require  a  corresponding  reflection 


I    Campbell's   Narrative   of  thirteen    years'    service   among    the    Wild 
Tribes  of  Khondistan,  p.  i6. 


THii.    LYRE    STAGE.  I67 

in  the  instrument,  and  it  would  soon  get  to  return  all 
the  glancing  colours  of  thought,  being  indeed  a  mirror 
of  notes  in  which  the  song  could  see  itself.  So  that 
when  the  last  stage  was  reached  in  our  musical  liaison, 
when  the  instrument  and  the  voice  went  hand  in  hand, 
note  for  note,  and  word  for  word,  the  instrument  would 
be  almost  as  skilful  as  the  Voice  itself  in  expressing 
the  minutest  flickering  of  thought,  and  ready  for  the 
separation  which  ultimately  occurred  again,  though  at  a 
period  far  distant  from  the  present.  By  which  time 
the  instrument  was  by  the  benefit  of  its  schooling  no 
longer  the  reckless  jingler  we  have  known  it,  but  as  good 
an  interpreter  of  thought  as  the  Voice  itself,  and  with 
some  peoples  it  became  a  better  one. 

Such  then  was  the  result  of  Harmony,  which  is  in  its 
essence  but  accompaniment,  and  which  first  came  to  pass 
in  the  union  of  the  Voice  with  the  Instrument  in  the 
Lyre  Stage.  And  I  am  speaking  here  only  of  Instru- 
mental Harmony.  For  that  other  Harmony,  of  Voices 
alone,  was  in  existence  before  this,  and  owes  its  origin  to 
other  causes.  And  it  owes  its  origin  to  the  different 
pitches  of  the  human  Voice.  For  since  the  world  began 
there  have  always  been  high  men's  voices  and  low  men's 
vioces,  and  high  women's  voices  and  low  women's  voices ; 
and  whenever  two  of  a  different  sort  sing  together  they 
necessarily  produce  Harmony.  And  so  we  find  even 
savages  employing  Harmony,  for  it  comes  easier  to  them 
than  singing  all  at  the  same  pitch.  And  they  have  learnt 
the  art  of  regulating  this  easiness  of  Singing  to  the 
requirements  of  pleasing  effect.  For  our  ears  do  not 
like  to  hear  two  notes  clashing  together,  but  any  other 
combinations  they  accept,  though  some  delight  them 
more  than  others.  And  as  to  what  are  the  most 
naturally  pleasing  combinations,  we  may  learn  this  from 
savage    harmony,    and     we    shall    find     that    thirds    are 


168 


HISTORY    OF    MUSIC. 


pleasing,  and  also  fifths,   but  particularly  thirds,  for  we 
get  many  combinations  like  this  in  savage  songs  : — 


^*=*=*^^ 


'--^  4.  *  Jli  "-^-Q. 


and  also  the  third  joined  with  the  fifth  at  the  close,  as 


zs:^ 


and  other  thirds  piled  above  (and  indeed  the  fifth  itself  is 
but  a  repHcation  of  the  third),  and  these  other  thirds  we 
call  sevenths  and  ninths,  and  all  these  we  find ;  as  in  that 
savage  song  that  La  Perouse  heard  : — 


m. 


1^-^ 


-^- 


-F—^ 


-« — ^ — 

-~« — S — ' 


■SP" 


-^r 


I       I       1 


TT 


-*-  It 


-^-  -^-  -^y 


Then  we  have  fourths  and  sixths  too,  but  not  so  com- 
mon.    And  all  these  belong  to  one  category,  that  is  to 


1  Ambros'  Geschichte  der  Musik,  I.,  7. 

2  Bowdich's  Mission  to  Ashantee.p.  364. 

3  Engel's  National  Music,  p.  154. 

+    Forster's  Reise  um  die  Erde,  I.,  429. 


3.  Le  Perouse,  II.  209 


THE    LYRE    STAGE. 


169 


say,  they  are  in  their  essence  but  many  voices  singing 
the  same  thing  at  different  pitches,  and  the  prescription 
of  the  pitches  for  the  purpose  of  pleasant  effect  is  a  later 
addition  which  came  as  naturally  as  the  prescription  of 
certain  pleasing  turns  in  simple   melody. 

But  there  is  another  sort  of  Harmony  of  a  totally 
different  kind  among  savages,  which,  I  take  it,  is  more 
important  than  this  sort ;  and  that  is  when  some  Voices 
sing,  not  the  Melody  at  a  lower  pitch,  but  an  independant 
accompaniment  on  their  own  account,  thus  standing  to 
the  melody    in  the  same  relation  which  the  Instrument 

did   in  its    accompaniment,  as  we    have  just  described. 

As  for  instance 


-»^- 


-&-. 


-^ \- 


m 


,    ¥r^'¥     ¥     fj'f-   ^ 


k^. 


^    ^    ^ 


K^     ^     k 


r^f^ 


1  Wilkes  II.,  134 

2  Engel's  National  Music. 


Wilkes  II.,  i8g, 


lyO  HISTORY    OF    MUSIC. 

Here  are  the  few  instances  I  have  met  with  of  this  sort 
of  Harmony,  and  I  say  they  are  more  important  than  the 
other  because  they  are  independent  strains  ;  and  we  shall 
find  that  in  course  of  time  these  rude  beginnings  of 
independent  notes  blossom  out  into  independent  melodies, 
and  while  the  first  order  of  harmony  gives  us  the  germ  of 
what  we  understand  by  Harmony  Proper,  this  second 
order  gives  us  the  germ  of  that  elaborate  Harmony 
which  we  call  Counterpoint.  And  this  is  why  it  is  more 
important. 

But  I  am  looking  into  the  long  future,  and  speaking  of 
things  which  do  not  come  or  assume  any  historical 
importance  till  very  late  in  the  history  of  our  race, 
although  like  all  other  things  in  the  world  to-day  the 
seeds  of  them  may  be  found  in  savage  man.  So  returning 
to  the  sequence  of  events  as  we  left  them,  how  the  Lyre 
was  developed,  and  the  Voice  brought  into  union  with  it, 
and  how  Instrumental  Accompaniment  began,  and  a  New 
Music  with  it,  let  me  carry  on  the  tale  from  that  point 
again,  and  passing  from  the  technical  details  of  strings 
and  stoppings,  let  us  take  a  wider  view  and  scan  the 
world  itself  of  those  days,  and  get  the  secret  of  this 
wonderful  Lyre  Stage  when  so  much  was  done  for  our 
Art.  For  its  import  as  I  have  shown  was  the  absorption 
of  Music  into  Poetry  and  there  was  a  flood  of  fine 
feeling  abroad  we  may  be  sure,  or  such  things  never 
could  have  been. 

We  will  pass  from  the  Lyre,  then,  to  the  Author  of  the 
Lyre ;  and  we  shall  find  that  the  morning  is  at  last 
breaking  around  him.  The  savage  has  passed  into  the 
barbarian,  and  the  barbarian  is  fast  passing  into  the 
civilised  man,  for  it  is  now  the  last  day  of  Pre-historic 
Times,  and  we  are  on  the  eve  of  great  things. 

And  how  shall  we  study  our  hero  under  these  new  con- 
ditions ?      And    we   may   presage    that    History    is  just 


THE    LVKE    STAGE.  I7I 

beginning,  for  we  have  no  need  to  grope  among  savage 
analogies  for  our  materials,  but  we  have  the  authentic 
testimony  of  ancient  historians  to  the  condition  of  many 
peoples  who  were  barbarian  in  their  time,  and  this  is  the 
evidence  we  intend  to  take.  But  when  we  go  on  to  talk 
of  the  Celts,  who  will  be  our  principal  figures  during  the 
few  pages  that  yet  remain,  let  us  try  and  avoid  reverting 
in  fancy  to  the  period  when  Julius  Caesar  landed  in 
Britain,  B.C.  55,  or  to  the  expeditions  of  the  Phoenicians 
to  the  Scilly  Isles  for  tin — two  facts  apparently  which 
form  the  main  connotation  of  "  Celt "  in  one's  mind — 
but  on  the  contrary  let  us  arrive  at  a  new  connotation 
by  keeping  General  Faidherbe's  theory  well  -before  us, 
that  ages  before  Julius  Caesar,  or  Rome  itself  was  thought 
of,  the  Celts  swarmed  over  Europe,  and  passing  in  hordes 
over  into  Africa,  settled  in  the  Valley  of  the  Nile,  and 
founded  the  civilisation  of  Egypt.  Without  any  wish 
to  uphold  this  theory  for  a  moment,  I  will  set  it  down 
here  for  the  sake  of  its  appositeness  ;  for  since  our  path 
has  yet  to  run  through  the  land  of  the  Pyramids^ 
the  land  of  the  Winged  Bulls,  the  land  of  Junks,  ancient 
civilisations  shining  like  lamps  from  the  darkness  of 
Pre-historic  Times — since,  I  say,  we  have  yet  to  traverse 
these  hoary  civilisations  and  to  observe  how  harps  were 
twanged,  and  flutes  were  blown  there,  it  is  well  to  keep 
such  anachronisms  as  the  Ancient  Britons  and  Carac- 
tacus  very  far  away,  and  whether  speaking  of  the  Celts 
or  Goths  or  Germans,  I  would  be  understood  as 
endeavouring  to  paint,  by  colours  drawn  from  them, 
Barbarian  Man — who  moved  about  the  plains  of  the 
Euphrates  and  the  flats  of  Memphis  with  the  same 
habitudes  and  the  same  ideas  as  they.  And  we  must 
make  him  live  again  by  their  aid,  for  it  is  no  longer  a 
question  of  an  instrument  or  two  that  concerns  us,  but 
the  whole  life  of  the  people,  for  music  penetrated  it  all. 


172  HISTORY    OF    MUSIC. 

For  among  all  barbarian  nations  we  find  the  same  over- 
powering passion  for  Music  which  we  found  a  few  pages 
back  among  the  barbarian  Tartars  of  to-day.  And  whether 
it  is  the  Celts,  the  Sarmatians,  the  Goths,  the  Gepidse, 
the  ancient  Scandinavians,  or  whoever  it  is  we  consider, 
they  all  have  their  abundance  of  minstrels  and  rejoice  in 
them.  Nor  do  they  content  themselves,  as  at  a  later 
period,  for  instance  as  the  Greeks  in  Homer's  time 
contented  themselves  with  sitting  round  and  listening 
while  Homer  sang ;  but  they  themselves  are  the  singers. 
The  ancient  Scythians,  ^  the  Gauls,  ^  the  Cantabrians,  ^ 
the  Britons  +  rushed  singing  to  the  fight ;  so  of  the 
ancient  Germans,  "  canhc  truci,"  says  Tacitus,  s  and  of 
the  Thracians,  "  car  minibus  et  tripiidiis  "  ^ — it  was  thus 
they  charged,  singing  ^nd  dancing;  for  "  they  went  to 
the  fight "  says  old  Pelloutier  "  alloient  au  combat  come  a 
un  bat  et  un  festin.''  For  they  had  not  yet  learnt  the 
etiquette  of  Civilisation  ;  and  in  the  joy  of  fight  they 
unbuckled  their  souls,  and  this  is  how  their  joy  expressed 
itself.  A  perfect  riddle  it  was  to  the  civilised  man — 
"  it  is  all  rubbish,"  says  Brasidas  in  Thucydides,  "  they 
are   a   pack   of  cowards   who   think   they   can  scare  us 


I   Xenophon,  Cyropsedia,  V. 

3  Aulus  Gellius,  IX.,  13.     cf.  also  Diodorus,  V.,  2.         3   Strabo,  III. 

4  As  in  the  battle  between  Boadicea  and  Paulinus  ;  (rvvrjX,$ov  ot  jxlv 
f3dp/3apoL  Kpavyfj  Te  ttoAA,^  .cat  (jSais  dTreLXrjriKOis  x/^w/xevot, 
Dion,  62,  12.  It  is  a  pity  that  instead  of  the  frivolous  speech  that  Dion 
puts  in  the  mouth  of  Boadicea  he  had  not  taken  the  pains  to  give  us  a 
genuine  Celtic  battle  ode. 

5  Histories.  II.,  22.  Cf.  IV.  18,  ut  virorum  cantu  sonuit  acies. 

6  Annals.  IV.,  47,  "more  gentis "  he  adds.  The  barbarians  in  the 
Roman  armies  are  noticed  by  Ammianus  as  singing,  XVIL,  13. 


THE    LYRE    STAGE.  I 73 

by  their  loud  shouting."  '  "  They  got  quite  distraught  " 
says  Strabo  of  some  Cantabrians  '*  when  they  heard 
they  were  to  be  crucified  ;  and  in  their  frenzy  they  began 
to  sing."2  And  Quintus  Curtius  gives  if  possible  a 
weaker  explanation  of  the  singing  of  some  Sogdian 
captives  whom  Alexander  ordered  to  death,  "  they  sang  " 
it  appears  "  because  they  were  happy  in  being  put  to 
death  by  so  great  a  king."  3 

The  fact  being  that  the  whole  lives  of  these  men  were 
steeped_in  Music.  Singing  was  to  them  as  natural  a 
mode  of  expression  as  speaking  is  to  us,  and  in  moments 
of  high  nervous  exaltation  in  the  excitement  of  the 
battle-field,  or  when  face  to  face  with  death,  they  sang 
when  we  should  only  declaim,  or  more  tutored  still,  set 
our  teeth  and  hold  our  tongue.  Their  battle-song  is 
our  huzza. ;  and  a  general's  command  or  an  officer's 
cheer  finds  its  original  in  priests  and  bards  in  white 
robes  and  with  harps  in  their  hands  marching  at  the 
head  of  the  armies,  and  cheering  on  the  warriors  by 
their  lays.  '^ 

For  their  whole  life  as  I  say  was  wrapt  in  Music. 
There  was  no  form  of  culture  which  Music  did  not 
penetrate  ;  and  scarcely  any  fraction  of  life  in  which  it 


1  An  opinion  which  Thucydides  seems  to  share,  for  in  the  next  chapter, 
TTckXy  /3o7j  Kal  Oopvfica  7rpocr€K€tvTo  vofjiLauvres  <^euyetv  re  aTJTOv, 
&c.  ' 

2  Strabo,  III.,  4. 

3  Quintus  Curtius,  VII.,  10.  How  much  nearer  is  Plutarch  the 
mark  than  any  of  these,  in  his  account  of  the  battle  of  Aix. 

4  Jornandes.  quoting  Dion  "sacerdotes  cum  citharis  et  vestibus 
candidis  &c.  De  Getarum  Origine,  cap.  10.  See  the  spirited  description 
in  Lichtenthal's  Dizionario  e  bibliografia  della  Musica,  Art,  Bardi, 
"  They  fought  singing  with  crowns  on,"  are  the  words  of  jElian  (Various 
Histories,  XX.,  23)  and  Theopompus  describes  them  making  a  truce  to 
the  sounds  of  music  (Fragments  of  Book  46). 


174  HISTORY    OF    MUSIC. 

did  not  play  a  part.  And  to  do  away  with  even  the 
suspicion  of  exaggeration  in  such  a  statement,  and  to 
enable  us  to  comprehend  the  amazing  difference  between 
those  times  and  ours,  let  us  remember  that  if  we 
celebrated  'our  banquets  as  the  barbarians  did  theirs, 
there  would  be  eternal  singing  intermixed — each  guest 
contributing  his  song  in  turn,  and  as  often  as  not 
extemporising  both  words  and  music  for  the  occasion. 
For  this  is  the  way  in  which  the  Germans,  the  Scythians 
and  the  Cimbrians  were  used  to  banquet — and  it  survived 
in  our  own  country  till  the  time  of  those  Saxon 
b-mqueters  who  passed  round  the  harp  which  Csedmon 
could  not  play. 

And  if  we  celebrated  our  marriages  like  the  barbarians 
did  theirs,  the  guests  would  not  be  an  idle  troop  of 
spectators ;  they  would  be  all  choristers,  whose  wild 
hymns  would  be  but  the  plain-spoken  expression  of  their 
joy.  ^  And  at  those  other  ceremonies,  which  the  wheel 
of  life  brings  round  as  the  year  the  seasons,  we  should 
speak  our  grief  in  dirges,  and  chant  our  emotions  away.  ^ 
But  the  very  thought  of  such  a  mourning  would  be  a 
monstrous  affectation  now.  So  much  has  the  world 
changed  since  then. 

Lovers  wooed  in  music  and  wits  jested  in  it — whether 
it  were  hons  mots,  proposals  of  marriage,  or  racy 
stories  ^  — every  thing   was    sung.      And   it   is   by   this 


1  Pelloutier.  Histoire  des  Celtes,  II.,  i86.  Cf.  also  .the_  account  of 
Ataulph  the  King  of  the  Goths  himself  singing  the  nuptial  hymn. 

2  For  singing  at  funerals.  The  Visigoths,  Jornandes,  41.  The  Huns. 
Id.,  49,  "  Electissimi  equites  facta  ejus  cantu  funereo  deflebant,'  &c. 

3  Pelloutier,  loc.  cit.  The  saletes  en  vers  were  the  well  known  German 
Valleinachise.  What  holds  of  the  Celts  is  equally  true  of  their  modern 
antitypss,  the  Maories  and  others.  "  lis  ont  des  chants  erotiques,  featiriques, 
elegiaques,  et  guerriers,"  says  D'Urville  of  the  Maories,  which  are  sung 
by  all  alike.  For  the  Love  songs  of  the  Celts  see  the  appendix  to  Davies' 
British  Druids. 


THE    LYRE    STAGE.  I75 

universality  of  the  musical  faculty  that  we  must  explain 
such  statements  as  those  of  Diodorus  about  the  ancient 
Britons,  *'  that  their  cities  were  full  of  musicians,"  of 
Phranza  about  the  ancient  Georgians  to  the  same  tune, 
and  of  Marco  Polo  about  the  Tartars.  To  the  latter  I 
have  already  alluded  and  have  slurred  it  over  as  an 
exaggeration.  But  it  will  be  plain  now  that  it  is  no 
exaggeration  at  all.  For  in  saying  that  10,000  Tartar 
minstrels  marched  against  the  city  of  Mien,  he  is  merely 
conveying  the  implication,  that  in  any  10,000  Tartars 
there  was  scarcely  one  man  who  was  not  more  or  less  of 
a  musician.  And  so  Diodorus  of  any  city-full  of  ancient 
Britons  in  like  manner. 

And  our  surprise  at  even  these  modified  assertions  will 
vanish  when  we  remember  that  Music  was  the  main 
engine  of  Educ_ation  in  those  days — what  little  knowledge 
these  rude  men  possessed  had  all  been  conveyed  to  them 
through  the  medium  of  Music.  Their  migration,  wars^ 
and  all  the  chief  events  of  their  History,  says  Tacitus  of 
the  Ancient  Germans,  are  narrated,  in  hymns  ^ — Their 
mythology  also  and  the  origin  of  their  race  ^ — the  lives  and 
deaths  of  their  heroes  3 — the  Dogmas  of  their  religion 
and  their  moral  precepts  '^ — All  took  the  same  form  and 
were  chanted  like  the  longer  hymns  to  the  accompani- 


1  Tac.  Germany,  2,  cf.  Jornandes  the  same  of  the  Goths,  cap.  4. 

2  Ammianus  Marcellinus,  XV.,  19,  for  the  Celts. 

3  Qui  virorum  fortium  laudes  &c.  Festus.  Cf.,  Jornandes  on  the  Visi- 
goths and  Ostrogoths,  "Cantu  majorum  facta  modulationibus  citharisque 
canebant,"  Cap.  5,  cf.  also  Cap.  4.  For  the  Sarmatians.  Priscus  Rhet. 
in  exercit,  Legat,  p.  67.  tcoi/  acrfxarotv  (in  the  same  way  says  Mlian  of  the 
Celts)  VTToOeareLS  TTOioiJi'Tat,  roiis  av6puiiT0V<i  TOv<i  aTro9av6vTa<i  iv  tu> 
TTokefxco  KaXws.      /Elian's  Various  Histories,  XII.,  23. 

4  Prudentius  Apotheos,  206, 


176  HISTORY    OF    MUSIC. 

ment  of  the  lyre.  '     Traditions  of  their  gods  also  and 
of  the  creation  of  the  world  in  the  same  way.  ^ 

Now  whether  we  are  to  accept  Aristotle's  rationalistic 
explanation  of  all  this,  that  metrical  forms  were  con- 
sciously used  because  they  assisted  the  memory — unum 
id  genus  memorice,  says  Tacitus — or  whether  we  are  to 
steal  a  hint  from  Tasso  and  say  that  the  Music  was  used 
to  sugar  the  cup  of  learning,  or  whether  we  take  the  truer 
view,  that  with  barbarian  man  all  exalted  subjects  are 
saturated  with  passion,  and  Passionate  utterance  must 
sooner  or  later  tremble  into  Song — I  say,  whichever  view 
we  take,  it  is  certain  that  Mugic  in  those  days  was.  what 
writing  is  now,  and  that  the  range  of  Music  then  was 
coextensive  with  that  of  Literjitur^  now — so  that  what- 
ever piece  of  knowledge  a  barbarian  acquired  he  drew 
in  a  draught  of  Music  with  it.  And  there  was  more  of 
systematic  education  then  than  we  are  apt  to  believe. 
**  For  twenty  years,"  says  Cassar  of  the  Celtic  youths, 
"  for  twenty  years  they  were  kept  learning  verses."  3 
"  In  specu  et  abditis  silvarum,"  adds  Pomponius  Mela,  ^ 
so  that  there  was  an  ascetic  element  about  it.  And 
if  this  be  only  held  as  applying  to  the  pupils  of 
the  priests,  it  will  at  any  rate  let  us  into  the  secret 
of  what    education    in    those    days    actually    consisted 


1  La  voix  etoit  ordinairement  accompagnee  de  quelque  instrument,  says 
Pelloutier,  quoting  authorities,  II.,  i85. 

2  Tacitus. 

3  Cffisar,  DeBell  Gall,  VI.,  13. 

4  III.,  I.  W^e  will  suppose  however  an  end  to  have  been  reached  in 
due  time  nor  go  so  far  as  accept  the  stories  of  Diceneus,  how  "  viri 
fortissimi  quando  ab  armis  quatriduum  usque  vacarunt  ut  doctrinis 
philosophicis    imbuerentur," 


THE   LYRE   STAGE.  177 

in  and  go  to  justify  the  assertion  of  old  Pclloutier  that 
"  toiites  les  etudes  de  la  jciaicsse  se  reduisent  a  cJiarger 
leur  mcmoire  d' line  infinite  de  pieces  de  Poesie^'  an 
assertion  which  may  I  think  be  extended  to  all  bar- 
barous nations  since  we  find  a  similar  practice  obtain 
even  among  the  Maories  of  New  Zealand — the  pupils  of 
the  priests  being  compelled  to  pass  many  years  in 
laboriously    committing    verses    to    memory.  ^ 

But  the  influence  of  Music  did  not  end  with  the 
Education  of  the  Mind,  it  was  also  a  powerful  engine 
for  educating  the  body.  And  in  those  men  who  marched 
to  battle,  carniinibiis  et  tripiidiis, — K^ovovTiq  pvO/LK^  ra 
oirXa  Kai  (TvvaXXojUivoi  iravT^g  cifia, — I  think  -we  may 
see  its  incarnation  as  Ideal  Drill,  an  interesting  aspect 
of  its  empire,  which  I  propose  to  discuss  more 
minutely  when    I    treat    of  the    Music    of   the   Greeks. 

But  its  greatest  glory  is  yet  to  come,  for  not  only 
was  it  the  means  of  educating  the  body  and  the  mind, 
but  it  was  the  means  of  educating  the  Soul.  And  by 
as  immense  an  altitude  as  a  Good  man  stands  above 
a  clever  man,  by  so  much  does  this  latter  import  of 
Music    transcend    the    former. 

What  School  is  to  the  boy,  Life  is  to  the  man  ; 
and  Law  is  the  Schoolmaster  in  this  new  School, 
being  but  Social  opinion  stereotyped — the  opinion  of 
many  formulated  by  one.  Now  to  enhance  the  au- 
thority of  this  schoolmaster  and  to  bring  his  rulings 
home,  the  lawgiver,  who  is  the  apex  of  the  cone, 
naturally  expresses  himself  through  the  medium  of  that 
force  which,  for  the  time  being,  has  the  greatest 
influence  over  the  minds  of  men.  And  as  among  a 
people  peculiarly  susceptible  to  the  influence  of  Religion, 


I     Gray's  Polynesian  Mythology.  N 


178  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

as  the  Ancient  Hebrews  for  instance,  Law  appears  as  a 
direct  revelation  from  Heaven — which  also  served 
Lycurgus  as  a  ratification  ;  and  in  more  polite  times 
when  faith  ceases  to  be  paramount,  it  is  expressed  in 
the  naked  form  of  Science,  as  in  Codexes,  Digests  &c  ; 
so  in  these  old  barbarian  times,  Law  found  its  natural 
expression  through  the  medium  of  Music.  Thus  the  laws 
of  the  Celts  were  couched  in  Hymns  and  were  sung 
to  an  accompaniment  of  the  Lyre  ^  — the  laws  of  the 
Gepidae  in  like  manner,  ^  of  the  Turdetani  3  — of  the 
Agathyrsi,  the  Sygambri — and  we  should  probably  find 
this  to  hold  universally  of  all  barbarous  nations  if  we 
had  complete  information  about  their  history.  For 
Music  was  both  the  natural  medium  for  the  exposition 
of  Law,  and  it  was  at  the  same  time  the  best.  For  it 
had  by  this  time  attained  the  rank  of  a  Moral  Power. 
"  The  Celtic  Bards,"  says  Diodorus,  "  ^tr'  opyavwv  toIq  \v- 
puLQ  bfxoiwv  a^ovTeg  ovg  fxlv  vfivovaiv,  ovg  de  [5Xa(T(pr}iuov(n — 
"they  award  praise  and  censure  where  it  is  due."  4  So 
of  the  Bards  of  the  Tartars,  "  They  praise  the  hero, 
reprove  the  traitor  and  coward,  expose  guilt,  and  diffuse 
inteUigence  to  distant  tribes."  5  And  of  the  Rishis  and 
Rhapsodists  of  the  ancient  Hindus,  '•  they  were  con- 
sidered saifitly  guides^  ^  The  Scandinavian  Skalds  were 
present  in  the  thickest  of  the  fight  "  that  they  might 
behold  with  their  own  eyes  the  performances  of  the 
warriors,  and  award  the  prize  of  prowess."  7  And  the 
Celtic   bards   in     like    manner,    spettatori   in   hiogo    vicino 


1  See  Pelloutier's  account.II.  186. 

2  Ricobaldus  Ferrariensis  III.  3     Strabo  III.  4    V.  31. 
5    Spencer's  Travels  in  Circassia.  II.  341 

b    G.  M.  Fagore,  On  formation  of  the  Caste  System.  Trans,  Ethnol.  1861. 

7  Von  Troil's  Letters  on  Iceland  in  Pinkerton.  J.  697.  For  the  Moral 
influence  of  the  Bards  among  the  Goths,  see  the  remarkable  passage  in 
Sidonius  Apollinaris'  Letter  about  Theodenc.      '  Sic  tamen  quod  illic'  &c. 


THE   LYRE   STAGE.  1 79 

di  tutte  le  azioni — the  men  fought  under  their  eyes, 
and  a  hero's  highest  glory  was  to  hear  their  approving 
words.  They  could  arrest  armies  on  the  brink  of  a 
battle,  or  with  a  word  they  could  hurl  them  in 
collision   again.  ^ 

To  whom  then  could  man  better  entrust  the  promulging 
of  that  nobly  homily  of  submission  and  self  denial,  which 
is  Law,  than  to  men  like  these,  who  without  calling  in 
the  brutal  aid  of  physical  force,  or  conjuring  up  the 
scarecrows  of  an  invisible  world  to  help  them,  rose  to 
be  the  leaders  and  fathers  of  their  people  ? 

And  for  my  own  part  I  am  willing  to  spread  out  this 
picture  which  I  have  drawn  here,  and  to  invest  the 
whole  world  in  its  colours  on  that  great  day  which 
preceded  the  outburst  of  Civilisation.  I  am  willing  to  see 
in  this  growing  susceptibility  of  men  to  the  soft  fashioning 
of  moral  and  aesthetic  influences  the  signs  of  that  docility 
of  character  which  was  the  immediate  precursor  of 
Civilisation.  And  in  the  bards  and  seers  who  used  their 
power  so  nobly  for  everything  that  was  good  I  will  see 
those  legendary  heroes  who  exist  in  the  twilight  of  all 
national  legend,  and  are  reputed  as  the  founders  of  races. 

For  of  all  those  grey  kingdoms  and  empires  which 
now  begin  to  dot  the  surface  of  the  earth,  and 
which  seem  to  have  sprung  into  their  new  birth  of 
glory  so  suddenly  and  so  strangely  that  they  have  lost 
all  remembrance  of  the  past,  not  one  is  there  but  in 
its  quieter  moments  will  tell  the  simple  tale  of  some 
old  man  in  the  days  of  yore  who  taught  the  seed 
to  grow  and  the  corn  to  ripen,  who  gave  laws  and 
instructed  them  in  their  duty  to  one  another ;  and 
how  this  old  man  was  a  Musician  and  the  power  that 
he   used   was    Music. 


I.    See  the  account  in  Diocjore,     V.  213-4    Cf.  Strabo-  IV.   4. 


l8o  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

"  Osiris "  says  the  Egyptian  legend  "  dissuaded  the 
people  from  their  wild  and  brutal  life,  he  made  the 
corn  grow  and  gave  laws  to  the  people,  and  taught 
them  to  honour  the  gods.  And  he  did  not  do  this  by 
force  of  arms,  but  by  persuasion  and  eloquence,  soothing 
and   subduing   their   minds   with  songs    and    music."  ^ 

"  Maneros,"  says  another  legend  of  the  same  people, 
"  taught  the  art  of  husbandry  and  gave  laws  to  the 
Egyptians.  He  was  a  disciple  of  the  Muses,  and  he  it 
was  who   invented   Music."  ^ 

And  the  Chinese  give  the  same  account  of  their 
beginnings.  Up  till  the  time  of  Fou-hi,  men  lived  wild. 
They  knew  only  their  mothers  but  not  their  fathers. 
But  Fou-hi  instituted  marriage  and  gave  laws  to  the 
people.  He  taught  men  the  art  of  fishing  and  invented 
the  Kin,  which  is  a  Lyre  of  five  chords  made  of  silk. 
Then  came  Shin-nung.  He  invented  the  plough  and 
taught  the  art  of  agriculture  and  the  art  of  astronomy. 
He    made   another    kind    of    Lyre,    and    composed    songs 


1  l\a\L(TTa  fxiv   ottXwv    ^eridtvra,   TreiBoi    ci  tovq  TrXeiaTovg 
KOI  \oj(i)   fitT   o3Sf/e  Kai   }xovaiKr\Q  ^eXyojutvovg  Trpoaayoiuevov. 

_P1iit,irrh.  De  Iside. 

2  "  gave  laws  to  the   Egyptians  "—this  is  the  way  I  translate  Hesychius' 

TOVTOV  (j)r](Tiv  ^ AijvTrriov  ofioXoyrjaai  Trpwrov,  which  as  it 
stands  means  nothing.  Jablonski  corrects  bjXo\oyr\aaL  to  3'£oXoy7](Tat, 
translating  it  '  le  premier  qui  enseigna  la  theologie  aux  Egyptiens  '.  I  think 
M.  Villoteau's  translation  of  7rp wrov  o/ioXoyijcrat  perfectly  ridiculous, 
'  le  premier  qui  les  reunit  en  corps  de  societe, '  forcing  bfxo\oyj\(Jai  into  a 
meaning  it  could  not  possibly  have.  I  would  suggest  the  following  emen- 
dation of  Hesychius  : —  the  (prjcriv  is  plainly  corrupt  for  there  is  no  nomina- 
tive to  it,  the  TOVTOV  ^ Aijvtttiov  for  '  this  Egyptian  '  is  bad  Greek,  for  it 
ought  to  be  TOVTOV  Tov,  and  ojHoXoyrjcrai  means  nothing.  It  may  well 
be  emended  then  as  follows  :  tovtov  (^affiv  ^Aijvtttioi  vojuoAoyricrai^ 
which  gives  the  meaning  we  wish  ;  but  I  am  not  sure  about  vofioAojricrai, 
, ,  '  to  make  laws.'    I  fancy  however  I  have  niet  v/ith  it  in  Procopius. 


THE   LYRE   STAGE.  l8l 

to  soften  the  manners  of  the  people  and  recall  them 
to   virtue. 

And  though  Berosus  is  silent  on  the  point,  I  think 
we  well  may  place  Cannes  of  the  Assyrians  in  the 
same  list,  who  "  came  from  the  Persian  Gulf  and  taught 
the  Assyrians  the  Art  of  Fishing  and  the  Art  of 
Astronomy,  and  gave  them  their  laws  and  their 
civilisation  and  their  legends."  For  Cannes  was  the 
Osiris  of  the  Assyrians,  and  did  we  know  more  of 
him  we  should  hear  of  him  having  invented  the  Lyre 
and  Music  too. 

Precisely  similar  are  the  legends  which  meet  us  at 
the    threshold    of    Greek    History,    for    it    was  -the    Lyre 


says  Pindar  which  brought  peace  into  the  world,  ^  and 
men  were  wild  and  fierce,  says  Horace,  till  Orpheus 
came,  who  dissuaded  them  from  rapine  and  bloodshed 
and    taught    them    law    and    government,  ^ 

Orpheus,  Amphion,  Linus,  Musaeus,  then,  step  out  ot 
the  frames  of  Mythology,  and  stand  forth  in  their  true 
character  as  Lawgivers  and  Moral  Teachers — no  less 
authentic  in  their  personality  and  their  actions  than 
Charondas  and  Zaleucus,  Empedocles  and  Parmenides,  and 
other  men  of  later  times  who  used  the  same  means  to 
convey  their  teachings  by,  and  from  whom  we  may  learn 
that  it  was  not  the  Music  that  produced  the  marvels 
but  the  thoughts  and  wisdom  which  were  uttered  by  the 
Music.  Music  alone  could  never  tame  tigers  and  turn 
the  savage  into  a  civilised  being.  But  Law  and  Order 
can  change  a  bunch  of  mud  huts  into  a  flourishing 
city ;  and  Morality  can  bend  the  fiercest  warrior  tc 
delight  in  the  domestic  joys  of  Peace.  And  thus  it 
was  that  Orpheus  made  the  flocks  to  follow  him,  and 
Amphion   built   the   walls   of  Thebes. 


I    Pind.  Pyth.  V.  89.  2    Sylvestres  homines     &c. 


1 82  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

And  now  into  the  nice  question  how  to  adjust  the 
prize  of  glory  and  to  give  our  Art  the  honour  that 
is  due,  for  though  these  great  men  were  more  than 
mere  musicians  shall  we  say  that  their  lyre's  sweet 
melody  was  only  idle  twanging  and  their  beautiful 
voices  need  never  have  been  tuned  to  song —  did 
Music's  self  not  soften  the  rugged  hearts  they  disciplined 
and  formed,  and  how  far  was  it  a  sheer  necessity  to 
their  glorious  mission — I  say  into  this  question  I  would 
tain  enter,  but  must  leave  it  with  other  things  for  a 
more  convenient  time  that  never  comes.  For  I  must 
hasten  on  my  journey  nor  linger  any  longer  on  this 
fascinating  theme.  For  now  the  light  of  History  breaks 
over  the  Pyramids  of  Egypt,  and  man's  first  civilisation 
emerges  from  the  darkness  of  Prehistoric  times  in  full 
maturity  of  beauty.  What  storms  he  has  weathered 
before  this  calm  came  we  have  endeavoured  to  find 
by  taking  account  of  those  less  favoured  men  who  are 
still  in  the  middle  of  the  gales.  And  to  us  peering  from 
the  blackness  that  encompasses  the  labouring  vessel  the 
scene  in  the  gay  valley  of  the  Nile  looks  fair  indeed 
— by  contrast  to  what  we  are  leaving  it  is  flawless : 
perhaps  a  nearer  view  may  reveal  undreamt  of  imper- 
fections :  but  in  the  meantime  let  us  think  ot  it  at  its 
best,  and  feast  our  eyes  with  the  brightness  of  the 
scene. 

I  see  Harmony  incarnate  and  Order  in  man's  works 
before  me.  And  hark !  I  hear  the  sound  of  the  Lyre 
in  Memnon's  Statue,  and  it  is  worshipped  as  the  Voice 
of  the    Sun. 


END     OF     BOOK     I. 


APPENDICES. 


APPE^^DIX     A. 


Ofi  the  Three  Stages  iti   Central  Africa  and  especially 
the  Lyre  Stage. 

I  had  intended  to  have  made  a  copious  dissertation  on  the  subject 
of  this  heading,  which  It  seemed  to  me  merited  a  most  detailed  examin- 
ation, and  was  scarcely  to  be  relegated  to  the  obscurity  of  an  Appendix 
considering  its  intimate  connection  with  the  body  of  the  wori<.  But 
the  possibility  of  making  such  a  dissertation  has  been  denjed  me,  and  I 
can  do  little  more  than  throw  together  the  few  materials  I  have  by 
me,  with  the  hope  that  the  view  I  propose  may  commend  itself  on  its 
own   merits   to   the  reader. 

The  same  difficulty  meets  the  musician  in  the  case  of  Africa  which 
before  met  the  archteologist.  The  archaeologist  found  the  Africans 
invariably  in  the  Iron  Age  with  no  trace  of  the  Bronze  or  Stone 
Age  occuring  among  any  tribes  in  the  continent.  In  the  case  of  music 
we  find  indeed  no  such  disappearance  of  both  Stages,  although  occasionally 
of  one  i.e.  the  second  of  the  three,  but  yet  we  find  most  of  the 
tribes  are  in  the  Lyre  Stage.  1  had  prepared  a  catalogue  of  the  African 
tribes  with  which  we  are  acquainted,  to  discover  whether  the  absence  of 
stringed  instruments  prevailed  in  the  centre,  the  north,  or  in  what  dir- 
ection it  might  be  of  the  continent.  It  seemed  to  me  from  the  tale 
this  catalogue  told  that  the  tribes  in  the  lowest  state  of  musical 
development,  that  is,  those  who  have  not  acquired  the  use  of  stringed 
instruments,  were  principally  in  the  east  of  the  contnent  and  the  east  of 
the  central  part  of  it.  But  this  tabulation  I  was  obliged  to  discard, 
owing  to  the  conflicting  accounts  of  travellers,  and  without  endeavouinng 
to  trace  tho  topography  of  the  instruments,  let  us  be  content  with  the 
broad  assertion  that  most  of  the  tribes  of  Africa  are  in  the  Lyre  Stage 
and  some  are  prematurely  in  it,  that  is  to  say,  they  are  unacquainted 
with  the  use  of  pipes,  which  in  all  strictness  should  have  preceded  the 
knowledge  of  strings. 

Now  what  perplexes  us  in  our  appreciation  of  this  fact  is  this  :  We  have 
found  that  the  Lyre  belongs  to  a  very  high  stage  of  human  development ; 
we  have  found  it  in  the  hands  of  barbarians  who  were  just  emerging 
to  civilisation.     Yet  in   Africa  we  find  it   known  to  the   most    degraded 


1 86  APPENDICES. 

savages.  In  all  other  places  we  find  the  Pipe  and  Drum  its  invariable 
concomitants,  yet  in  Africa  we  sometimes  find  the  Pipe  wanting  It 
should  seem  then  that  the  word,  '  prematurely,'  which  we  used  a  moment 
ago,  might  help  us  to  an  explanation  of  this  fact.  The  occurrence  of 
the  Iron  Age  in  all  parts  of  Africa  has  been  well  explained  by  the 
theory,  that  the  Art  of  smelting  metals  was  passed  down  from  the 
Ancient  Egyptians  through  the  negroes  on  their  borders,  and  from  thence 
spread  through  the  whole  continent  of  Africa,  May  we  not  assume  a 
similar  hypothesis  in  relation  to  the  Lyre,  namely  that  it  was  transmitted 
from  the  Egyptians  to  the  tribes  of  Africa  while  yet  they  were  in  some 
cases  in  the  Drum  Stage,  and  in  all  cases  before  they  had  attained  that 
great  proximity  to  civilisation  which  in  general  accompanies  the  ap- 
pearance ot  the  instrument  P  The  possibility  of  such  a  passage  will  be 
better  imagined  when  we  remember  how  many  similar  elements  of 
Egyptian  civilisation  have  found  their  way  down,  beside  the  particular 
one  ill  question.  Livingstone  recognised  the  pestle  and  mortar,  sieve, 
and  corn  vessels  of  the  ancient  Egyptians  in  the  modern  implements  of 
the  Makololo  and  Makalaka.  He  found  throughout  the  south  of  Central 
Africa  precisely  the  same  form'  of  spinning  and  weaving  which  he  had 
seen  on  the  frescoe=!  and  sculptures  of  Egyptian  tombs.  The  arts  of 
cooking,  brewing  beer  and  straining  it,  are  throughout  the  whole  of 
Africa,  as  is  well  known,  conducted  in  precisely  the  same  way  as  among 
the  ancient  Egyptians.  Livingstone  says  that  at  Louangwa  he  sav/  men 
with  their  hunting  nets,  whom  he  could  not  have  distinguished  from 
the  fowlers  and  hunters  of  the  ancient  Egyptians,  Indeed  if  we  brought 
more  instances  of  the  kind  forward,  and  we  might  bring  many,  the  case 
would  be  rendered  a  very  strong  one ;  but  irrespective  of  such  evidence 
as  this,  we  must  not  forget  the  almost  necessary  inference  that  has  to 
be  drawn  from  the  Geographical  features  of  Africa.  It  is  impossible  for 
men  to  dwell  on  a  large  continent,  with  a  character  so  uniform  and 
intercourse  so  comparatively  unembarrassed,  without  continual  communication 
taking  place  between  the  most  distant  inhabitants,  and  the  productions 
of  the  more  civilised  finding  their  way  at  least  as  rarities  to  the  more 
barbarous  tribes.  Even  at  the  present  day  English  wares  bartered  at 
Mombas,  which  is  on  the  east  coast  of  South  Africa,  have  been  after- 
wards recognised  by  the  same  traders  at  Mogador,  which  is  on  the  west 
coast  of  North  Africa,  i  If  such  traffic  can  take  place  within  the 
experiences  of  a  few  traders  to  day,  what  untold  traffic  must  have  occurred 
in  the  course  often  thousand  years  past!  And  what  more  likely  to 
have  been  passed  from    hand    to  hand   and   from   tribe   to   tribe   than   an 


1.    'WaitB.  Anthropologie.  II.    101. 


APPENDIX  A.  187 

instrument  of  music  such  as  the  Lyre,  which  was  so  great  a  novelty 
to  savages  in  the  condition  of  the  Africans  ?  Accordingly  we  find  the 
shapes  of  the  African  harps  are  strikingly  similar  to  those  of  the  ancient 
Egyptians.  Let  alone  the  ordinary  shape  of  the  ancient  Egyptian  harps  i 
which  we  find  is  the  common  shape  of  the  African  tribes,  as  among 
the  Shelsianis  and  Bechuanas,  we  have  also  the  singular  form  mentioned 
on  p.— at  Karague,  and  also  among  the  Wahuma  tribes.  And  if  these 
may  he  explained  away  as  but  the  natural  forms  which  any  one  would 
use  who  made  a  harp — which  however  would  be  a  ridiculous  argument — 
we  have  one  instrument  the  paternity  of  which  can  admit  of  no  doubt ; 
for  that  peculiar  cross  between  the  lute  and  the  harp,  which  I  have 
yet  to  mention  as  the  connecting  link  between  these  two  forms,  and 
as  peculiar  to  the  ancient  Egyptians  alone  of  all  the  world,  appears  as 
a  constant  form  among  the  African  savages  of  the  Soudan,  by  whom 
it  is  called  the  Nanga.  As  the  Chinese  Tche  or  mouth  organ  appears 
again  in  the  Javan  rattle,  which  is  made  like  it  but  used  for  a 
different  purpose,  so  does  the  ancient  Egyptian  Nefer  re-appear  in  the 
Soudan  trumpet,  which  resembles  it  in  external  appearance  perhaps,  but 
not  in  use,  for  it  is  a  wind  instrument  not  a  string,  but  certainly  is 
called  by  the  same  name.  The  negroes  of  the  Soudan,  call  their  drums 
by  the  same  name  as  the  ancient  Egyptians — Daluka,  and  the  drums 
are  precisely  identical.  Many  similar  instances  would  no  doubt  be  ob- 
tainable, wei-e  the  musical  information  about  the  African  tribes  more 
copious.  And  this  is  the  reason  why  J  think  that  the  Lyre  came  into 
Africa  from  the  ancient  Egyptians,  because  other  musical  instruments 
and  other  things  such  as  implements  &c.,  and  arts  &c.  passed  down 
the  continent  from  ancient  Egypt,  and  also  because  it  seems  impossible 
that  savages,  at  the  low  condition  of  development  the  Africans  are. 
could  have  risen  so  high  as  to  invent  this  poetical  instrument  them- 
selves. It  has  been  prematurely  introduced,  I  take  it,  and  certainly  their 
use  of  it  justifies  the  idea.  For  it  is  generally  used  as  a  mere  idle 
instrument,  and  often  fitted  with  keys  of  iron,  or  struck  with  rods  like 
a  dulcimer,  and  has  pieces  of  shells  and  tin  hung  to  it,  to  make  a 
jingling  accompaniment.  It  serves  the  same  office  which  the  Pipe  does 
among  other  savages — to  accompany  the  dance,  or  to  amuse  the  ear ; 
but  as  to  being  an  instrument  for  poets,  as  to  being  the  companion  of 
bards  and  minstrels,  we  do  not  find  any  such  fate  has  befallen  the  Lyre 
of  Africa  So  we  prefer  to  consider  it  a  premature  importation  from 
civilised  neighbours,  which  has  not  taken  root  and  flourished,  because 
the  new  possessors   were   not  prepared   to   receive  it. 


1.   As  on  p — 


APPENDICES. 


APPENDIX     B. 

On  Darwin's  Theory  of  the  Origin  of  Ifistrumental  Music. 

Darwin's  ingenious  hypothesis  in  Descent  of  Man,  which  finds  the 
Origin  of  Instrumental  Music  in  the  Love  Call,  is  open  to  the  somefirhat 
serious  objection,  that  in  the  case  of  all  the  birds,  which  he  enumerates 
as  employing  instrumental  music  for  a  love  call,  the  male  bird  is  always 
furnished  by  nature  with  some  personal  peculiarity  wanting  or  half  de- 
veloped in  the  female,  which  is  naturally  adapted  to  the  making  of 
sound.  The  Indian  bustard  and  the  Chamoepetes  unicolor  are  in  a  manner 
typioal  of  the  rest  of  the  instances  he  quotes,  of  which  the  first,  for 
instance,  has  its  primary  wing  feathers  greatly  acuminated  and  with 
these  it  makes  a  humming  noise  while  courting  the  female.  And  it  is 
because  of  the  female's  deficiency,  and  consequent  incapacity  to  produce 
the  like,  that  she  feels  attracted  by  the  sound.  But  has  man  any 
acuminated  wing  feathers  which  woman  has  not  ?  Are  not  man  and 
woman  precisely  even  in  the  matter  ?  And  this  being  so,  what  attraction 
could  woman  find  in  the  playing  of  those  rude  instruments,  extemporised 
drums,  that  she  could  quite  as  easily  peform  upon,  herself  .^  If  it  could  be 
proved  that  man  has  some  exclusive  perfonal  advantage,  which  fits  him 
for  playing  the  rude  extemporised  instruments  with  which  music  began, 
the   hypothesis  might   stand.     But   this   cannot    be    shown. 


APPENDIX    0. 

On  Darwin^s  Theory  of  the  Origin  of  Vocal  Music. 

Darwin's  admirable  hypothesis  in  Descent  of  Man,  which  finds  the 
Origin  of  Vocal  Music  in  the  Love  Call,  is  open  to  the  objection  that 
in  all  the  birds  which  he  eites,  the  voice  of  the  male  is  much  sweeter 
than  that  of  the  female,  whereas  in  man  the  opposite  is  the  case.  It 
might  however  be  fairly  argued  that  the  Love  Call,  though  first  used 
by  the  male  to  attract  the  female,  was  afterwards  perhaps  abandoned 
by  him  and  adopted  by  her  in  her  turn  as  a  means  of  attracting  the 
male.  Certainly  the  sensual  passions  of  the  females  are  among  all  savage 
races  much  stronger  than  those  of  the  opposite  sex.  And  a  very  good 
analogy  might  be  struck  with  Dancing  which  undoubtedly  arose  from  the  Love 


APPENDIX  C.  189 

Call  fto  keep  the  name),  miist  have  originated  with  the  male,  agreeably 
to  the  nature  of  all  animals,  and  as  certainly  has  been  abandoned  by 
by  him  in  course  of  time  and  adopted  by  the  female,  with  whom 
among  savages  it  is  the  usual  means  of  attracting  the  opposite  sex. 
All  the  dances  of  savages,  except  the  war  dances,  are  performed  by 
women,  sometimes,  though  not  nearly  so  often,  by  women  and  men,  and 
are  of  the  most  licentious  description,  thus  showing  clearly  enough  their 
original  object.  cf.  Cook,  passim,  particularly  his  account  of  the 
Timorodee.  Cameron  passifu  &c.  &c.  But  even  with  this  analogy  ac- 
counting for  the  superiority  of  the  female  over  the  male  in  a  department 
which  at  first  was  the  male's  domain,  it  biings  yet  more  clearly  into 
relief  an  unsatisfactory  point  of  Darwin's  theory,  which  is  that  the 
songs  of  savage  races  are  never  Love  Songs  (I  have  never  met  with  any), 
but  always  War  Songs  or  Songs  of  triumph  or  Panegyric,  or  Dirges. 
Now  if  their  original  theme,  before  language  was  used,  had  been  Love, 
we  should  probably  find  traces  of  this  in  the  songs  as  we  do  in  the 
dances,  which  certainly  owe  their  origin  to  this  passion.  His  remarks 
on  the  Musical  Gibbon  seem  rather  to  prove  that  the  usual  method  of 
Love-making  with  Apes  is  not  prefaced  or  carried  on  by  songs,  and 
that  this  animal   is  an  exception    to   the  rule. 

But  even  supposing  that  man  did  use  his  voice  as  a  Love  Call 
(which  I  do  not  grant  for  an  instant),  Darwin  is  surely  wrong  when 
he  says  that  'the  vocal  organs  were  primarily  used  and  perfected  in 
the  practice  of  this  Love  call,'  whereas  it  is  probable  that  not  until 
man  had  fully  tested  and  satisfied  himself  of  the  power  of  his  voice,  and 
become  familiar  with  its  various  tones,  would  such  a  thing  as  the  Love 
Call  be  conceived.  It  is  narrowing  the  dominion  of  music  too  much 
to  limit  its  origin  to  love,  instead  of  the  broader  ground  of  all  human 
emotion,  which  is  the  admirable  theory  of  Theophrastus  centuries  ago,  and 
which   we  prefer    to   maintain   to  day.  i 


1.    Plutarch,    Queestiones  Sympos.    I.   2. 


BOOK  II. 

THE  MUSIC  OF  THE  ELDER  CIVILISATIONS 

AND  OF 

THE  GREEKS. 


X 


BOOK  II. 

THE   MUSIC   OF    THE    ELDER  CIVILISATIONS 

AND  OF 

THE    GREEKS. 


THE  LYRE   RACES. 

CHAPTER     I. 

THE    EGYPTIANS. 


Passing  now  from  the  fastnesses  of  the  barbarian  to 
the  lawns  and  enclosures  of  civilised  man,  it  will  behove 
us  to  see  under  what  guise  our  Art  appears  under  these 
new  conditions.  We  left  it  in  the  keeping  of  sages 
and  lawgivers  a  great  Moral  power  in  the  world,  at 
every  turn  impressing  its  influence  on  the  minds  of  men, 
overarching  and  brightening  their  rude  lives  like  a 
rainbow,  in  whose  vermilion  was  dipt  the  woof  of  all 
their  culture.  But  bidding  adieu  to  brawny  warriors 
rushing  song-intoxicated  into  battle,  white-robed  priests, 
harp  in  hand,  leading  the  way,  steppes  and  forests,  mud 
cabins  and  leaf  huts,  cromlechs,  maraudings,  and  all 
the   belongings    of  barbarous  man,  let  us   enter  the   land 

o 


194  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

of  the  Pyramids,  and  take  a  walk  through  Thebes  or 
HeliopoHs  at  say  the  beginning  of  the  19th  dynasty, 
when  the  power  of  Egypt,  which  had  been  steadily 
mounting  during  the  i8th  dynasty,  had  now  reached 
its  full  plenitude  and  prosperity  under  the  sceptre  of 
Rameses  II.,  and  let  us  commence  a  tour  of  discovery 
in  search  of  Music.  And  passing  down  the  crowded 
streets,  where  through  the  open  shop  fronts  we  may 
see  the  carpenters  at  work  with  saws,  mallets,  chisels, 
planes,  and  gimlets,  ^  the  goldsmiths  with  files,  pincers, 
and  blowpipes  worked  by  bellows,  2  the  coopers  drawing 
out  wine  through  siphons,  ^  the  brushmakers  making 
brushes,  '^  the  painters  varnishing  and  painting  camp 
stools,  5  chairs,  arm-chairs,  tables — taking  care  to  steer 
clear  of  the  great  benches  at  the  shop  doors  of  the 
poulterers,  butchers,  fruiterers,  oil-merchants,  on  which 
the  shopkeepers  sit  bargaining  and  haggling  with  their 
customers  ^ — as  we  go  along,  I  say,  we  shall  be  able 
to  observe  the  signs  of  the  times,  and  remark  how 
different  everything  is  to  the  state  in  which  we  left  it 
in  our  last  book.  These  carpenters,  shoemakers,  coopers, 
curriers,  that  fill  the  Egyptian  streets,  have  other  things 
to  do  than  think  of  warbling.  They  have  so  many 
tubs,  shoes,  tables  to  make  before  nightfall,  and  every- 
thing must  be  put  aside  till  their  work  is  done. 
Besides  why  should  they  sing  ?  You  may  sing  when 
you  have  won  a  battle,  but  there  is  not  much  use  in 
falling  into  such  ecstasy  over  the  completion  of  a  tub 
The  stimulus  to  that  joyous  bursting  out  of  animal 
spirits,  which  is  Singing,  is  clean  gone  now.  And 
could  we  imagine  it  for  a  moment  revived,  it  is  ques- 
tionable   whether    it    would    have    any    effect.     For    the 


I     Brugsch  Graberwelt.  p.  24.     2  Wilkinson,  Manners  and  Customs  of  the 
Ancient  Egyptians.   III.   400  sq.    3  lb.    4  lb.     5  lb.     6  "Wilkinson,  p.  406. 


THE  EGYPTIANS.  1 95 

lesson  of  Self  Restraint,  which  is  the  first  chapter  of 
Civilisation,  has  been  learnt  only  too  well,  and  men  have 
passed  from  men  into  machines — cogs  in  a  vast  piece 
of  intricate  wheelwork,  and  the  great  wheel  goes  on  and 
never   stands   still    a   moment. 

But  one  cut  are  they  above  the  gangs  of  slaves  and 
captives  whom  we  may  see  at  work  in  the  adjoining 
fields — cutting  clay  and  baking  bricks,  and  wincing  under 
the  lash  of  the  taskmaster.  These  work  through  fear 
of  the  whip,  the  others  through  fear  of  Poverty  and 
Want,  and  with  both  incessant  toil  is  the  order  of  the 
day. 

It  is  plain  therefore  that  I  must  not  look  for  Music 
among  these  "  stinking  masses,"  ^  "  miserable  slaves,"  ^ 
'  craven  labourers,"  3  for  such  are  the  terms  which  the 
officers  of  Pharaoh's  court  delight  to  apply  to  these 
noble  fellows,  who  have  thus  humbly  and  gallantly  fallen 
into  line,  and  are  quietly  carrying  on  the  work  which 
the.  new  scheme  of  life  apportions  them  ;  for  they  turn 
neither  to  the  right  nor  to  the  left  from  the  work 
before  them,  and  the  grating  of  the  saws  and  the 
clatter  of  the  hammers  are  all  the  Music  that  I  hear. 
Where  then  am  I  to  find  what  I  am  in  search  of  ? 
I  am  told  that  if  I  go  to  the  house  of  Menu-hotep 
1  shall  find  it.  I  go  to  the  house  of  Menu-hotep 
accordingly,  and  I  find  there  is  a  dinner  party  on,«  and 
am  hurried  along  in  the  crowd  of  guests  and  servants, 
past  the  fragrant  kitchen,  where  rounds  of  beef,  quarters 
of  kid  and  wild  goat,  haunches  of  gazelle,  geese,  ducks, 
widgeons,  quails,4  are  all  roasting  and  boiling  away — ■ 
cooks  at  work  with  pots,  pans,  and  cauldrons,^  confec- 
tioners    making     maccaroni,     batter,     and     all     sorts    of 


I     Brugsch's  Geschichte  .<Egyptens  unter  den  Pharaonen  p.  2i, 
4    WUkinson.  Ill,      s    Tb, 


2  lb.  3  lb. 


196  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

sweetmeats  ^ — past  the  kitchen  up  to  the  dining-hall  in 
the  press  of  the  throng  ;  and  the  dining-hall  is  brilliantly 
lighted  and  crowded  with  guests,  ^  and  there  are  slaves 
handing  cups  of  wine  ^  — others  holding  vases  of  ointment 
and  flowers  ^ — others  presenting  grapes,  figs,  lotus  flowers, 
costly  cakes  ;  ^  or  throwing  necklaces  of  jewels  with 
reckless  extravagance  round  the  necks  of  the  guests  — 6 
and  there — I  hear  it — and  at  the  far  end  of  the  room 
I  see  it — our  Art  and  its  representatives — four  women 
and  two  men  singing  and  clapping  their  hands  to  mark 
the  time,  one  woman  playing  on  the  double  pipe  and 
one  man  playing  the  harp,  7  amidst  all  the  clatter  of 
the  dishes  and  the  chatter  of  the  guests^ — but  one 
flower  more  are  they,  one  sweet  odour  more  in  the 
general  bouquet  and  perfume  of  delight.  They  are  all 
slaves  every  one  of  them,  and  do  obeisance  to  the 
master   of  the   house   when    they   enter   the  .  room.  8 

And  now  the  dinner  is  over,  and  jugglers  come  in 
to  do  conjuring  tricks,  9  acrobats,  1°  dancing  women,  ^^ 
a  young  girl  who  dances  a  skipping-rope  dance  through 
a  hoop,  12  and  she  dances  to  the  time  of  the  flute ;  ^3 
and  men  come  in  who  throw  a  ball  up  in  the  air 
and  catch  it  in  all  sorts  of  marvellous  positions.  And 
as  the  hired  amusers  go  on  with  their  work,  the 
musicians  get  so  mixed  up  with  the  jugglers  and 
tumblers   that    I    can't   tell   which    from    which. 


I.  lb.  2.  lb.  3.  See  the  frescoes  and  sculptures  in  Rosellini.  I  mon- 
umenti  dell'  Egitto  Tavole  II.  4.  lb.  5.  lb  6.  lb,  79.  7.  See  the  group 
in  Lauth's  article  on  ancient  Egyptian  music  in  the  Sitzungsberichte  der 
Miinchener  Akademie  for  1873.     8    Rosellini   loc.  ci-     9    Rosellini,  II.  lOO. 

10  lb,  II  lb.  12  Wilkinson  III.  13.  lb,  14  Rosellini.  I, 
Monumenti  dell'  Egitto.  Tavole.  II,  icx). 


THE  EGYPTIANS.  I97 


II. 


We  left  Music  a  Life  Speech.  We  find  it  an  article 
de  luxe.  What  was  once  the  common  property  of  all 
has  become  the  prerogative  of  a  chosen  few.  It  should 
seem  that  in  this  matter  Music,  Joy,  and  Freedom  have 
fared    alike. 

The  Barbarian's  birthright —  which  are  these  three 
things — is  made  so  little  account  of  now,  that  the 
toiling  masses,  in  their  stern  conception  of  life,  yield 
it  up  without  a  murmur  to  the  idlers  who  flirt  with 
it.  There  has  been  a  sad  dwindling  in  the  estimation 
of  Music  since  Civilisation  set  in,  if  the  greater  part  of 
men  can  now  make  shift  to  do  without  it,  and  the 
rest  are  content  to  make  its  acquaintance  by  deputy.  ^ 
And  the  reason  of  this  dwindling  must  plainly  be  that 
Music  no  longer  answers  any  practical  purpose  in  life. 
History,  religion,  morals,  law  have  left  the  old  channel 
through  which  they  flowed  ;  and  the  scribes,  philosophers, 
jurists,  and  others  whom  the  disintegration  of  knowledge 
has  brought  into  being,  would  laugh  at  the  idea  of 
chanting  their  lucubrations — and  with  reason  too,  for 
the  pen  has  taken  the  place  of  the  Lyre,  and  has  been 
found  a  much  more  manageable  instrument.  Joy  and 
freedom  can  no  longer  fill  the  vacuum,  for  they  have  been 
banished  from  the  majority  of  lives,  and  their  fortunate 
possessors  are  too  much  bewildered  with  the  numberless 
ducts  of  happiness  at  their  disposal  to  concentrate  its 
flood  on  catgut.  The  old  channel  therefore  is  quite 
dried  up,  and  until  something  is  directed  into  it  again 
lies     unused    and     worthless.       Music     must    therefore   be 


I     Cf.  with  this,  Wilkinson,  II.  241.  cf,  also  infra  p.  31. 


IpB  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

content  to  drag  on  an  uneventful  existence  until  better 
days  arrive — of  no  more  account  than  tapestry  and 
embroidery,  perhaps  not  so  much.  Each  age  has  its 
art,  and  in  these  days  of  the  first  civilisation,  when  men 
were  in  all  the  first  blush  of  the  new  knowledge  of 
the  marvellous  power  that  lies  in  the  united  effort  of 
many,  that  Art,  which  is  produced  by  such  effort,  and 
is  the  most  obvious  and  direct  expression  of  such 
knowledge,  was  the  Art  of  the  time.  Architecture 
darkened  the  sun.  Beside  the  Pyramids  what  is  a 
fiddlestring  ?  Architects  married  kings'  daughters,  ^  and 
the  Musicians  were  slaves. 

It  is  thus  that  we  must  look  at  our  theme  now. 
It  has  lost  considerably  in  dignity,  perhaps,  but  not  in 
human  interest.  And  these  slave-minstrels  are  as  dear 
to  me  as  any  in  the  long  roll  that  I  shall  hereafter 
treat  of 

Their  business  was  to  attend  the  banquets  of  the 
great,  and  play  and  sing  for  the  amusement  of  the 
company ;  and  we  find  them  constantly  represented  in 
the  sculptures  in  groups  of  from  two  to  eight  persons 
— some  women  and  some  men — playing  on  various  in- 
struments as  the  harp,  pipe,  flute — the  harp,  lute,  flute 
— the  harp,  lyre,  lute — the  lyre,  flute,  and  double-pipe 
— the  harp,  the  double-pipe,  and  the  tambourine — the  prin- 
cipal collocation  as  it  should  seem  being  the  harp, 
double-pipe,  lute,  and  flute;  or  the  harp,  double-pipe, 
lyre,  and  flute — another  favourite  one  being  the  harp, 
double-pipe,  lute,  lyre,  and  tambourine,  and  other  similar 
collocations  might  be  mentioned,  which  it  .  will  be 
needless    to    set  down  here. 

Such  is  the  tale  which  the  sculptures  tell,  and  it 
may    furnish    us  with    materials    for    copious  disquisition. 


I     Brugsch.  Geschichte  .^gyptens.  T.  6o- 


THE  EGYPTIANS.  1 99 

For  in  the  first  place  the  arrangement  of  the  musicians 
in  groups,  will  show  us  that  the  Music  has  closely 
followed  in  the  steps  of  Life.  The  effect  of  Civil- 
isation on  Life  has  been  to  assemble  men  in  masses, 
and  teach  them  to  work  together.  Its  effect  on  Music 
has  been  to  assemble  musicians  into  bands,  and  teach 
them  to  play  together.  Towns  have  been  founded  in 
the    one    case,    and    Concerts   in    the    other. 

And  secondly,  let  us  not  forget  that  we  are  in  the 
land  of  hieroglyphics,  and  that  besides  the  figures  on 
the  surface,  a  hidden  meaning  may  remain  behind. 
For  the  sculptors  who  gave  us  these  books  of  stone, 
which  we  have  just  read  off  into  words,  are  indeed 
the  historians  and  annalists  of  Egypt.  But  in  reading 
the  books  that  they  have  left  us,  we  must  remember 
that  we  are  not  perusing  the  words  of  men  who  could 
write  as  they  pleased,  but  the  words  of  men  who  had 
only  a  limited  space  at  their  disposal  to  express  them- 
selves in.  When  therefore  they  would  speak  of  an 
army,  they  sculptured  four  men — this  had  to  do  duty 
for  as  many  thousand.  When  they  would  show  us  how 
the  obelisks  were  dragged  to  their  resting  places,  for 
which  thousands  of  men  were  necessary,  they  were 
compelled  by  straits  of  room  to  abridge  the  numbers 
to  at  the  utmost  four  batches  of  workmen, — six  in  each 
batch.  The  trains  of  captives  who  were  brought  back 
from  war,  were  symbolised  rather  than  expressed  by 
one  captive  apiece,  and  the  chief  was  made  to  do  duty 
for  a  whole  tribe.  This  then  was  the  sculptural  method. 
Compelled  as  the  carvers  were  to  utilise  and  make  the 
most  of  every  inch  of  space  at  their  disposal,  they 
endeavoured  to  hit  off  the  most  salient  features  of  the 
scene,  rather  than  to  express  the  whole  entire,  which 
would  have  been  impossible — their  records  are  essentially 
abridgements,  and  as  in  the  pictures  of  the  brickmaking. 


2O0  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

we  find  one  man  kneading  the  clay,  one  man  cutting 
it,  one  man  baking  it,  one  man  carrying  it,  who  we 
,know  are  to  be  taken  as  the  symbols  of  many  kneaders, 
cutters,  and  carriers,  so  in  the  pictures  of  the  concerts 
we  must  not  necessarily  suppose  that  one  harper,  one 
piper,  one  fluteplayer,  and  one  singer,  by  any  means 
form  the  entire  band,  but  that  on  the  contrary  they 
are  only  the  typical  representatives  each  of  a  whole 
division  of  performers,  and  that  as  before  the  chief  is 
made  to  do  duty  for  the  tribe.  It  will  be  well,  there- 
fore, to  modify  or  rearrange  those  groups  of  minstrels 
whom  we  have  formerly  given,  saying  that  they  were 
five,  six,  or  eight  in  number  ;  but  now  we  must  assume 
them  many  more  than  six  or  eight.  For  I  say  there 
is  no  limit  to  the  elasticity  of  the  notions  which  we 
should  conceive  about  the  Egyptian  musical  performances. 
Admiration  of  bigness  was  a  part  of  the  national 
character,  and  the  music  must  have  had  its  bulk  and 
magnitude  as  other  things  had.  "  When  one  thinks 
of  the  Egypt  of  Cheops  and  Cephren,"  says  M.  Renan, 
"  on  est  pris  de  vertigeT  ^  Everything  was  done  on  a 
scale  of  vastness  aud  profusion — ten  or  fifteen  large 
estates  were  the  usual  allotment  of  one  Egyptian 
gentleman  ^ — thousands  of  droves  of  oxen  ranged  on 
his  pastures  ^ — the  slaves  who  worked  in  his  fields  and 
attended  in  his  house  were  numbered  by  tens  of 
thousands.  4 

Now  Tebhen,  the  son  of  Hum-chopat,  was  an 
Egyptian  grandee  of  the  time  of  CheopSj  and  like 
every  other  gentleman  of  his  time  he  had  a  certain 
contingent  of  his  slaves  told  off  to  do  the  music 
work.     And  if  we  take  the  reading  of  his  tomb  literally, 


I     E.  Renan,   Revue  des  deux,  mondes,  1865.    2.  lb.    3.  lb.    4.  lb. 


THE  EGYPTIANS.  20I 

two  harpers,  two  fluteplayers,  and  one  piper  were  all 
that  he  could  spare  out  of  his  immense  establishment.  '^ 
What  a  beggarly  remainder !  Why  even  in  Ptolemy  Phila- 
delphus'  time,  when  the  Egyptians  were  pigmies  compared 
to  these  old  Pyramid  men,  the  festival  orchestra  of  the 
Royal  Palace  could  consist  of  six  hundred  performers,  ^ 
and  the  stock  orchestra  of  probably  half  that  number. 
I  think  if  Tebhen  heard  of  the  parsimonious  character 
with  which  his  musical  arrangements  have  hitherto  been 
credited,    he    would    turn  in    his    grave. 

This  is  the  second  point  I  wanted  to  bring  out. 
And  it  seems  to  me  that  putting  actual  testimony 
aside,  speculation  might  have  led  us  to  the  same  result, 
by  comparing  the  parallel  cases  of  Venice  and  our 
own  times,  when  a  spirit  of  centralisation  and  the 
consequent  throwing  of  large  resources  in  the  hands 
of  individual  men,  have  communicated  breadth  and 
vastness  to  the  Music  of  the  time.  Trebly  more  would 
they  do  so  when  the  world  was  younger,  and  men 
felt  more  keenly  than  they  do  now  the  glory  of 
lord.ship    and    the    divinity    of   power. 

And  next  to  recur  to  our  hieroglyphic  again.  As 
a  mere  mechanical  result  of  grouping  such  various  in- 
struments together,  some  form  of  Harmony  must  have 
gradually  grown  up.  If  an  orchestra  consisting  of 
Harps,  Lyres,  Lutes,  Tambourines,  Double  pipes. 
Single  pipes.  Flutes — if  all  these  played  the  air,  what 
a  waste  of  good  sound  !  And  men  knew  what 
Accompaniment  was  very  well  too,  for  they  had  used 
it  in  the  Lyre  Stage  ;  so  that  to  credit  the  Egyptian 
bands  with  only  playing  the  air,  or  only  playing  in 
octave,  as  some    have  done,  seems  a    hardier  supposition 


I     Champollion.  Antiquites.  V.  17.  6.        2    Athenseus. 


202  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

than  to  credit  them  with  playing  a  Harmony  :  which 
whether  it  partook  of  the  nature  of  a  mere  single 
part  accompaniment,  or  whether  it  were  a  regular  3 
or  4  part  Harmony,  may  admit  conjecture.  But  most 
probably  it  was  the  latter.  For  let  us  take  the  much 
abused  band  of  Tebhen  that  we  have  spoken  of — it 
is  composed  of  2  Harpers  (I  give  the  numbers  on 
the  sculpture)  2  Flute  Players,  i  Pipe  Player,  4 
Male,  3  Female  Singers — all  these  are  playing  and 
singing  together.  Now  the  Pipe  cannot  be  playing 
in  unison  with  the  flute  ^  because  it  is  shorter  and 
therefore  higher  ;  besides  this,  even  though  they  were 
of  the  same  pitch,  the  flute  is  being  sounded  in 
its  lowest  note  and  the  pipe  in  its  middle  register ; 
while  the  other  flute  is  likewise  being  sounded  in  its 
middle  register,  and  therefore  is  giving  a  sound  mid- 
way  between    the    first    flute    and    the    pipe,   with   such 

I   or    or  J 

J-     ^- 


n_j| 1 =1- 

a    result    as    this  :      JL.. .  I ^ —         for    though    it 


f 


may  be  presumed  that  the  Pipe  doubles  one  of  the 
Flutes,  it  is  plain  that  the  flutes  are  not  doubling  each 
other.  But,  meanwhile,  what  are  the  Harpers  doing  ? 
Are  they  doubling  ?  Or  are  the  Male  and  Female 
singers  doubling  ?  If  they  all  doubled  the  octave  and 
5th,  the  effect  would  be  the  thinnest  and  puniest 
imaginable — and  ten  times  thinner  by  the  multiplicity 
of  the  performers.  When  a  chord  of  octave  and  5  th 
is  sounded — especially  by  a  large  band — the  5th  is 
scarcely  heard.  It  might  as  well  be  left  out  for  all 
that   it  enriches  the  sound.     And    shall  we  imagine    that 


I     This  fact  is  well  brought  out  in  Chappel's  "  History  of  Music." 


THE  EGYPTIANS.  203 

these  big  orchestras,  the  whole  raison  d'etre  of  which 
was  to  procure  breadth  and  richness  of  tone,  were 
content  to  hmit  themselves  to  two  notes  at  once  and 
one  of  them  a  dummy.  I  should  rather  say  that  they 
would  err  on  the  side  of  luxuriance  rather  than  of  chastity 
— great  discords,  uncouth  barbaric  chords,  ponderous 
chords,  colossal  harmonies  I  should  expect  to  have 
heard  had  I  listened  to  those  old  Egyptian  concerts.  ^ 
Big  orchestras  always  mean  luxuriant  Harmony,  as  he 
that  reflects  on  the  History  of  Music  will  know.  And 
it  was  in  keeping  with  the  Egyptian  genius,  which  was 
always  hankering  after  bigness  and  adored  combination. 
They  could  never  be  content  with  soloists  but  must  have 
great  groups  of  performers ;  ^  even  a  chorus  was  not 
enough,  they  must  add  instruments  ;  3  and  it  may  be 
remarked  as  strikingly  suggestive  of  the  national  charac- 
ter that  their  favourite  instrument  (of  the  Wind  family) 
was  always  the  Double  Pipe  that  gave  {dextra  et 
sinistra)  a  treble  and  a  bass  {biforein  cantitui)  at  the 
same  time.  Now  it  seems  hard  to  believe  that  this 
tendency  to  massing  and  grouping  while  appearing 
so  strongly  in  everything  that  surrounded  the  music, 
should    yet    be    banished    from    the    music    itself 

It   should    seem    that   the    Melody  was  more    likely   to 
have    been    lost    in    the    Harmony,    than    the     Harmony 


I  This  staletnent  must  not  be  accepted  as  a  rash  or  hasty  one,  anil  having 
thought  over  it  frequent!}',  I  do  not  feel  disposed  to  alter  it  in  the  slightest.  I 
had  since  thought  that  we  must  limit  the  Egyptian  harmonj'  to  much  slenderer 
dimensions,  since  otherwise  we  should  have  found  traces  of  what  I  speak  of 
in  Greek  Music,  which  lay  under  obligation  to  the  Egyptian.  Yet  it  is  on  the 
other  hand  more  probable  that  the  Greeks  singled  out  the  best  and  purest 
things  for  their  imitation,  and  let  the  unwieldy  and  barbaric  be.  Let  us  think 
of  their  parallel  obligations  in  Architecture  and  Sculpture,  and  we  shall  have 
no  difficulty  in  understanding  this.  2    The  sculptures  in  Rosellini  and 

Champollion  show  us  clearly  that  soloists  were  quite  the  exception. 

3  There  are  but  two  or  three  instances  of  singers  unaccompanied. 


204:  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

in  the  Melody.  Since  Melody  is  the  musical  reflection 
of  Individualism,  and  only  appears  in  those  epochs 
when  the  Individual  man  comes  prominently  forward 
on  the  scene.  Such  was  the  savage,  and  such  have 
men  been  at  various  epochs,  and  particularly  transitional 
epochs,  in  the  world's  history  since  that  time.  But 
Harmony  is  the  musical  reflection  of  Organic  States, 
when  the  Individual  is  sacrificed  to  the  mass.  Egypt's 
history  is  but  the  history  of  such  perennial  sacrifice. 
And  that  Harmony  should  take  the  pas  of  Melody 
there  was  natural. 

I  have  spoken  of  their  Harmony  as  '  luxuriant,' 
but  I  must  add  a  qualification.  The  Harp  was  the 
foundation  of  the  Egyptian  orchestra.  Now  the  Harp 
is  essentially  Anti-chromatic — even  since  the  invention  of 
Pedals  it  rebels  against  accidentals— and  before  Pedals 
were  invented,  the  Harp  could  only  play  a  straight  up 
and  down  Diatonic  scale.  It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  the 
Egyptian  Harmony  was  purely  diatonic,  such  a  thing 
as  modern  modulation  utterly  unknown,  and  every  piece 
from  beginning  to  end  played  in  the  same  key. 

Now  a  full  Egyptian   Orchestra  was  thus  composed: — 
20     Harps 
8     Lutes 

5  or  6  Lyres 

6  or  7  Double  Pipes 
5  or  6  Flutes 

1  or  2  Pipes  (rarely  used) 

2  or  3  Tambourines  (seldom  used)^ 


I  This  specification  is  based  on  a  calculation  I  have  made  from  the 
Sculptures,  in  which  I  find  that  the  Harps  form  40  per  cent  of  the 
total  number  of  concert  instruments  employed,  the  Pipes  2 ,  per  cent, 
Flutes  II  per  cent,  Double  Pipes  13  per  cent,  Lutes  16  per  cent,  Lyres 
II  per  cent,  Tambourines  5  per  cent.  Now  let  us  collate  this  specific- 
ation which  we  obtain  from  the  Sculptures,  with  the  proportions  of  the 


THE    EGYPTIANS.  205 

If  Vocalists  were  added,  which  was  not  necessarily  the 
rule  by  any  means,  they  would  number  about  three 
fourths  as  many  as  the  Harpers. 

This  makes  sixty-five  in  all,  which  seems  a  fair 
maximum  for  the  establishment  of  a  private  gentleman, 
since  musical  performances  were  always  indoors,  and  the 
dimensions  of  the  hall  must  be  taken  into  consideration, 
otherwise  ^  the  number  might  have  been  infidenitely 
extended,  as  doubtless  in  the  Royal  Orchestras  it  was 
much  extended.  The  number  of  performers  in  that 
Orchestra  of  Ptolemy  Philadelphus  which  I  have  mentioned 
was  600  ;  but  as  this  was  a  Festival  Orchestra,  we  may 
perhaps  compute,  as  we  have  computed,  the  stock  Royal 
Orchestra    at    half  that    number. 

The  Compass  of  the  Egyptian  Orchestra  was  four 
octaves  and  a  half — that  is  to  say  considerably  more 
than  half  that   of  the    Modern    Orchestra. 


Taking  B      ^ — :":=:         as    the   bottom    note,    because 

it  was  the  lowest  note  of  the  Assyrian  Scale,  2  and 
probably  also  that  of  the  Egyptian,  as  it  was  of  other 
ancient  nations  of  whom    we  shall   hereafter  treat  ^ — 


Royal  Orchestra  in  Ptolemy  Philadelphus'  time.  Athenseus  says  that  of 
the  600  that  composed  it  30  were  harpers,  and  though  we  might  well 
assume  that  these  300  were  players  on  the  harp  alone,  yet  it  is  probable 
from  the  word  K:f0apt(rTr7C  that  we  must  take  it  generally  as  "players  on 
stringed  instruments,"  including,  that  is  to  say,  lute  players  and  lyre 
players  too.  So  of  an  orchestra  of  600,  half  were  strings  ;  .  and  if  we 
add  up  our  strings  20-8-5.. 33  we  shall  find  that  they  likewise  make 
half  of  the  number   we  have  assumed   as  the   total — 65. 

I  If  we  could  be  sure  that  the  courts  of  the  houses  were  ever  used  for 
musical  performances,  and  they  would  seem  to  invite  the  use  iu  such  a  climate, 
we  might  imagine,  as  I  say  indefinite  orchestras.  2    That  is  B  (Infrap.) 

We  are  assuming  the  Egyptian  an  octave  lower.  The  return  to  Cb  of  late 
years  in  tuning  modem  harps  is,  I  take  it,  an  instance  of  Reversion. 

3    E.  g.— the  Chinese  whose  oldest  mode  of  scale  was  in  B,  (Infra  p.-). 


206  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 


taking  B       sSzizp  then    as  the  bottom  note,  the 

compass    of  the    Great    Harps   was   from — 


! [which  seems  a  fair  computation  for  strings, 

the  lowest  of  which  was  6  ft.  Jong  and  proportionately  thick,  requiring  a 
muscular  effort  to  twang  it— whence  it  was  that  women  were  precluded  from 
playing  the  Great  Harp.]   i 

Of  the  Small  Harps  from 


Of  the  Lyres  (like  the  small  Harps) 

^or:^ 


From 


-^~       tf 


[For  we  are  told  that  in  the  reign  of  Amasis  Harps  of  14  strings  and  Lyres  of 
1 7  were  used  together, 3  arid  it  seems  plain  that  the  object  of  so  using  them  was 
that  together  they  might  cover  the  whole  compass  of  the  orchestral  gamut : 
and  since  we  cannot  place  the  highest  note  of  the  Lyre  much  above  "  d  "  or 
"  e  "  because  this  was  the  limit  of  the  highest  known  Egyptian  instrument  4 — 
nor  the  lowest  much  lower  than  "d"  if  the  instrument  was  to  be  of  any  use  in 
supplementing  the  Great  Harp,  we  will  suffer  one  8ve  to  overlap  which 
we  cannot  help  and  conjecture  its  compass  as  above.] 

Now  the  Harps  and  Lyres  are  not  difficult  to  conjecture, 
for  when  we  have  assumed  a  bottom  note  we  have 
merely    to     count    up     the    number    of    strings    on    the 


I     See  the  harpers  in    Rosellini,  I  monumenti.  II.  97.    Tavole,  and    par- 
ticularly the  left  hand  one.  2    The  Small  Harp  was  used  for  the  same 
purpose  as  the  lyre  (i.e,  to  accompany  the  Great  Harp),  and  therefore  I  have 
given  it  the  same  compass. 
3    Wilkinson.  II. 


THE   EGYPTIANS.  207 

sculptures,  one  note  for  each  string,  and  we  get  the 
compass.  And  the  number  of  strings  in  the  Great 
Harps  range  from  lo  to  i8,  ^  and  in  the  Small  Harps 
from  4  to  21,2  and  in  the  Lyres  from  4  to  22  strings.  3 
And  the  compasses  of  these  instruments  have  been 
given. 

But  when  we  come  to  the  Lutes  it  is  a  very  dif- 
ferent thing,  for  the  strings  of  lutes  are  tuned  at 
considerable  intervals  from  one  another  because  they 
are  stopped  ;  and  we  cannot  know  the  number  of  notes 
a  Lute  has,  unless  we  know  how  many  frets  it  has 
on  its  neck.  But  the  extreme  length  of  the  neck  in 
these  Egyptian  Lutes,  shows  us  that  they  must  have 
had  very  many  frets,  or  that  each  string  must  have 
been  stopped  many  times,  which  comes  to  the  same 
thing.  And  then  we  know  from  Diodorus  that  the 
Egyptian  lute  had  three  strings,  4  and  some  on  the 
sculptures     we    find     with    4    strings  ;  ^    so     that    if    we 


4  This  is  the  highest  note  in  the  Treble  Flute  discovered  in  the 
Tombs  of  Thebes.  This  Treble  Flute  does  not  come  into  prominence 
till  late  in  Egyptian  Musical  History,  and  we  have  not  admitted  it  into  the 
orchestra,  because  there  is  no  warrant  for  so  doing  from  the  sculptures. 

1  Bruces  Travels  in  Abyssinia  1. 126.  sq.  Bruce's  Harps  are  very  good  types 
of  the  Great  Harp,  nor  does  it  seem  by  the  sculptures  that  the  number  of 
strings  in  the  Great  Harp  ever  went  beyond  18,  which  is  the  number  in  his 
largest  Harp.  It  is  a  pity  his  researches  were  interrupted,  for  there  were  many 
more  harps  in  the  tomb  where  he  found  these,  and  Bruce  would  have  drawn 
them  all,  had  not  his  guides  become  refractory  at  his  long  stay,  and  with  great 
clamour  and  marks  of  insubordination  dashed  their  torches  against  the  largest 
harp,  leaving  him  and  his  companions  in  the  dark. 

2  Engel.  Music  of  most  Ancient  Nations,  p.  181.  4,  7,8,  9,  10,  13,  18,20. 
and  on  p.  183.  he  sets  down  the  highest  as  21  strings. 

3  Wilkinson.  (Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians,  i.  462,) 
gives  4,  6,  7,  8,  9,  ID,  II,  12,  14,  17,  20,  21,  and  22  strings.      4  Diodorus.  I.  16. 

5  Or  rather  4  pegs,  for  it  is  hard  to  see  the  number  of  strings  on  a  flat 
surface.  And  even  if  these  pegs  are  only  tassels,  as  some  have  conjectured 
and  as  indeed  sometimes  they  are  tassels,  this  would  make  no  difference  in 
the  computation  of  the  strings. 


208  HISTORY  OF    MUSIC. 

imagine   these    strings    tuned    in    5ths    or   6ths    to    each 
other,    we    shall    get     such    a    compass    as    this  for    our 

or 


Lute,         \t^     I  *      f\\    \    r     ?~         for    the   neck  is  so 


I )  j    I         i 


long   that   we   are   compelled   to    assume   a    low  note  as 
the   bottom  one.  ^ 

And  the  Flutes — it  will  be  hard  to  conjecture  their 
compass  too,  since  we  do  not  know  the  number  of 
stops  ;  yet  their  great  length  marks  them  out  as  an 
Alto  or  Tenor  rather  than  a  Treble  instrument.  And 
then  they  are  held  obliquely  not  horizontally  like  our 
own  Flutes,  2  and  perhaps  this  was  because  they  were 
too  heavy  for  the  arms  to  support  in  a  horizontal 
position.  So  this  is  aril  the  more  reason  for  conceiving 
them  a  Tenor  or  Alto  instrument.  And  we  will  assign 
them  a  compass  somewhat  similar  to  the  Lute,  only  not 
so   low   in    their   bottom    notes. 

The  highest  instrument  was  the  Pipe.  It  possessed 
but  few  stops  and  belonged  to  the  hautboy  order  of 
instrument.      So  we  will  confine  it  within  hautboy  limits 

'^  or-^ 

-I — 

for  its  top  note,  and  perhaps  7  notes 

on    this    side    of  it  for    its    compass. 

Now  as  to  how  precisely  these  ^  instruments  were 
arranged    in   combination — whether  the    Harps    played  a 


1  The  traditional  method  of  dealing  with  this  lute,  as  I  remember  from 
Dr.  Burney,  is  to  assume  its  tuning  the  same  with  that  of  the  Lnte  of 
Orpheus,  i,  4,  5,  8,  i.e.  the  2nd,  3rd,  and  4th  strings  tuned  in  4th,  5th,  and 
8ve  to  the  first.  The  next  step  is  to  prove  that  Orpheus  got  his'  lute  from 
Egypt,  which  is  a  harder  matter, 

2  Champollion.  Antiquites.  V.  17.  6, 


THE  EGYPTIANS.  209 

substantial  melody,  which  was  repeated  by  the  Lutes 
an  8ve  above,  with  chords  perhaps  in  addition,  since 
chords  are  the  Lute's  forte  ;  while  close  on  these  came 
the  Double  Pipe's  bass  reed  and  the  Tenor  Flute ; 
while  the  Lyre  and  the  Small  Harp  filled  in  the 
harmony  above,  and  highest  of  all  (though  rarely  used) 
the    Pipe    warbled    deliciously — may    admit    conjecture.  ^ 

Yet  this  noble  pomp  of  instruments  and  voices,  this 
triumph  of  discipline  and  art  was  but,  like  the  Pyramids, 
the  monument  of  their  slavery.  Giant  stones  were  piled 
in  hills  by  toil  incalculable— to  enclose  the  carcass  of  a 
king.  Instruments  were  heaped  together  in  glorious 
profusion — the  exploits  of  three  thousand  years  to  come 
beggared  quite — men  condemned  to  the  music-room,  as 
they  were  to  the  stone  quarries,  to  practise  their  in- 
struments eternally,  and  pass  their  lives  in  learning  parts 
by  heart  ^  — and  all  to  enliven  a  gentleman's  dinner 
parties.  There  a  king's  carcass,  here  a  nobleman's 
stomach  was  the  matter  at  stake.  They  raised  Pyramids 
to  bid  defiance  to  death,  and  they  raised  a  Pyramid 
to  bid  "  Viva  la  j'oia "  to  life.  And  Music  was  that 
Pyramid. 

Hence  we  shall  understand  why  the  Orchestra  was 
composed  as  it  was.  Why  it  was  a  mass  of  Harps 
and    other   strings,  accompanied    by    the    voices    of  such 


1  The  method  of  playing  the  Harp  was  much  the  same  as  at  the  present 
day.  In  one  or  two  points  however  there  were  differences :  the  thumb  and 
little  linger  were  the  chief  fingers  employed,  instead  of  the  thumb  and 
third  finger  as  at  present— this  was  probably  owing  to  the  distance  of  the 
strings  apart;  also  the  harp  was  held  on  either  shoulder  instead  of  on  the 
right  exclusively.  Even  already,  however,  there  seems  to  have  been  a  pre- 
ference for  the  right  shoulder,  which  may  be  the  origin  of  the  modern  habit. 

2  Though  the  Egyptians  must  probably  be  credited  with  the  possession 
of  a  musical  notation,  the  performers  ou  the  sculptures  always  play  from 
memory. 


210  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

melodious  instruments  as  the  Flute  and  Double  Pipe, 
why  women  formed  the  majority  of  the  singers  and 
at  least  half  the  instrumentalists,  why  such  instruments 
as  the  Trumpet,  Drum,  ^  Cymbals  ^  were  carefully  ex- 
cluded— in  one  word,  why  softness  and  sweetness  were 
aimed  at  in  its  composition  rather  than  strength  and 
power.  3  Yet  we  may  well  admire  how  strangely  out 
of  keeping  with  the  manifestness  of  the  intention  is 
the  way  in  which  that  intention  was  carried  out. 
There  is  a  massiveness  and  solidity  about  the  or- 
chestra that  is  unmistakeable.  Presided  over  by  the 
Great  Harp,  whose  tone  approached  that  of  our 
Double  Basses,  the  second  instrument  in  point  of  im- 
portance was  the  Lute,  likewise  a  deep-toned  instrument 
of  the  Bass  or  Baritone  order,  then  came  the  Double- 
Pipes  with  their  additional  contribution  to  the  Bass 
element.  The  Flutes,  as  we  have  seen,  were  Alto  or 
Tenor.  The  range  of  the  Lyres  and  small  Harps  com- 
prised more  Tenor  and  Alto  than  they  did  Soprano,  and 
the  Soprano  single  Pipe  was  rarely  used.  Thus  the 
whole  schwerpiinkt  of  the  Orchestra  was  in  the  Bass, 
Tenor,  and  Alto  registers.  So  smitten  were  the  Egyptians 
with  the  passion  for  massiveness  that  this  was  the 
lightest   thing    in    Orchestras   they   could    achieve. 

Now  passing  from  the  Orchestra  to  the  Music  the 
Orchestra  played,  we  will  examine  its  character  in  turn. 
And  I  think  we  may  make  a  fair  guess  at  its  char- 
acter. For  when  we  remember  the  servitude  of  the 
musicians  and  how  they  lived  but  for  the  pleasure 
and  on  the  sufferance  of  their  lord,  we  cannot  ex- 
pect  any   very  high  or  manly  feeling  to   have    pervaded 


1  They  were  only  used  in  the  armies.  Clemens  Alex.  Stromateis.  II.  164^ 

2  Cymbals  were  confined  to  religious  ceremony.    "Wilkinson,   II.   256. 

3  yElian  draws  a  similar  conclusion   about  the   Byzantine    Music    from 
the  absence  of  the  Trumpet.     (Various  Histories,  III.  14). 


THE    EGYPTIANS.  211 

their  compositions.  And  if  any  of  them  ever  ventured 
to  entertain  lofty  ideas  about  his  art, — ne  siitor  ultra 
crepidam,  and  we  may  be  sure  he  would  pretty  soon 
have  had  to  drop  them.  And  we  have  spoken  about  the 
sweetness  of  the  music,  and  I  think  we  may  go  on  to  em- 
bellish our  conception  of  it  and  to  bring  the  music  bodily 
before  our  mind ;  for  let  us  remember  the  occasions 
on  which  the  performances  took  place — during  banquets 
and  before  them,  "while  the  dinner  was  preparing ; "  and 
we  need  only  enquire  what  the  demand  is  on  such 
occasions  to  form  a  very  fair  notion  of  what  the 
supply  would  be.  So  we  may  imagine  that  a  calm 
and  tranquil  music  preceded  the  banquet,  "such  as 
would  compose  the  nerves  of  the  guests  and  put  their 
appetites  in  good  trim,  and  a  sparkling,  effervescent 
music  accompanied  it,  bright  and  glittering  like  the 
lights  and  the  jewels,  yet  not  so  loud  as  to  drown 
the  conversation,  and  particularly  subdued  when  Trim- 
alcion  himself  made  a  bon  mot.  ^  It  will  be  well 
therefore  to  credit  the  musicians  with  considerable 
powers  of  expression  and  chiaroscuro.  Nay  we  might 
go  beyond  this  without  offence,  and  credit  them 
with  a  dramatic  power,  in  so  far  as  they  were  the 
aesthetic  reflections  of  a  scene  that  was  notoriously 
dramatic.  For  when  the  skeleton  was  introduced  towards 
the  close  of  the  feast,  can  we  imagine  a  better  pen- 
dent or  a  more  natural  one  than  the  wailings  of  the 
singers,  the  muffled  tones  of  the  flutes,  and  the 
growling   of  the   bass   on    the    Harp  ? 


I  If  we  may  judge  from  the  dinner  music  of  Romance: — "  They  took 
their  places  at  the  table,  and  had  scarcely  seated  themselves  when  a  num- 
ber of  slaves,  belonging  to  the  princess,  began  a  delightful  concert  of  vocal 
and  instrumental  music,  which  continued  during  the  whole  of  the  repast. 
As  the  instruments  were  kept  very  soft  they  did  not  interrupt  any 
conversation  between  the  prince   and  the  princess." 


5l2  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

We  shall  at  any  rate  do  no  wrong  if  we  credit  them 
with  a  high  degree  of  technical  skill,  which  it  will  be 
plain  they  could  not  but  acquire  in  the  course  of  a 
life  devoted  to  no  other  occupation  than  that  of  Music, 
since  most  probably  they  were  brought  up  to  their 
work  from  their  earliest  years.  And  allowing  this  pre- 
dication of  the  musicians  to  flow  into  the  Music,  we 
shall  conclude  that  the  music  itself  (since  composers 
write  as  they  play)  was  full  of  technical  difficulties, — ^ 
and  this  will  give  us  an  additional  reason  why  the 
practice  of  the  art  in  Egypt  was  in  all  cases  limited 
to  professional  performers,  who  were  the  only  musicians 
known  in   Egypt. 

There  is  another  point  about  Egyptian  Music  I  will 
now  mention.  It  was  Arrhythmic  rather  than  Rhythmic. 
Not  only  does  the  absence  of  percussion  instruments 
from  the  orchestra  point  in  this  direction,  but  the 
constant  presence  of  conductors  also  suggests  the  same. 
For  Music  that  is  alive  with  Rhythm  does  not  want 
conducting.  It  goes  of  itself.  ^  Its  short  groups  of 
notes  and  tripping  metres  caper  on  unbidden.  But 
a  Music  that  has  long  phrases  and  weak  rhythms — 
where  this  has  to  be  played  a  conductor  is  indispensable, 
or   otherwise  the  performers  could  never  keep  together  ;3 


1  The  opinion  at  least  of  some  of  the  ancients. — "Variosque  modos 
^gyptia  ducit' Tibia,"  says  Claudian  in  this  connection,  "The  Egyptian 
pipe  plays  its  florid  strains;"  where  "Pharios,"  the  other  reading,  must 
be  condemned  as  an  inept  reading  unworthy  of  Claudian. 

2  Hence  the  most  useless  of  conductors  is  the  conductor  of  the  ball 
room  orchestra — for  which  reason  he  generally  plays  the  fiddle  at  the 
same  time.  3  And  I  would  particularly  cite  the  analogy  of  modern 
times,  for  the  history  of  conducting  shows  us  that  it  is  only  of  late  years 
since  the  arrhythmic  music  of  modem  Germany  has  come  into  vogue  that 
the  conductor  has  taken  up  the  prominent  position  in  the  orchestra 
which  we  find  him  occupying  to-day.  For  in  preceding  times  it  was 
sufficient  for  the  composer  to  preside  at  the  piano,  as  Rossini  and  other 
Italian  opera  writers  used  to  do,  or  at  the  organ  like  Handel  and  others, 
and  this  was  aU  the  conducting  necessary. 


THE   EGYPTIANS.  21  3 

and  this  perhaps  may  be  offered  in  explanation  of 
the  multipHcity  of  Egyptian  conductors,  of  whom  there 
were  probably  three  for  each  band,  one  for  the  strings, 
one  for  the  wind,  and  one  for  the  vocalists.  ^  And 
they  conducted  not  by  the  baton,  but  by  clapping  the 
hands.  But  considering  the  size  of  the  bands,  the 
sound  of  the  clapping  had  very  little  chance  of  being 
heard,  and  their  role  must  have  been  very  near  the 
same  dumb  show  which  the  conductor  plays  in  a 
modern  orchestra.  For  that  their  action  was  most 
attentively  watched  by  the  band,  and  that  the  time 
was  taken  rather  from  the  movements  of  their  hands 
than  the  sound  of  the  claps,  we  may  well  imagine 
from  the  following  fact :  for  when  blind  men  were 
the  singers  the  conductor  was  dispensed  with  as  useless, 
and   the   singers   beat   the   time    themselves. 

From  these  facts  and  from  other  similar  ones  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  music  was  not  naturally  a 
highly  rhythmic  music  by  any  means,  but  that  it  had 
more  in  common  with  the  Chant  than  the  Dance,  to 
which  indeed  the  pronounced  partiality  for  the  Harp 
seems  otherwise  to  point. 

But  nevertheless  it  was  much  influenced  and  perverted 
from  its  natural  way  by  its  continual  association  with 
the  dances  in  the  salons,  and  in  the  emphatic  style  of 
conducting  we  may  see  a  solicitude  for  crispness  of 
playing,  which  shows  that  the  influence  of  the  dance, 
and  worst  of  all  the  feminine  and  enervating  dance,  for 
there  was  no  other,  was  very  strong  indeed. 


I  As  in  the  band  in  Lepsius.  Ab.  II.  B.  III.  Bl.  53.  This  sculp- 
ture is  otherwise  interesting  as  furnishing  one  of  the  best  indirect  proofs 
of  the  size  of  the  orchestras  ;  for  there  is  only  one  harper  and  one  singer 
depicted  on  the  sculpture,  to  each  of  whom  there  is  a  conductor.  Now 
if  they  are  not  representative  figures,  wh^^t  js  the  rea,soii  of  this  pro- 
fusion  of  conductors  ? 


214  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

But  I  am  talking  as  if  Egypt  had  only  lasted  a  gen- 
eration or  two  instead  of  six  thousand  years  ;  as  if  the 
characteristics  I  have  mentioned  now  had  held  good  for 
all  time.  Starting  with  a  tour  during  the  reign  of 
Rameses  II.,  I  have  hitherto  fixed  my  eye  despite  myself 
almost  exclusively  on  his  epoch,  while  i8  dynasties  and 
nearly  four  thousand  years  had  rolled  away  before 
Rameses  and  his  orchestras  saw  the  light. 

I  shall  therefore  proceed  to  write  the  history  of 
Egyptian  Music,  dynasty  by  dynasty,  from  the  time  of 
Menes  till  the  time  of  the  Ptolemies,  not  only  because 
of  the  light  it  will  throw  on  the  picture  we  have  just 
been  studying,  but  in  order  that  viewing  the  various 
steps  of  the  art  through  its  rise,  climax,  and  decline, 
brought  close  together  in  a  small  frame  here,  we  may 
gather  suggestions,  and  form  anticipations  about  its 
probable  course  among  other  nations  and  in  other  parts 
of  the  world. 

Up  till  the  time  of  Menes  gods  ruled  over  Egypt,i 
who  went  about  among  the  people  civilising  them  and 
instructing  them  in  the  arts  of  peace,  and  accompanied 
wherever  they  went  by  troops  of  musicians.  ^  What 
instrument  these  musicians  played  is  not  told  us,  but 
we  may  fable  that  they  played  the  oldest  of  the 
Egyptian  stringed  instruments — the  Lute  of  Thoth — an 
instrument  whose  antiquity  is  testified  by  the  fact,  that 
it  is  the  only  instrument  which  ever  appears  in  the 
hieroglyphics.  It  was  a  little  Lute,  shaped  like  the  ace 
of  spades  with  an  elongated  neck,  and  fitted  with  three 
strings.  And  since  there  is  reason  to  suppose  that  there 
was  a  time  in  the  history  of  Egyptian  Music  when 
the    Lute    of    Thoth    was    the    only    stringed    instrument 


I    The  account  is  in  Diodorus,  2    lb. 


THE   EGYPTIANS.  21  5 

known  and  that  if  any  this  was  the  time,  we  may  infer  that 
the  character  of  primitive  Egyptian  Music  before  the 
time  of  Menes  was  of  essentially  the  same  description  as 
that  I  have  described  in  use  among  barbarian  man — 
bards  chanting  to  their  lyres,  singing  and  declaiming  the 
order  of  the  day,  and  a  widespread  passion  for  music 
among  the  people  at  large.  And  who  these  gods  were — 
that  they  were  the  veritable  Bards  and  Lawgivers  who 
turned  people  to  virtue  and  order  by  the  power  of  their 
music,  is  suggested  by  the  hieroglyphics  themselves,  for 
the  Lute  of  Thoth  is  the  hieroglyphic  for  "  Goodr  ^ 

Then  came  Menes,  "  the  strong  man,  ^  "  and  with  him 
came  Egypt's  oppression.  The  people  got  their  civilis- 
ation and  lost  their  music.  And  now  that  they  adopted 
settled  habits,  and  left  their  wandering  life,  their  tents  and 
leaf  huts  began  to  pass  into  permanent  stone  houses, 
and  so  did  the  Portable  Lute  of  Thoth  into  the  Non- 
Portable    Harp.     And    this    is    how  it    turned: — The    ace 


of  spades 


was     first     slightly    curved    thus- 


i 


so    as    to     admit    of    greater    tension     being 


1  Hence  it  was  painted  up  at  the  doors  of  houses  as  a  symbol  of  good 
fellowship,  or  perhaps  to  bring  good  luck  to  the  owners,  as  we  nail  up 
a  horseshoe  at  barn  doors  to-day. 

2  Brugsch  has  well  brought  out  the  characters  of  these  early  kings  by 
literal  translation  of  their  names,  which  are  all  seen  to  be  epilhetal 
like  the  one  in  the  text, 


■^ 


2l6  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

applied  to  the  strings  by  the  benefit  of  the  curve,  which 
would  partially  remove  the  pressure  from  the  pegs  on  to 
the  body  of  the  wood.  The  instrument  thus  formed, 
however,  did  not  remain  long  in  use,  though  it  appears 
frequently  as  a  revived  form  in  the  later  dynasties,  ^ 
and  the  step  once  taken,  the  good  results  of  the  bending 
would  be  too  apparent  not  to  finish  the  work  so  happily 


begun.    And    so     I       was    turned    into         [  which 


L 


when  the  spade  part  of  it  had  been  cut  down,  since  it 
was  no  longer  necessary  to  have  a  sound-board  (for 
this  is  what  the  spade  was)  now  that  the  strings  were 
so  tightly  strung  as  they  were,  by  this  time,  I  say,  the 
Lute  had  turned  into  the  Harp,  retaining  however  till 
the    last  the  sign  of  its  paternity  in    having   the   bottom 


end    always   thicker    than    the    top.  I  ^      gy     tj^g 


4th  Dynasty  the  change  was  complete,  and  the  connect- 
ing link  between  it  and  the  harp  had  dropped  out  of 
sight   altogether. 


1  This  "connecting  link."  if  we  may  term  it  so,  between  the  lute  and 
harp  is  figured  in  Rosellini,  II,  98,  2,  96,  5,  &c.  Also  in  Wilkinson  there 
are  figurings  of  it,  II,  287,  214,  pi.  I.  2,  3.  215,  2,  2a.  It  is,  a  regular 
mongrel,  and  it  would  be  hard  to  say  whether  it  were  a  big  lute  or  a 
small  harp 

2  Cf.  all  the  harps  of  Cheops'  time  in  Lepsius, 


THE    EGYPTIANS.  21/ 

It  is  interesting  then  to  remark  that  the  Egyptian  Harp 
was  a  development  of  the  Lute,  which  might  have 
seemed  more  naturally  a  development  of  the  Lyre  ; 
in  any  case  being  the  progeny  and  perpetuation  of  an 
elder  form  ;  being  to  the  Lyre  or  Lute  what  the  pillared 
stone  House  is  to  the  log  cabin  or  leaf  hut,  or  better 
what  the  minaret  is  to  the  tent — being  but  the  badge 
of  stationariness  or  the  signet  of  permanence  which 
man  naturally  impressed  on  the  form  when  he  be- 
came  stationary   himself. 

By  the  4th  Dynasty  then  the  change  was  complete, 
and  the  connecting  link  between  Lute  and  Harp  had 
dropped  out  of  sight  altogether.  The  Harps  of  the  4th 
Dynasty  were  all  of  the  simple  shape  we  have  just 
mentioned,  ^  but  they  had  six  strings  now  instead  of 
three,2  which  were  fastened  as  they  had  been  in  the 
Lute — to  pegs  at  the  top  and  to  the  body  of  the 
instrument  itself  at  the  bottom.^  The  peculiarity  of 
these  strings  is  that  they  were  all  Bass,  the  place 
where  the  treble  strings  come  being  left  quite  bare  ;  4 
so  that  in  these  Harps  we  see  the  progenitors  of  the 
Great  Harps  of  Rameses'  time  with  which  we  are 
already  acquainted.  The  orchestras  of  Cheops'  time  were 
very  simply  composed — Bass  Harps,  Tenor  or  Alto 
Flutes,  and  Single  Pipes  formed  the  tout  ensemble.  ^ 
Men  singers  were  more  common  than  women  ;  ^ 
and  dancing  women  had  not  yet  flooded  the  salons.  7 
We  may  therefore  assume  a  rough  manly  vigour  to  have 


1  Lepsius.    Denkmaeler  aus  ^gypten.     Abthei  III.     Band  III.    Bl.  3fi. 

2  lb.  3     Cf.  alFO  the  Memphis  harps  in  Wilkinson. 
4    Lepsius  loc    cit.  5    Lepsius.    II.    III.    36,  &c, 

6  Lepsius.    II.    Ill     61.  19,  10,  Rosellini.    II.    94. 

7  There  is  a  marked    absence  of  Dancing  girls  in   the  4th  5th  and  6th 
Dynasties.    See  the  places  in  Lepsius  and  others  hitherto  cited, 


2l8  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

characterised  the  music  of  the  4th  Dynasty,  an  almost 
primitive  simplicity  of  style,  and  a  well  marked  affinity 
to  the  Chant.  Yet  that  this  was  par  excellence  the  era 
of  large  orchestras  and  large  choruses,  we  may  imagine 
since  it  was  the  era  of  Tebhen,  whose  musical  arrange- 
ments we  have  before  discussed,  and  what  is  more  it 
was  the  era  of  the  Great  Pyramids,  when,  if  ever, 
centralisation  and  reckless  accumulation  were  the  order 
of  the  day.  We  might  argue  from  the  Pyramids  to 
the  Music  and  predicate  a  plain  and  colossal  Harmony  as 
its  leadmg  characteristic,  which  probably  characterised 
all  the  music  of  the  Memphian  Monarchy  and  remain- 
ed to  be  the  foundation  of  the  Music  of  Arsinoe  and 
Thebes. 

During  the  5th  Dynasty  (Manetho's  Elephantine)  the 
the  frame  of  the  Harp  was  bent  still  more — into  a 
perfect  semicircle,  and  the  lower  part  of  it  was  greatly 
thickened  and  had  its  bottom  flattened,  by  virtue  of 
which  the  Harp  could  stand  alone.  ^  In  this  thicken- 
ing we  may  see  the  first  conscious  efforts  at  securing 
a  sensuous  fullness  of  tone,  for  hitherto  it  had  been 
rather  a  straining  at  bigness  of  form  that  had  carried 
the  Harp,  along  but  now  it  was  bigness  of  tone ; 
and  in  this  thickening  of  the  lower  part  we  may  see 
the  first  dim  gropings  after  a  sound-board.  So  that 
we  may  conjecture  that  the  sensuous  side  of  the  Art 
began  to  claim  attention  under  this  Dynasty,  seeing 
that  there  is  such  a  pronounced  move  towards  securing 
the    resonance   of   the    strings.  2 

By  the  12th  Dynasty  this  tendency  was  carried  to 
its  completion,  and  the  Harp  furnished  with  a  perfect 
sound-board.      In     the     dark    period    which    intervened 


1  Lepsius.    Denkmaler.    Ab.  II.    Bd.  III.    Bl.  53.     Cf.  also  53. 

2  That  this  tendency  should  first    appear  in  a  Dynasty  which   ruled    in 
Upper  Egypt  and  not  in  a  Memphian  Dynasty  is  suggestive. 


THE   EGYPTIANS.  219 

between  the  close  of  the  5  th  Dynasty  and  the  opening 
of  the  1 2th,  the  thickened  and  flattened  pillar  of  the 
Harp  had  been  first  thickened  still  more,  then  hollowed 
out,  then  rounded,  and  finally  finished  off  into  the 
shape  of  a  kettledrum.  Thus  was  the  Harp  provided 
with  a  regular  sound-board  which  greatly  increased 
the  volume  of  its  tone.  ^  Small  Harps  were  now  made 
as  well  as  Great  Harps  ^  — lightness  was  studied  in  the 
orchestras  as  well  as  massiveness,  and  probably  the 
Small  Harp  was  a  natural  reaction  against  the  pro- 
fundity and  volume  which  up  till  now  had  pervaded 
the  Music.  It  ousted  the  somewhat  tart  Reed  Pipe 
from  the  Orchestra,  ^  and  probably  took  its  .  place  as 
the  Treble  instrument.  Sweetness  therefore  as  well  as 
lightness  was  an  object  of  study,  which  we  may  the 
more  surmise  since  the  long-necked  Lutes  now  begin  to 
appear  '^ — thus  affording  another  foil  to  the  boom  of  the 
Great    Harp. 

The  1 2th  Dynasty  was  a  busy  time  for  commerce 
and  manufactures,  and  the  spirit  of  the  age  was  strongly 
reflected  in  the  musical  world.  Harps  were  now  made 
of  a  particular  sort  of  wood — sycamore  wood^ — which  was 
specially  imported  from  distant  countries  for  the  purpose  ;  ^ 
the  frame  was  covered  with  all  sorts  of  fancy  devices 
to  attract  customers  ;  7  and  the  mechanical  ingenuity  of 
the  craftsmen  suggested  a  new  method    of   fastening  the 


1  It  may  be  seen  growing  in  the  harp  of  the  6th  Dynasty.  Lepsius. 
Ab.  II.  Bd.  IV.  Bl.  109.  For  this  kettledrum  shape  of  the  Pedestal 
see  the  harps  in  Lepsius'  4th  volume,  and  for  the  strong  probability  that  it 
was  hollowed  &c.,  see  Ambros.  Geschichte  der  Musik,  I.,  where  the  subject 
is  fully  discussed. 

2  Rosellini.  I  Monumenti.  Tavole.  II.  96.  3     lb.  II.  96,  i. 

4    lb.  95, 96.  5    Cf.  the  harp  in  the  Berlin  Museum.    There  is  also  one 

I  fancy  in  the  Louvre,  also  of  sycamore  wood. 

6  The  sycamore  does  not  grow  in  Egypt. 

7  Cf,  the  harps  in  Rosellini,  II.  96,  i,  96.  6,  8fc, 


220  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

Strings,  which  bears  a  close  resemblance  to  the  way  in 
use  at  the  present  time.  Egypt,  which  was  now  the 
centre  of  the  civilised  world,  was  brought  into  contact 
with  many  foreign  nations,  products  of  all  parts  of  the 
earth  flowed  into  its  markets,  and  among  the  rest  a  new 
musical  instrument  which  had  never  been  seen  in  Egypt 
before.  And  this  is  how  it  came  .A  son  of  Chnumhotep, 
an  Egyptian  grandee,  had  need  of  some  paint  to  paint 
his  eyes  with,  which  was  only  to  be  obtained  in  a 
certain  region  of  Palestine,  that  was  inhabited  by  Semites 
of  the  Amu.  And  as  Chnumhotep  was  a  man  of  con- 
sideration, a  family  of  Semites,  hearing  what  his  son 
•wanted,  set  off  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Egypt  with  a  supply 
of  the  paint,  in  the  hopes  of  driving  a  good  bargain, 
or  else,  perhaps,  they  meant  to  make  an  offering  of 
it  in  return  for  the  great  man's  protection.  Now  one 
of  these  Semites  was  a  musician,  and  naturally  brought 
his  instrument  with  him,  and  the  Egyptians  who  knew 
only  Harps  and  Lutes  were  for  the  first  time  in  their 
lives  gratified  with  the  sight  of  a  real  Lyre — and  that 
too  of  so  antique  and  primitive  construction  that  even 
the  Lute  of  Thoth,  the  Harp's  great-grandfather,  was 
quite  put  out  of  court  in  point  of  senility.  ^  This 
Semitic  Lyre  was  merely  a  battered  old  square  board, 
of  which  the  top  part  was  hollowed  out  into  a  kind 
of  gibbous  frame,  on  which  7  strings  were  strung. 
There  was  no  attempt  at  decoration :  even  the  edges 
of  the  board  were  all  left  rough  ;  and  the  strings  were 
simply  twisted  round  the  frame  and  tied  in  knots. 
Primitive  though  the  thing  was,  it  took  nevertheless, 
and    what    is    stranger   still,   the   old    scooped-out    board 


I      The  fresco  is  in  Lepsius,  DenkmSler.    Ab.  II.  IV.  133.    Cf.  also  the 
account  of  the  fresco  in  Brugsch.  Geschichtc  ^gyptens,  I.  148, 


THE  EGYPTIANS.  221 

form  was  still  retained,  nor  was  any  attempt  made  to  im- 
prove upon  it  ;  I  so  that  side  by  side  with  the  glorious 
Harps  of  the  time,  we  sec  this  shabby  old  weather- 
beaten  instrument,  coming  hot  from  the  Patriarchs, 
take  up  a  position  of  easy  familiarity.  Its  tenure  of 
favour,  however,  would  probably  have  been  as  brief  as 
that  of  most  oddities,  had  not  its  advent  been  shortly 
succeeded  by  the  arrival  of  the  Shepherd  Kings,  who 
being  much  wilder  Semites  than  the  obsequious  family 
who  brought  the  paint,  probably  brought  a  still  ruder 
form  of  their  national  instrument  along  with  them. 
And  now  the  luckless  Egyptians,  who  had  at  first  good- 
humouredly  patronised  the  instrument  as  a  bete  saiivage 
had  it  forced  on  their  notice  in  a  way  they  were  little 
prepared  for.  And  for  five  hundred  years,  as  long  as 
the  Shepherds  lasted,  they  had  to  endure  it.  If  the 
Shepherds  were  an  abomination  to  the  Egyptians,  what 
must  the  Shepherds'    Music   have   been  ! 

Though  it  be  the  fashion  to  describe  the  Shepherds 
as  having  been  in  time  completely  absorbed  into  the 
Egyptian  nation,  and  to  find  tho  solitary  relic  of  their 
supremacy  in  the  enrolment  of  their  god.  Set,  in  the  Eg- 
yptian Pantheon,  I  think  that  another  relic  must  be  found 
in  the  establishment  of  the  Lyre  in  Egyptian  Music. 
Unknown  in  Egypt  till  a  little  before  their  arrival,  we  find 
it  by  the  time  of  their  disappearance,  that  is  by  the  begin- 
ning of  the  1 8th  dynasty,  a  recognised  component  of 
the  Egyptian  Orchestra ;  having  in  the  interim,  indeed, 
undergone  many  improvements,  not  only  in  the  increase 
of  the  number  of  its  strings,  but  also  in  the  finish  of 
its    make,   for   the   rude   board   had    by   this  time    given 


I     Ambros  has  found  many  primitive  lyres  of  this  shape  during  the  1 2th 
dynasty. 


222  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

place  to  a  handsome  instrument  of  lo,  12,  14,  17,  20, 
21,  22,  strings.  ^  And  doubtless  we  must  allow  for  the 
effects  of  Semitic  influence  coming  from  another  quar- 
ter contemporaneously  I  mean  from  the  great  Chaldean 
empire  at  the  mouth  of  the  Euphrates,  which  was 
already  past  the  meridian  of  its  splendour  and  giving 
way  before  the  rising  power  of  Assyria  ;  for  under  the 
reign  of  Aahmes,  who  was  the  first  king  of  the  i8th 
dynasty,  the  Egyptian  arms  had  penetrated  to  Babylon, 
and  doubtless  there  was  a  most  intimate  connection  at 
this  time  between  the  two  courts.  At  any  rate  we 
may  find  a  sure  trace  of  Semitic  influence  in  the 
introduction  of  the  Dulcimer,  which  appears  in  this 
i8th  dynasty 2  for  a  moment,  but  then  as  quickly 
disappears  again ;  for  it  never  took  root  like  the 
Lyre   did. 

This  then  we  will  take  as  the  leading  trait  of  the  i8th 
dynasty — the  final  establishment  of  the  Semitic  Lyre  in 
Egyptian  music,  which  now  began  to  dispute  the  soprano 
place  in  the  orchestra  with  the  indigenous  Small  Harp. 
Two  more  dynasties  and  it  had  succeeded  in  its  efforts, 
and  had  ousted  the  Small  Harp  completely  from  the 
orchestra.  3  But  in  the  meantime  it  was  only  disputing 
the  place  of  honour.  And  now  despite  the  poetry  and 
vigour  which  are  the  inseparable  concomitants  of  the 
Lyre,  we  must  see  in  its  growing  dominion  in  the 
Egyptian  Orchestra  a  very  different  sign.  For  in  being 
transplanted  to  Egypt  it  had  shared  the  usual  fate  of 
an   exotic,   and   had   been    made   effeminate.       That   the 


1  Wilkinson's  Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians. 

2  See  the  solitary  dulcimer  in  Wilkinson.  It  belongs  to  the  i8th  dynasty. 
It  is  placed  on  a  frame  on  the  ground,  and  from  this  position  has  sometimes 
been  misinterpreted  as  something  else. 

3  In  all  the  Post-Theban  sculptures  I  have  noticed  this. . 


THE  EGYPTIANS. 


223 


quality  of  its  tone  was  rather  sweetness  and  softness 
than  strength,  we  may  infer  from  its  always  being 
played  by  women.  And  since  the  Small  Harp,  which 
was  played  by  men,  was  fast  giving  place  to  it,  ^  we 
may  fairly  conclude  that  sweetness  and  beauty  had 
become  the  leading  characteristics  of  the  music  itself 
by  this  time.  And  another  fact  also  points  in  the 
same  direction  : — the  alteration  which  was  taking  place  in 
the  form  of  the  Harp  points  in  the  same  direction.  The 
old  curved  form  was  now  being  fast  abandoned,  and 
the    Small   Harps   were  constructed  with  a  frame  of  this 


shape 


,  with    strings     strung     obliquely 


across    it 


Now    since     there     is    no 


pedestal  to  these  new  Harps,  it  is  plain  that  the 
tension  of  the  strings  cannot  have  been  very  great, 
not  nearly  so  great,  that  is  to  say,  as  in  the  old  bow- 
shaped   form.  2     Wherefore  we   are  to   imagine   that   the 


r    Cf.  Rosellini.  II.  98,  2. 

2    Cf.  Wilkinson's  remarks  on  the  Paris  Harp,  which  is  an  excellent  example 
of  the  triangular  form. 


224  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

strings  were  neither  so  thick  nor  so  strong,  and  that 
the  object  aimed  at  was  rather  an  agreeable  Hghtness 
of  tone  than  sonorousness.  The  fact  that  women  began 
to  compete  with  men  as  its  players  shows  the  direction 
things  were  taking,  and  a  glance  into  the  far  future 
is  yet  more  suggestive  ;  for  in  this  triangular  Harp  we 
have   the   parent   of  the    notorious    Sambuca.^ 

The  Great  Harp  however  still  remained  true  to  its 
old  form,  and  like  a  rock  kept  back  the  unwholesome 
current.  Standing  nearly  7  feet  in  height,  and  fitted  with 
18  sonorous  Bass  and  Tenor  strings,  it  must  have 
ruled  the  Orchestra  like  a  king,  and  have  served  as  a 
standing  protest  against  the  meretricious  tendencies 
of  the  time.  Yet  in  a  strange  way  was  it  at  the 
same  time  one  of  their  most  emphatic  exponents.  If 
ever  there  was  a  monument  of  the  pomp  and  pride 
of  luxury,  it  was  the  Great  Egyptian  Harp  in  the 
Augustan  Age  of  the  i8th  and  19th  dynasties.  Its 
immense  frame  shimmered  with  all  the  colours  of  the 
rainbow ;  ^  its  sides  were  curiously  veneered  with  rare 
wood,  or  inlaid  with  ivory,  tortoise-shell,  and  m.other- 
of-pearl ;  3  the  sound-board,  which  had  now  attained 
the  bulk  of  a  massive  stand,  was  carried  out  considerably 
beyond  the  body  of  the  Harp,  and  served  as  the 
pedestal  for  a  Great  Sphinx'  Head,  which  reared  itself 
nearly  half  way  up  the  front  of  the  strings.  Some- 
times the  bust  of  the  Pharaoh  himself  took  the  place 
of  the  Sphinx  ;  and  this  was  always  so  with  the  royal 
musicians,  whose  Harps  glittered  with  gold  and  precious 
stones. 


1  Jam  pridem  Syrus  in  Tiberim  defluxit  Orontes, 

Et cum  tibicine  chordas..obliquas 

Vexit  et  in  Circo  jussas  prostare  puellas. 

2  See  the  fresco  in  Rosellini.    I  Monumenti,  II.  97. 

3  Bruce's  Travels  in  Abyssinia,  I.  126. 


THE  EGYPTIANS.  225 

The  Great  Harp  was  thus  passing  from  a  musical 
instrument  into  a  piece  of  gorgeous  furniture.  But  in 
the  meantime  that  unhappy  fate  had  not  yet  arrived, 
and  its  power  was  still  undoubted.  Other  characteristics 
of  this  age  were  the  growing  fondness  for  female  singers 
and  instrumentalists  ;  ^  the  daily  increasing  popularity  of 
the  Double  pipe,  which  was  played  almost  exclusively 
by  women  ;  ^  the  more  frequent  use  of  the  tambourine 
than  in  former  dynasties — all  pointing  to  an  increased 
prominence  of  the  sensuous  side  of  the  Art.  Dancers 
took  part  in  the  performances  more  frequently  than 
singers,  3  and  hence  we  may  conclude  that  Rhythmic 
effects  were  far  more  freely  indulged  in  ;  while  it  is 
certain  that  mere  virtuosity  for  its  own  sake  was  now 
eagerly  studied.  The  musicians  of  the  Royal  Orchestra, 
for  instance,  were  drilled  and  practised  in  their  parts 
from  morning  till  night.  So  tightly  were  they  kept 
at  their  work  that  they  had  hardly  a  moment  allowed 
them  to  snatch  a  morsel  of  food.  They  lived  in  an 
atmosphere  of  eternal  scraping ;  when  the  practice  of 
the  day  was  over,  then  came  the  concert,  and  till 
within  half  an  hour  of  the  concert,  the  practice  was 
kept  up  ;  as  we  know  from  a  picture  on  the  sculptures, 
where  the  dilatory  ones  who  were  behind  hand  in 
their  parts  are  still  twanging  their  instruments  under 
the  direction  of  a  music-master,  while  the  rest  are 
dressing  for  the  performance.  4  Under  these  circumstances 
technical  dexterity  must  have  attained  a  great  height, 
and  it  is  to  this  age  of  virtuosity  that  I  was  alluding 
in  a  great  measure,  when  I  spoke  of  the  virtuosity 
of  Egyptian    Music   in    the   early   part    of    this   chapter. 


I    Rosellini.  II.  98.  I.  2.  3.  4.  2    lb.  95.  7.  96.  4,  98.  2. 

3    lb.  II.  99.  4    Lepsius.  Denkmaler.  III.  106,    For  the  discussion 

whether  this  really  be  a  Music  School,  see  Arabros   Geschichte  der  Musilc 

Q 


226  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC.    . 

Let  alone  any  direct  evidence  on  the  matter,  we  might 
have  formed  the  same  conclusion  from  the  general  evi- 
dence of  the  contemporary  art.  The  technical  dexterity 
of  the  Theban  potters  and  intaglio  cutters  was  renowned 
through  the  ancient  world  ;  the  sculptors  were  noted  now 
for  their  skill  in  detail  and  the  delicacy  of  their  chiselling  ;i 
and  the  temples  of  Karnac  and  Luxor  with  their 
forests  ot  fluted  pillars  and  thick  foliage  of  basket 
capitals  contrast  strangely  with  the  simplicity  of  the 
Pyramids.  As  great  a  contrast  therefore  must  we 
imagine  between  the  Music  of  this  time  and  that ; 
and  must  expect  the  same  technical  skill  and  pro- 
fusion of  adornment  to  appear  in  it  as  in  the  other 
artistic  exponents  of  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  the  age. 

We  must  be  careful  however  not  to  overdraw  the 
picture.  This  was,  despite  all,  the  Augustan  Age  of 
Egyptian  Art — that  is  to  say,  that  with  all  the 
wealth  of  decoration  and  bloom  of  sensuousness  there 
was  still  the  requisite  backbone  or  body  to  carry  it 
off.  The  temples  were  massive  as  hills,  the  sculptures 
were  colossuses,  and  the  Great  Harp  still  boomed  on, 
the  king   of  the    Egyptian    Orchestra. 

But  Thothmes  and  Sesostris  passed  away,  and  the 
Augustan  Age  of  the  l8th,  and  19th  Dynasties  came 
to  an  end.  And  then  the  evil  influences,  which  up  till 
then  had  been  held  in  check,  began  to  make  them- 
selves visibly  felt  under  the  weak  and  effeminate 
princes  that  succeeded.  The  Art  of  the  21st  Dynasty, 
when  the  capital  had  been  removed  to  Tanis,  was 
remarkable  for  the  feminine  intricacy  of  its  finish,  and 
we  may  conjecture  that  the  Music  also  shared  this' 
character.     The    Lyre  played    by  women  had  completely 


I    Rosellini  says  somewhere  that  their  carvings  seem  rather  to  have  been 
impressed  vvith  a  seal  than  cut  with  a  chisel. 


THE    EGYPTIANS.  227 

banished  the  Small  Harp  from  the  Orchestra,^  and  the 
Great  Harp  was  now  being  distorted  into  the  triangular 
form,2  In  the  22nd  Dynasty  the  capital  was  removed 
to  Bubastis,  the  most  luxurious  city  in  Egypt,  and  it 
is  a  sign  of  the  times  that  the  popular  deity  of  the 
people  was  now  a  goddess.  Of  Orchestras  we  no 
longer  hear  mention.  They  had  been  supplanted  by 
dancing-girls  and  tambourine  players.  The  Great  Harp 
had  become  a  mummy  like  its  masters.  And  the 
attention  of  the  musical  world  in  Egypt  was  concen- 
trated on  a  newly  invented  instrument — the  Treble 
Flute.  Now  whenever  the  Flute  becomes  the  prominent 
instrument  of  the  day,  we  may  suspect  that  all  is 
not  right.  It  so  easily  leads  to  a  mere  sporting  with 
beautiful  tones,  that  it  cannot  but  produce  a  vicious 
taste  in  music  :  to  which  indeed  in  the  first  place  its 
prominence  must  be  due.  And  if  the  Flute  really 
owed  its  origin  to  the  billing  and  cooing  of  Primitive 
Man,  there  was  considerable  reason  for  its  supremacy 
at  present.  For  the  orgies  of  Bubastis  had  now  become 
matters  of  as  deep  national  concern  as  the  building 
of  a  Pyramid  had  used  to  be,  and  the  effeminate 
Egyptians  flocked  in  hundreds  of  thousands  down  the 
Nile,  ("  700,000  at  a  time,"  says  Herodotus,^)  to  cele- 
brate her  festivals  at  the  city  which  was  called  by  her 
name — men  and  women  outdoing  one  another  in 
licentiousness,  (^al  8'  6p)(iovTai,  al  S'  avaavpovrat  avLCTTa/j.- 
tvat)  'some  dancing  and  others  going  beyond  that,' 
while  the  boats  resounded  with  the  clatter  of  castanets, 
the  clapping  of  hands,  and  the  liquid  warblings  of  some 
thousands    of    Flutes.     These    were   the    Egyptians    that 


I    Supra,  p.  2    See   the    Great  Harp  played  by  the  Esjyptian  deity 

in  Rosellini.  Monumenti.  HI.  17.  3    Herodotus.  U.  60. 


228  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC 

Sophocles  talks  about,  the  men  staying  at  home  to  spin, 
and  the  women  going  about  and  conducting  business.^ 
The  men  effeminate  wretches,  the  women  taking  the  pas 
of  them  in  everything.  ^  And  this  is  how  they  amused 
themselves  —  with  the  licentious  orgies  of  Bubastis 
or  the  libidinous  processions  of  Serapis,  ^  to  the 
inevitable  accompaniment  of  the  universal  Flute.  Now 
there  is  another  point  about  this  flute  that  I  must 
mention,  which  may  give  us  an  additional  reason  for 
the  demise  of  the  old  Harp — it  was  Chromatic.  4 
Here  then  is  the  break  up  of  the  Egyptian  Orchestra 
accounted  for.  The  Harp  could  only  play  a  Diatonic 
Scale,  and  as  long  as  the  people  were  simple-mindfed 
enough  to  be  contented  with  such  simple  melodies  and 
harmonies  as  the  Diatonic  Scale  could  give,  so  long 
was  the  Egyptian  Orchestra  possible  ;  but  directly  the 
jaded  taste  required  a  new  and  more  pungent  stimulus, 
and    the    Chromatic     Scale    came    in     answer     to      the 


1  c5  TrdvT    Ikuvm  Tolq  iv  'AiyuTrrfjj   voiiolq 
(pvcnv  KareiKaaBevTe  koI  /3tou  T^o(^ag' 
Iku  yap   oi    julv  apcrsveg  Kara  arijag 
^aKOvaiv  'icTTOvpyovvTi^g,  at    ot  avvvofioi 
ra^M   (diov  rpo0£ta  Tropavvova    ad. 

2  ovpeovcTi  at    /ilv  yvvalKeg  6p6a\,  oi    Se   av^peg    KaTtjiniv  oi 

3  Strabo.  4    This  is  the  scale  of  the  flute  in  the  Florentine  Museum 


-M. 1 1 1 

^        I         I         I  \       _\      ^  ^  \         \         I 


1^=^. 


w 


It  was  discovered  in  the  Royal  tombs  at  Thebes,  and  so  belongs  to  the 
i8th  or  19th  dynasties,  but  it  certainly  did  not  achieve  any  prominence  at  that 
time,  as  we  may  readily  see  from  the  sculptures. 


THE  EGYPTIANS.  229 

demand,  then  Great  Harps,  Small  Harps,  and  even 
the  effeminate  Lyres  could  no  longer  play  the  fash- 
ionable music,  and  the  Orchestra  necessarily  collapsed 
in  consequence.  From  the  character  of  the  epoch  at  which 
it  was  introduced  and  the  character  of  the  Instrument 
which  now  sprang  to  the  fore  as  its  great  exponent, 
some  light  may  perhaps  be  thrown  on  the  character 
of  the  Chromatic  Scale  itself.  It  seems  to  bear  the 
same  relation  to  the  Diatonic  that  an  embroidered  robe 
does  to  a  white  garment,  and  more  than  this  I  will 
not  commit  myself  to  at  present,  unless  it  be  to  add  the 
suggestive  fact  that  as  long  as  the  Egyptians  used  the 
Diatonic  Scale  in  their  Music  they  were  content  with 
the  Primary  colours  in  their  painting,  and  when  they 
began  to  use  the  Chromatic,  they  began  to  use  Secondary 
colours  in  their  Painting  at  the  same  time. 

Passing  over  the  Renaissance  of  Egyptian  Art  under 
Psammetichus  in  the  26th  Dynasty,  because  its  effects 
were  merely  temporary,  and  its  import  lay  in  the  im- 
itation of  Greek  forms  with  which  we  need  not  concern 
ourselves  here,  I  hasten  on  to  the  last  stage  of  Egyptian 
Music  as  we  find  it  under  the  Ptolemies.  In  those  days 
the  Egyptians  were  accounted  the  greatest  musicians  in 
the  world,  as  they  had  in  former  times  been  accounted 
the  greatest  architects.  But  now  they  had  left  off 
building  Pyramids,  and  had  taken  to  playing  tunes 
instead.  Every  man  in  Alexandria  could  play  the  Flute 
and  Lyre  to  perfection.  ^  Yet  still  despite  their  pro- 
ficiency in  the  latter,  the  Flute  was  always  the  favourite 
instrument  ;  the  most  untiring  efforts  were  made  to 
attain  dexterity  on  it,  bandages  were  bound  round  the 
cheeks  to  counteract  the  strain  on  the  muscles,  and 
veils    were    worn    by    the    crack    players    to    hide    the 

I    Athenseus, 


230  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

contortions  of  their  countenance.  Through  all  grades  of 
society  ran  this  mania  for  flute  playing,  and  even  the 
King  himself  of  Egypt  did  not  disdain  to  assume  the 
veil  and  bandage  and  put  on  the  habit  of  a  professional 
flute-player,  and  play  the  flute  in  public  competition  with 
all  comers.  This  king  was  the  miserable  Ptolemy  Auletes, 
who  was  the  father  of  Cleopatra,  who  was  the  courtesan 
of  Julius  Caesar.  What  a  king  and  what  a  people ! 
And   this  is   the  last  we   hear   of  Egyptian    Music. 


III. 


Now  if  I  understand  it  rightly  these  tendencies  which 
have  reached  so  grotesque  a  climax  were  present  in 
Egyptian  Music  from  the  very  first.  From  the  first 
moment  we  get  historical  accounts  of  it,  that  is  to  say, 
in  the  4th  Dynasty,  it  was  an  article  de  luxe^  committed 
to  the  more  or  less  unwilling  care  of  slaves,  who  had 
doubtless  little  heart  for  their  enforced  work,  and  cer- 
tainly no  scope  for  the  development  of  their  genius. 
For  the  musicians  were  to  be  the  graceful  appendages 
of  revelry  and  pleasure  (avaOijfxaTa  dairog,)  and  if 
they  aspired  to  be  something  higher,  they  ceased  to  ^ 
be  musicians  and  became  upstarts  who  needed  a  gentle 
correction    to   bring   them    to   their   senses. 

That  Egyptian  Music  was  expressed  in  so  massive  a 
form  as  the  Orchestral,  and  that  this  form  was  filled 
with  so  massive  a  compost  as  the  Harmony  of  Great 
Harps  and  other  deep  instruments,  was  due  rather  to 
the  architectural  genius  of  the  people  than  to  any 
sublimity  of  musical  feeling.  For  the  use  tp  which 
this  great  structure  was  put,  was  sadly  out  of  keeping 
with  its  character.  That  such  a  multiplicity  of  instru- 
ments  and    of  so   finished   a    pattern   should   have  been 


THE   EGYPTIANS.  23  I 

produced,  was  due  rather  to  the  mechanical  genius  of 
the  people  and  to  the  patronage  of  the  great.  But 
neither  the  profusion  of  instruments  nor  the  magnifi- 
cence of  the  orchestra  must  blind  us  to  the  true  state 
of  the  case.  The  Egyptian  Orchestra  was  an  elephant 
playing  a  barrel-organ,  and  the  Egyptian  musicians, 
were,  at  the  best,  dexterous  virhiosos^  who  only  knew 
how  to  astonish  and  amuse.  But  the  poetical  side  of 
the  Art  had  never  once  from  beginning  to  end  a  single 
chance  of  asserting  itself;  for  it  requires  enthusiasm 
for  its  food,  and  freedom  of  expression  for  its  condition 
of  development,  and  in  that  unhappy  land  it  could  get 
neither.  Cheops  effectually  squelched  the  fountain-head 
of  it  with  his  Great  Pyramid,  and  three  thousand 
years  could  not  undo  his  work.  *'  I  only  heard  the 
people  sing  one  song,"  says  Herodotus,  with  significant 
exaggeration,  "  all  the  time  I  was  in  Egypt ;  and  that 
was  a  mournful  one."  ^ 

Patronage  could  force  an  artificial  product,  but  the 
Music  thus  produced  was  a  body  without  a  soul  ;  and 
to  an  ordinary  Egyptian's  mind  "  Music  "  never  connoted 
anything  more  than  dancing-women,  effeminate  fellows, 
and  a  pretty  twingle  twangle  that  was  all  very  well 
perhaps,  but  meant  nothing  in  particular.  Which  is 
precisely  what  it  was.  So  that  it  was  not  until  this 
Egyptian  became  an  effeminate  fellow  himself,  in  the 
Bubastis  and  Ptolemy  days,  that  he  began  to  take 
any  very  fervent  interest  in  the  Art,  and  then  the 
pitiful  exhibition  he  made  of  himself  was  just  what 
might  have  been  expected  when  he  gave  way  to  a 
temptation  he  had  hitherto  been  taught  to  despise. 
For   up   till    then   Music   had     been    rigorously   excluded 


I    Herodotus,  II.  79. 


232  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

from  an  Egyptian  gentleman's  education  on  precisely 
these  grounds,  that  it  would  render  him  effeminate  ;  ^ 
and  though  much  of  this  effeminacy  would  be  thought 
to  come  from  his  mixing  with  the  singing-girls  and 
dancing-girls  with  whom  a  taste  for  music  would  ne- 
cessarily bring  him  into  continual  contact,  yet  we 
must  imagine  that  the  Music  itself  bore  its  part  of 
the  blame,  and  that  there  never  was  a  time  when  it 
had  anything  very  hearty  or  manly  about  it.  The 
slavery  and  unhappiness  of  that  down-trodden  land 
were  no  soil  for  the  development  of  an  art,  whose  soul 
is  freedom,  and  whose  tongue  brags  the  joy  of  humanity. 
That  joy  can  the  barbarian  feel,  but  civilisation  kills  it. 
And  the  Egyptians  coming  at  the  beginning  of  the  day 
felt  the  galling  weight  of  the  new  fetters  more  than  us 
all.  And  it  was  reserved  for  the  Greeks  first  to  wrest 
the  contradictions  into  harmony,  and  proceed  the  teachers 
of  the  world.  For  beyond  the  cruel  school  of  mechanic 
civilisation  there  comes  a  time  when  the  free  joyous- 
ness  of  the  rank  and  fallow  old  shines  forth  again — 
this  time  disciplined  and  curbed  by  the  restraining 
influence  of  the  new.  And  that  is  the  perfection  of  the 
human.  And  so  when  the  Sphinx  passed  over  from 
Egypt  to  Greece,  it  brought  the  riddle  which  the 
Egyptians  could  not  solve.  The  Greeks  solved  it ;  and 
the   solution  was  Man. 

So   then   the    Egyptian    Music  was  not   the   best   that 
Egypt  could  produce,  but  the  best  which  could  be  produced 


I  Diodorus  is  the  authority  for  this  statement ;  the  reason  is  the  author's. 
Diodorus  has  been  the  mark  of  much  objurgation  in  consequence  of  this 
statement,  bnt  I  imagine  without  justice,  for  the  very  peculiarity  of  the  state- 
ment commends  its  veracity.  Writers  who  prefer  a  priori  theories  to  historical 
testimony  will  teU  us  that  music  must  have  formed  a  part  of  Egyptian  edu- 
cation because  it  played  so  large  a  part  in  the  education  of  the  Greeks,  forgetting 
that  music  was  not  the  moral  power  in  Egypt  that  it  was  in  Greece,  but  on 
the  contrary  was  regarded  with  different  feelings  altogether. 


THE  EGYPTIANS.  233 

under  the  unkind  circumstances  that  surrounded  it.  For 
looking  further  into  their  life  than  we  have  hitherto  per- 
mitted ourselves  to  do,  we  shall  find  that  there  was  a 
certain  section  of  Egyptian  life  where  the  Art  of  Music 
was  allowed  air — and  where  it  was  permitted  to  spread 
itself  unpatronised  and  free.  In  the  temples  of  Thebes, 
Memphis,  Arsinoe — those  twilight  retreats  of  a  sublime 
Pantheism,  to  which  it  should  seem  that  all  Religion  is 
destined  again  and  again  to  gravitate — there,  amidst  the 
clouds  of  the  incense  and  the  flash  of  gold  and  white 
robes,  might  have  been  heard  the  Music  which  might 
have  been  Egypt's  had  Egypt  been  free — crowds  of 
Priests  winding  along  the  aisles  of  sphinxes,  and 
chanting  the  praises  of  Him  who  lives  for  ever  and 
ever,  God  of  the  Evening  Sun,  God  of  the  Morning 
Sun,  who  only  and  eternally  lives — Bright  Horus. 
There    was    the    pulse    of    Egypt's    spirit. 

But  the  religious  music  was  an  arcamnn  like  the 
religion  itself,  nor  ever  spread  its  influence  among  the 
people  at  large.  What  little  we  know  of  it  may  be 
more  conveniently  studied  when  we  come  to  the  He- 
brews, who  were  the  heirs  of  much  of  the  Egyptian 
religion  and  of  the  Egyptian  music  in  like  manner. 
But  it  will  be  well  to  mention  here  that  the  Psalms 
of  the  Priests  were  collected  in  two  books,  each  of 
which  the  musicians  were  compelled  to  learn  by  heart, 
and  the  first  book  contained  the  psalms  in  praise  of  the 
Gods,  and  the  second  book  the  psalms  in  praise  of 
the  king.  ^  And  one  of  the  psalms  in  the  second  book 
we  have  the  good  fortune  to  have  preserved  to  us.  And 
it  treats  of  the  exploits  of  Sesostris,  and  its  author's  name 
is  Pentaur,  who  was    a    scribe  in   the    temple  of  Abydus. 


I    Clemens  Alexandrinus,  Stromateis,  VI.  269.  (Migne). 


234  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

For  the  rest,  if  we  would  find  the  exact  contribution 
of  Egypt  to  the  general  history  of  our  Art,  we 
must  find  it  in  the  mechanical  excellence  of  its  in- 
strument makers,  under  whose  dexterity  and  skill  the 
Harp  gained  sufficient  power  to  be  able  to  be  played 
as  a  solo  instrument.  Everything  else  has  perished,  but 
the    Solo  Harp  has  remained. 


I  i  npp  t  II 


CHAPTER     II. 


THE    ASSYRIANS    AND    HEBREWS. 


By  contrast  with  the  Music  of  the  Egyptians,  the 
Music  of  the  Assyrians  was  essentially  martial.  Drums 
trumpets,  and  cymbals  brayed  and  clashed  in  the 
Assyrian  concerts.  We  must  cease  to  talk  of  Orchestras 
now,  and  speak  of  '  bands  '  instead,  for  we  are  to  speak 
of  a  Music  in  which  we  seem  to  hear  the  warhorse 
neighing.  The  whole  spirit  of  it  seemed  to  come  from 
the  armies  ;  the  players  grouped  in  concise  bodies  and 
arranged  in  lines  have  all  the  air  of  marching  bands  ; 
the  instruments  too  were  all  portable,  strapped  to  the  body 
or  carried  in  the  hand,  ^  the  harps  all  so  small  that 
they  could  be  held  in  the  hand,  ^  the  dulcimers 
strapped  to  the  shoulders,  and  the  drums  strapped  on 
the  chest,  as  we  strap  our  military  drums  to-day;  and 
to    conclude,  the   method   of  beating   time   in    the    con- 


1  The  strapping  plainly  appears  in  many  bas-reliefs,  in  others  we  are  left  to 
imagine  it.  The  author  may  remark  that  his  account  of  the  Assyrian  musical 
instruments  has  been  derived  from  studies  of  the  bas-reliefs  which  he  made 
some  years  ago  in  Berlin  and  Paris,  and  more  recently  in  London.  It  is  to  be 
regretted  that  there  is  no  large  book  of  Assyrian  antiquities  like  Lepsius  and 
Rosellini  for  Eg)fptian,  to  which  convenient  reference  might  be  made  in  all  cases. 
As  it  is  he  must  content  himself  with  limiting  his  references  to  those  bas-reliefs 
whose  numbers  in  the  Museum  catalogues  he  took  down  at  the  time,  which 
unfortunately  are  only  the  London  ones.  Statements  which  are  founded  on 
bas-reliefs  at  other  places  he  is  obliged  to  leave  unnoted. 

2  Nor  is  any  larger  hatp  to  be  met  with  on  the  bas-reliefs, 


236  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

certs  was  not  by  clapping  the  hands,  as  with  the 
Egyptians,  but  by  stamping  with  the  foot — as  if  they 
had    learnt   their   time   from    soldiers    marching.^ 

Now  was  this  Assyrian  Orchestra  actually  a  development 
of  the  Assyrian  Military  band,  since  we  know  that 
one  of  their  marked  differences  from  the  Egyptians 
was  in  having  organised  bodies  of  musicians,  instead 
of  merely  gangs  of  drummers  to  head  their  lines  in 
battles  ?  2  Was  this  so  ?  or  was  its  martial  character 
merely  due  to  the  martial  spirit  of  the  people  them- 
selves ?  Whichever  way  we  take  it,  certain  it  is  that 
the  peoples'  ears  delighted  in  Schlacht-Musik,  and  that 
king  of  the  Assyrians,  who  at  a  petit  souper  with  his 
favourite  wife  chose  to  be  regaled  with  the  sounds  of 
a  Lyre  and  a  Big  Drum  close  at  his  elbow,  may 
serve   as    a   good    type   of  Assyrians   in    general.^ 

That  a  love  for  shrill  sounds  should  be  joined  to 
this  love  of  martial  effect  was  but  natural,  and  it 
shines  unmistakeably  through  all  Assyrian  Music  as 
one  of  its  leading  characteristics.  If  the  Egyptian 
Orchestra  was  marked  by  a  preponderance  of  the  Bass, 
the  Assyrian  Bands  were  as  remarkable  for  the  pre- 
ponderance of  the  Treble.  All  the  Harps,  as  we  have 
said,  were  small,  being  rather  Lyres  than  Harps,  and 
could  scarcely  contain  any  notes  below  Alto  compass. 
Of  the  other  instruments,  which  were  the  Lyre,  the 
Lute,   the    Dulcimer,    the    Flute,   the    Double   Pipe,    the 


1  I  think  the  first  to  call  attention  to  this  method  of  beating  time,  though 
he  omits  to  draw  the  conclusion  from  it,  was  C.  Engel  in  his  Music  of  most 

Ancient  Nations. 

2  Clemens  Alexandrinus.  Wilkinson  also  notices  this  fact  about  the 
Egyptians.  But  the  Assyrians  '  mit  Pfeifcn,'  &c.,  see  Ambros,  Geschichte 
der  Musik,  I. 

3  Vide  the  bas-relief  of  Sardanapalus  III.  in  British  Museum,  No.  IJI. 


THE  ASSYRIANS.  237 

Trumpet,  the  Single  Pipe,i  there  is  not  one  but  what 
is  small  in  make  and  probably  Treble  in  pitch,  with  a 
similar  compass  no  doubt  to  that  of  the  Lyre-shaped 
Harp.  And  agreeably  to  the  composition  of  the  Instru- 
mental portion  of  their  bands,  was  the  composition  of 
the  Vocal  element,  which  was  supplied  principally  by 
women  and  boys,  that  is  to  say,  by  Treble  voices.^  The 
fact  of  boys  being  employed  at  all,  shows,  I  think,  most 
undeniably  this  penchant  for  high  voices,  for  the  labour 
that  has  to  be  spent  on  training  chorus  boys  would 
never  have  been  systematically  engaged  in  unless  there 
had  been  a  marked  partiality  for  high  voices.  Eunuchs 
also  are  frequently  found  among  the  singers,-  and  this 
points  in  the  same  direction  ;3  and  indeed  were  it  not 
that  we  find  Eunuchs  employed  as  Instrumentalists  as 
well,  we  might  say  that  the  Assyrian  passion  for 
Soprano  was  so  great  that  it  led  them  to  a  creation 
of  Men  Sopranos,  such  as  afterwards  prevailed  in  Italy .4 
But  since  we  find  Eunuchs,  though  not  nearly  so  often, 
in  the  ranks  of  the  Instrumentalists,  we  must  not  go 
so  far  as  this,  but  must  say  that  the  employment  of 
them  is  merely  another  proof,  though  certainly  a  most 
convincing  one,  of  the  Assyrian    passion    for   high  notes. 


I  Lyre.  British  Museum.  14.  124.  Dulcimer,  lb.  4  b.  Double  Pipe  lb. 
124.  48.  49  50.  Of  the  others,  Lute,  Flute,  Trumpet,  Single  Pipe,  I  have 
seen  specimens  in  the  bas-reliefs  in  the  Berlin  Museum.  The  band  in 
Daniel,  '  comet  (trumpet)  flute,  harp,  sackbut,  (large  trumpet)  psaltery  (lyre) 
and  dulcimer,'  well  sums  up  the  ordinary  constituents  of  the  Assyrian 
orchestra,  and  had  he  added  "drums  and  cymbals,"  which  we  may 
suppose  alluded  to  in  'all  kinds  of  music,"  it  would  have  been  a 
complete  description, 

2.  Cf,  particularly  the  procession  in  48,  49,  50,  Brit.  Museum.  It  is 
figured  in  Layard's  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  455, 

3  Mr.  Engel  who  describes  them  as  "  those  beardless  effeminate  personage 
who  are  called  Eunuchs,"  is  often  at  a  loss  to  distinguish  them  from  women, 

4  Semiramis  tenero*  mares  prima  castravit  &c. 


238  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

We  may  add  a  very  suggestive  fact  in  illustration  of 
the  Assyrian  taste  ;  for  in  the  bas-reliefs  we  see  women 
pinching  their  throats  with  their  hands  as  they  sing ; 
and  this  is  in  order  to  force  the  top  notes  of  their  voice.  ^ 
These  many  Soprano  voices,  then,  mixed  with  only 
a  few  men  singers,  formed  the  vocal  choruses ;  and 
since  the  men  singers  are  so  few  by  comparison,  ^ 
and  there  is  no  imagining  a  division  of  their  numbers 
into  two  parts,  we  can  as  little  imagine  any  Harmony 
in  the  music  itself,  but  must  conceive  it  an  air  in 
8ves  with  all  the  stress  on  the  high  8ve.  And  since 
there  is  a  lack  of  middle  instruments  likewise,  and 
even  of  bass  instruments,  but  all  the  instruments  were 
Soprano,  we  must  say  that  the  instrumental  music 
shared  the  character  of  the  vocal  music,  and  was  in 
like  manner  Melody  in  8ves  with  all  the  stress  on 
the  high  8ve — though  the  possibility  of  some  of  the 
instruments  playing  in  4ths  or  5ths  to  the  melody 
might  well  admit  conjecture.  And  now,  as  I  take  it, 
it  was  to  take  off  the  edge  of  the  immense  disproportion 
of  the  Treble  element,  that  the  Assyrians  were  in  a 
manner  compelled  to  employ  loud  instruments  of 
percussion  like  the  drum  and  cymbals — in  order  to 
give  as  it  were  a  bottom  to  their  music.  Which 
indeed  is  the  natural  thing  to  do  in  such  cases,  as 
we  see  in  the  case  of  our  own  drum  and  fife  bands, 
where   the   drums   are    indispensable    to    tone    down    the 


Layard's  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  455,  It  was  Signer  Mongini's  habit 
to  do  the  same.  I  have  often  seen  him  in  the  sestett  in  the  Huguenots 
compress  his  throat  with  his  hand  in  order  to  force  out  the  high  Cg 
Porphyry  whom  few  things  escaped  has  not  failed  to  speculate  on  this 
contraction  of  the  muscles  of  the  throat  in  the  3rd  Chapter  of  his  Com- 
mentary on  Ptolemy's  Harmonics. 

2    In  those  that  I  have  been  able   to  examine  the  men  are  as  a  rule 
not  a  fourth  as  many. 


THE  ASSYRIANS.  239 

shrill  notes  of  the  fife — and  which  was  the  universal 
custom  with  the  Pipe  Races,  to  whom  in  many  respects 
the  Assyrians  bear  a  marked  resemblance.  These  Drums 
and  cymbals  were  thus  made  to  do  duty  for  an  elaborate 
Harmony,  and  gave  a  body  to  a  Music  which  but  for 
their  roaring  would    have    been    querulous  and    puny. 

We  must  not  fancy  however  that  in  these  martial 
bands  we  see  the  utmost  which  the  Assyrians  could 
achieve  in  the  way  of  Music.  On  the  contrary,  we 
only  see  the  kind  of  music  which  they  employed  at 
public  pageants,  in  processions,  and  at  royal  festivals. 
Into  their  inner  life  we  get  but  few  glimpses,  and 
can  only  speculate  on  what  music  followed  them  there, 
for  unlike  the  Egyptians,  the  Assyrian  bas-reliefs  give 
but  few  domestic  scenes,  and  even  when  they  do,  they 
prefer  to  treat  us  to  perpetual  Nebuchadnezzar,  instead 
of  what  would  be  infinitely  more  interesting,  a  few 
details  about  even  the  meanest  of  his  subjects.  This 
vacuum  however  we  do  not  feel  so  much  as  we  otherwise 
should,  for  the  following  reason,  that  the  import  of  Assyria 
in  the  History  of  Music  lies  not  so  much  in  its  public 
bands  or  in  its  private  concerts,  or  in  anything  which 
it  achieved  in  the  practical  department  of  Music  at  all, 
but  in  its  achievements  in  Musical  Science.  And  the 
proper  place  to  study  Assyrian  Music  is  neither  in  the 
halls  of  kings  nor  in  the  gatherings  of  the  people, 
but  in  the  Tower  of  Belus,  where  a  woman  was  sent 
annually  to  be  deflowered  at  the  conjunction  of  the 
Planets,  Astarte  and  Belus — that  is  to  say,  at  the 
harmonic   combination  of  the    5th   and    2nd    Tones. 

The  Tower  of  Belus  was  built  by  Semiramis,  and 
stood  in  the  centre  of  the  Temple  of  Belus,  and  it 
was  quadrangular  in  its  shape,  the  sides  facing  the 
four  cardinal  points.  This  is  the  way  the  Tower  was 
built : — There  was  first  a  solid  tower  of  the  height  and 


240  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

thickness  of  a  furlong,  on  this  there  was  another,  and 
then  another,  and  so  on  higher  till  the  7th  tower  was 
reached,  which  was  the  highest.  In  this  tower  was  a 
chapel,  and  in  the  chapel  a  beautiful  bed  and  a  table 
of  gold.  And  on  the  roof  of  the  tower  was  an  ob- 
servatory where  the  Chaldean  astronomers  watched  the 
stars  during  the  night-time,  and  called  the  hours 
to  the  great  city  of  Babylon  which  lay  below  them. 
For   the   tower   was    in    the   heart   of  the   city.  ^ 

In  their  nightly  watches  they  were  chiefly  engaged 
in  casting  horoscopes,  and  that  system  of  foretelling  a 
destiny  by  the  culminations,  aspects,  conjunctions,  and 
oppositions  of  planets  in  the  geniture  was  first  elaborated 
by  them.2  Nevertheless  it  is  with  their  astronomy  rather 
than  their  astrology  that  we  are  concerned,  and  with 
its    method   rather   than    its   results. 

The  faculty  of  association  was  much  more  strongly 
developed  in  men's  minds  among  these  ancient  nations, 
than  it  is  at  present  ;  partly  because  with  an  equally 
extensive  sphere  of  knowledge  under  their  view  there 
was  a  deficiency  of  intimacy  with  that  knowledge,  so 
that  they  were  more  inclined  to  wander  from  subject 
to  subject  than  to  pause  on  any  single  one,  and  partly 
because,  owing  to  that  very  deficiency,  resemblances  and 
affinities  struck  them  in  greater  multitude  than  they 
do  us,  who  have  come  to  disregard  as  fanciful  whatever 
cannot  be  shown  to  possess  an  essential  relationship 
as  well  as  a  superficial  one.  Along  with  this  prepon- 
derance of  the  power  of  association,  and  perhaps  almost 
as  a  consequence  of  it,  was  a  weakness  in  the  faculty 
of  observation,  and  a  tendency  to  express  abstract 
ideas  by  concrete  reflectors,  which  was  all  the  more 
easily    indulged   in    owing   to   the   variety   of  associated 


1    See  the  account  in  Herodotus.  2    Diodorus.  II.  79. 


THE  ASSYRIANS.  24I 

concretes  always  ready  at  hand.  This  method  of 
expressing  abstract  ideas  is  what  we  call  Symbolism  ; 
but  though  the  so-called  Symbol  stands  well  as  the 
sign  of  a  separate  abstract  entity  behind  it  to  our 
understandings,  it  may  be  questioned  whether  in  those 
days  the  separation  of  the  two  was  at  all  complete, 
that  is  to  say,  whether  the  abstract  idea  was  merely 
expressed  as  a  concrete.  It  is  most  probable  that  it 
was  likewise  conceived  as  such.  Thus  the  King  of 
Egypt  was  symbolised  as  the  Sun.  But  he  had 
not  merely  the  Sun  for  his  Symbol,  he  was  die  Sonne 
selbst  zvelcke  der  Welt  gesche7ikt  ist.^  He  was  the  bright 
Horus  who  gave  fertility  and  verdure  to  the  .ground, 
and  as  such  received  the  Sun's  sacrifices.  The  divinity 
of  the  god  Ptah  was  symbolised  by  the  beetle.  But 
the  beetle  was  not  merely  the  symbol  of  Ptah,  it 
was  the  god  Ptah  himself  ^  And  much  of  the  animal 
worship  of  the  Egyptians  may  be  explained  in  this  way. 
Similarly  among  the  Assyrians,  with  whom  this  tendency 
reached  a  greater  subtlety  than  even  among  the 
Egyptians,  the  wing  of  the  Winged  Bull  was  not  the 
symbol  of  swiftness ;  it  was  the  word  "  swiftness " 
written  in  as  legible  a  character  as  I  write  it  now, 
and  far  more  completely  identified  with  the  thing 
"  swiftness "  than  are  the  word  and  the  thing  to-day, 
since  probably  there  was  not  a  tithe  of  abstraction 
in  the  conception  of  any  ideas  then,  and  in  this  Wing 
we  have  the  precise  form  in  which  the  idea  of 
swiftness  occurred  to  the  mind  of  the  thinker.  So  of 
the  bull's  body  of  these  Winged  Bulls  as  the  actual 
conception  of  "  Strength,"  and  the  Man's  head  of 
"  Wisdom,"   in    like  manner. 


I    Duncker's  Geschichte   des  Alterthums.  I.   76.  2    lb.  I. 


242  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

In  two  spheres  of  thought  did  this  swallowing 
up  of  abstract  in  concrete  particularly  show  itself — 
in  Religion  and  in  Abstract  Science,  because*  in  them 
abstract  ideas  crowd  in  greatest  numbers ;  so  that  of 
all  branches  of  knowledge  the  discrepancy  between  our 
way  of  thinking  and  theirs  is  most  marked  in  these. 
And  now  the  same  cause  which  led  them  in  the  domain 
of  Religion  to  give  corporal  form  to  the  abstract 
attributes  of  their  deities  by  wings,  claws,  teeth,  curled 
beards,  and  indeed  to  present  those  otherwise  unthinkable 
beings  themselves  in  a  corporal  shape,  this  same  cause 
likewise  led  them  in  the  field  of  Abstract  Science  to 
search  most  willingly  for  some  concrete  embodiment 
of  those  things  so  hard  to  catch — Figures  ;  as  children 
prefer  to  count  on  their  fingers  rather  than  in  their  ^ 
heads  to-day.  And  being  in  search  of  an  abacus  on 
which  they  might  see  these  abstract  figures  and  the 
proportions  betwixt  them,  they  found  one  on  which 
they  could  hear  them,  and  their  proportions  and 
relations  might  be  listened  to.  For  having  been 
accustomed,  with  the  natural  spirit  of  calculators,  early 
to  make  their  musical  scale  the  subject  of  arithmetical 
investigation,  to  number  the  tones  and  semitones,  to 
divide  it  into  equal  parts  &c,  for  no  other  purpose  at 
first  probably  than  to  satisfy  an  idle  fancy,  they 
gradually  had  become  awake  to  the  fact  that  when 
sounding-  a  musical  interval,  or  when  thinking  about 
one,  since  the  thought  always  brought  back  the  sound, 
they  had  a  much  juster  and  more  accurate  apprehension 
of  a  proportion  before  their  minds  than  any  placement 
of  figures  would  give  them.  They  became  awake  to 
the  fact  that  in  these  intervals,  which  sounded  so  clearly 
and  showed  so  lucidly  the  distances  between  point 
and  point,  lay  the  possibility  of  a  Concrete  Mathematic, 
which    would    open   a   perfect    apprehension    of  difficult 


THE   ASSYRIANS.  243 

sums,  and  particularly  those  of  ratios  and  proportions 
of  numbers,  which  up  till  then  had  been  rather  dimly- 
dreamed  of  than  conceived.  And  as  naturally  as  men 
lay  down  one  pen  and  take  up  another,  so  did  they 
unconsciously  begin  to  use  a  musical  terminology  for 
all  the  harder  and  higher  branches  of  calculation,  which 
thenceforth  began  to  be  clear  to  them  ;  and  so  they 
would  speak,  not  of  the  proportions  of  4  :  3,  but  of 
the  4th  note  in  the  scale  to  the  3rd,  not  of  2:1,  but 
of  the  2nd  note  to  the  ist;  and  so  the  problem.  As 
7:5  —  4  :  the  required  quantity,  would  be  expressed. 
As  the  7th  note  in  the  scale  is  to  the  5th  note,  so  is 
the  4th  note  to  the  one  required,  which  on  a  qalculation 
of  the  intervening  semitones  would  give  the  2nd  note 
of  the  scale  as  the  answer.^ 

Or  possibly  it  may  be  that  in  the  knitting  and 
knotting  of  ideas  which  then  obtained  it  was  impossible 
from  the  very  first  to  pursue  any  train  of  calculation 
without  some  bodily  counterpart,  and  that  the  notes  of 
the  scale  suggested  themselves  as  naturally  to  a  musical 
and  contemplative  people  as  the  fingers  of  the  hand 
to  other  nations.^  But  whichever  way  we  take  it, 
certain  it  is  that  at  a  very  early  period  among  the 
Chaldeans  the  notes  of  the  scale  answered  the  same 
purpose  in  abstract  science,  as  the  wings  of  Nergal  or 
the  horns  of  Astarte  in  religious  metaphysic,  and  were 
probably  as  invariably  heard  in  the  brain  of  the 
calculator  as  the  others  were  seen  in  the  mind's  eye 
of  the  worshipper.  Therefore  when  a  Chaldean  astronomer 
would  express  the  proportional  lengths  of  the  Seasons 
of  the  Year,  for  instance,  he  would  never  use  figures  to 


1  Peter  Bongus'  Mystica  numerorum  significatio.  Bergamo.  1585- 

2  The   Chinese   whose   scale  is  5  notes  have  a  musical  abacus  of  5   in 
like  manner,  V.  du  Halde,   Description  de  la  Chine.  H. 


244  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

do   so,   but    would    say    that    the    Spring  stood    to   the 

_^ ,_  ^ 4= 

Autumn  in  the   relation    of 


:i=to  fc 


a  4th  to  a  5th  ;    and  that  it  stood  to  the  Winter  in  the 
relation   of  fcEz^*=  to  feEz^^E        a  5  th   to  a 

g^-^ —    ^-w — 

4th  ;    and  to  the  Summer  in  the  relation  of: — 

an    8ve — which 


indeed  convey  if  not  so  exact  a  statement  of  the 
proportions  to  our  minds,  at  any  rate  a  far  finer  sense  of 
them.  We  might  almost  say  that  the  intervals  have 
here  served  them  as  Round  Numbers,  as  they  certainly 
did  in  their  calculations  of  the  distances  of  the  heavenly 
bodies  from  one  another.     According  to  which, 

Saturn     was  distant  from  Jupiter     dj/  a  Semitone 
Jupiter       „  „  „      Mars        by  a  Tone 

Mars  „  „  „      The  Sun  by  a   Tone 

The  Sun    „  „  „      Venus       by  a  Semitone 

Venus         „  „  „      Mercury  by  a  Tone 

Mercury  „         „         „     The  yioonby  a  To?ie,^ 
each    musical    interval    being    here    exactly  expressive  of 
the    proportionate  distances  in  each  case,  being  an  Ideal 


1  Plutarch  de  Animse  Procreatione  in  Timseo  XXXI. 

2  For  this  and  the  development  of  the  Assyrian  Scale  which  follows  I  am 
indebted  to  the  learned  and  curious  disquisition  of  the  Abbe  Roussier,  who 
in  his  Memoire  sur  la  Musique  des  Anciens  has  by  a  certain  divine  intuition 
penetrated  many  secrets  of  these  ancient  nations  which  else  must  have 
remained  unknown  to  us.  That  I  have  chosen  to  develope  his  views  in 
connection  with  the  Assyrians  rather  than  with  the  Egyptians  is  due  partly 
to  the  exigencies  of  subject,  and  partly  to  the  suggestions  of  Salmasius  (De 
Annis  Climactericis.  Praefatio.  23.  cf.  also  p.  803.)  who  has  also  justified  it 
on  p.  574.  of  the  same  work  in  the  course  of  his  Pissertation  on  the 
Abrasax  of  Basilides. 


THE  ASSYRIANS.  245 

Round  Number  of  the  actual  figures  in  miles,  as  Pythagoras 
has  since  proved.  How  lucid  then  and  manageable  a 
form  was  this  in  which  to  show  the  dominions  of  those 
heavenly  kings  and  how  they  lay  !  Here  is  a  chart  for 
those  who  worship  the  stars  !  But  since  we  have  ceased 
to  worship  them  we  have  no  need  of  a  chart ;  and 
astronomers  who  are  nobody's  guides  may  bewilder  us 
with    mountains  of  figures  in  which  no  one  is  interested. 

This  surprising  agreement  between  the  intervals  of  star 
to  star  and  note  to  note,  joined  to  the  other  fact  which 
would  most  of  all  be  likely  to  strike  a  mystical  mind, 
that  they  were  both  7  in  number,  led  by  an  easy 
transition  to  the  appropriation  of  the  separate  tones 
each  to  its  separate  planet,  namely,  that  to  which  it 
bore  so  intimate  a  correspondence  in  its  arithmetical 
relations  :  which  subsequently  passed  into  their  identi- 
fication, that  was  rendered  all  the  more  easy  because 
the  two  leading  planets  in  the  heavens,  Saturn  and  the 
Sun,  occupied  likewise  the  two  leading  positions  of  the 
Scale,  being  each  at  the  head  of  one  of  the  two  divisions 
into  which  the  scale  was  scientifically  divided,  and  each 
attended  by  a  satellite  in  the  shape  of  a  semitone,  which 
accompanied  none  of  the  others  ;  for  Saturn  was  B, 
and  the  Sun  was  E,  the  first  the  head  of  the  tetrachord,  B 
to  E,  the  second  the  head  of  the  tetrachord,  E  to  A, 
and  B  was  attended  by  the  semitone  satellite,  C,  and  E 
by  the  satellite,  F. 

The  planets  and  the  tones  were  identified  as  follows: — 


Saturn 

h 

El 

B 

si 

Jupiter 

% 

Belus 

C 

do 

Mars 

(? 

N  ergal 

D 

re 

The  Sun 

0 

Asshur 

E 

mi 

Venus 

9 

Astarte 

F 

fa 

Mercury 

? 

Nebo 

G 

sol 

The  Moon 

I  a 

Sin 

A 

la 

246  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

Now  whether  such  an  order  of  the  notes  as  that 
we  have  here  stated — B  C  D  E  F  G  A — was  the  result 
of  a  natural  and  unconscious  arrangement  of  the  tones, 
or  whether  it  was  the  result  of  a  conscious  scientific 
arrangement,  may  admit  conjecture.  That  the  latter 
was  the  case  seems  more  probable  because  it  is  only 
by  commencing  the  seven  notes  at  B,  that  the  scale 
can  be  divided  into  equal  parts  of  five  semitones  each, 
which  was  the  great  feat  of  the  Chaldean  Mathematicians, 
and  which  whether  achieved  for  musical  purposes  must 
have  governed  their  musical  system,  or  if,  which  is  more 
likely,  performed  for  arithmetical  purposes,  must  have 
owed  its  origin  to  the  sheer  exigencies  of  calculation, 
since  unless  their  abacus  was  separable  into  two  equal 
parts,  the  computation  of  fractional  quantities  was 
plainly  impossible.  Hence  they  were  forced  to  adopt 
such  a  key  note  as  would  render  this  division  possible, 
and  though  perhaps  they  were  favoured  in  this  in- 
stance by  prescription,  and  in  taking  B,  merely  took 
what  was  the  existing  key  note,  let  us  assume  that 
some  other  note  had  been  the  key  note  of  the  existing 
scale — -and  with  what  result  ?  For  if  you  start  with  B 
indeed,  the  scale  separates  at  once  into  two  equal  parts, 
as  we  have  said,  for  from  B  to  E  is  five  semitones, 
and  from  E  to  A  is  five  semitones,  and  then  it  goes 
by  equal  parts  upwards  and  upwards,  till  it  has  included 
all  the  notes  that  compose  it  and  all  are  arrangeable 
in  4ths    from  each  other.     For — 

B  to  E  is  five  semitones 

E  to  A  is  five  semitones 

A  to  D  is  five  semitones 

D  to  G  is  five  semitones 

G  to  C    is  five  semitones 

C  to  F    is  five  semitones     ^ 

I    Roussier.  p.  73. 


THE  ASSYRIANS.  247 

and  thus  by  starting  at  B,  all  the  notes — B  C  D  E  F 
G  A — have  been  taken  in,  and  arranged  in  perfect 
fourths  or  tetrachords  to  each  other.  ^  But  if  on  the 
other  hand  you  start  at  any  other  note  you  cannot  do 
this,  for  starting  at  C,  C  to  F  is  indeed  five  semitones, 
but  F  to  B  in  the  second  place  is  six  semitones  ;  and  start- 
ing at  D  you  get  this  tritone  of  six  semitones  in  the  fourth 
place  ;  and  starting  at  E  you  get  it  in  the  sixth  place  ; 
at  F  in  the  first  place  ;  at  G  in  the  third  place  ;  and 
at  A  in  the  fifth  place.  But  by  starting  at  B  it  is 
avoided  altogether.  So  that  while  all  the  other  key- 
notes make  an  equal  division  of  the  scale  impossible, 
B  alone  secures  the  necessary  symmetry  which  for 
mathematical  calculation    is   entirely  indispensable. 

Wherefore  whatever  had  been  the  scale  of  the  people, 
this  would  always  have  been  the  scale  of  the  philoso- 
phers. But  in  the  Chaldean  system  the  two  happily 
coincided,  and  the  same  scale  was  used  by  both — but 
with  a  different  arrangement.  For  this  arrangement  of 
the  scale  in  conjunct  tetrachords,  was  always  the  esoteric 
or  philosophical  form  of  it — that  is  to  say  arranged  as 
above— B  to  E,  E  to  A,  A  to  D,  D  to  G,  G  to  C,  C  to 
F — or  generally  in  the  form  B  E  A  D  G  C  F — and 
this  was  the  form  it  appeared  in,  in  the  arithmetical 
abacus  by  which  the  mathematicians  worked.  As  we 
know  both  in  other  ways,  and  also  because  of  this  : 
that  the  houses  in  the  horoscope  succeed  one  another 
not  in  the  natural  sequence  of  numbers,  but  by  conjunct 
tetrachords  ;  for  the  Cardines  are  not  as  1,2,  3,  4,  but 
they  are  i,  4,  7,  10.  And  the  Succedents  in  like  man- 
ner are  not  2,  3,  4,  5,  but  they  are  arranged  tetrachordally 


I  Roussier.  Memoire  sur  laMusique,  p.  73,  21.  For  this  treatment  of  the 
intervals,  cf.  an  exactly  parallel  instance  in  Ptolemy's  Plarmonics,  II.  10.  O 
if  we  regard  the  indefinite  extension  of  the  scale  for  purposes  of  calculation,  cf. 
the  scale  in  Plato's  Timaeus  as  quoted  in  this  Book — Appendix  3. 


248  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC 

2,  5,  8,  II.  And  the  Cadents  also  tetrachordally  3,  6,  9, 
12.  These  are  the  houses  of  the  horoscope  and  they 
are  thus  arranged  :  in  three  series  of  three  conjunct 
tetrachords  each.  And  indeed  we  may  speculate 
that  infinite  calculations  might  have  been  engaged 
in  by  means  of  this  musical  abacus,  and  that  in 
the  tetrachordal  system  of  Chaldean  theory  we  are 
on  the  brink  of  a  parallel  style  to  our  own  de- 
cimal system.  But  this  we  cannot  certainly  say,  , 
but  only  that  they  worked  by  such  a  formula.  And  T*" 
it  was  in  this  way  then  that  they  expressed  the 
months  of  the  year,  that  is  to  say,  by  taking  a  note 
of  the  scale  for  each  month  and  at  a  tetrachord  apart, 
up  to  the  number  of  the  12  houses  in  the  horoscope, 
and  arranged  in  similar  conformation.  ^  And  in  the 
same  way  they  expressed  the  hours  of  the  day,  that  is 
by  notes  in  tetrachords  one  for  each  hour,  24  in  all,  ^ 
only  this  time  they  would  be  doubled,  that  is  taken 
in  two  positions,  as  first  with  the  horoscopal  description 
with  star-shaped  cardines  and  plane  of  orientation  in 
the  centre,  and  second,  with  rectangular  cardines  and 
no  plane  of  orientation,  which  are  the  two  horoscopes 
employed    in  Astrology,   as  is  well  known. 

And  the  24  parts  of  the  sky  were  arranged  in  the 
same  manner,  and  the  12  signs  of  the  Zodiac  which 
are  the  zeniths  of  the  houses.^  Nor  did  the  planets 
themselves  escape  the  influence  of  this  formula.  And 
we    have    seen    that   they  were    identified,  each    with    its 


1  Arguing  from  the  Rosicrucian  arrangement  by  tones  in  various  Harmon- 
ious Dodecachordons. 

2  The  Chinese  "Lu"  s  in  like  manner  (12  in  number)  go  with  the  hours  of 
the  day — Hoang  tchoung  representing  11  to  12  (midnight),  Ta-Lu,  i- 2  A.M. 
the  next  2-3,  and  so  on.  See  Amiot,  Memoires  concernant  Thistoire  des 
Chinois,  VI.  58,  and  vide.  Infra,  p- 

3  The  tetrachordal  arrangement  of  the  24  parts  of  the  sky  and  the  12  signs  of 
the  zodiac  obtains  in  some  genetliliacal  astrology* 


THE  ASSYRIANS.  249 

note  already,  but  next  without  losing  this  identity 
they  were  arranged  by  the  mathematicians  and  astrono- 
mers in  the  tetrachordal  scale,  who  would  express 
thereby  their  equipoUency,  and  secure  the  possibility  of 
clean  arithmetical  treatment,  vvhile  the  other  scale  was 
rather  a  scale  of  distances  and  of  dignities.     In  this  way — 


became 


b 

Saturn 

B 

si 

% 

Jupiter 

C 

do 

6 

Mars 

D 

re 

0 

The  Sun 

E 

mi 

9 

Venus 

F 

fa 

^ 

Mercury 

G 

sol 

(L 

The  Moon 

A 

la 

h 

,  Saturn 

B 

si 

0 

The  Sun 

E 

mi 

d 

The  Moon 

A 

la 

(? 

Mars 

D 

re 

? 

Mercury 

G 

sol 

^ 

Jupiter 

C 

do 

9 

Venus 

F 

fa 

When  therefore  these  same  astronomers  were  com- 
missioned by  the  early  kings  of  Assyria  with  the 
formation  of  a  Calendar,  they  divided  the  year  into  52 
parts  of  7  days  each,  and  called  these  days  after  the 
names  of  the  planets  as  was  natural  for  them 
to  do.  Yet  that  the  order  in  which  the  planets 
and  their  days  appeared  in  the  Calendar  should 
correspond  with  the  mathematico-musical  arrangement 
of  the  Planets  rather  than  with  their  ordinary  and  popular 
one  was    only  to   be    expected  ;    for    indeed    they   were 


I  Agreeably  to  the  Gnostic  Vase  in  Montfau9on  to  which  Roussier  appeals 
in  his  Deux  lettres  a  I'auteur  du  journal  des  beaux  arts  et  des  sciences,  2nd 
lettre,  p.  12. 


250 


HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 


astronomers  making  astronomical  computations  and  not 
priests  or  poets  compiling  litanies,  and  the  planetary 
construction  took  its  complexion  accordingly.  So  that 
while  the    natural    order  would    have    been: — 

Saturn's  day. 

Jupiter's  day. 

Mars'  day. 

Sun's  day. 

Venus'  day. 
Mercury's  day. 

Moon's  day. 

the  days  appeared  in  the  Calendar  in  the  tetrachordal 
scale  instead,  that  is,  Saturn's  day,  Sun's  day,  Moon's 
day.  Mars'  day.  Mercury's  day,  Jupiter's  day,  Venus' 
day — as  we  should   write   it: — 


Dies  Saturni. 

Dies 

Solis 

Dies  Lunae 

Dies  Martis 

Sabbath,  or 
more  commonly 

Sunday 

Monday 

Tuesday 

Saturday 

Lunedi 

Martedi 

Sabato 

Lundi 

Mardi 

Samedi 

Dies  Mercurii 

Dies  Jovis 

Dies  Veneris 

Wednesday 

Thursday 

Friday 

Mercordi 

Giovedi 

Venerdi 

Mercrec 

li 

Jeudi 

Ven 

dredi 

This  is  the  Week  which  the  Hebrews  got  from  the 
Chaldeans,  and  we  from  them,  and  it  would  appear  that 
its   form  and  in  a   great    measure    its  origin  is   a   purely 


THE  ASSYRIANS.  25  I 

musical    one.     Which  likewise  is  the  opinion  of   Dion.  ^ 

And  other  things  we  might  also  imagine  to  have  come 
from  the  same  musical  source,  as  that  constant  classification 
of  qualities  and  objects  in  sets  of  sevens  which  runs 
through  all  antiquity ,2  and  which  might  without  much 
difficulty  be  shown  to  have  had  a  musical  origin  rather 
than  an  astronomical  one  ;  for  it  would  not  be  hard 
to  prove  that   the    musical    mathematic  penetrated  as  an 


1  el  yap  tic  t^^'  apfioviav  rrjv  cm  TEfrcrapwv  koXov fXEvrjv, 
TjTrep  TTOV  KOL  TO  Kvpog  rfjc  jUovrTLKriQ  (Tvvi)(^eiv  TreTrtorevrat, 
KaL  eiri  Tovg  acTTepag  tovtovq  v(p  a»v  6  irag  row  ovpavov 
KocTjuoQ  otttXrjTTrat  Kara  ti)v  tu£,lv  KaO'  i]v  I'lcaoToe  avTiov 
irepiiropeveTat  eTrayayoi,  /cat  ap^Ufjievog  aTro  rrjc  et,(x)  Trepicpo- 
pag,  Trig  T(i^  Kpovw  cacojuivrig,  tTveiTa  CLoXnrojv  cvo  Tag 
i^ojJiivag  tov  Tr,g  T^TapTrig  OEO-Trorrjv  ovo/biacreiev,  kol  just' 
avTov  Svn  av  kTspac,  vTrepjSdg  lirl  Trjv  kjdoonriv  ck^Ikolto,  kcu 
T(Jo  avTC^  rouTTti)  avTag  rt  Ittliov  koX  Tuvg  cr^wv  ^eovg  ava- 
Ku/cAwv  eTTiXeyoi  Talg  i)juipaLg,  evpijcrsi  iracrag  avTag  fiovcriKiog 
TTwg  Ttj  TOV  ovpavov  ^iaico<T/ut](jei  TrpocrrjKOvaag.  Dio  Cassius. 
XXXVII.  18.  I  have  always  thought  that  if  the  question  in  Plutarch's 
Symposiacs  A.id  tl  Tag  binovvjiovg  Tolg  Tr\dvr]<JLV  '^fxipag  ov 
KaTa  Trjv  Ikhvmv  tIi^iv,  aXA'  lvi]Wayjxivovg  apidfxovcnv  ', 
had  reached  us,  it  would  have  been  answered  in  a  manner  not  dissimilar  to 
the  above.  According  to  J.  Scaliger  the  invention  of  the  Week  is  to  be 
attributed  to  the  King  himself  of  Assyria.  See  Julius  Scaliger's  Prolegomena 
ad  Emendat.  Temporum.  But  this  is  founded  on  a  mistranslation  of  the 
oracle  in  Porphyry,  where  why  may  we  not  take  Trjg  kiTTachQoyyov 
l5a(TiXevg  as  ^^^  '^'^'^-  (s^^)  ap/noviag  IdaatXEvg  i.  e.  the  Master  of 
the  Scale.  But  see  Selden  De  Jure  Naturali  p.  411  where  the  whole  sub- 
ject is  discussed,  In  contrast  to  the  elegant  theory  above  propounded  an 
amusing  and  parallel  speculation  may  be  found  in  Vignier's  Fastes  des 
ancient  Hebreux  &c.  Paris.  1588.  fol.  200. 

2  Cf.  among  other  illustrations  of  it  Philo's  Eulogy  on  the  number  7  in  his 
De  Mundi  Opificio.  15. 


252  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

organising  principle  the  bulk  of  the  Chaldean  knowledge/ 
and  that  the  classifications  of  the  things  of  nature  which 
we  find  in  the  writings  of  the  Cabalists  and  Rosicrucians, 
and  which  are  the  direct  heirlooms  of  Chaldean  culture 
are  much  more  aptly  referred  to  Music  for  their  origination 
than  to  astronomy,^  because  often  the  precise  arrangement 
of  the  component  members  betrays  no  special  affinity 
when  considered  in  relation  to  the  planets,  but  a  very 
considerable  one  to  the  notes  of  the  scale  ;  as  to  take 
but  one  instance  out  of  many  that  might  be  quoted  :  the 
Rosicrucian  arrangement  of  Colours,  which  disposes  them 
in  a  set  of  Seven,  beginning  with  Black  and  ending  with 
White,  can  be  with  little  justice  deduced  from  the  facial 
appearance  of  the  planets,  since  there  is  no  reason  why 
Black  should  be  the  colour  of  Saturn,  to  whom  it  is 
appropriated,  or  White  be  particularly  that  of  the  Moon 
while  Blue  is  appropriated  to  the  planet  Mercury,  and 
other  colours  in  the  same  way.  But  if  we  consider 
Black  to  be  the  colour  appropriated  to  the  lowest  note  of 
the  Scale,  which  was  Saturn's  note,  and  White  to  the 
highest,  which  was  the  Moon's,  the  other  colours  may 
well  come  between,  as  they  approached  or  receded  from 
these  extremes,  and  the  attribution  of  Black  to  depth 
and  White  to  height  is  eminently  apropos,  such  pairing 
most  frequently  finding  place  in  those  fancy  liaisons 
of  notes  and  colours,  which  imaginative  minds  at  all 
times  have  never  ceased  to  make.  And  certainly  the 
classification  of  the  Seven  colours  among  the  Assyrians 
themselves  showed  rather  a  musical  than  an  astronomical 


^     XaXSatot TO,  liriyeia  rolg  //triwpotc  koX  ra  ovpavia  tolq 

iiTL  'yr}q  ap/no^ofuvoi,  koX  tjairep  ^M  fJ-ovcriKrig  Xoyuiv  tyjv 
ifijUEXeaTUTriv  (TV/jKpojvMv  tov  ttuvtoc,  liri^tiKVVfxevoi.  Philo- 
Frankfort  Folio,  fol.  415. 

2    Cf.  Dr.  Dee.  Aphorismus  XI. 


THE  ASSYRIANS.  253 

affinity  ;  for  Black  though  it  was  the  colour  of  Saturn, 
who  is  the  furthest  planet  from  the  earth,  was  yet 
placed  lowest  in  the  astronomical  towers,  being  painted 
on  the  tower  of  Saturn,  who  was  identified  with  the 
lowest  note  of  the  scale  ;  and  White,  though  the  colour  of 
the  Moon  which  is  the  lowest  planet  of  all,  was  placed 
highest,  agreeably  to  the  Musical  situation  of  the  Moon's 
note,  which  stood  highest  in  the  scale.  In  the  same 
way  in  the  Rosicrucian  arrangement  of  weights,  the 
attribution  of  Heaviness  to  Saturn  and  Lightness  to 
the  Moon  can  still  less  be  derived  from  any  astronomical 
observations,  for  of  the  two  orbs  there  is  no  question 
which  deserves  the  epithet  of  heavy  ;  and  the  lumbering 
moon,  which  rolls  slowly  over  the  sky,  can  in  no  way  merit 
the  distinctive  adjective  which  so  exactly  describes  the 
passage  of  that  weird  and  mystical  planet  which  soars 
higher  than  them  all,  and  traverses  with  far  greater 
celerity  a  far  wider  expanse  of  space — a  fact  which 
the  Chaldeans,  no  less  than  we,  were  fully  aware  of 
But  if  on  the  contrary  the  musical  mathematic,  which 
identified  Saturn  with  the  lowest  note  of  the  Scale  and 
the  Moon  with  the  highest,  were  the  cause  that  deter- 
mined this  description  of  qualities,  then  most  just  and 
most  palpable  were  the  reasoning.  Equally  so  of  the 
attribution  of  Earth  as  Saturn's  element  in  the  Rosicrucian 
category  of  elements,  who  is  furthest  from  the  earth  in 
astronomy,  but  nearest  it,  being  the  lowest  note,  in  Music. 
And  of  other  planets  besides  Saturn  and  the  Moon, 
e.g.  Mercury  and  Venus  especially,  similar  things  might 
be  said. 

But  such  speculations  are  unfruitful  and  vague, 
and  in  the  absence  of  tangible  materials  for  veri- 
fication often  dangerous  to  hazard.  So  returning  to 
Assyrian  music  where  we  left  it  at  the  beginning  of 
this   discussion,   how  all  its   spirit   seemed  to   come  from 


254  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

the  armies,  how  strong  rhythmic  effects  were  freely 
indulged  in,  how  they  delighted  in  high  shrill  voices, 
and  other  facts  that  we  have  mentioned  before,  let  us 
briefly  sum  up  its  character,  which  we  can  easily  do 
from  the  data  that  we  have  now  to  hand.  And  we 
shall  say  that  while  Assyrian  theory  amused  itself  with 
hard  dry  speculations  in  the  most  recondite  and  difficult 
secrets  of  music,  the  doctrines  of  philosophical  science 
were  unable  to  penetrate  and  inform  the  practical  side 
of  the  Art,  and  mould  its  stormy  and  wanton  elements 
into  civility,  but  remained  from  first  to  last  entirely 
distinct  ;  while  that  practical  side  itself  was  one  of 
the  most  pronounced  exponents  of  the  Sensuous  form 
of  Music  which  it  has  been  our  lot  thus  far  to 
consider.  The  accounts  that  we  have  already  given 
and  the  instruments  that  we  have  already  considered 
}  are  visible  proof  of  this ;  and  of  all  the  instruments, 
even  more  than  the  Drum,  the  Dulcimer,  the  most 
sensuous  form  of  stringed  instrument,  and  the  favourite 
instrument  of  the  Assyrians,  is  a  remarkable  testimony 
to  the  nature  of  the  music.  Most  sensuous  of  all  the 
Strings  is  the  Dulcimer,  since  in  it  the  strings  are 
struck  by  a  rod  or  plectrum  in  order  to  magnify  their 
sound,  and  its  whole  raison  d'etre  seems  sensuousness 
and  volume  of  tone.  At  the  same  time,  since  it  does 
not  admit  of  the  performer  singing  at  the  same  time 
owing  to  •  the  comparative  exertion  which  the  playing 
requires,  it  is  from  the  first  a  Solo  Instrument,  and 
might  well  be  ranked  in  the  Pipe  Family  of  instru- 
ments rather  than  with  the  Lyres,  which  are  in  the 
beginning  all  instruments  of  accompaniment.  The 
Dulcimer,  indeed,  was  such  a  favourite  with  the  Assyri- 
ans, that  it  appears  on  the  bas-reliefs  twice  as  often 
as  any  other  instrument.  And  of  this  instrument, 
which     we     must     especially     notice    singe    it     is     the 


THE  ASSYRIANS.  255 

undoubted  parent  of  the  Modern  Piano,  there  were 
two  kinds :  The  Grand  Dulcimer,  and  the  Cottage 
Dulcimer — if  we  may  adopt  a  nomenclature  that  is 
eminently  apposite — the  Grand  Dulcimer,  a  horizontal 
form  with  the  strings  lying  flat,  and  the  Cottage 
Dulcimer  a  vertical  form  with  the  strings  strung 
upwards,  but  above  one  another  ;  the  first  an  exact 
model  of  our  Fhigel  or  Grand  Piano,  the  second  not 
quite  so  good  a  one  of  the  Cottage,  because  the 
strings  were  strung  one  above  another  instead  of  side 
by  side.  And  these  appear  at  least  twice  as  often  as 
any  other  instruments  on  the  bas-reliefs,  as  I  have 
said.  They  had  ten  strings  on  an  avera-ge,  though 
sometimes  one  or  two  more  are  found,  and  sometimes 
less.  They  were  strapped  to  the  person,  like  so  many 
of  the  musical  instruments  of  the  Assyrians,  and  being 
small  sat  most  conveniently  to  the  figure,  and  allowed 
the  player  the  greatest  freedom  of  motion.  And  of 
the  two  kinds  of  Dulcimer  the  Cottage  Dulcimer  is 
much  the  commoner.^  The  Player  struck  the  strings  with 
the  rod  which  he  held  in  his  right  hand,  and  used  his 
Left  Hand  at  the  same  time  as  a  damper  ^  for  the 
lower  strings,  to  prevent  their  sound,  that  is,  running  into 
one  another  ;  by  which  we  may  conclude  that  the  music 
was  as  a  rule  very  rapid,  since  in  slow  music  the  sound 
of  each  string  would  have  died  away  in  time.  This  is 
the  style  of  Dulcimer  that  is  in  the  hands  of  the  Dul- 
cimer Player,  whose  picture  from  the  bas-reliefs  enriches 
the    pages    of   so    many    works  on  ancient  music.^     And 


1  e.g.  on  the  bas-reliefs  in  the  British  Museum  it  is  figured  four  times  (4b.  124, 
118,  12,)  and  of  the  Grand  Dulcimer  I  do  not  remember  an  instance  in  the  same 
gallery  unless  it  be  12a.  and  of  this  I  am  not  quite  sure. 

2  This  fact  was  firstbrought  out  by  the  ingenious  observation  of  Mr.  Engel, 
(Music  of  Most  Ancient  Nations.) 

3  See  a  very  good  figuring  in  Dr.  Stainer's  Music  of  the  Bible,  p.  36, 


256  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC 

the  sandstone  of  the  rehef  has  been  much  worn  away 
and  frayed  in  the  course  of  three  thousand  years,  and 
the  figure  is  hke  some  ghost  to  our  eyes — a  soh'tary 
rehc  that  remains  to  us  of  a  most  magnificent  and 
stupendous  past.  For  when  I  think  of  Assyrian  hfe  and 
the  great  cities  of  Babylon  and  Nineveh,  of  the  marts 
of  Nineveh  and  the  looms  of  Babylon,  where  carpets  and 
curtains  of  inestimable  value  were  spun  to  be  distributed 
over  the  world,  and  where  the  art  of  spinning  gold 
threads  was  carried  to  unknown  perfection,  the  women 
walked  the  streets  in  brilliant  coloured  dresses,  silver 
vases  and  gold  moulding  carried  also  to  unknown 
perfection — I  say,  when  I  think  of  all  this,  and  then  try 
to  imagine  Assyrian  music  after  it,  I  think  of  great  swells 
of  harps  and  roars  of  drums  sweeping  through  enormous 
halls,  as  those  halls  of  Nineveh  with  their  crimson  draperies, 
where  Sardanapalus  and  his  army  feasted  one  hundred  and 
twenty  days,  or  those  halls  at  Babylon  where  the  people 
used  to  banquet,  and  the  matrons  and  the  virgins  of  the  city 
would  come  in  at  the  heat  of  the  revelry,  and  dance, 
casting  off  their  garments  one  by  one  in  the  fury  of 
the  revel,  till  at  last  they  stood  naked  and  unabashed 
before  the  eyes  of  thousands.^  And  all  around  seethed 
with  the  riot  of  applause,  the  screams  of  the  eunuchs, 
the  whistle  of  flutes  and  harps.  So  that  whatever  is 
in  the  power  of  Music  to  intoxicate  or  to  inflame, 
that  I  can  imagine  the  music  of  Assyria  to  have 
excelled   in. 


I  See  the  picture  in  Quintus  Curtius  V.  I, 


I 


THE   HEBREWS.  257 

II. 

The  Assyrians  lived  in  a  land  of  corn  and  dates  :  "  the 
plains  of  the  Euphrates,"  says  Herodotus,  "  yield  three 
hundred-fold  the  grain  that  is  sown  there."  ^  In  this 
plenty  that  surrounded  them  there  was  the  sure  induce- 
ment to  develop  the  gay  and  sensuous  side  of  life,  and 
there  was  the  requisite  means  for  securing  that  leisure 
to  the  intellectual  members  of  the  community,  which 
enabled  them  to  indulge  in  those  dry,  abstract  specu- 
lations, to  which  the  Chaldean  mind  was  naturally  disposed. 

There  was  a  subordinate  branch  of  the  great  Chaldean  race, 
which  had  very  different  experiences  from  the  niain  body 
of  its  brethren,  which  spent  the  early  part  of  its  life  in  a 
precarious  isolation  as  settlers  among  hostile  and  alien  tribes, 
passed  its  youth  in  the  most  galling  slavery,  escaped 
from  that  only  to  face  years  of  want  and  misery  in  the 
desert,  and  had  to  fight  its  way  back  to  the  land  it  came 
from,  inch  by  inch,  there  to  enjoy  a  brief  span  of  sunshine 
till  the  sky  became  overcast  for  good.  This  was  the 
education  to  develop  great  men  and  high  aspirations, 
and,  in  the  reaction  of  the  mind  against  the  unkindness 
of  its  surroundings,  to  give  a  marvellous  impulse  to  the 
imagination,  which  is  the  nurse  of  the  spiritual  life.  The 
Hebrews,  who  have  appeared  on  the  world's  stage  as  the 
Apostles  of  Affliction,  have  likewise  spoken  out  above  all 
peoples  before  or  since  them  that  which  is  the  best  result 
of  Affliction — namely.  Religion.  For  in  its  rebellion 
against  the  eternal  buffet  of  brute  misery  and  stupid 
trouble,  the  mind,  as  I  say,  soars  aloft,  and  creates  a 
world  where  it  can  expatiate  free  from  care  amidst  delight 


I    Herod.  I.  193.      etri     SirfKoaia    /nlv     to     rrapaTrav    airo^i^oT 
Strabo  speaks  to  the  same  effect.  Lib,  XIII, 


2$ 8  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

and  eternal  sunshine,  and  whence  it  can  summon  helpers 
that  never  fail,  to  mitigate  and  ease  its  sorrows  and 
afflictions  here  below. 

With  such  a  training  and  such  a  character  we  may 
waive  the  weaknesses  and  admire  the  excellencies  of  this 
people,  whose  weakness  lay  in  an  utter  deadness  to  the 
sensuous  and  artistic  side  of  life,  and  whose  excellence 
consisted  in  exalting  its  spiritual  side  to  a  height  such  as  we 
shall  never  meet  with  again.  Thus  unlike  the  Assyrians,  the 
beauty  of  whose  carvings  has  perhaps  never  been  surpassed, 
the  Hebrews  not  only  despised  the  Art  of  sculpture,  but 
accounted  the  practice  of  it  illegal  and  irreligious.^  Paint- 
ing fared  no  better  with  them.^  Architecture  was  so  poorly 
represented  that  Jahveh's  tabernacle  was  for  centuries  a 
tent,  and  Solomon  had  to  get  a  foreigner  to  build  the 
Temple.  Equally  deficient  were  the  Hebrews  in  Dramatic 
genius — they  cared  as  little  and  doubtless  were  as  little 
able  to  embody  their  thought  in  spectacular  figures  as 
they  were  to  embody  it  in  stone  or  colour  or  elaborate 
literary  forms.  3  There  was  only  one  Geyser  by  which 
their  wild  formless  emotion  could  find  a  congenial  vent, 
and  that  was  in  the  passionate  outbreaks  of  Lyric  Poetry, 
and  the  coincident  effusion  of  extemporised  Song.  And  it  is 
here  therefore  that  we  must  look  for  the  import  of  the 
Hebrews  in  Musical  History.  For  their  relation  to  In- 
strumental music  is  a  purely  subordinate  one,  and  scarcely 
merits  remark.     They    had    but   few  instruments,  and    of. 


I     Cf.  among  other  things,  the  2nd  Commandment. 

1  On  this  deficiency  of  the  Hebrews  in  plastic  art,  Ambros  "well  remarks, 
•'  desto  grosser  ist  der  poetische  Sinn  &  Schwung." 

3  The  attempts  to  construe  the  Song  of  Solomon  into  a  drama — among 
which  may  be  cited  as  perhaps  the  most  elegant  and  complete,  the  rifat;imento 
of  Dr.  Davidson  (Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament,  II.  389) — only  succeed 
in  impressing  the  very  faintest  dramatic  outline  on  the  poem.  The  Book  of 
Job  yields  a  yet  fainter  impression. 


THE   HEBREWS.  259 

these  all  but  one  were  borrowed  from  other  nations, 
principally  it  seems  from  the  Egyptians  ;  and  even  in 
their  borrowing  they  showed  the  utmost  nicety,  and 
the  same  feelings  and  antipathies  that  we  have  just  been 
considering.  That  most  sensuous  of  instruments,  the 
Drum,  for  instance,  was  to  the  last  an  exile  from  the 
Holy  Land.  There  was  not  a  drum  to  be  found  from 
Dan  to  Beersheba.  ^  Nor  a  Dulcimer  either.  And  Flutes 
if  used  at  all  were  very  rarely  used.  The  only  instrument 
that  attained  much  favour,  and  this  was  the  indigenous 
one,  2  was  the  Harp,  which  should  more  properly  be  de- 
scribed as  a  Lyre  than  a  Harp  3  since  it  was  a  small 
portable  instrument,  which  the  player  carried  about  with 
him  wherever  he  went,  and  of  which  we  may  form  a 
very  fair  notion  if  we  remember  the  Rabbinical  tradition, 
that  David  used  to  hang  his  on  a  nail  above  his  pillow 
when  he  went  to  bed.  This  little  Lyre  was  the  great 
instrument,  then,  in  Israel,  and  the  reason  it  could  be  so 
was,  that  the  Music  of  the  Hebrews  was  in  every  sense  of 
the  word  a  Vocal  Music.  The  Voice  transcended  and 
outdid  the  instrument,  and  Instrumental  development 
stood  still.  With  the  Hebrews  therefore  we  pass  from 
the  heated  atmosphere  of  bands  and  concerts  to  a  far 
higher     and     purer    air  ;     and     the     centre     of     interest 


1  That  modified  form  of  drum,  the  tambourine  or  tabret,  was  however 
used  in  religious  ceremony.  Cymbals  and  sistrums  (Saalschiitz'  Geschichte 
&  Wiirdigung  der  Musik  bei  den  Hebraeru  quoting  Samuel  VI.  5,)  were  also 
used  by  the  priests. 

2  The  same  Semitic  Lyre  which  we  have  described  on  p— ;  and  in  support 
of  the  assertion  that  this  was  the  only  indigenous  instrument,  without 
going  at  length  into  the  proofs,  I  may  content  myself  with  quoting  the 
high  authority  of  Mr.  Engel  (Music  of  most  ancient  nations,  p.  282.)  "the 
Lyre,  a  purely  indigenous  Semitic  instrument  and  probably  the  only  one 
the  Hebrews  can  lay  claim  to." 

3  "The  so  called  Harp  was  probably  the  Lyre."  p.  311. 


26o  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

changes  from  bands  and  orchestras  to  a  single  figure, 
who  is  in  a  manner  eminently  typical  of  the  Hebrew 
Race    itself — the    Minstrel    Poet.^ 

The  Minstrel  with  the  Hebrews  was  an  inspired  seer, 
who  delivered  himself  of  moral  precepts  in  the  didactic 
style  of  a  sage,  or  preached  against  the  sins  and  vices 
of  his  time,  or  in  an  ecstasy  revealed  the  future.* 
These  were  his  walks,  and  so  earnest  and  sublimely 
strung  was  the  national  temper,  that  minstrelsy  never 
bent  itself  to  please,  or  became  the  prattler  of  the 
softer  emotions,  but  was  a  preacher,  and  a  censor,  and, 
if  we  may  go  so  far,  one  of  the  chief  exponents  of 
Religion  itself  For  "to  prophesy"  meant  "to  sing,"^ 
and  there  is  little  doubt  that  Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  and 
the  other  prophets  uttered  their  prophecies  in  song  no 
less  than  in  verse,  both  alike  being  extemporised,  and 
this  indeed  was  the  natural  form  in  which  their  ex- 
alted spirit  found  expression.  To  such  men  as  this 
Music  could  never  be  an  Arf* — it  was  a  form  of 
speech,  which  they  employed  as  unconsciously  and  as 
freely  as  we  do  our  speech  to-day.  So  knit  up  too 
was  it  with  Poetry  that  we  can  scarcely  consider  it 
apart,  and  certainly  there  could  have  been  no  conscious 
separation  between  the  two  in  the  minds  of  the  minstrels 
themselves,    as    little    as     there    is    in    ours   between    the 


1  Assuming  that  what  the  Pyramids  are  for  Egyptian  History,  or  the 
Bas-reliefs  for  Assyrian  History,  that  is  the  Bible  for  Jewish  History. 
Should  a  larger  limit,  however,  be  permitted  to  evidence,  manyof  the  Assyrian 
and  Egyptian  Instruments  will  find  entry  into  the  Hebrew  Music,  which  is 
the  method  pursued  by  Dr.  Stainer  in  his  Music  of  the  Bible. 

2  der  Musiker  erhebt  sich  zum  Range  eines  vom  Gottlichen  begeisterten 
Weisen.  (Ambros.  Geschichte  der  Musik.  I.  179.) 

3  Cf.  Chronicles.  XXV.  i.  '  die  da  weissagten  auf  Cithern  &  Harfen  & 
Zymbeln.'  The  meaning  however  is  so  general  that  there  is  often  doubt  in  which 
sense  to  take  it 

4  Sic  ist  nicht  Kunst  sondern  Gottesdienst,  und  nicht  die  ^sthetik  son- 
dem  die  Religion  hat  ihren  Werth  zu  bestimraen.    (Ambros.  I.  169.) 


THE    HEBREWS.  26 1 

word  we  say  and  the  tone  we  say  it  in.^  Could  we 
be  certain  that  they  were  in  the  habit  of  invariably 
employing  an  instrument  to  accompany  them  when 
they  sang  or  prophesied,  we  might  imagine  that  art 
had,  at  least,  some  share  in  their  songs.  But  this  is 
not  so,  for  it  is  most  probable  that  the  use  of  an 
instrument  was  only  occasional.  Their  song  no  less 
than  their  verse  was  purely  unpremeditated,  being  in 
the  first  instance  the  same  Impassioned  Speech  which 
we  have  noticed  as  the  original  of  Song  among 
Primitive  Man  ;  but  with  the  Hebrews  this  Impassioned 
Speech  received  a  very  peculiar  development.  For 
there  is  a  certain  feature  of  the  Hebrew  language,  or, 
I  should  rather  say,  of  the  syntax  of  the  language, 
which  would  of  itself  be  sufficient  to  stamp  the 
language  with  a  marked  individuality,  and  put  it  in 
forcible  contrast  to  all  other  languages  not  of  the 
same  stock  ;  so  that  to  find  a  pronounced  individuality 
in  that  development  of  Language  which  is  Song,  is 
what  we  may  not  unnaturally  expect.  For  the  Hebrew 
language  has  no  copula,^  and  therefore  not  only  is  the 
expression  of  a  thought  very  different  to  what  it  is 
in  our  Aryan  languages,  but  from  the  first  the  attitude  of 
the  thinker  to  his  thought  must  have  been  very 
different.  For  while  we  by  the  benefit  of  our  copula 
can  say  "  the  man  is  good,"  or  "  God  is  gracious," 
the  Hebrews  could  only  phrase  it  "  the  man,  the  good '' 
and  "  God,  the  gracious."  And  while  we  can  and  indeed 
must  assign  a  subordination  to  one  of  the  two  parts 
of  the   sentence,  that  is  to   say    to    the    predicate,  which 


1  Mit  der  Poesie  steht  die  Musik  stets  in  genauer  um  nicht  zu  sagen 
untrenbarer  Verbinndung.    (lb.  193.) 

2  This  peculiarity  is  of  course  shared  by  the  Northern  and  Southern  branches 
of  the  Semitic  family— the  Syriac  &  the  Arabic. 


262  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

is  to  us  merely  an  attribute  of  the  subject,  being  an 
extra  thing,  so  to  speak,  affirmed  or  denied  of  the 
subject,  to  the  Hebrews  there  was  no  such  subordin- 
ation of  one  part  to  the  other  possible,  but  both 
stood  side  by  side  as  strictly  coordinate,  for  neither 
was  the  predicate  a  mere  attribute  hooked  on  to  the 
subject  by  a  hook,  nor  was  it  a  thing  that  depended 
for  its  raison  d'  etre  on  the  subject,  for  it  could  stand 
equally  well  alone,  and  thus  instead  of  the  sentence 
being  composed  of  a  principal  and  a  subordinate,  it 
was  composed  of  two  coordinates — not  a  subject  and 
a  predicate,  but,  if  we  may  so  phrase  it,  two  subjects. 
And  of  these  two — so  thorough  was  the  coordination — 
either  might  stand  first  ;  not  even  is  there  that 
determination  of  subject  which  priority  of  order  might 
give,  as  for  instance  "God:  the  gracious"  was  as  com- 
monly and  as  well  expressed  by  "  The  Gracious  one : 
God."  So  that  we  who  are  of  a  different  cast  of  mind 
and  form  of  expression  are  often  left  to  seek  which 
of  the  two  we  shall  turn  into  the  predicate  and  which 
into   the   subject  of  our  sentence. 

Now  this  coordination  of  expression  implies  a  certain 
mental  habit  as  the  predisposing  cause  of  it,  for  it 
implies  the  habit  of  seeing  things  side  by  side  without 
much  considering  their  mutual  relations,  of  regarding  their 
similitudes,  that  is  to  say,  rather  than  their  differences, 
which  is  the  result  of  an  inbred  love  of  coordinating. 
And  this  love  may  be  either  peculiar  to  the  Semitic 
race,  or  it  may  be  a  feature  in  the  human  mind 
generally  in  the  early  stages  of  its  development.  But 
without  staying  to  enquire  into  the  cause  that  lies  at 
the  bottom  of  it,  let  us  go  on  to  examine,  how  else 
its  workings  have  made  themselves  felt,  beyond  this 
special  coordinating  of  the  Subject  and  Predicate  that 
we     have    just    been    examining.       For   it   is    plain    the 


THE  HEBREWS.  263 

influence  of  such  a  feeling  would  not  rest  here,  but  as 
it  affected  the  relations  of  one  part  of  a  sentence  to 
another,  so  it  would  be  as  likely  to  affect  the  rela- 
tions of  individual  words  to  each  other,  the  relations 
of  complete  sentences  to  sentences,  and  of  thoughts 
to  thoughts.  And  in  the  case  of  individual  words,  it 
shows  in  dispensing  with  the  genitive  case,  and  setting 
up  the  two  words  side  by  side  on  terms  of  equality, 
turning  "  the  horse  of  the  king,"  for  instance,  into  "  the 
horse  the  king.''^  And  in  sentences  it  shows  in  the 
almost  entire  banishment  of  particles  and  conjunctions. 
and  the  coordination  of  each  sentence  with  the  other. 
And  in  thought  it  shows  in  the  matching  of  thought 
with  thought,  or,  what  is  commoner,  in  getting  the 
coordination  by  repeating  the  same  thought  over  twice, 
with  some  little  variety  of  form.  And  this  seems  to 
have  been  felt  as  necessary  to  the  due  completion  of 
the  one  original  thought  as  the  two  verbal  terms  to 
the  completion  of  the  Sentence  ;  for  this  was  the  form 
nearly  always  adopted  in  any  measured  or  rhetorical 
expression  of  thought — which  seems  to  differ  from 
ordinary  expression  chiefly  in  this,  that  it  is  more 
exhaustive 

Now  since  the  sober  temperament  of  the  Hebrews 
was  little  inclined  to  toy  with  language,  or  frolic  in  the 
sweet  jingle  of  syllables  like  the  Aryans,  there  is 
no  belt  of  poetry  running  round  the  beginnings  of 
their  literature,  but  the  form  they  first  expressed 
themselves  in  was  naked  prose.  And  their  poetry  grew 
out   of    their    prose,    being    but    a   more   measured   and 


I  For  it  might  be  well  argued  that  the  shortening  of  the  vowel  in  the 
"governing"  substantive,  as  we  call  it,  as  for  instance  V  shortened  into 
"J  ^  in  the  phrase  '^  ^  D  "p,  or  any  of  the  other  changes  that  take  place  in 
the  construct  state,   are  forms  that  grew  up  late  in  the  language's  history. 


264  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

pompous  delivery,  and  there  was  nothing  to  distinguish 
it  from  prose  except  its  rhetorical  cast,  for  metres,  feet 
&c.  there  were  none.  But  very  early  this  rhetorical 
expression  set  into  a  clearly  defined  and  sharp  cut 
form  which  ever  after  remained  the  form  of  the  Hebrew 
poetry,  and  the  gist  of  which  lay  in  the  parallelism, 
antithesis,  or  wedding  of  two  thoughts  as  the  com- 
ponent of  each  poetical  expression  ;  and  generally  it 
was  the  parallelism,  and  more  particularly  that  form 
of  parallelism  which  consisted  in  repeating  the  same 
thought  twice  over  with  some  little  variety  of  form. 
And  amid  the  dry  records  of  their  early  history  there 
stands  out  as  a  gem  that  little  poem,  which  is  so 
different  from  its  surroundings,  and  which  should 
command  our  reverence  because  it  is  the  oldest  poem 
in    the    world: — 

"  Adah  and  Zillah  hear  my  voice  :  Ye  wives  of  Lamech, 
harken  unto  my  speech. 

"  For  I  have  slain  a  man  to  my  wounding  :  And  a  young 
man  to    my    hurt. 

"  If  Cain  shall  be  avenged  seven  fold  :  Truly  Lamech 
seventy  and   seven  fold." 

And  with  this  simplest  of  all  forms  of  Poetry  the 
Spiritual  Hebrews  were  to  the  last  content.  All  the 
metre  was  in  the  thought  :  the  words  might  run  pretty 
much  as  they  pleased,  and  the  balance  of  the  clauses 
be    as    loos.e   as    possible    and   lopsided,^   the   symphony 


I     Genesis.   IV.   23.   As  an  instance  of  the  purely  rhetorical  use  of 
this  parallelism    we  may  quote  the  blessing   of  Jacob  by    Isaac    (Gencses 
XXVII,  29.)  where  there  is  naturally  no  question   of  singing: — 
"Let  people  serve  thee    :    and  nations  bow  down  before  thee. 
''  Be  lord  over  thy  brethren      :     and  let  thy  mother's  sons  bow  down  to  thee. 
"  Cursed  be  everyone  that  curseth  the.  :  and  blessed  be  he  that  blesSeth  thee." 

2  Cf.  When  the  company  of  the  spearmen  and  the  multitude  of  the  mighty 
are  scattered  abroad  among  the  beasts  of  the  people  so  that  they  humbly 
bring  pieces  of  silver  :  and  when  he  hath  scattered  the  people  that  delight  in  war. 


THE  HEBREWS.  265 

of  the  two  ideas  was  sufficient  to  satisfy  all  the 
requirements  which  that   spiritual  people  laid  upon  verse.^ 

That  Lamech,  the  poet,  should  be  the  father  of  Jubal, 
the  minstrel,  is  natural,  and  that  the  minstrelsy  which 
arose  in  company  with  such  a  form  of  poetry  should 
wear  the  same  peculiar  stamp,  was  also  to  be  expected. 
So  that  at  this  very  early  period,  when  the  old 
Patriarchs  were  living  in  tents  in  the  plains  of  Meso- 
potamia, that  form  of  Song,  which  consists  in  two 
parallel  phrases  of  similar  or  contrasted  intonation,  and 
which  we  may  hear  to-day  in  the  Religious  Chant,  of 
our  Churches,  was  fast  developing,  if  it  were  not 
already  fully  established.  The  tones  would  be  .rude,  and 
rather  approaching  Speech  than  Song — on  each  occasion 
probably  extemporised  ;  yet  the  repetition  of  the  same 
form  of  language  verse  after  verse,  would  gradually 
lead  to  their  being  remembered,  and  the  unique 
parallelism  of  parts  would  communicate  to  them  that 
individuality,  which  separates  them  even  now  from  all 
other  styles  of  musical   declamation. 

Now  the  plain  result  of  the  establishment  of  such 
a  form  of  Poetry  and  Song  was  this  : — when  the 
minstrel  of  the  old  patriarchal  times  gave  place  to  the 
choruses  of  city  life  (and  since  it  was  in  Egypt  that 
they  first  began  to  congregate  in  cities  we  may  see 
in  these  very  choruses  the  first  trace  of  Egyptian 
influence,^)  this  division  of  the  verse  into  two  parts  each 
reflecting  the  other,  would  plainly  suggest  the  division 
of  the  chorus  into  two  parts,  each  responding  to  the 
other,    as   the  men    to    the    women,  for   instance,  or  two 


1  The  various  attempts  to  father  intricate  systems  of  versification  on  the 
Hebrews  have  all  proved  unsuccessful. 

2  As  another  trace  may  be  quoted  the  use  of  sistrums  by  the  Hebrew- 
priests,  of.  the  remarks  of  Saalschiitz  in  his  Geschichte  (Sc^Wurdigung  der 
Musik  &c . 


266  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

companies  of  women,  or  it  might  be  a  solo  singer 
and  a  chorus  answering  him — but  whichever  way  were 
the  more  usual,  this  early  got  to  be  the  recognised 
method  of  chorus  singing,  and  so  thoroughly  was  it 
the  recognised  method  that  the  Hebrews  began  to  use 
the    word    "  answer "    as    synonymous    with    "  sing."  ^ 

That  this  style  was  developed  in  the  city  life  in 
Egypt  we  may  imagine  since  the  first  mention  of 
it  in  the  Bible  is  immediately  after  the  passage  of 
the  Red  Sea,  when  "  Miriam,  the  prophetess,  took  a 
timbrel  in  her  hand,  and  all  the  women  went  out 
after  her  with  timbrels  and  dances.  And  Miriam 
answered  them  : — 
Sing  ye  to  the  Lord  for  he  hath  triumphed  gloriously  : 

The  horse  and  his  rider  hath  he  thrown  into  the  sea." 
This  latter  half  being  probably  the  response  of  the 
women.  So  that  we  may  conjecture  that  that  other 
song  which  immediately  precedes  this,  which  was  sung 
by  Moses  and  the  Children  of  Israel,  was  treated  in 
a  similar  manner   and  that  the  parts  were  distributed : — 

Moses. 
I  will  sing  unto  the  Lord  for  he  hath  triumphed  gloriously  : 
Children  of  Israel. 
The  horse  and  his  rider  hath  he  thrown  into  the  sea. 
M.  The  Lord  is  my  strength  and  my  song : 

C.  of  I.   And  he  is  become  my  salvation. 
M.  He  is  my  God  and  I  will  prepare  him  an  habitation  : 

C.  of  I.    My  father's  god  and  I  will  exalt  him. 
M,  The  Lord  is  a  man  of  war  : 

C.  of  I.    The  Lord  is  his  name. 


I  As  the  Arabs  to-day.  Lowth  (Prselectiones  de  sacra  &c.)  .would  derive 
the  parallelism  of  the  poetry  from  this  antiphonal  practice  of  chanting,  instead 
of  what  is  far  more  probable,  the  antiphonal  chanting  from  the  parallelism,  for 
we  find  the  latter  in  existence  at  least  a  thousand  years  or  more  before  we 
hear  of  the  former. 


THE  HEBREWS.  267 

M.  Pharaoh's  chariots  and  his  host  hath  he  cast  into  the  sea  : 
C.  of  I.  His  chosen  captains  also  are  drowned  in  the  Red  Sea. 
This  practice,  as  I  say,  once  stereotyped,  hke  many 
things  in  those  old  civilisations,  remained  unaltered  to 
the  end,  and  if  we  were  to  write  a  history  of  the 
Hebrew  chorus  from  now  till  the  time  of  the  captivity, 
it  would  be  but  to  enumerate  the  various  occasions 
on  which  such  performances  are  chronicled  in  the  Bible 
and  the  various  personages  who  took  part  in  them 
For  instance,  in  the  services  of  the  Tabernacle,  the 
Priests  formed  one  chorus,  the  Levites  the  other :  ^ 
Miriam  and  her  women  find  their  parallel  in  later 
times  in  the  two  choruses  of  women  who "  came  out 
to  meet  David  after  his  victory  over  Goliath,  one 
chorus  singing,  "  Saul  hath  slain  his  thousands," 
the  other  answering,  "  And  David  his  ten  thousands," 
and  while  Miriam  and  her  women  only  used  timbrels 
to  accompany  their  voices,  the  women  who  went  to 
meet  David  had  not  only  timbrels  but  also  other 
'instruments  of  Music,'  so  that  there  would  be  a 
distinct  advance  in  musical  feeling  to  be  recorded 
here.  But  this  line  of  treatment  would  be  somewhat 
jejune,    and     at    the    same    time     in    a     great     measure 


I  Lowth.  De  Sacra,  poesi  Hebrseorum.  XIX.  Cf.  also  Ezra  III.  11. 
in  allusion  to  the  performance  of  the  136th  Psalm.  Lowth  also  compares  the 
title  of  Psalm  LXXXVIII.  It  seems  allowed  on  all  hands  that  this  was  the 
common  method  of  performance.  Those  who  would  go  beyond  this,  and  have 
us  believe  that  3  choirs  were  used,  must  be  held  to  be  advancing  a  fanciful 
theory.  Thus  the  English  commentator  and  translator  of  Lowth  founds  his 
supposition  of  3  choirs  on  the  following  verse  :  — 

"Praise  the  Lord,  Ye  House  of  Israel;  Praise  the  Lord,  ye  House  of  Aaron  ; 
Praise  the  Lord,  ye  House  of  Leir."  He  says  that  this  verse  must  obviou- 
sly have  been  sung  by  3  divisions  of  singers,  that  the  first  sentence  was 
sung  by  the  High  Priest  addressing  the  people,  the  2nd  by  the  people  back 
to  the  High  Priest,  and  the  3rd  by  the  Levites,  than  which  nothing  more 
fanciful  can  be  imagined.  On  the  other  hand,  so  universal  was  the  practice 
of  chanting  by  Two  Choirs,  that  Isaiah  transfers  it  to  the  Seraphim. 
"  And  they  cried  alternately  and  said  &c."  (Isaiah.  VI.  3.)  This  is 
Lowth's  translation. 


268  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

trivial,  and  it  is  better  to  proceed  at  once  to 
consider  what  effects  the  recognised  custom  of  choral 
song  had  on  the  arrangement  of  the  services  in  the 
Temple.  And  it  will  be  found  to  have  had  very- 
important  effects  indeed,  since  not  only  would  it 
imply  two  choirs  of  singers,  but  also  two  bands  of 
instrumentalists,  and  very  likely  would  affect  the  in- 
ternal arrangements  of  the  Temple  itself,  on  which  we 
are  left  to  speculate,  in  necessitating  two  rows  of 
seats  facing  one  another,  not  unlike  the  stalls  in  our 
own  churches.  And  that  this  was  the  arrangement  in 
Solomon's  Temple,  we  may  judge  from  the  arrange- 
ments in  Nehemiah's  time  at  the  ceremony  of  the 
dedication  of  the  wall  of  Jerusalem,  which  probably 
partook  of  the  nature  of  the  Temple  Service,  "  when  the 
chiefs  of  the  Levites,  Hashabiah,  Sherebiah,  and 
Jeshua,  the  Son  of  Kadmiel  "  were  appointed  "  ivith 
their  bi'ethren  over  against  them  to  praise  and  give 
thanks  according  to  the  commandment  of  David,  the 
man  of  God "  (so  that  it  was  undoubtedly  a  revival  of 
the  old  practice),  "  ward  over  agaijtst  ward."'^  "  Two 
great  companies  of  them  that  gave  thanks,"  says 
Nehemiah,2  "  were  appointed,  whereof  one  went  to  the 
right  hand  upon  the  wall,  and  after  them  went  Hosh- 
aiah  and  half  the  princes  of  Judah,"  (so  that  it  looks 
as  if  the  whole  disposal  of  the  ceremony  was  affected 
by  the  choral  requirements,)  a  band  of  trumpeters 
also  went  with  them.^ — "and  the  other  company  of 
them  that    gave    thanks   went    over   against   them.       So 


I.    Nehemiah,  XII.  24. 

2  lb.  XII.  31  He  is  here  alluding  to  the  ceremony  at  the  dedication 
of  the  wall  of  Jerusalem,  which  however  we  may  well  consider  as  but  an  out- 
door replication  of  the  usual  ceremony.  3    lb,  35. 


THE   HEBREWS.  269 

Stood    the    two    companies    of   them  that  gave  thanks  in 
the  house  of  God."^ 

It  should  seem  that  we  may  fairly  argue  back 
from  this  example  to  the  arrangements  of  the  Temple 
services  themselves,  and  assume  that  there  were  two 
choirs  of  Levites,  or  possibly  one  of  Priests,  the  other 
of  Levites,  stationed  opposite  one  another  at  either 
side  of  the  Temple,  who  sang  in  antiphon  the  psalms 
and  canticles  which  went  to  make  up  the  service. 
The  singers  were  flanked  by  instrumentalists,  composed 
in  like  manner  partly  of  priests,  partly  of  Levites, 
who  each  had  their  peculiar  instruments  ;  for  while 
the  Levites  had  cymbals  and  psalteries  and  harps,^ 
the  priests  had  trumpets^  —  an  instrument  which 
appears  to  have  been  exclusively  reserved  for  them. 
Appearing  in  its  oldest  form  as  a  trumpet  of  ram's  horn^ 
— by  the  time  we  are  speaking  of  it  was  made  of  brass 
and  gold.  There  were  many  superstitions  attaching  to 
the  instrument — it  was  the  trumpet  that  had  caused  the 
walls  of  Jericho  to  fall  and  had  struck  the  Midianites 
with  panic — and  doubtless  a  peculiarly  sacred  character 
attached  to  it,  which  marked  it  out  as  especially  the  priests' 
instrument. 


1  lb.  38.  40.  This  allusion  to  the  "two  companies"  seems  to  confirm  the 
view  stated  above. 

2  I  Chronicles.  XXV.  i.  3.  6.  That  phrase  m  verse  5,  of  the  same 
chapter,  "to  lift  up  the  horn,"  must  certainly  be  taken  in  the  purely  fig- 
urative sense  "To  praise."  Those  commentators  who  take  it  as  "to  play  the 
trumpet,"  miss  the  fact  for  which  we  are  here  contending,  and  which  has 
been  amply  demonstrated  by  others,  that  the  trumpet  was  peculiar  to  the 
priests,  cf.  also  2  Chronicles.  V.  12.  XXIX.  53.  i  Chron.  XVI.  5.  XV.  20 
Nehemiah.  XII.  27.  Ezra,  III.  10. 

3  Nehemiah.  XII.  35.  Chron.  V.  12.  i.  Chron.  XV.  24.  XVI.  6,  XLII.  2. 
Numbers  X.  8.  Joshua.  VI.  4.  8.  9, 

4  Joshua.  VI.  8. 


270  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

We  are  not  to  think  of  any  elaborate  harmony  in  the 
Hebrew  Temple  Services,  such  as  characterised  the  per- 
formances of  the  Egyptians.  To  the  Hebrews  Music  was 
not  an  Art,  but  a  Voice  in  which  they  poured  forth  their 
soul  to  Him  "  that  inhabited  the  praises  of  Israel."  i  To 
dally  with  the  musical  relations  of  notes,  or  to  endeavour 
to  enhance  the  effect  by  graceful  combinations  of  instru- 
ments or  sounds,  were  thoughts  very  far  from  their  earnest 
minds.2  "  The  singers  and  the  trumpeters  were  as  07ie  to 
make  one  sound  to  be  heard  in  praising  and  thanking  the 
Lord."  3  "  One  hundred  and  twenty  priests  blowing  with 
trumpets"^ — a  scream  of  sound  !  Harshness  is  forgiven  to 
that  enthusiasm  which  so  wrestles  for  expression,  and 
sees  Heaven  open  before  its  eyes,  "  For  when  they  lifted 
up  their  Voice  with  the  trumpets  and  the  cymbals  and 
instruments  of  music,  and  praised  the  Lord,  saying,  '  For 
he  is  good  :  for  his  mercy  endureth  for  ever  ;  behold  then 
the  house  was  filled  with  a  cloud,  even  the  house  of  the 
Lord  :  so  that  the  priests  could  not  stand  to  minister  by 
reason  of  the  cloud  ;  for  the  glory  of  the  Lord  had  filled 
the  house  of  God."  ^ 

Now  in  this  swallowing  up  of  all  into  enthusiasm,  this 
contempt  of  beauty  and  the  fair  outside  of  Music,  we 
may  see  the  contrast  between  the  Hebrews  and  the 
Egyptians.  In  the  Egyptian  temples  there  were  the 
Priestesses    singing    and    rattling    their    sistrums,^    flutes 


1  Psalms  XXII.  3.  Ambros  has  admirably  phrased  it  in  the  following  sen- 
tence, which  seems  to  me  to  sum  up  the  complete  spirit  of  the  Hebrew  music  : 
"  Sie  wird  die  Verbindungsbruckez  wischen  der  Menschen  und  der  iiber  Natur 
stehendenGeisterwelt;siewird  Traegerinnder  Gebeter,&bringt  als  gnadenvoUes 
Gegengeschenk  vom  Gotte  Abrahams,  Isaaks,  und  Jakobs  prophetische  Erleu- 
chtung.  (Geschichte  I.  196.) 

2  Sie  war  keine  darstellung  der  Schonen  durch  Tone,  to  use  the  words 
of  Ambros. 

3  2  Chronicles  V,  13.  4    lb.  12.  5    lb.  13.  14. 

6  Lepsius,  Denkmaeler  aus  .^gypten,  Abtbeil  HI.  Band.  VHI.  Blatt. 
244.  247. 


THE   HEBREWS.  27 1 

playing,^  lyres  and  lutes  swept  by  the  hands  of  women,^ 
all  beautiful  and  melodious  in  sound :  the  Hebrews 
would  not  tolerate  women  within  the  temple's  precints, 
their  Choruses  were  composed  entirely  of  men  singers,^ 
even  boy's  voises  they  were  careless  to  take  advantage 
of,  and  the  national  instrument  of  the  land,  the  Harp, 
was  made  to  give  way  in  the  enthusiasm  of  devotion  to 
the  Trumpet. 

The  reign  of  David  is  an  idyllic  episode  in  the  history 
of  Israel,  and  David  himself  stands  out  in  many  points 
a  contrast  to  his  countrymen.  The  sternness  of  the 
national  temper  is  seen  much  softened  in  him,  and  in 
thinking  of  the  minstrel  king  we  are  apt  to  forget  that 
we  have  before  us  the  rare  and  short-lived  bloom,  which 
appeared  but  once  or  twice  on  Hebrew  history.  We  gain 
a  truer  conception  of  the  features  which  were  likely  to 
dominate  their  Music,  by  thinking  of  the  prophets  of  old, 
Moses,  Joshua,  Samuel,  by  remembering  the  harshness 
of  the  Hebrew  language,  with  its  abundance  of  aspirates 
and  sibilants  and  gutturals,  it  •' plethora  of  consonants 
and  feeblenes  in  vowels.  The  fact  of  such  a  language 
being  developed  in  the  first  instance  shows  a  want  of 
the  sense  for  beauty  of  tone,  or  rather  it  shows  the 
deliberate  preference  of  force  to  beauty.  And  we  may 
conjecture   that  the  character  of  the  language  which  was 


1  As  we  may  know  from  Strabo: — 

iv  OE  rtj)  t£pti>  Tov  Oaipicog  ou/c  f'sfortv  ovte  wSov  ovre  av- 
ArjTTiv  OVTE  xpaXrriv  airap'^^EaOai  no  ^eio  k  aO  air  e  p  r  ol  g 
aWoic.  Strabo  I.  6.  Also  from  a  sculpture  in  Wilkinson.  II.  where  priests 
are  offering  incense  to  the  sound  of  a  flute. 

2  See  the  sculptures  in  Wilkinson  of  priestesses  playing  these  instruments. 

3  The  sole  argument  for  the  existence  of  women  singers  is  I.  Chronicles  XXV. 
5,  b,  where  "  these  "  however  probably  applies  only  to  the  men.  At  the  same 
time  we  must  not  forget  those  verses  in  the  psalms.  "  It  is  well  seen,  O  Lord, 
how  thou  goest,"  &c.  ;  and  perhaps  the  occasional  employment  of  women  as 
instrumentalists  on  festivals  and  great  occasions  was  always  allowed,  but  not 
as  singers. 


272  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

at  the  same  time  so  strongly  in  keeping  with  the 
character  of  the  people,  should  also  be  communicated  to 
the  Music.  Their  chants  and  psalms  we  must  imagine 
they  intoned  or  recited  in  an  elevated  voice,  with  but 
little  to  distinguish  the  delivery  from  ordinary  recitation 
except  the  monotony  of  the  tone  and  the  markedness  of 
the  cadences.^  All  their  enthusiasm  was  centred  on  the 
thought ;  and  the  form  in  which  the  thought  was  expressed 
was  entirely  a  secondary  consideration.  And  this  is  what 
always  happens  ;  when  Music  and  Poetry  are  blended 
so  thoroughly  as  they  were  with  the  Hebrews,  the  Music 
necessarily  suffers  from  the  union.  In  this  way  they 
could  dispense  for  a  long  time  with  the  aid  of  regular 
singers  in  the  services  of  the  Tabernacle,^  not  through 
any  indifference  to  the  due  performance  of  the  services, 
as  I  take  it,  but  because  they  regarded  the  aesthetic 
element  as  of  purely  trivial  import.  During  this  time 
the  Levites,  who  were  these  regular  singers,  were  suffered 
to  become  completely  disorganised,  and  eventually  to 
degenerate  into  a  half  mendicant  order  wandering  up  and 
down  Israel,  ^  and  dependent  for  their  bread  on  the 
hospitality  of  chance  entertainers  ;  nor  was  it  until  the  time 
of  David  that  they  were  restored  to  their  former  position 


1  Clemens  who  heard  some  of  the  ancient  chants  says  they  reminded  him 
of  the  Dorian  mode,  "which  statement,"  adds  a  commentator,  "we  must  take  as 
referring  to  their  earnestness  and  solemnity  " — perhaps  better  to  their  gravity 
or  low  pitch.  The  attempt  to  restore  the  Hebrew  style  from  rifacimentos  of 
the  chants  used  by  modern  Jews  has  always  ended  in  failure.  Not  only  are  the 
modern  Jewish  chants  of  a  trivial  character  by  comparison,  but  "  in  addition 
to  this,"  says  one  who  knows  them  well,  "  the  German,  Italian,  Spanish  &c. 
Jews  all  have  different  chants  and  different  styles,  and  agree  in  nothing,  and 
so  there  is  no  standpoint  for  comparison."  Any  one  wishing  to  test  the  truth 
of  this  assertion  will  find  it  fully  borne  out  by  examining  the  mddern  Jewish 
chants  in  Engel's  Music  of  most  ancient  Nations. 

2  That  is  during  the  time  of  the  Judges.  Ewald,  Geschichte.  II.  454. 

3  Cf.  Judges.  XVII.  9. 


THE   HEBREWS.  273 

That  this  restoration  of  the  Levites  should  take  place  under 
the  Minstrel  King  was  natural,^  and,  generally  speaking,  as  we 
have  remarked,  in  David's  reign  there  are  everywhere  signs 
of  a  Musical  Renaissance^  and  now  for  the  first  time  the 
conception  of  music  as  an  art  begins  to  appear.  The  Levites 
under  David's  direction  were  officered  and  arranged  in  so 
many  divisions,  which  had  to  relieve  one  another  in  the 
temple  duties  ;  ^  they  began  to  be  educated  specially  for 
their  functions,  and  were  required  to  commence  regular 
training  at  the  age  of  twenty  ;3  the  psalms  that  were  to  be 
sung  in  the  service,  even  when  written  by  so  eminent 
a  composer  as  the  king  himself,  were  first  submitted  for 
revision  or  practice  to  the  most  skilled  musicians  of  the 
choir  ;  4  and  there  was  a  great  deal  in  the  way  of  adapt- 
ation and  setting  went  on,  as  we  may  judge  from  those 
numerous  Psalms  which  remain  to  us,  whose  title  has  no 
connection  with  the  subject  of  the  Psalm  itself — ^from 
which  we  must  infer  that  the  title  refers  to  the  tune  to 
which  the  Psalm  was  sung,  and  that  therefore  it  was  no 
uncommon  thing  to  adapt  one  Psalm  to  the  tune  of 
another.5  Whether  this  practice  points  to  the  existence 
of  traditional  tunes  or  modes  of  chanting  which  were  now  for 


1  It  is  suggestive  that  David's  birthplace,  Bethlehem,  should  be  in  such 
close  proximity  to  the  villag^es  of  the  Netophathites,  which  were  inhabited 
exclusively  by  "the  singers"  and  "the  sons  of  the  singers,"  that  is  to  say, 
by  the  Levites.  cf.  i.  Chron.  IX.  16.  Nehemiah.  XII.  28.  29. 

2  3  courses  of  chorus  singers  and  players,  viz.  the  Kohathites,  Gershonites, 
and  Merarites.  i.  Chron.  XXIII.  6.  sq.  Twenty-four  courses  of  'cunning' 
singers  and  players,  who  we  must  presume  were  soloists  or  leaders  of  the 
others.  There  were  12  in  each  course — 288  in  all.  i  Chron.  XXV.  7.  9.  sq. 
These  skilled  minstrels  were,  in  the  first  instance  at  least,  nearly  all 
Kohathites.  cf.  i  Chron.  XXV.  with  Id.  VI.  S3-  39- 

3  I  Chron    XXIII.  24.  27.  4     i  Chron.  XVI.  7. 

5  e.  g.  the  psalm  whose  heading  is  "  Von  der  stummen  Taube  unter  den 
Fremden,"  and  about  which  there  is  not  a  word  in  the  whole  Psalm.  For 
Other  instances,  Forkel.  Greschjchte  der  Musik,  I.  141. 

T 


274  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

the  first  time  collected  together  and  ai ranged,  or  whether 
such  traditional  tunes  existed  at  all,  may  admit  conjecture.  ^ 
To  the  same  period  also  we  must_  refer  the  establishment 
of  those  Schools  of  the  Prophets,  in  which  Music  and 
Poetry  were  the  leading  subjects  of  instruction,  and 
which,  from  being  training-places  for  the  Temple  services 
under  David  and  Solomon,^  ^  passed  in  more  troublous 
times  into  being  centres  of  mysticism  and  fanaticism,  from 
whence  issued  those  hair-mantled  anchorites,  who  were 
the  terror   of  the    Israelitish    Monarchs. 

In  these  Schools  was  worked  out  in  a  way  such 
as  it  never  has  been  before  or  since,  that  mysterious 
connection  between  Music  and  Religious  Inspiration, 
which  we  have  had  occasion  to  notice  in  an  early 
part  of  this  work.  Standing  out  as  these  men  did 
in  bitter  opposition  to  the  tendencies  of  the  age,, 
and  as  embodiments  of  that  ascetic  spirit  which  was 
now  begining  to  wax  faint  in  Israel,  it  was  natural 
that  they  should  inveigh  against  the  art  of  the 
court  life,  which  could  seem  to  them  little  better 
than  effeminate  fooling.  "Ye  that  lie  upon  beds  of 
ivory,  and  stretch  yourselves  upon  couches,"  cries  the 
rough  herdsman  of  Tekoa,  "ye  that  chant  to  the 
sound  of  the  viol  and  invent  to  yourselves  instruments 
of    Music,  and  drink     wine    out    of    bowls,    and    anoint 


1  The  existence  of  traditional  tunes  is  generally  considered  to  be  proved  by 
the  3rd  verse  of  the  137th  Psalm,  "Sing  us  one  of  the  songs  of  Zion."  But 
this  would  only  seem  to  indicate  a  national  style  of  singing. 

2  It  was  the  duty  of  the  prophets  in  these  schools  to  compose  music  for  the 
Temple  Services.  (Lowth.  De  Sacra  Hebrae.  Pralect.  XVIII.)  It  seems 
there  would  be  no  bar  to  our  identifying  the  schools  of  the  prophets  with 
'  the  villages  of  the  singers  '  to  which  we  have  before  alluded,  for  not  only 
were  these  villages  '  round  about  Jerusalem  and  in  the  villages  of  Netopha- 
thi,'  (Nehemiah  XII.  28.)  but  they  must  have  been  spread  here  and  there 
throughout  the  land  agreeably  to  the  prophecy  in  Genesis  XLIX.  7.  '"I  will 
divide  them  in  Jacob  and  scatter  them  in  Israel." 


THE   HEBREWS.  2/5 

yourselves  with  the  chief  ointments,  take  away 
from  me^.the  noise  of  your  songs,  for  I  will  not  hear 
the  melody  of  your  viols."  Even  the  Temple  Services  did 
not  escape  their  invective.  "The  songs  of  the  Temple 
shall  be  howlings,"  says  the  same  Amos.  And  in  him 
and  others  like  him  spoke  the  real  spirit  of  the 
Jewish  people,  which  is  doubtless  the  reason  why 
they  were  tolerated  and  respected.  This  lying  on 
ivory  couches  and  basking  in  the  melody  of  viols  was 
very  far  removed  from  the  genuine  national  temper, 
and  if  we  would  follow  the  track  of  the  purely  Jewish 
Music,  we  must  turn  from  the  courts  of  Jerusalem 
and  Samaria,  where  Assyrian  and  Egyptian  influences 
were  making  themselves  every  day  more  strongly  felt, 
and  betake  ourselves  to  these  very  Schools  of  the 
•Prophets,  which,  secluded  in  the  mountain  fastnesses  of 
Gilead  or  Bethel,  served  as  rallying  places  for  the 
disaffected  and  the  patriot,  and  continued  to  nurse  the 
spirit  of  religious  enthusiasm  after  it  had  been  long 
extinguished  among  the  people  at  large.  And  we  shall 
find  that  the  music,  which  was  cultivated  there,  was  of 
a  very  different  order  to  the  music  that  Amos  declaimed 
againsi,  that  it  was  probably  a  reversion  to,  or  rather 
a  continuation  of  the  old  devotional  chant  or  psalm 
in  its  strict  traditional  form  ;  for  the  literary  studies  of 
the  scholars  in  these  Schools  was  confined  to  the  Law 
and  the  ancient  writings  of  the  nation,  and  the  fact  of 
an  elderly  prophet  being  vested  with  an  almost  despotic 
authority  in  their  management  seems  warranty  for  im- 
agining that  the  old  traditions  were  peculiarly  preserved. 
Here  then  as  we  said  was  worked  out  in  a  way  it  never 
has  been  before  or  since,  that  mysterious  connection 
between  Music  and  Religious  Inspiration,  which  we  have 
had  occasion  to  refer  to  in  an.  early  part  of  this  work. 
The  Prophetic  Ecstasy   was   doubtless  necessary   in  a 


276  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

greater  or  less  degree  for  the  attainment  of  all  prophecy. 
Whether  the  inspiration  took  the  form  of  a  vision  or 
a  voice,  it  was  no  mere  mental  picture  or  secret 
whispering  of  thought,  but  a  great  tangible  relief 
jutting  out  upon  the  sight,  or  a  'great  Voice'  sounding 
in  the  ears — that  is  to  say,  it  was  the  concomitant  of 
an  abnormal  condition  of  mind,  such  as  the  prophetic 
ecstasy  was  calculated  to  produce.  Now  since  one  of 
the  features  of  all  high  spiritual  exaltation,  and  particularly 
of  this  prophetic  enthusiasm  we  are  speaking  of,  was 
the  morbid  acuteness  of  the  hearing,  which  attained 
as  it  were  an  ocular  power,  for  "  Micah  saw  the  Word  of 
the  Lord,"  and  "  Paul  in  a  trance  saw  him  saying,"  &c., 
this  may  furnish  us  with  a  hint  why  it  seems  the 
prophetic  ecstasy  should  be  frequently  brought  on  by 
Music.  Perhaps  indeed  it  was  so  induced  more  frequently 
than  we  are  aware  of,  for  besides  the  instances  actually 
recorded  in  the  Bible,  the  fact  of  all  prophecy  being 
delivered  in  the  form  of  chanted  verse  ^  will  at  any  rate 
show  how  essential  an  element  Music  was  to  the  vision- 
ary condition  of  the  consciousness.  But  in  the  case  of 
Elisha,  who  was  the  president  of  one  of  the  prophetic 
Schools,  2  we  have  a  practical  illustration  of  the  principl  e, 
for  being  asked  by  the  Kings  of  Judah  and  Israel  to 
predict  the  result  of  their  war  with  the  King  of  Moab, 
he  was  unable  to  do  so  until  a  minstrel  was  brought 
to  play  to  him.  'And  it  came  to  pass  that  as  the 
minstrel  played,  the  hand  of  the  Lord  came  upon 
Elisha,' 3  and  he  then  uttered  the  desired  prediction. 
In  a  similar  way,  at  an  earlier  period  of  Jewish  history, 


1  As  "  to  prophesy". .  "  to  sing,"  so  Prophet. ."  the  singer^'  and  Prophe- 
tess, "  the  songstress."  cf,  in  Judges  IV.     "  Deborah,  the  SongstresSi" 

2  Kings.  VI.  32.3    Kings.  III.  15. 


THE  HEBREWS.  277 

contemporaneously  with  the  first  establishment  of  these 
Schools,  '  a  company  of  prophets  from  the  School  of 
Bethel  met  Saul  on  his  way  thither,  and  they  played 
on  the  psaltery,  and  tabret,  and  pipe,  and  harp,  and 
prophesied  ;  and  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  came  upon 
Saul,  and  he  prophesied  with  them,  and  was  turned  into 
another  man.'^  It  was  likewise  the  custom  of  Saul 
'  to  prophesy  in  the  midst  of  his  house  while  David 
played  the  harp>  To  Saul  also  we  must  turn  if  we 
would  find  what  this  prophesying  in  its  most  exalted 
form  actually  was,  for  in  this  condition  '  he  would  tear 
off  all  his  clothes,  and  lie  stretched  on  the  ground 
for  a  night  and  a  day  together.'^  The  condition  of  a 
man  under  the  ecstasy  was  like  that  of  '  a  lyre,'  said 
Montanus,  '  swept  by  the  plectrum.'  He  was  an  irres- 
ponsible agent ;  he  was  unconscious  of  what  he  said 
or  did.  "  For  when  the  Spirit  of  God  seizes  us,"  says 
Balaam,  "  it  utters  whatsoever  sounds  and  words  it 
pleases,  without  any  knowledge  on  our  parts  ;  for  when 
it  has  come  into  us  there  is  nothing  in  us  that  remains 
our  own."''-  Hence  "  the  prophets  were  often  called  mad 
or  frenzied."^  But  after  the  frenzy  had  continued  some 
time,  "the  highest  point  which  the  inspiration  reached 
was  a   Song."6     And   this   was   the  prophecy. 

Now  we  may  well  admire  that  Music  could  be 
capable  of  inducing  such  effects  as  these,  and  if  we 
ask  the  cause,  it  would  appear  that  to  finely  strung 
temperaments  Music  acts  as  a  nervous  stimulant,  producing 
parallel    effects    to    those    of  any   other    stimulant,  first 


I    Samuel  X.  6,  2    Samuel  XVIII.  10.    "  As  at  other  times  "—these 

words  point  of  course  to  a  custom. 

3  Stanley's  Jewish  Church.  II.  21.  cf.  also  Samuel  XIX.  24. 

4  Balaam  in  Josephus.  IV.  5    Davidson  on  Kings  IX.  II. 
6    Davidson's  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament.  II.  429. 


278  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

soothing,  and  if  continued,  intoxicating ;  and  then  finally 
comes  the  reaction,  in  which  the  mind  recovers  its  balance, 
and  in  its  sublime  and  tranquil  exaltation  the  eyes  see 
visions,  the  ears  hear  voices,  and  the  tongue  utters 
words  that  beggar  the  powers  of  deliberate  expression. 
And  thus  it  was  that  Urbain  Grandier  broke  forth  into 
celestial  singing  at  the  height  of  his  torture,  and  the 
Templars  sang  as  they  were  fastened  to  the  stake,  and 
enthusiasts  of  all  ages  have  uttered  the  beatitude  of  the 
spirit  in  the  tones  of  song. 

But  the  power  of  Music  to  provoke  this  very  beati- 
tude and  triumph — the  making  it  the  cause  as  well  as 
the  effect — this  is  peculiarly  Hebrew.  Mortification,  bodily 
pain,  religious  ecstasy  were  the  cause  of  it  with  those 
men  we  have  just  alluded  to,  but  with  the  Hebrews, 
.so  susceptible  and  delicately  feminine  was  their  tem- 
perament, that  Music  alone  could  sometimes  cause  it. 
And  to  the  same  head  must  be  referred  those  instances 
of  the  Medical  use  of  Music  which  also  occur  in  the 
Bible,  as  when  David  was  sent  for  to  play  the  harp  to 
Saul,  who  was  troubled  with  an  evil  spirit.  "  And  it  came 
to  pass  that  when  the  evil  spirit  was  upon  Saul,  that 
David  played  with  his  hand;  and  Saul  was  refreshed 
and  was  well,  and  the  evil  spirit  departed  from  him.''^ 
But  here  the  application  would  be  somewhat  different 
For  the  object  aimed  at  would  no  longer  be  to  intoxicate 
the  nervous  system,  but  only  to  gently  stimulate  it,  or  as 
we  should  phrase  it,  to  put  the  jaded  fibres  in  the 
condition  most  favourable  to  the  recovery  of  their 
irritability,  not  to  provoke  this  irritability  into  existence 
by  shocking  it.  And  seeing  that  the  application  of 
Electricity    to    Therapeutics    in    modern    times    presents 


I     Samuel  XYI.  23. 


THE    HEBREWS.  279 

many  points  in  common  with  the  curative  appHcation 
of  Music  in  ancient  times,  and  particularly  in  the  fact  of 
the  induced  current  being  most  effectually  applied  through 
the  auditory  nerves,  we  may  speculate  whether  Music 
may  not  be  merely  a  form  of  Electricity.  And  since 
the  central  organs  of  the  nervous  system,  as  well  as  the 
nerve  trunks  that  pass  through  the  great  cavities,  on 
account  of  their  being  completely  surrounded  by  soft 
parts  and  bones,  which  cannot  be  forced  into  contact 
with  them  by  external  compression,  are  the  most  completely 
withdrawn  from  the  influence  of  the  electric  current, 
that  form  of  electricity  which  had  a  direct  effect  on 
the  nervous  organisation  through  its  immediate  access 
to  the  brain  by  the  medium  of  the  ear,  was  naturally 
the  first  form  that  received  notice  from  men,  because 
it  was  so  patent  and  easy  of  application.  And  it  was 
naturally  limited  in  its  application  to  the  cure  of  those 
diseases  which  have  their  seat  in  the  brain,  as  th 
different  varieties  of  mania,  such  as  melancholy,  hallu- 
cination, &c.  .And  the  invigorating  and  tranquillising  effects 
of  Music  in  cases  of  grief,  anxiety,  over-excitement, 
&c„  which  are  all  but  modified  forms  of  brain 
paralysis,  are  effects  which  many  of  us  have  no  doubt 
experienced  ourselves,  and  will  enable  us  to  understand 
how  its  potency  would  infinitely  increase  with  a  people 
of  a  far  more  susceptible  nervous  organisation  than 
ourselves.  Whether  however  we  must  not  search  for  a 
more  physical  explanation  than  this,  might  admit  con- 
jecture. For  looking  at  the  fact  that  the  essence  of 
Musical  Sound  is  regularity  of  vibration,  we  might 
speculate  that  its  precise  effect  would  lie  in  restoring, 
by  sympathy  with  its  own  regularity  of  vibration, 
that  rhythmic  pulsation  of  the  blood  and  brain  which 
disease  or  over-excitement  had  rendered  irregular  and  fitful. 
In  this  way  the  diseases  it  would  particularly  reach  would 


2 So  HISTORY   OF   MUSIC. 

be  nervous  diseases,  such  as  hysterical  affections,  hypoch- 
ondriasis &c.,  in  which  trembhngs  and  palpitations  are 
the  leading  symptoms,  and  to  this  order  of  diseases 
rather  than  to  varieties  of  mania  we  should  then 
refer  those  affections  for  which  antiquity  held  it  a 
sovereign  specific.  In  this  way  it  would  also  tend  to 
counteract  through  sympathy  that  irritation  or  restless- 
ness of  nerve  which  we  call  Pain,  by  re-inducing 
regularity  of  function  ;  whence  modern  surgeons  are  now 
beginning   to    use  Music    as    an  anodyne.^ 

Numerous  are  the  miraculous  effects  that  have  been 
ascribed  to  music  by  Rabbinical  tradition,^  but  to  suggest 
that  the  high  estimation  which  it  enjoyed  in  Israel  was 
in  any  way  due  to  its  supposed  miraculous  virtues  would 
of  course  be  to  go  too  far.  The  Hebrew  minstrels 
would  never  have  risen  above  the  social  status  and 
importance  of  their  brethren  in  other  lands,  had  not 
their  subject  been  the  noblest  that  man  can  aspire  to 
sing  of,  and  had  it  not  been  in  such  thorough  harmony 
with  all  the  highest  feelings  of  their  nation.  For  they 
who    sing    of  love,  when  men  are  arming  themselves  for 


1  M.  Vigouroux  has  invented  a  method  of  alleviating  pain  by  administer- 
ing to  the  affected  part  a  recurrent  series  of  waves  of  sound  by  means  of  a 
tuning-fork  and  a  sounding-board.  M.  Boudet  has,  I  believe,  improved  upon 
M,  Vigoroux'  invention  by  keeping  the  tuning-fork  in  constant  vibrcition  by 
means  of  an  electric  magnet,  and  communicating  the  undulations  to  the  skin 
by  means  of  a  rod.  Neuralgia  is  removed  in  a  few  minutes  by  this  means,  and 
anaesthetic  effects  are  induced  by  a  longer  action. 

2  P.  de  Bretagne,|De  excellentia  musicae  antiquae  Hebrseorum.  The  subject 
of  the  curative  power  of  Music  on  the  lines  of  the  old  medicine  possesses  an 
ample  literature.  Cornelius  Agrippa  devotes  a  chapter  of  his  Occult  Philoso- 
phy to  it;  Andreas  Tiraquellus,  a  chapter  of  his  Commentary  de  Nobilitate. 
Medeira's  Inaudita  Philosophia  de  viribus  musices,  Delrius'  De  musica  magica, 
andReineccius'  De  effectibus  musices  merito  suspectis,are  specimens  of  complete 
worlcscn  the  subject.  More  modern  works  are  Randnitz'  Musikals  Heilmittel, 
which  is  rather  puerile  and  fanciful,  Albrecht's  Tractatus  Physicus  de  effectibus 
musices,  &c.,  &c. 


THE  HEBREWS.  28 1 

the  battle,  must  expect  an  inattentive  audience,  and  they 
who  lisp  of  green  trees  and  gurgling  brooks  to  men  who 
are  taken  up  with  the  stern  duties  of  life,  must  not 
complain  if  they  get  neglect  or  even  contempt  for  their 
reward.  But  these  poets  of  God  sang  the  praises  and  the 
might  of  God  to  a  nation  intoxicated  with  deity,  and 
this  is  why  the  fame  of  the  brightest  Minnesinger  shrinks 
to  a  speck  before  the  majesty  of  Isaiah.  Wild  and  artless 
may  their  strains  have  been,  and  it  is  idle  to  attempt  to 
recall  the  melodies  that  were  flung  into  the  breezes 
and  lost  there.  The  wrappings  of  their  minstrelsy  are 
lost  for  ever.  But  the  noblest  part  of  it  remains,  and 
in  the  words  they  sang  and  the  thoughts  they  uttered, 
we  may  see  how  the  subject  that  inspired  them 
strained  every  fibre  of  the  men  to  the  struggle  of 
expressing  it.  So  much  nobler  was  the  inspiration 
that  came  from  Jehovah  to  the  inspiration  that  has 
come  from  any  other  source  before  or  since  them. 
For  the  Egyptian  poets  drew  their  inspiration  from 
their  King.  He  was  the  fountain  of  their  lays,  the 
spirit  of  all  their  genius.  And  how  did  they  achieve 
their  task  ? 

"My  King,"  sings  Pentaur,  "my  king,  his  arms  are 
mighty,  his  heart  is  firm,  his  courage  in  the  fight  is 
like  Monthu's,  the  god  of  war.  He  leads  his  soldiers 
to  unkown  peoples.  He  grasps  his  sword  and  buckler, 
and  he  is  a  wall  of  iron  to  his  soldiers,  he  is  their 
shield  in  the  day  of  battle.  He  bends  his  bow  and 
none  can  resist  him.  Mightier  than  a  hundred  thou- 
sand men  he  marches  forwards.  His  courage  is  like 
the  courage  of  a  bull.  He  has  struck  down  all  the 
nations   who    have    banded   together    against    him.      No 


282  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC, 

one  knows  the  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands 
that  stood  against  him.  A  hundred  thousand  sank  at 
his  glance.  He  is  terrible  when  his  battle-shout 
goes  up ;  he  is  braver  than  all  the  world.  He  is 
like  a  raging  lion  in  a  valley  of  gazelles.  His 
orders  are  obeyed.  No  adversary  dare  contradict  him. 
His  counsel  is  wise :  his  resolutions  are  perfect  :  when 
he  wears  the  royal  crown,  Atef,  and  declares  his 
will,'  he  is  a  protector  of  his  people  against  un- 
righteousness. His  heart  is  like  a  mountain  of  iron. 
Such   is    King    Rameses    Miamun."^ 

Now  hear   Habakkuk  : — 

"  God  came  from  Teman,  and  the  Holy  One 
from  Mount  Paran.  Selah.  His  glory  covered  the 
heavens,   and    the   earth   was    full    of    his    praise. 

And  his  brightness  was  as  the  light ;  he  had  horns 
coming  out  of  his  hand :  there  was  the  hiding  of  his 
power. 

Before  him  went  the  pestilence :  burning  coals  went 
forth  at  his  feet. 

He  stood  and  measured  the  earth :  he  beheld  and 
drave  asunder  the  nations  ;  and  the  everlasting  moun- 
tains were  scattered,  the  perpetual  hills  did  bow  :  his 
ways    are    everlasting. 

I  saw  the  tents  of  Cushan  in  affliction :  and  the 
curtains    of  the    land    of   Midian  did  tremble. 


I    Brugsch.  Geschichte  JEgypteas.  501.  sq. 


THE   HEBREWS  .  283 

Was  the  Lord  displeased  against  the  rivers  ?  was 
thine  anger  against  the  rivers  ?  was  thy  wrath  against 
the  sea,  that  thou  didst  ride  upon  thy  horses  and  thy 
chariots  of    salvation  ? 

Thy  bow  was  made  quite  naked,  according  to  the 
oaths  of  the  tribes,  even  thy  word.  Selah.  Thou 
didst   cleave   the   earth    with   rivers. 

The  mountains  saw  thee,  and  they  trembled  ;  the 
overflowing  of  the  waters  passed  by  :  the  deep  uttered 
his  voice,  and  lifted  up  his  hands  on  high. 

The  sun  and  moon  stood  still  in  their  habitation  :  at 
the  light  of  thine  arrows  they  went,  at  the  shining  of 
thy  glittering  spear. 

Thou  didst  march  through  the  land  in  indignation: 
thou  didst  thresh  the  heathen  in  anger. 

Thou  wentest  forth  for  the  salvation  of  thy  people, 
even  for  the  salvation  of  thine  anointed :  thou  woun- 
dedst  the  head  out  of  the  house  of  the  wicked,  by 
discovering   the  foundation  unto  the  neck.     Selah. 

Thou  didst  strike  through  with  his  staves  the  head 
of  his  villages  ;  they  came  out  as  a  whirlwind  to  scat- 
ter me :  their  rejoicing  was  to  devour  the  poor 
secretly. 

Thou  didst  walk  through  the  sea  with  thine 
horses,    through    the  heap    of  great    waters. 

When  I  heard,  my  belly  trembled  ;  my  lips  quiv- 
ered at  the  voice :  rottenness  entered  into  my  bones, 
and     I     trembled     in     myself,     that     I     might    rest    in 


284  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

the  day  of  trouble  :  when  he  cometh  up  unto  the 
people,   he   will   invade    them    with    his    troops. 

Although  the  fig  tree  shall  not  blossom,  neither 
shall  any  fruit  be  found  in  the  vine  ;  the  labour  of 
the  olive  shall  fail,  and  the  fields  shall  yield  no 
meat ;  the  flock  shall  be  cut  off  from  the  fold,  and 
there   shall    be   no   herd    in   the    stalls : 

Yet  will  I  rejoice  in  the  Lord,  I  will  joy  in  the 
God    of  my    salvation. 

To  the  Chief  Singer  on  my  Stringed  Instruments. 


I  I  lacei  I  I 


THE    PIPE    RACES. 


CHAPTER      III. 


THE    CHINESE,    INDO-CHINESE,    AND 
OTHER    MONGOLOIDS. 


To  the  Chinese  mere  sensuous  delight  in  tone  presents 
such  attractions,  that  their  musical  system  is  occupied 
mainly  with  the  analysis  and  classification  of  the  dif- 
ferent qualities  of  Sound,  and  only  secondarily  with 
those  sequences  of  Sounds  which  we  call  Notes. 

They  excel  in  the  manufacture  of  Instruments,  and 
their  artistic  genius  shows  itself  in  the  novelty  and 
variety  of  form  which  they  give  them.  They  have  in- 
struments in  the  shape  of  birds'  eggs,i  of  bushels,^  of 
writing-tablets,^  of  tigers.''-  They  adorn  their  instruments 
with  silken  canopies,^  streams  of  tassels  and  ribbons,^ 
and  a  profusion  of  carvings.7  They  emblazon  them  with 
colours,  and  one  would  fancy  by  the  pains  they  spend 
on  them,  that  they  aimed  at  pleasing  the  eye  quite  as 
much  as  pleasing  the  ear  in  the  construction  of  them. 


I     Smith's  Wonders  of  Nature  and  Art.  Vol.  VI.  83        2    lb.        3    lb. 
4   lb,      5    La  Borde.  Essai  sur  la  Musique,  I,  Plates,       6    lb.      7    lb. 


286  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

According  to  the  Chinese,  there  are  8  different  musical 
sounds  in  nature,  each  possessing  a  well-marked  charac- 
ter peculiar  to  itself.^ 

There  are 

1  The  Sound  of  Skin. 

2  The  Sound  of  Stone. 

3  The  Sound  of  Metal. 

4  The  Sound  of  Baked  Earth. 

5  The  Sound  of  SiLK. 

6  The  Sound  of  WOOD. 

7  The  Sound  of  BAMBOO. 

8  The  Sound  of  GouRD. 

These  8  substances  then  and  in  the  order  named 
constitute  the  Scale  of  Nature,  and  as  they  exist  in 
Nature  are  the  gamut  of  the  Universal  Harmony.  So 
that  while  other  nations  hang  Harmony  in  the  sky,  the 
Chinese  riddle  the  earth  with  it.^ 

Nature  then  having  so  contrived,  Man  has  treated 
these  substances   for  his  own  use,  and  has  fashioned 


SKIN                    1 

nto 

DRUMS. 

STONE 

)) 

CYMBALS. 

METAL 

» 

BELLS. 

BAKED  EARTH 

)) 

HORNS. 

SILK 

» 

LUTES. 

WOOD 

)> 

CASTANETS  &  VIBRA- 
TING  INSTRUMENTS. 

BAMBOO 

» 

FLUTES. 

GOURD 

3) 

MOUTH   ORGANS. 

1  Pere  Amiot's  Memoiresconcernant  I'histoire  &c.,  des  Chinois.  VI:  29.  sq. 

2  For  the  mystical  account  of  it  see  Pere  Amyot.  loc.  cit. 


'     the  chinese.  '  287 

The  Sound  of  Skin 
Has  eight  varieties,  and  there  therefore  are,  8  different 
kinds  of  Drums,  which  vary  in  minute  points  of  construction, 
as  in  having  a  longer  or  a  fuller  barrel,  or  in  general  bulk, 
or  even  in  the  method  of  beating,^  for  the  8th  variety 
has  two  different  names,  according  as  it  is  struck  by  the 
right  hand  or  the  left.^  But  this  8th  variety  has 
another  peculiarity  ;  for  while  the  others  give  the  sound 
of  SKIN  alone,  it  qualifies  the  sound  of  SKIN  with  the 
sound  of  RICE — which  is  a  subordinate  sound  of 
Nature,  and  does  not  come  into  the  universal  gamut. 
And  this  is  how  the  Sound  of  Rice  is  given.  The 
barrel  of  the  drum  is  filled  with  the  husk  ■  of  Rice, 
which  has  been  beaten  from  the  grain  in  a  mortar ; 
and  being  filled  full  of  this,  it  gives  the  sound  of  the 
Rice  when  it  is  beaten,  as  well  as  the  sound  of  Skin. 3 
In  these  kind  of  drums,  also,  the  skin  of  the  drum- 
head must  not  only  be  tanned,  but  it  must  be  boiled 
for  a  long  time  in  pure  water.  4  The  sound  of  this 
drum    is   therefore    marvellously   sweet   and    mellow. 

The  Sound  of  Stone 
Is   extolled    by    Chinese   theorists    as    one   of  the    most 
beautiful  of  all  the  sounds.     It   is   said    to  give  a  sound 
midway  between    the  Sound  of  Metal  and  the  Sound  of 


I  TheTsoukou;  theYukou;  theHiuenkou;  theKinkou;  the  Toakou  (large); 
the  Takoou  (small) ;  the  Yakou  ;  and  the  Pofou.  To  show  the  miuute  points  of 
difference— the  Tsoukas  has  the  pedestal  which  supports  the  drum  (for  most 
of  these  are  supported  on  pedestals)  right  through  the  barrel;  the  Yukou  the 
same,  only  the  pedestal  is  buried  in  the  earth,  whence  we  may  conjecture 
harder  beating  for  this  drum ;  the  Hiuenkou  has  two  little  drums  sus- 
pended, one  on  each  side  of  the  barrel ;  the  Kinkou  is  the  Hiuenkou  orn- 
amented ;  the  Yukou  is  in  the  shape  of  a  barrel,  the  Pofou  in  the  shape  of  a 
cylinder.  Amiot.  36.  sq,  2, 

2  When  it  is  struck  by  the  right  hand,  and  with  the  motion  from  right  to 
left,  it  is  called  Po,  and  is  called  Fou,  when  it  is  struck  by  the  left  hand,  and 
with  the  motion  from  left  to  right.  lb.  38. 

3  Amiot.  VI.  38.  4  lb. 


288  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

Wood,  '  and  it  is  less  tart  and  rasping  than  the  Sound  of 
Metal,  and  much  brighter  than  the  sound  of  Wood — more 
brilliant  and  sweet  than  either.'  ^  To  make  the  stone 
instruments,  of  which  there  are  two  varieties,  the  Tse- 
King  and  the  Pien-King,  both  being  comprised  under 
the  general  name,  King,  the  stone  is  sliced  into  thin 
plates,  about  the  size  and  something  of  the  shape  of  a 
carpenter's  square.  ^  The  term  "  Cymbals  "  is  misleading? 
for  the  stones  are  not  clashed  together,  but  struck  like 
drums  with  a  mallet.  But  in  default  of  a  better  term 
it  will  be  well  to  keep  Cymbals,  since  the  Bells  also 
present  a  similar  discrepancy  with  ours,  for  the  Bells 
also  are  not  rung  with  a  clapper  inside,  but  are  struck 
on  the  outside  like  the  drums  and  cymbals  with  a 
mallet.  The  Cymbals  are  of  various  sizes  according 
to  the  note  they  give,  for  they  give  musical,  melodic 
notes,  and  are  arranged  i6  together  on  a  frame  and 
played  as  we  should  play  a  dulcimer.  3  When  one  of 
them  goes  out  of  tune,  it  can  be  flattened  by  taking  a 
thin  slice  off  the  back,  or  sharpened  by  cutting  a  piece 
off  the  end.  4  The  best  stones  for  the  King  are  those 
which  are  picked  up  off  the  ground  near  the  banks  of 
the  river  See.^  In  the  year  2200  B.  C.  we  read  that 
the  Emperor  Yu  assessed  the  various  provinces  in  so 
many   stones    each,  which    were     to    be    taken    in    part 


I    Amiot.    VI.    40.  2      See  the   illustration  in  La  Borde,   Essai 

sur  la  Musique.  I. 

3  This  number  has  been  i6  it  seems  from  the  most  ancient  times.  It 
seems  according  to  tradition,  that  the  art  of  making  kings  was  lost  till  in 
the  rei^n  of  Tcheng-ty  32  B.C.  an  ancient  king  made  of  16  stones  was 
found  at  the  bottom  of  a  pond.  This  and  another  which  was  found  247  A.D., 
also  of  16  stones,  served  as  a  model  for  the  modern  kings  .  I  always  think 
it  is  characteristic  of  the  high  esteem  in  which  Music  is  held  in  China, 
that  the  first  act  of  a  usurping  monarch  is  to  destroy  aU  the  musical  in- 
struments in  use  under  the  preceding  dynasty,  for  by  so  doing  he  imagines 
he  most  effectually  destroys  the  traditions  of  the  dynasty. 

4  Smith's  Wonders  of  Science  and  Art.  Vol.  VI.  p.  82.    5  AiTuot.  VI.  40, 


THE  CHINESE.  289 

payment  of  their  regular  tribute.^  These  stones  were 
destined  for  the  palace  instruments.  But  since  then  it 
has  been  pretty  generally  agreed  that  the  best  stones, 
as  I  say,  are  those  that  are  picked  up  near  the  banks 
of  the  See,  for  being  exposed  to  the  sun  and  to  peculiar 
variations  of  the  atmosphere  which  occur  there,  they 
acquire  an  extreme  hardness  and  give  a  '  clearer,  purer, 
and  smarter '  sound  than  any  others,  "  excelling "  (in 
the  language  of  Chinese  hyperbole)  "  all  other  stones 
that  are  either  in  the  bosom  of  the  earth,  or  in  the 
depths  of  the  sea,  or  in  conglomerate,  or  in  detached 
pieces,  or  even  those  that  are  quarried  from  strata  in 
the   solid   rock." 

The  Sound  of  Metal. 
Has  3  varieties,  and  consequently  there  are  3  kinds 
of  Bells  manufactured  to  produce  it — the  Po-tchoung, 
the  Te-tchoung,  and  the  Pien-tchoung.^  Of  these,  the 
Po-tchoung  is  the  largest,  and  gives  the  richest  tone  ; 
and  the  Pien-tchoung  the  smallest,  and  gives  the 
most  piercing,  The  Tetchoung  comes  midway  between 
the  two.  The  small  bells,  however,  are  of  more  im- 
portance in  Chinese  Music  than  the  large  ones,  for 
while  the  large  ones,  i.  e.  the  Po-tchoung  and  the 
Te-tchoung,  are  only  used  to  strike  the  first  note  in 
a  piece,  or  to  accent  strong  rhythms,  or  to  take  an 
occasional  part  in  the  performance,  the  small  bells 
are  arranged  in  sets,  and  are  played  solo.3  These 
sets  of  Bells  may  be  called  Bell  Organs,  as  the  sets 
of  Cymbals  or  Stones  Stone  Organs,  and  they  are 
arranged  in  precisely  the  same  way.  That  is  to  say, 
there  are  16  Bells  in  all,  hung  by  hooks  to  two 
cross    beams    on    a    frame,    8    on    the     top     cross     beam. 


I  lb.  2  Amiot,  VI.  43  .sq.  3  Amiot,  VI.  43,  sq 

U 


290  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

and  8  on  the  bottom  one,  each  Bell  giving  one  of 
the  notes  of  the  musical  scale,  just  like  the  Stones, 
and  graduated  in  the  same  manner,  the  size  gradually 
diminishing,  bell  after  bell  and  stone  after  stone,  from 
the  biggest  one,  which  gives  the  lowest  tone,  to  the 
smallest,  which  gives  the  highest.^  Once  on  a  time 
it  was  possible  to  play  the  whole  musical  scale  on  one 
single  bell,  for  the  ancient  bells  were  cast  with  knobs 
embossed  on  them,  each  knob  giving  a  note  of  the 
gamut.  But  this  plan  was  abandoned  in  favour  of 
the    Bell    Organs.^ 

The  Sound  of  Baked  Earth. 
The  Sound  of  Baked  Earth  was  first  extracted  by 
striking  a  flat  piece  of  baked  earth  against  some  hard 
substance.  But  the  sound  thus  produced  was  very 
harsh  and  unmelodious.  The  next  attempt  to  extract 
it  was  by  infringing  on  the  domain  of  the  Drum,  and 
the  sound  of  baked  earth  was  got  by  stretching  a 
piece  of  tanned  skin  over  a  vase  of  baked  earth. 
Then  vases  of  baked  earth  were  made  in  the  shape 
of  drums,  and  struck  with  drumsticks.3  But  these  and 
similar  experiments  proved  unsatisfactory,  and  since 
it  was  found  impossible  to  get  the  sound  of  baked 
earth  from  an  instrument  of  percussion,  it  was  de- 
cided to  attempt  it  from  an  instrument  of  wind.  A 
certain  quantity  of  earth  was  therefore  taken,  the 
finest  that  could  be  got.  It  was  made  still  finer  by 
washing  it  in  several  waters,  and  then  worked 
into     the      consistency       of    liquid     mud.       Two     eggs 


1  See  the  illustrations  in  Amiot  and  La  Borde. 

2  Thomson's  China.  IV.    The  Bell  reputed  to  be  the  most  ancient  in  the 
Chinese  Empire  is  of  this  shape. 

3  Amiot.  Memoires  concernant   I'histoire  &c.  VI.  49.  sq. 


THE  CHINESE.  29 1 

one  of  a  goose,  the  other  of  a  hen,  served  as 
the  models,  and  the  Hquid  mud  was  thrown  over 
these  and  allowed  to  set.  And  then  the  egg  on  the 
inside  was  broken  and  picked  out,  and  an  exact 
mould  of  the  egg  remained.^  The  opening  made  at 
the  end  for  the  purpose  of  extracting  the  egg  was 
next  enlarged  to  serve  as  a  mouthpiece,  and  5 
holes  were  pierced  in  the  bowl,  3  on  the  front, 
and  2  on  the  back ;  and  5  Musical  Notes  were 
now  able  to  be  produced,  each  giving  the  desired 
sound   of  Baked   Earth.^ 

The    Sound    of    Silk 

Has  two  leading  varieties,  and  seven  minor  varieties. 
The  sound  of  Silk  was  produced  by  twisting  silken 
threads  into  cords  and  twanging  them  with  the 
fingers.3  Little  by  little  it  began  to  be  noticed  that 
the  sound  of  silk  gave  definite  musical  notes,  and 
the  cords  were  then  pegged  down  on  a  flat  board, 
and  the  number  of  threads  in  each  cord  counted,  so 
.as  to  preserve  the  note  unaltered  for  the  future. 
The  board  was  gradually  curved  to  bring  the  strings 
nearer  together,  and  the  number  of  strings  was  limi- 
ted to  7,  which  just  gave  the  gamut.  Of  the 
instrument  thus  formed,  which  is  called  the  Kin,  there 
are  3  varities  and  it  is  one  of  the  most  esteemed  in  China. 
But  the  other  instrument  which  gives  the  Sound  of  Silk, 


1  I  have  here  differed  from  Father  Amiot.  I  seem  to  imagine  that  the  eggs 
served  merely  as  blocks.     He  ^ives  an  abstruser  explanation. 

2  Amiot.  loc.  cit. 

3  The  account  here  given  is  agreeable  to  the  Chinese  tradition.  It  is  said 
also  expressly,  that  silk  was  applied  to  Music  before  it  was  to  Manufactures. 
(Amiot.  VI.  62.). 


History  of  music.  292 

for  I  have  mentioned  that  there  were  two  leading  varieties 
of  the  Sound  of  Silk,  irrespective  of  the  minor  varieties — 
this  instrument,  I  say,  which  is  called  the  Che, 
used  to  have  50  strings,  but  they  were  afterwards 
decreased  to  25,  and  this  is  the  number  of  strings 
employed  at  the  present  day.  Each  string  has  its 
own  separate  bridge,  so  that  there  are  25  bridges. 
In  this  instrument  the  Sound  of  Silk  attains  its  greatest 
perfection  ;  '  its  sound  far  excels  that  of  any  European 
clayichord,'  says  Amiot.^  Nevertheless  the  seven-stringed 
Kin  is  more  esteemed  in  China,  probably  in  deference 
to  its  antiquity,  for  it  is  much  the  older  instrument 
of  the    two.2 

The  Sound  of  Wood. 
The  instruments  which  give  the  Sound  of  Wood  are 
the  strangest  of  all.  For  these  are  those  strange  instru- 
ments I  spoke  of  some  time  ago.  And  one  is  in  the 
shape  of  a  bushel,  another  in  the  shape  of  writing 
tablets,  and  the  third  is  in  the  shape  of  a  tiger.  Their 
names  are  the  Tchou,  the  Tchoung-tou,  and  the 
Tiger  is  called  theOu.^  The  Tchou  then  is  in  the  shape 
of    a  bushel    or   square     box.      On    the    inside    of    this 


1  Amiot.  VI.  60. 

2  As  we  may  otherwise  see  from  the  cloud  of  mysticism  and  tradition  that 
smTOunds  it.  Like  the  Bell,  the  Kin  is  brought  into  connection  with  univer- 
sal nature.  Fou-hi  in  the  legend  rounded  the  Kin  at  the  top  to  represent  the 
heaven ;  he  smoothed  the  bottom  part  of  it  to  represent  the  earth.  He  assigned 
8  inches  to  represent  the  8  points  of  the  compass,  and  4  inches  to  represent  the 
4  seasons  of  the  year.  He  gave  it  5  chords  to  represent  the  5  elements  and  the  5 
planets,  &c.,  &c.  This  last  statement  shows  us  that  the  Kin  was  not  always 
7  stringed  as  we  have  it  now ;  indeed  at  present  there  is  a  five  stringed  Kin,  so 
I  have  heard.  The  Che  has  4  varieties,  the  Kin  3.  The  Che  is  barren  of 
mysticism,  with  the  exception  of  its  25  bridges  being  coloured  in  sets  of  S,  each 
set  with  one  of  the  primary  colours,  to  which,  I  imagine,  the  Che  is  in 
some  sense  supposed  to  give  musical  expression. 

2    Amiot  VI.  p.  61. 


THE   CHINESE.  293 

there  is  a  hammer  fastened,  that  is  to  say,  the  handle 
is  fastened  to  the  roof,  and  the  hammer  hangs  Hke  the 
tongue  of  a  bell  or  the  pendulum  of  a  clock,  inside  the 
bushel.  There  is  an  aperture  in  one  of  the  sides,  big 
enough  for  your  hand  to  pass  through,  and  you  put 
your  hand  through  this  and  swing  the  hammer 
against  the  sides. ^  This  instrument  is  placed  at  the 
North-East  of  the  band,  and  played  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  music.  The  Tchoung-tou  consists  of 
twelve  oblong  pieces  of  wood,  like  writing  tablets,  and 
indeed  these  were  the  actual  writing  tablets  of  the 
Chinese  before  paper  was  invented,  and  the  instru- 
ment, which  is  of  great  antiquity,  may  be  supposed  to 
have  dated  from  those  early  times.  Even  yet  they  are 
all  written  over  with  ancient  characters,  and  the  instru- 
ment itself  is  said  to  have  been  invented  in  order  to 
preserve  the  memory  of  ancient  writing.  These  12 
pieces  of  wood,  then,  are  strung  on  a  strap,  and  you  play 
them  by  beating  them  gently  against  the  palm  of  your 
hand. 2  'Castanets'  is  perhaps  the  best  word  we  have  in 
English  to  render  them  by,  for  they  answer  in  some 
degree  to  our  castanets,  or  rather  to  the  castanets  of 
the  ancients,  with  which  they  have  much  more  in 
common  than  with  ours. 3  But  what  word  have  we  to 
express  the  last  'instrument  of  the  three,  the  Ou,  or 
Tiger?  This  extraordinary  instrument  is  an  exact 
representation  of  "a  squatting  tiger. "'^  It  is  made  of  wood 
painted  to  resemble  a  tiger's  hide,  and  is  of  the 
size    of    life.      It     has     27  teeth  on  its  back,  that  stick 


1  Amiot.  loc.  cit. 

2  Smith's  Wonders  of  Nature  and  Art,  VI.  83. 

3  Ad  cubitum  raucos  excutiens  calamos.    Yet  these  were  long  castanets 
shaken  together. 

4  Smith's  Wonders  of  Nature  and  Art.  ' 


294  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

up  just  like  the  teeth  of  a  saw,  and  the  way  to  play  it 
is  to  scrape  its  back  gently  with  a  rod.  In  ancient 
times  the  manufacture  of  the  wooden  teeth  was 
carried  to  such  perfection  that  melodious  tones  could 
be  extracted  from  them.  But  this  art,  it  would 
appear,  has  been  lost,  and  since  then  the  barbarism 
has  been  introduced  of  striking  the  tiger  on  the 
head,i  and  it  is  questionable  if  this  custom  has  yet 
been  abandoned.  But  the  legitimate  way  to  play  it 
is  to  scrape  its  back  with  a  rod.  The  Tiger  is  placed 
at  the  North-East  of  the  band,  and  played  at  the 
conclusion  of  the  music.  These  are  the  instruments 
which   give    the   Sound   of  Wood.* 

The  Sound  of  Gourd. 
The  Sound  of  Gourd  went  through  somewhat 
similar  experiences  to  the  sound  of  Baked  Earth,  for 
there  were  many  unsuccessful  attempts  to  extract  it 
before  a  satisfactory  result  was  attained.  For  first 
they  tried  this  plan ;  they  cut  off  a  gourd  from  the 
stem,  and  pierced  it  with  a  hole  for  an  embouchure 
at  the  part  where  it  had  been  attached  to  the  stem, 
and  then  pierced  different  parts  of  the  rind  for  stops. 
But     the    sound    it     gave    was    very     dull   and    rough.^ 


1  Amyot.  VI.  62. 

2  The  mystical  side  of  Chinese  Music  is  a  subject  that  has  never  been 
opened  at  any  length,  and  yet  all  Chinese  treatises  are  full  of  it.  These 
strange  instruments  of  wood  would  give  a  very  good  starting  point.  It  is  said 
that  the  Tchou  was  invented  to  show  by  means  of  music  the  advantages  which 
men  procure  for  one  another  by  being  united  in  society ;  the  Tchoungtou  to 
preserve  the  memory  of  the  ancient  writing  ;  and  the  Ou  or  Tiger  to  symbolise 
the  empire  which  man  has  over  all  the  animal  creation.  This  is  the  Chinese 
explanation,  yet  if  we  look  a  little  closer  we  shall  find  a  more  extensive 
mysticism.  For  take  the  Ou  or  Tiger — the  Tiger  is  one  of  the  deities  of  the 
Chinese,  the  patron  of  gamblers  and  midwives  ;  tigers'  heads  are  used  as 
amulets,  and  they  are  one  of  the  magical  charms  used  by  the  priests.  An  en- 
quiry into  many  of  the  other  instruments  would  reveal  similar  curious  facts, 
and  leave  us  on  the  threshold  of  an  interesting  research  which  those  who 
have  the  opportunity  might  well  pursue,  3    Amiot,  VI,  63.  sq. 


THE   CHINESE.  -  295 

And  seeing  that  gourd  of  itself  failed  to  yield  a 
better  sound  to  various  experiments,  they  resolved  to 
trench  on  the  Sound  of  Wood  and  the  Sound  of  Bamboo, 
to  aid  the  Sound  of  Gourd,  just  as  in  the  Sound  of 
Baked  Earth,  they  brought  the  Sound  of  Skin  to  bear 
on  the  Baked  Earth.  So  they  cut  away  all  the  top 
part  of  the  gourd,  and  fitted  a  wooden  lid  on  it, 
which  was  then  pierced  with  holes,  in  each  of  which 
a  Bamboo  was  set.  A  mouthpiece  of  wood  is  then 
inserted  into  the  gourd,  and  the  gourd  serves  as  a 
wind  chest  supplying  the  various  pipes  of  bamboo 
with  wind,  which  produce  their  sound  by  means  of 
the  vibration  of  a  little  tongue  of  metal,  which  is 
fitted  by  means  of  beeswax  in  the  lower  end  of 
each  pipe.i  Thus  there  is  another  alloy  to  the  Sound 
of  Gourd  in  this  little  metal  tongue,  and  the  Sound 
of  Gourd  in  its  modern  perfection  should  strictly  be 
regarded  as  a  composite  sound,  giving  a  mixture  of 
the  Sound  of  Gourd,  the  Sound  of  Metal,  the 
Sound  of  Wood,  and  the  Sonnd  of  Bamboo. 
The  Sound  of  Bamboo. 
Bamboo  is  by  nature  the  most  musical  of  all 
substances,  for  the  hollow  tubing  between  one  knot 
and  the  other,  the  distance  between  each  knot,  and 
the  proportions  of  the  distances,  the  hardness  of  the 
cane  &c.,  all  seem  to  invite  man  to  blow  into  it,^  and 
the  instruments  made  of  bamboo  were  by  consequence 
the  earliest  that  were  invented,  and  served  as  pitch- 
pipes  for  tuning  the  other  instruments,  and  especially 
those  of  Silk.  The  Instruments  of  Bamboo  are  Pan 
Pipes  and  various  kinds  of  flutes — there  is  nothing  to 
distinguish     them     from     our     own      instruments     of     a 


1  There  is  a  minute  description  of  this  instrument  in  the  notes  to  Helm- 
holtz's  Tonempfindgungen.  p.  712, 

2  Amyot.  VI.  63.  sq. 


296  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC.  P 

similar   kind,   except   that   some   of  the    flutes   have   the 
embouchure   in    the   middle    instead    of  at    the    end.^ 

But  the  instruments  of  Bamboo  attain  a  technical 
importance  above  the  instruments  of  all  the  other  7 
substances,  for  not  only  does  the  Bamboo  Pan  Pipe 
regulate  the  tuning  of  the  other  instruments  ;  but  the 
succession  of  sounds  which  it  gives  are  taken  as  the 
foundation    of  the    Chinese   scale. 

It  was  in  the  reign  of  Hoang-ty,  runs  the  legend, 
that  the  famous  musician,  Lyng-lun,  was  commissioned 
to  order  and  arrange  Chinese  Music,  and  bring  it 
from  being  a  confused  array  of  sounds  into  a  regular 
system.  Without  knowing  how  to  proceed  with  his  task, 
Lyng-lun  wandered,  deep  in  thought,  to  the  land  of  Si-joung, 
where  the  bamboos  grow.  And  having  taken  one  of 
them,  he  cut  it  off  between  two  of  the  knots,  and 
having  pushed  out  the  pith  blew  into  the  hollow,  and 
the  bamboo  gave  out  a  most  beautiful  sound.  Now 
it  happened  that  ^this  sound  was  in  unison  with  the  sound 
of  his  voice  when  he  spoke,  and  he  noticed  this.  And  it 
happened  at  the  same  moment  that  the  river  Hoang-ho, 
which  ran  boiling  along  a  few  paces  off,  roared  with 
its  waves,  and  the  sound  of  the  river  Hoang-ho  was 
also  in  unison  with  the  sound  of  his  own  voice  and 
the  sound  of  the  bamboo.  "  Behold,  then,"  cried 
Lyng-lun,  "  the  fundamental  sound  of  nature  !  This 
must  be  the  tone  from  which  all  others  are  derived." 
And  while  he  was  musing  on  this,  the  magic  bird, 
Foung-hoang,  accompanied  by  its  mate,  came  and 
perched  on  a  tree  near,  and  began  to  sing.  And  the 
first  note  it  sang  was  also  in  unison  with  the  sound 
of  the  river    Hoang-ho,  and  with  the   voice   of  Lyng-lun 


I    Amiot.  loc.  cit. 


THE   CHINESE.  297 

and  with  the  sound  of  the  bamboo.  Then  all 
the  winds  were  hushed,  and  all  the  birds  in  the  world 
ceased  singing,  that  they  might  listen  to  the  song  of 
the  magic  bird,  Foung-hoang,  and  its  mate.  And  as 
they  sang,  Lyng-lun,  the  musician,  kept  cutting  bamboos 
and  tuning  them  to  the  notes  of  these  magical 
birds,  six,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  notes  of  the  male, 
and  six  to  the  notes  of  the  female,  for  they  each 
sang  six  notes  apiece  ;  and  when  they  had  done 
singing,  Lyng-lun  had  twelve  bamboos  cut  and  tuned, 
which    he    bound    together    and    took    to    the    king. 

And  the  bamboos,  gave  the  following  sounds  when  they 
were   blown    mto  : — 

12345678         9        10       11      12 


i 


1^ — r— ^g: 


^^^^i^J-<^^    ^  ii''^    r—T-  T    r    ^^=ti 


and    the    odd    notes,   that    is    to    say. 


were    the    6    notes    that  were    given    by   the    male   bird, 
and    the   even    notes 


were  those  that  were  given  by  the  female.  And  the 
odd  ones  were  pronounced  to  be  Perfect  and  Male 
notes,  and  were  called  yang,  and  the  even  ones  were 
Imperfect  and  Female,  and  were  called  Yn.^  And  each 
Pipe  received  a  name,  and  the  F  pipe  was  called 
Hoang-tchoung 


I    Amiot.  Meraoires  &c.  VI.  95. 


298  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 


And 


And 

the    F§ 

Ta-lou 

the  G 

Tay-tsou 

And 

the  GS 

Kia-tchoung 

the  A 

Kou-si 

the  aS 

Tchoung-lu 

the  B 

Joui-pin 

the  C 

Lin-tchoung 

the  C§ 

Y-tse 

the  D 

Nan-lu 

the  Di 

Ou-y 

the  E 

Yng-tchoung. 

These  were  the  12  "Lu's, "  and  by  these  names  they 
are  known  at  the  present  day. 

In  order  to  ensure  the  precise  sounds  being  pre- 
served in  all  future  time,  Lyng-lun  measured  the 
length  and  capacity  of  the  pipes,  and  he  took  millet 
seed  to  measure  them  with,  and  he  found  that  the 
largest  pipe,  Hoang-ty,  (F),  was  the  length  of  100 
millet  seed  placed  end  to  end,  and  that  its  capacity 
was  1200  millet  seed,  for  this  was  the  number  of 
seeds  it  contained  in  its  hollow  tube.  And  the  other 
pipes  ^ere  of  length  and   capacity  proportionate  to  this.^ 

Since  the  time  of  Lyng-lun,  various  new  measurings 
have  been  proposed"  and  some  adopted,  but  no  definite 
improvement  was  effected  till  the  time  of  Tsai-yu, 
who  invented  the  Musical  Foot,  which  is  now  the 
standard  measure  for  the  F  Pipe,  and  the  accuracy 
of  which  may  be  tested  in  the  same  way,  for  though 
it  is  an  oblong  block,  like  any  ordinary  measure,  but 
thicker,  for  it  is  square-sided,  it  nevertheless  is  hollow 
in  the  inside  like  a  pipe,  and  holds  exactly  1200 
millet   seed,   and,    in    addition    to    this,   gives    the   sound 

I    Amiot.  VI.  90, 


THE  CHINESE.  299 


of  F   when   you   blow   into   it.^ 

This    then    is    the    scale    of  the    Chinese 


and   this   is   how   it  originated   according  to  the  Chinese 
mythology. 

Now  it  is  not  a  little  singular  that  the  typical 
representative  of  the  Pipe  Races  should  derive  the 
origin  of  its  Scale,  we  might  almost  say  of  its  Music, 
from  the  Pipe,  and  at  the  same  time  we  may  well 
admire  the  justness  of  the  legend  in  assigning  an  in- 
strumental origin  to  such  a  scale  as  this.  For  I  have 
had  occasion  to  remark  that  the  Chromatic  Scale  is 
the  creation  of  Instruments,  and  the  Diatonic  of  the 
Voice  ;  and  if  there  is  any  obscurity  in  the  generation 
of  these  two  scales  as  I  have  described  them  before, 
such  obscurity  may  be  remOved  by  observing  the 
state  of  things  in  China  ;3  for  there  Instrumental 
Music  and  Vocal  Music  have  always  kept  immeasurably 
asunder,  and  we  have  the  strange  spectacle  of  two 
distinct  Scales  existing  from  time  immemorial,  the 
one  used  by  Instruments,  the  other  by  the  Voice,  and 
they  never  cross,  except  when  the  Voice  is  accompanied 
by  Instruments,  and  then,  and  only  then,  the    Instruments 


1  It  is  in  tact  the  Chinese  Foot  Measure,  for  according  to  the  principles 
of  Chinese  Geometry  the  F  Pipe  is  the  origin  of  all  measures.  Amiot.  VI. 
104. 

2  These  areknownas  the  12  "Lus,"  and  they  repeat  in  the  8ve  above  and 


the  8ve  below,  making  3  8ves  in  all.  The  lowest  F  Pipe        pj| 


is  20  inches,  the  middle  one,  which  is  the  one  we  are  here  considering,   lO, 
and  the  highest  5, 

3  Chinese  Music  must  ever  hold  the  first  place  in  the  studies  of  the  musical 
antiquarian.  He  must  begin  with  it  and  end  with  it.  Fortunately  one  of  the 
most  elaborate  treatises  ever  written  on  any  Music  is  in  existence  on  the  music 
of  China  that  is— divinum  opus  Alcimedontis — the  divine  work  of  Father 
Amiot. 


300 


HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 


play  in  the  Vocal  Scale,  but  the  Voice  on  no 
occasion  makes  use  of  the  Instrumental  Scale.  The 
Instrumental,  as  we  have  said,  is  the  Chromatic ;  and 
the  Vocal  Scale,  the  Diatonic,  that  is  the  same  scale 
divested  of  the  Chromatic  Intervals.  This  then  is  the 
Vocal    Scale  : — 


1st  Mode. 


..,fa=j-J±r=r: 


s 


2nd  Mode 


-i 


:=l: 


~P 


^ 


And    the    2nd  ^is    reputed     the|^older   of  the   two.     And 
the    Instrumental    Scale   we    have   already   given. 

And  that  there  is  no  question  of  identity  of  origin, 
by  which  one  scale  might  be  considered  the  parent 
of  the  other,  the  Diatonic  of  the  Chromatic  or  vzce 
versa — but  that  there  is  no  question  of  this  we  may 
know,  for  in  this  Vocal  Scale  the  notes  are  called  by 
entirely  different  names — no  longer  by  names  which 
are,  that  is  to  say,  at  the  same  time  names  of  Pipes, 
but  by  names  which  have  a  mystical  import  into  which 
it  is  not  my  intention  here  to  enter — being  known  no 
longer  as  the  12  Lu's  or  the  7  I.u's,  but  as  the  5 
Tones  and  the  2  Piens,  that  is,  the  5  Tones  and 
the  2  Embryo  Tones,  which  are  the  Semitones. 
Here  follow  the  2  modes  of  the  5  Tones  and  the 
2  Piens,   with   the    Chinese   names   above   them  : — 

Koung    Chang      Kio  Pien-tche   Tche        Yu    Pien-koun^ 


1st  Mode. 


^ 


2ud  Mode. 


Pien-tche  Tche    Yu    Pien-koung    Koung    Chang      Kio 


W 


j^=Z 


And   the   2nd   is   reputed   the   older   of  the  two.' 

This    Diatonic   Scale,   however,   as    I   have  written   it 


THE  CHINESE.  3OI 

here,  is  but  the  Scale  of  Theory.  For  in  practice  the 
2  Piens  are  almost  invariably  omitted — I  say  almost, 
for  having  examined  many  pieces  of  Chinese  Music, 
I  have  found  one  where  the  2  Piens  are  employed. 
The  Chinese,  therefore,  though  acquainted  with  the 
Agglutinative  and  Inflectional  Octave,  do  not  make  use 
of  it,  but  even  in  their  acquaintance  with  it  they  show 
in  advance  of  other  Monosyllabic  peoples,  who  do  not 
appear  to  possess  even  a  theoretical  knowledge  of  it 
Now  in  this  inability  to  supplement  knowledge  by 
execution,  this  outrunning  of  the  practical  faculties  by 
the  speculative,  we  see  a  touch  of  the  real  Chinese 
character.  The  people  who  were  acquainted  with  gun- 
powder but  never  invented  a  gun,  who  knew  of  the 
polarity  of  the  magnetic  needle  and  yet  never  thought  of 
employing  it  as  a  compass — have  also  from  unknown 
antiquity  been  acquainted  with  the  4th  and  7th  tones, 
whose  insertion  among  the  others  procures  the  complete 
octave,  and  yet  have  never  carried  out  the  results  of 
their  knowledge  into  Practical  Music,  but  have  suffered 
all  their  songs  to  be  written  in  the  old  Isolating  Scale 
of  5  notes,  so  that  for  all  practical  purposes  we  may 
set   down  the  Chinese  Vocal  Scale   as    the   following : — 

Koung      Chang  Kio  Tcho  Yu         1 


i 


w 


znz. 


in    which    all    their    Vocal    Music  is    written. 

I    will   now   give  some   specimens   of    Chinese    Vocal 
Music. 


I    Rousseau  writes  the  Chinese       — {/- — — — 1  1 

[Scale  :—       ^ 1~""~"1 ^ ^ ^ — ' 

which  is  naerely  Amiot's  transposed       \}"~^'-      2^ 


203  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

This    is  a   hymn    in    honour   of  ancestors  : — 

HYMN  IN  HONOUR  OF  ANCESTORS. 


^     Trh  lentement. 

^    -   - 



— -^ — 

m. 

— ?^ — 

rD 

c^ 

VMr  ■  c 

n> 

See       hoang       sien        Tsou  Yo         ling  yu        Tien 


y       r^ 

/T         *-^ 

r-^ 

rD 

((\\ 

r-^-- 

^— J 

K\) 

^— *' 

CJ. 

Yuen       yen        tsing       licou         Yeou        kao         tay        hiuen 


^— ^- 


-^ 


% 


Z2: 


Hiuen       eun       cheou      ming       Tchoui     yuen        ki 


-iS- 


321 


^1 


izz: 


-^- 


Ming        yu  che       tsoung 


ouan         see         mien 


2nd  Yerse. 


%. 


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122: 


f 


:z2: 


:c2: 


Toui        yue         tche        tsing         Yen         jan         jou        cheng 


I 


221 


f 


22: 


1221 


122: 


"22" 


Ki 

ki 

tchao 

ming 

Kan 

ko 

tsai 

ting 

) 

r^ 

r'^ 

\     '^ 

Sl/ 

1 

♦ 

Jou        kien 


ki 


hing 


Jou        ouen  ki         cheng 


P 


iizsz: 


22: 


^ 


:22: 


:22: 


:e2: 


Ngai       eulh       king       tche  Fa         hou     tchoung    tsinj, 


THE  CHINESE. 
8rd  Verse. 


303 


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1 1 

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t. 

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Tien 

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f' J* 

<^        1 

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Ly 

yuen 

ki 

ku 

Yuen 

cheou 

fang        koue 

/ 

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rj> 

"— -^ 

rj 

(( 

V       (^ 

,^ — , 

\-\J 

r^ 

^— ^ 

r^ 

•—i 

Yu 

Q. 

pao 

ki 

te 

Hao 

Tien 

ouang        ki 

7 

^_^__ 

(S'  — 



C,' 

■ 

ft- 

\ 

^^^ 

rD 

VM; 

^^ 

fj 


Yu         tsin         san        hien 


Ouo 


sin  yue 


Here  is   a   popular   Chinese    Melody : — 


-^- 


'-^ 


-^=i 


rJ         rJ 


:f=^ 


g 


P=     J     ^=f= 


i 


y 


-g^ ^ 


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-f=2 — (=: 


:|= 


i 


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1 


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g^    gJ 


^    J    *^    ^  I  ^J       rJ  V^ 


3^  I  I         I    I        I         I         I         I    I         I  I    I         \'m     M        \\    n        ^=^ 


i 


-r^    cj 


rJ      <-J 


3tlW= 


-c^— g=^: 


304  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

Another : — 


i 


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r?     fi    f- 


-g       -  -: 


S 


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^^^^=^ 


r>     ^    T'- 


r>      -^=r 


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^ — (=2_i:^ 


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<rJ       ^ 


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T=4: 


:?==)*: 


izz: 


:^ii=it 


:^=it 


-W-^ 


li- 


i 


d  •  ^ 


m: 


's:?- 


:2:± 


Three  Chinese  Songs  from  Barrow  and    Du   Halde : — 


s'z«z^- 


r^=^zsz 


^=^=t- 


t.J 


-^^7$7Z^-^^- 


v=a^zd=W=i?: 


a^-^-'"-i^-^-i- 


•  V  -.-J.  *    *'^-  Jr*^~^"  "^^ 


a 


fe4- — I — r"^.  n 


^=:p^: 


:*i3t 


ii:*==3t=i^=l:^=st: 


^ 


nt^i=^ 


jtit 


;.  J       J  ^ — J  ^  ' 


<<.VJ-J-^  v^ 


=i: 


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^  M   A — I 1— — H 


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THE   CHINESE. 


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r>    i'*«* 


^rlJ^.j^jgj^^ 


This  last  is  very  bizzare — I  mean  in  its  intervals — for 
in  other  respects  it  keeps  up  the  features  which  distinguish 
them  all— that  is  to  say,  plastic  rhythm,  (which  I  have 
endeavoured  to  bring  out  as  far  as  possible  by  marking 
the  phrases),  and  symmetrical  balance  of  clauses.  A 
tendency  to  introduce  an  imperceptible  refrain  may  be 
noticed  in  all    these    pieces,    as    in    the    first    one— the 


Hymn- 


22: 


which   is   exactly 


X 


3o6 


HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 


repeated  in    the  2nd    verse,   and    also    in   the    transposed 

__22 ^ _ 


form 


refrains  are — 


—W- 


^^ 


itzt 


ZlZtlL^. 


^ 


and 


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.     In  the  second  piece  the 


=]- 


In    the   third: 


-^—w-^-- 


i=± 


^  and  ^^^^^ 


which  appear  transposed  as 


:1=^: 


—^ — ^— *-|— g^ 


and  _i:|=id-^; 
zz*z::fznt 


Another  remarkable  feature  is  the  tendency  to  repetition — 
many  phrases  being  repeated  twice  over — the  second, 
varied — as, 


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or  perhaps  we  should  more  correctly  describe  each  of 
these  groups  of  two  as  one  phrase  only,  and  say  that 
each  phrase  consists  of  two  equal  parts,  the  second  being 
a  variation  on  the  first.  This  peculiarity  may  well  be 
explained  by  considering  it  as  the  direct  musical  reflection 
of  Chinese  Versification,  which  insists  on  a  Csesura  in 
the  middle  of  each  line,  so  that  the  Musical  Phrase 
is  cut  in  half,  as  the  Poetical  one  is.  The  Refrain, 
also,  is  a  favourite  form  in   Chinese    Poetry,  and    this 


THE   CHINESE.  307 

we   find    in    the    Music.     And    another    tendency   of  the 

Poetry — to    keep    up    a    jingle    of    rhymes     inside  the 

rhyming    words     at     the    end     of    each     verse,     as  for 
instance, 

Shang  pin  che  jin  :  piih   keaoit   shen   hov/, 
Chung  pin  che  jin  :  keaou   wok   how    shen, 
Hea   pin    che    jin  :  keaou    woh  puh   shen. 

also   finds   expression    in    the    Music,   for   analysing   that 
Hymn    to    the    Ancestors,    we    shall    find    there    is    a 


perpetual  jingle   on —  ^     ^■-  ^     ^ 


r^       ^^      r^ 


-jlHL 


cf.  rj 


22: 


122: 


-&>- 


and    also  .    ^     g;     ^  ,      rz       ,  and  other   artifices 


of  construction   will    also    appear,    e.g.    that   the    ist   bar 
of  one   verse   is   the    last   bar  of  the   next   verse,  &c. 

But  if  this  toying  and  trifling  with  sound  shows 
itself  in  their  Vocal  Music,  much  more  does  it  come 
out  in  their  Instrumental  Music,  which  is  the  very 
excess  of  licentious  joy  in  mere  tone — a  bout  of 
tones, — a  carnival  of  sound  ;  with  no  laws  to  regulate 
it,  no  forms  to  restrain  or  fetter  the  fancy  of  the 
player.  One  of  the  most  celebrated  pieces  of  Chinese 
Instrumental  Music  is  that  known  as  the  84  Modulations, 
which  was  a  show  piece  as  early  as  640  A.  D.  when 
the  musicians,  Tsou-siao-sun  and  Tchang-ouen-cheou, 
performed  it  on  the  Stone  Organ  to  the  Emperor 
Tay-tsoung.  Here  are  The  84  MODULATIONS,  as 
played   by   Tsou-siao-sun    and   Tchang-ouen-cheou  ; — 


308 


HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 


i 


ii 


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J-^J  ^J  J  J  ^^  J  ^^  ^~F^^^ 


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:i^ 


^e: 


lii^it 


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¥  J  r 


4f?c 


:g=igzzg^ 


iz: 


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if^ 


I        I 


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THE  CHINESE.  309 

This  is  one  of  the  most  celebrated  pieces  of  Chinese 
Music,  which  is  at  the  same  time  applauded  by  theorists 
as  the  best  practical  exposition  of  Chinese  Musical 
Theory,  since  it  shows  the  12  "Lu"s  in  all  their 
possible  relations.  To  judge  of  the  effect  of  such  a 
piece  as  this,  it  is  not  sufficient  to  read  the  notes  as 
they  are  written  here ;  we  must  imagine  the  rich, 
mellow  tones  of  the  Musical  Stones,  that  are  softer 
and  sweeter  than  any  gong  or  silver  bell,^  and  we 
must  try  and  fancy  these  strange  notes  dealt  out  like 
a  shower  of  feathers — great  fluffs  of  sound  falling 
on  the  ear,  so  beautiful  that  musical  notes  disappear 
in    the    sensuous    swell.     You     are     lapped    in    euphony. 

So  when  the  Chinese  listen  themselves,  it  is  hard 
to  imagine  that  they  bestow  much  attention  on  the  actual 
notes  that  are  struck  or  sounded  ;  as  little  perhaps  as 
they  do  on  the  actual  forms  and  figures  of  their  Painting  ; 
and  so  their  Music  is  best  described  as  a  fanciful 
play  with  Sound,  as  their  Painting  is  a  play  with 
colours.  And  if  this  is  the  attitude  of  their  Musical 
Sense  to  their  Music,  we  shall  now  have  an  explan- 
ation of  why  their  Musical  System  should  be  taken  up 
primarily  with  classifying  qualities  of  Tone,  and  only 
secondarily  with  Musical  Notes — in  this,  being  so 
different  from  the  systems  of  Western  Nations,  whose 
ear  is  not  so  open  to  the  sensuous  influence  of  Music, 
but   much   keener   for   its   logic   and  its    meaning. 

And  when  we  think  of  the  instruments  themselves, 
it  would  seem  as  if  they  were  not  merely  made  to 
gratify     the     ear     with     their     tones,    but,   as      I     have 


I  "  When  I  touch  the  sonorous  stones  of  my  King,"  says  Kouei,  the  Orpheus 
of  China,  "  all  the  animals  come  flocking  round  me  and  dance  with  joy." 


3IO  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

mentioned  before,  in  quite  as  great  a  measure  to 
please  the  eye  with  their  form  and  their  colours — as 
if  this  nation  of  artists  could  not  separate  one  sense 
from  the  other,  and  must  always  aim  at  satisfying 
both.  For  the  Stones,  for  instance,  of  the  Stone 
Organ,  which  is  perhaps  the  typical  instrument  of 
China,  are  sorted  in  degrees  of  excellence,  more  out 
of  regard  for  their  colours  than  for  their  qualities  of 
tone.  They  say  indeed  that  certain  timbres  go  with 
certain  colours,  and  profess  to  recognise  the  flavour  of 
a  tone  by  the  colour  the  stone  has ;  but  this  looks 
like  an  afterthought,  and  as  if  the  stones  were  ranked 
in  order  of  excellence,  primarily,  on  account  of  their 
colours,  for  that  certain  colours  would  please  the  eye 
more  than  others.  And  this  is  the  order  the  stones 
are  ranked  in.  They  say  the  best  are 
Whey-coloured. 

2.  Light   blue. 

3.  Sky    blue. 

4.  Indigo   blue. 

5.  Light  yellow. 

6.  Orange. 

7.  Dark  red. 

8.  Pale  green. 

9.  Greenish  white. 

10.  Dark  green. 

11.  Ash  grey.        _ 

12.  Chestnut.^ 

And    best  when  the    stone    is  all    of  one  colour   without 
ribs   or    streaks. 

Now    these    stones  are   worked  into  all    sorts    of   pat- 
terns.    There    are    16    stones,    as    I    said,    hanging    on    a 

I  Pere  Amiot,  VI.  289.  The  name  of  the  best  land  of  stone  is  Yu.  Its  du- 
rabihty  and  hardness  is  such,  that  it  can  be  worked  and  polished  like  agate. 
The  weight  is  something  tremendous.  A  miot  saw  a  small  piece  that  he  thought 
one  man  could  lift  easily.     It  took  four  men  to  move  it  from  the  ground. 


THE    CHINESE.  3It 

frame.  And  the  commonest  pattern  is  that  of  a  Car- 
penter's Square.  But  I  fancy  these  are  the  Whey-coloured 
stones  that  are  worked  in  this  pattern,  for  the  pattern 
seems  to  vary  with  the  colour.  The  Chestnut  stones, 
for  instance,  are  carved  in  the  shape  of  a  heart ;  the 
sky  blue  of  a  bell ;  the  light  blue  and  dark  yellow 
in  the  shape  of  shields  ;  the  light  yellow  in  the  shape 
of  a  man's  face ;  the  pale  yellow  of  two  fishes  lying  on 
a  plate  ;  the  indigo  of  a  bat.^  So  that  we  may  well 
imagine  that  the  eye  as  much  as  the  ear  is  consulted 
in  the  making  of  these  musical  stones  and  arranging 
them  in  organs,  or  we  may  see  at  any  rate  what  pains  are 
taken  to  please  the  eye.  The  frame  too  on  which  they 
hang,  these  strange  figures,  bats,  and  fishes,  and  shields, 
&c.,  is  sumptuously  embellished — the  corners  of  the 
frame  are  worked  into  the  form  of  rams'  heads,  most 
delicately  carved;  5  birds  stand  on  the  top  of  the 
frame,  holding  tassels  in  their  mouth,  which  droop 
down  in  a  shower  half  way  down  the  frame  :  immedi- 
ately above  the  Stones,  between  them  and  the  birds, 
is  generally  a  fresco  with  2  dragons  painted  on  it 
The  two  beams  of  the  frame  rest  on  the  backs  of  two 
griffins,  while  streamers  of  gaudy-coloured  tassels  hang 
from  the  snouts  of  the  two  rams'  heads  at  the  top  of 
the   frame,  all    the   way   to   the   ground. 

The  Bell  Organs  are  constructed  with  equal  pomp 
of  ornament ; — 16  bells,  as  I  have  said,  hanging  on  a 
frame,  just  like  the  stones,  and  adorned  with  profusions 
of  carvings  and  ribbons — this  is  the  Bell  Organ.  But 
the  Drums  almost  surpass  them  all,  for  the  great  drum 
is  reared  on  a  tall  thin  pedestal,  and  dominates  like 
a  monster  the  band.  And  this  pedestal  is  surrounded 
at  the   bottom   with   4   crouching  griffins.     A  canopy  of 


2  See  the  illustrations  in  Amiot. 


312  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

cloth  of  gold,  richly  embroidered,  hangs  above  the  drum, 
with  animals'  heads  and  fancy  devices,  and  this  canopy 
terminates  in  a  knob  at  the  top,  which  is  surmounted 
with  a  bunch  of  artificial  flowers.  4  goats'  heads  look 
down  from  the  sides  of  the  canopy,  having  strings  of 
tassels  hanging  to  their  snouts,  and  these  tassels  reach 
almost  to  the  ground.  The  barrel  of  the  great  drum 
is  embossed  with  dogs'  and  griffins'  heads,  and  these 
have  chains  of  tassels  hanging  by  a  ring  from  their  mouths.^ 

When  all  these  instruments  play  together  in  a  full 
band,  they  have  certain  pt)sitions  assigned  them  by 
immemorial  usage  ;  as,  some  are  stationed  at  the  N.E. 
of  the  band,  others  at  the  N.W. ;  some  are  placed  outside 
the  concert  room,  others  are  in, — all  these  things  being 
prescribed  by  immemorial  usage. 

I  will  now  score  the  Hymn  to  the  Ancestors  for 
a   full    Chinese  Orchestra  : — 


•i? 


\  For  the  above,  see  the  gorgeous  illustrations  in  Amiot  and  La  Borde. 


8".   ver«e(»u»cc»,) 


End  of  2^.<irers. 


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THE  CHINESE.  313 - 

The  characteristics  of  Chinese  Music  repeat  themselves 
in  the  Music  of  the  Indo-Chinese  and  other  civilised 
Mongoloids  of  the  Old  World,  and  we  may  say  generally, 
that  the  music  we  have  been  listening  to  just  now  is 
the  music  of  the  whole  of  South-Eastern  and  Eastern  S^v^v-l^ 
Asia  ;  of  the  Burmese,  (the  Siamese,  the  Tonquinese,\  the  -^^  ^ ;?  t,^?' 
Anamese,  the  Japanese,  the  Javans.  Thus  the  Siamese, 
who  of  all  the  Mongoloid  nations  most  resemble  the 
Chinese — a   full    Siamese   band    consists    of : — 


I 

Small    Drum. 

2 

Large    Drum. 

3 

Kettle  Drum. 

4 

Small  Kettle  Drum. 

5 

Bell    Organ. 

6 

Single    Bells. 

7 

Cymbals. 

8 

Large   Cymbals. 

9 

Gong. 

10 

30  Pairs  of  Long  Castanets. 

II 

Pairs  of  Short  Castanets. 

12 

Bass   Viol. 

13 

Lute. 

14 

Tambourine. 

15 

Clarionets. 

16 

Flutes. 

17 

Trumpet. 

18 

Small    Trumpet. 

19 

Drum  Organ. 

20 

Javanese  Drums. 

21 

Muffled    Drum. 

22 

Small   Gong.« 

I    Captain  Low  on  Siamese  Literature,  in  Asiatic  Researches.  XX.  Pt.  I. 


3H  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

This  is  the  full  Siamese  Orchestra.     And  the  Burmese 
is  not  much  different,  for  it  consists  of    ' 

Large  Drums. 

Small  Drums. 

Gongs. 

Cymbals. 

Great  Drum 

Flageolet. 

Clarionets. 

Pan  Pipes. 

Lute. 

Harp. 

Drum  Organ. 

Cymbal   Organ. 

Gong  Organ.i 
And  since  the  Burmese  are  remarkable  for  their  Drum, 
Gong,  and  Cymbal  Organs,  I  will  describe  one  or  two 
of  these  instruments.  The  Burmese  Drum  Organ  con- 
sists of  21  drums  of  various  sizes,  from  very  big  to 
very  little,  hung  round  inside  a  great  hoop,  and  the 
tones  of  these  Drums  ascend  by  a  series  of  semitones 
(as  far  as  drums  can),  of  which  however  it  was  only 
possible  for  the  uncultivated  Western  ear  of  the  writer 
of  this  book  to  detect  more  than  half  a  dozen  or  so 
in  a  Burmese  drum  organ  he  was  examining ;  and 
beginning  from  the   lowest   these  were 


J  jA  <j  ^^  i|g 


-|-— l-^^-ft=^: 


&C. 


— he  could    distinguish   no    more. 

And    the  Gong  Organ   he   saw   consisted  of  15  Gongs 
hung   round    inside  a   great   hoop,  just  like    the  Drums 


I  Captain  Low's  History  of  Tenasserim. 


THE  CHINESE.  315 

and  the  tones  of  these  Gongs  ascended  by  an  irregular 
series  of  tones   and   semitones    thus  : — 

The  player  stands  in  the  inside  of  the  hoop  round  which  the 
gongs  or  drums  are  hung,  and  strikes  them  with  a  stick. 
As  these  instruments  are  much  used  in  processions,  it 
will  be  necessary  to  state  how  they  are  played  then. 
The  hoop  with  its  drums  attached  to  it  is  carried 
by  two  men,  one  at  the  front  and  the  other  at  the 
back,  like  chairmen  carrying  a  sedan  chair,  but  without 
the  poles,  and  the  player  shuffles  along  in  the  inside 
of  the  hoop  as  best  he  can,  playing  as  he  goes. 
This  must  be  very  difficult  to  do,  for  he  has  to  turn 
round  and  round  to  strike  his  drums,  and  still  keep 
moving  along  inside  his  hoop  at  the  rate  of  the  proces- 
sion :  but  they  have  a  method  of  striking  them  behind 
their  back,  to  which  they  are  trained  on  the  stage,  and 
perhaps  in  this  way  it  may  be  done.^ 

The  Drum  Organs  and  the  Gong  Organs  are  chiefly 
used  in  full  bands,  and  the  small  bands  of  Burmah 
have  this  remarkable  difference  from  the  large  ones, 
that  they  are  composed  of  nothing  but  instruments  of 
percussion.  Thus  we  read  of  small  bands  of  "  gongs, 
drums,  and  cymbals  ;  "^  "  drums  and  cymbals  ;  "3  "  one 
cymbal   player   and    two    drummers,"4  and    so    on.     But 


1  Playing  under  these  circumstances  cannot  be  so  difficiilt  to  the  Burmese 
drum-players  as  at  first  sight  it  may  seem  to  be ;  for  they  are  accustomed  to 
exhibit  feats  of  dexterity  on  the  stage,  the  point  of  which  consists  in  playing  a 
drum  in  all  sorts  of  impossible  positions,  as  behind  the  back,  over  and  under 
the^shoulders,  under  the  legs,  &c.  For  a  full  account  of  this,  see  Clement 
Williams'  Through  Burmah  to  Siam,  p.  134. 

2  CI.  Williams,  Through  Burmah  to  Siam,  p.  134. 

3  lb.  118.  4  lb.  117. 


3l5  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

before  leaving  the  Burmese,  it  will  be  well  to  men- 
tion a  very  strange  instrument  they  have,  which  is 
not  to  be  found  anywhere  else  in  the  world;  and 
this  is  an  instrument  in  the  shape  of  a  Crocodile. 
There  is  only  one  other  instrument  that  bears  any 
analogy  to  it,  and  that  is  the  Chinese  Tiger.^  But 
the  Crocodile  differs  from  the  Tiger  in  bt;ing  not  a 
simple  vibrating  instrument,  but  a  regular  stringed 
instrument.  And  it  consists  of  a  piece  of  wood,  carved 
in  the  shape  of  a  crocodile,  with  its  belly  hollow, 
and  on  its  back  are  stretched  three  brass  strings.^  It 
is  played  like  the  Chinese  Che,  but  most  probably  the 
strings  are  stopped,  though  this  is  more  than  I  can 
say   for  certain. 

The  Tonquinese  are  but  humbler  reflections  of  the 
nations  we  have  just  been  considering.  The  Tonquinese 
bands  are  of  much  the  same  composition  as  the 
Burmese  or  Siamese,  only  on  a  smaller  scale,  for  they 
are   composed   of 

Drums. 

Gongs. 

Copper  Basins. 

Hautboys. 

Lutes. 

Trumpets.3 
The  Anamese  or  Cochin  Chinese,  in  a  similar  way, 
and  on  a  similar  contracted  scale.''-  The  Javans  again 
have  a  superabundance  of  instruments,  and  though 
they  are  rather  out  of  the  line  I  have  studied  to  keep, 
for  they  owe   a  great  deal  of  their  civilisation  to  Aryan 


1  In  addition  to  these  two  Animal  instruments,  the  Serpent  'Vvill  suggest 
itself  as  a  modem  and  Western  representative. 

2  Symes'  Embassy  to  Ava,  508.  In  Pinkertou,  IX. 

3  Tavemiere  in  Pinkerton.  IX.  672.  4  TaverniSre  in  Finkerton.  IX. 


THE  CHINESE.  317 

influences,  yet  it  will  be  well  to  make  a  slight  mention 
of  them  here.  They  have  flutes,  fifes,  pipes,  hautboys,  and 
trumpets,  4  ft.  long  ;  harps  and  lutes,  drums  and 
gongs,!  and  the  gongs  have  a  knob,  in  the  centre 
which  is  covered  with  elastic  gum  and  struck  with  a 
mallet.2  Now  the  Javan  Gong  Organs  are  very  strange 
for  the  gongs  themselves  are  like  the  pots  you  get 
pate  de  foie  gras  in,  and  they  are  stuck  in  frames 
like  the  rods  of  an  iron  bedstead,  one  in  each  hole. 
And  the  Javans  have  Dulcimers,  which  are  bars  of 
wood,  or  sometimes  of  metal,  placed  over  a  wooden 
trough  or  boat,  and  struck  with  a  little  hammer.^  But 
one  of  the  most  singular  of  their  instruments-  is  that 
called  the  Anklung,  which  is  plainly  the  Chinese  Mouth- 
Organ,  or  Cheng,  under  a  very  unbecoming  disguise. 
For  the  Cheng,  as  we  have  noticed,  was  a  collection  of 
bamboo  pipes  of  various  lengths  fitted  in  a  gourd  box 
which  were  blown  by  means  of  a  mouthpiece  inser- 
ted in  the  box.  Now  the  Javan  Anklung  is  precisely 
the  same,  except  that  there  is  no  mouthpiece,  and 
the  pipes  are  not  blown  at  all, — the  sum  total  of  the 
music  consisting  in  rattling  the  pipes  about.^  The 
fate  which  has  thus  attended  the  Cheng,  which  is 
degraded  from  a  complicated  Wind  Instrument  into  a 
simple  instrument  of  the  Rattle  Species,  may  give  us 
a  hint  how  instruments  suffer,  like  other  things,  from 
changes  of  climate,  and  how  easy  it  is,  as  a  rule, 
to  detect   the   imported    from    the    indigenous. 

The     Japanese      Orchestras     though     they     have     the 
accident  to  be   considered   here    last,    are  yet  well  up  in 


I  Crawfurd's  Indian  Archipelago,  I.  334. 
a  lb.  335.  3  lb. 

4  Crawfurd's  Indian  Archipelago,  1. 333. 


318  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

the  list,   and   stand   second   to   the    Chinese  alone. 
A    full  Japanese    Orchestra  consists   of 

Bells. 

Gongs. 

Tambourines. 

Drums. 

Castanets. 

Cymbals. 

Musical  Stones. 

Lute. 

Flutes. 

Clarionets. 

Trumpets.  ^ 

If  I  were  asked  to  hit  off  the  difference  between 
Japanese  and  Chinese  Music,  I  should  say  that  the 
Japanese  was  wanting  in  that  barbaric  pomp  which 
marshals  instruments  like  troops,  that  there  was  much 
more  sentiment  about  it  than  there  is  about  the  Chinese, 
and  the  fact  that  solo-playing  seems  to  be  preferred 
to  orchestras  ^  would  also  point  in  the  same  direction. 
In  one  word,  it  is  more  Spiritual.^  And  to  give  it  this 
character  would  be  quite  in  keeping  with  what  we 
know  of  these  two  peoples  otherwise — the  Japanese 
artistic  sense  being  far  inferior  to  that  of  the  Chinese ; 
the  Chinese  temples  rioting  in  imagery  and  gorgeous 
carving,^  great  gilt  idols,  and  symbolical  decorations, 
the  Japanese  destitute  of  any  idol  whatsoever,  and  for 
decorations     being    simply    hung    with    small    strips    of 


1  Aime  Humbert,  Le  Japon  iHustre. 

2  Wassili  Golownin's  Recollections  of  Japan,  140. 

3  St.  Francis  Xavier  has  said  somewhere  of  the  Japanese,  "  I  know  not 
when  to  have  done  speaking  of  them  ;  for  they  are  the  joy  of  my  heart." 

4  As  the  Temple  of  the  Queen  of  Heaven,  for  instance,  at  Ninp-po, 


THE  CHINESE.  319 

white  paper  all  round  the  walls,  and  a  looking-glass 
suspended  near  the  door.^  And  the  make  of  their 
musical  instruments  certainly  tells  the  same  tale,  for 
they  are  all  of  a  much  coarser  make  than  the  Chinese. 
If  you  were  to  place  a  Japanese  lute  by  the  side  of 
a  Chinese  one,  and  compare  the  two,  you  would  say 
that  the  Japanese  had  been  made  by  some  schoolboy, 
who  tried  his  hand  at  carpentering  in  the  holidays. 
It  is  not  well  to  draw  out  a  contrast  which  has  been 
often  drawn  before  in  this  book  in  relation  to  other 
peoples  than  these.  But  here,  perhaps,  may  be  the 
place  to  remark,  that  inside  the  broad  circle  of  nations 
and  races,  whom  I  have  entitled  the  Pipe  Races,  the 
fundamental  antithesis  of  human  character  makes  itself  felt, 
as  it  does  elsewhere,  though  not  of  course  with  any- 
thing like  the  impressiveness  among  the  individual 
members  of  this  group  that  it  does  between  the 
members  of  this  group  and  the  members  of  the  other, 
I  mean  the  Lyre  Races.  So  that  if  we  wished  to  make 
a  subdivision  of  these  nations  we  have  just  been 
considering,  we  should  place  the  Chinese  and  Siamese 
on  one  side,  and  the  Japanese  and  Burmese  on  the 
other ;  and  taking  in  the  Mongoloid  Nation  of 
the  New  World,  we  should  find  that  the  Ancient 
Peruvians  went  in  the  first  class,  and  the  Mexicans 
would  go  with  the  Japanese  and  Burmese  in  the  second. 
But  since  it  is  my  business,  in  the  meantime,  not  to 
endeavour  to  establish  differences,  but  rather  to  find 
points  of  agreement  by  which  these  peoples  may  be 
shown  in  contrast  to  those  Aryan,  Semitic,  and  Hamitic 
Races,   to   whom    they    are   so   entirely    opposed    on    all 


S  Kempfer's  History  of  Japan, 


320  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

general  grounds  despite  a  few  individual  analogies  that 
might  be  struck  here  and  there — I  shall  refrain  from 
making  any  subdivisions,  and  still  continue  to  treat 
them    on    the    broad    lines   I    have   hitherto   done. 

Now  one  of  the  singularities  which  knots  them  so 
determinedly  together,  and  is  sufficient  of  itself  to  make 
a  group  of  them  if  nothing  else  were  there  to  aid 
it,  is  the  Scale  of  5  Notes  being  common  to  them 
all,  and  to  them  alone  of  all  Civilised  Nations  on 
the  earth — for  with  other  nations  it  may  occur  in  the 
infancy  of  culture,  but  subsequently  be  got  the  better 
of,  just  as  a  stage  of  Monosyllabism  has  doubtless 
/occurred  in  all  languages,  and  is  got  rid  of  very 
early  by  most  peoples  ;  but  with  these  Pipe  Races 
the  5  Note  Scale  has  never  been  got  rid  of,  but  has 
stuck  to  them  to  the  present  moment,  appearing 
among  the  Chinese,  (very  strongly),  the  Siamese,  (very 
strongly),  the  Burmese,(slightly),  the  Japanese,  (moderately), 
the  Peruvians  and  the  Mexicans — at  the  time  of  the 
conquest — and  if  we  still  add  these  Javans  to  the 
group,  it  appears  in  a  very  pronounced  degree  among 
them. 

Now  what  is  the  reason  that  these  nations  con- 
tinue to  use  the  old  scale  of  5  notes,  which  has  long 
since  been  abandoned  by  the  civilised  world  ?  If  we 
explain  it  by  quoting  their  Monosyllabism,  and  finding 
in  the  use-  of  this  5  note  scale  the  same  inaptitude 
to  compound  which  we  find  in  that  very  Monosyllabism, 
saying  that  they  can  as  little  agglutinate  the  Great 
Scale  and  the  Little  Scale  together  as  they  can 
manufacture  out  of  two  of  their  roots  a  two-syllabled 
word — I  say,  if  we  explain  it  in  this  way,  we  may 
content  ourselves  with  calling  the  5  Note  Scale  the 
Monosyllabic  of  Music,  and  we  will  then  throw  the  onus 
on     philologists    to     explain     why    such    a     thing    as 


THE   CHINESE.  321 

Monosyllabism  exists.  Bnt  then,  though  this  may  be  par- 
tially true,  it  is  not  wholly  so.  For  although  the  Chinese 
and  the  Indo-Chinese  are  monosyllabic,  the  Japanese 
are  polysyllabic,  and  the  Javans  and  the  uncivilised 
Malays  are  so  eminently  polysyllabic  that  they  have 
polysyllabic  roots,  and  the  Mexicans  and  Peruvians 
were  polysynthetic.  So  that  Monosyllabism,  though  It 
may  suggest  much,  and  doubtless  has  much  to  do  with 
the  use  of  the  5  Note  Scale,  cannot  be  accepted  as  in 
any  way  a  complete  solution  of  the  matter.  Shall  we 
say  this  then,  that  the  races  of  Eastern  and  South- 
Eastern  Asia  are  gifted  with  a  natural  character 
of  naive  simplicity,  a  spirit  of  primitive  conservatism, 
which  makes  them  shrink  frem  the  wrenches  of  pro- 
gress, and  that  they  prefer  to  utilise  and  re-utilise 
again  and  again  the  old,  rather  than  face  the  flighti- 
ness  and  failures  of  the  new.  And  so  instead  of 
developing  the  infinite  possibilities  of  the  String,  or 
even  of  the  Pipe,  probing  restlessly  into  the  mys- 
teries of  keys  and  inventing  dulcimers,  spinnets,  harp- 
sichords, or  what  not,  they  cling  to  the  earliest  form 
of  Musical  Instrument,  and  make  artful  Organs  out  of 
Drums ;  and  in  the  same  way  they  have  adhered  to 
the  oldest  form  of  the  Musical  Scale,  and  are  contented 
with  the  patterns  which  their  5  notes  make,  rather 
than  break  with  the  traditions  of  their  musical  kaleidoscope 
for  the  sake  of  a  new  colour  or  two.  Now  their 
Monosyllabism  would  then  appear  as  an  expression  of 
the  same  phase  of  mind.  And  we  might  go  on  to 
speak  of  the  Ancestor  Worship  of  China,  and  the 
Buddhist  Relic  worship  &c.,  in  illustration  of  the  same  idea 
I  will  now  give  some  examples  of  the  Music  of 
these  peoples. 

Y 


322 


HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 


SIAMESE.  I 


m 


w 


r^ 


■(d  ^-  ^  .    jj    '-9  -^  ^—^ 


---r^- 


^1 


i 


n^ 


S 


1^ 


3t 


^T"^ 


^- 


H H — :J — 


*  .    d^ 


J  J  ^ 


:W=^ 


It 


SIAMESE.  2 


ur 


:^dt 


^===^-T=;r'-^ ^1^- f^-:^=^^^ 


-^-js:z\z:i,z 


-sf- 


i 


f*1     S 


^    J   J^  .    ^ 


w=r^ 


l^ZgL 


S 


"gr7^^q=:q 


^:^lii^g=^ 


=W=I 


s 


I  Captain  Low's  History  of  Tennasserim.  Journal  of  Royal  Asiatic  Society 
IV.  SI.  sq.  2  lb. 


THE   CHINESE. 


323 


JAPANESE.  I 


m 


r-^    r   ^ 


5 


SE 


:^ 


if~r~^ 


ac^: 


:=t 


:9=:«^: 


l3^-^-| 


^a 


i — ^- 


d    <^  '' 


5 


S    S    *-aH-^ 


:ilr:3: 


JAVAN. 


:^ 


^ 


=^ 


?2=at 


:^ 


-z^ 


1=^ 


v^-^z 


H 1— »- 


-n 


:?c-^ 


ri  r^  r 


^: 


a^^^ 


2:± 


1^— a^-a^- 


-i^ 


F-*= 


-w 


i 


:^ 


S^SEEt 


r  f  f» 


m-^  J  ^  '\^ 


^ 


-^ — h 


1— t^ 


at^ 


:^ 


^L_^ 


-^ — ^ — a<-  -f^-a^ 


tf»     ^ 


:f^=f:;ffi=-j==^:e= 


e- 


1=± 


1 — t^b 


-p — ^ 


:?2: 


:?2= 


:^ 


■r. 


^==lat 


li^r-^"^ 


-01— j^ 


i-iat—T- 


1:21 


-» p-^ 


■  I       ^«*L 


:?2=:e; 


2^^t 


-<» — ^- 


-^ — ^ 


:r~iar 


tzit 


=  =2:± 


=1=»-=^=l 


I  Engel's  Ancient  Nations,  p.  139. 

I  Crawfurd'  History  of  the  Indian  Archipelago,  1,  p.  340.  pi.  ii. 


324  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

It  is  strange  what  a  strong  family  resemblance  this 
use  of  the  5  Note  Scale  gives  to  all  these  airs ;  but 
though  there  may  be  a  ring  of  uncouthness,  or  shall 
we  rather  say  quaintness  ?  about  them,  it  would  be 
wrong  to  set  them  down  as  any  the  less  musical  on 
that  account.  It  is  only  our  prejudiced  ears,  inured 
to  one  particular  scale  from  childhood,  that  refuse  to 
give  a  fair  hearing  to  the  strains,  as  our  eyes  have 
until  lately  denied  all  merit  to  that  wonderful  luxury 
of  colour  and  design,  which  we  call  Chinese  and  Jap- 
anese painting.  For  if  ever  nations  were  musical,  they 
are  these  whom  I  have  called  the  Pipe  Races.  In  the 
delicate  melody  of  their  Poetry,  which  is  studded  with 
metres  of  unknown  intricacy  ^ — in  the  suavity  of  their 
languages,  which,  if  the  Chinese  is  a  type  of  the  rest, 
are  all  vowels — no  rasping  letters  to  interrupt  the 
harmonious  flow — and  are  delivered  by  song  rather 
than  speech,  for  a  study  of  the  Chinese  accents  reveals 
the  fact,  that  varieties  of  tone  rather  than  varieties  of 
words  are  the  means  used  to  secure  varieties  of  meaning  ; 
for  the  Sheng,  which  is  what  the  intonation  of  Chinese 
Speech  is  called,  is  so  paramount  in  its  influence,  that 
you  may  alter  the  letters  of  your  word,  the  syllables — 
you  may  add  an  extra  syllable  even — so  long  as  you 
do  not  disturb  the  musical  inflection,  but  if  you  alter 
the   Sheng   in   the   slightest,  you  are   unintelligible   to   a 


I  e.g.  take  the  Javan  metrical  system  as  an  example.  How  strictly  are 
syllables  kept  in  the  lines  !  How  intricate  are  many  of  the  stanzas !  e.g.  the 
Durmo  stanza,  which  is  as  difficult  as  our  Spenserian  stanza,  which  it  some- 
what resembles ;  for  in  the  7  lines,  which  it  consists  of,  there  are  only  two 
rhymes  allowed,  4  lines  going  to  one  rhyme,  the  1st,  3rd,  4th,  and  6th,  and  the 
remaining  three  to  the  other.  I  .could  give  other  examples  of  such  intricate 
versification  in  the  Javan  metrical  system, 


THE  CHINESE.  325 

Chinese.!  What  singing  and  melody  of  diphthongs  and 
triphthongs,  and  all  the  words  beginning  with  a  soft 
letter !  And  the  Siamese,  also,  employ  this  method  so 
much,  that  there  is  no  telling  their  song  from  their 
Speech.2  The  Lord  of  the  White  Elephant  holds  parley 
with  foreign  ambassadors  by  means  of  singing,^  and 
in  Burmah  even  the  Prose  of  common  conversation  is 
measured,  and  the  last  word  of  each  sentence  is  length- 
ened by  a  musical  cadence.'*  Yes,  and  as  the  great 
world  spins  round,  we  pass  from  the  crowded,  bustling 
cities  of  Europe  as  they  come  galloping  by  us,  roaring 
with  trade  and  bustle  and  hurry,  over  the  steppes  of 
Russia  as  the  world  swings  round,  and  the  Salt  Desert 
of  Persia  forges  ahead,  and  the  swamps  of  Tartary, 
swinging  round  to  meet  the  Sun,  and  we  come  at  last 
to  those  strange  lands  where  the  men  use  fans,  and 
people  are  walking  about  in  red  dresses  with  green 
sashes,  and  then  what  abundance  of  music  may  we  hear ! 


I    Thus  according  to  Meadows    (Desultory  Notes  on  the  Chinese,  p.  66.) 
the  word  ling  for  instance   may  be  pronouuced 


:^^ 


— ^- 


ling  lin  ning  nlng  nln 

and  this  is  in  the  3rd  Sheng  of  the  Pekin  Dialect— and  yet  despite  all  these  chan- 
ges of  consonants  will  be  always  understood  as  ling.     But  the  word  ling 


itself  without  any  change,  taken  to   the  4th  Sheng.      ir^lT^^z:   is  totally 

ling 
uninteUigible,   at  least  in  the  meaning  of  'ling,'  to  a  Chinese  ear. 

It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  the  only  professed  work  on  the  Sheng  i.e. 
that  of  the  missionary,  Dyer,  is  not  obtainable  in  Enghsh  Libraries. 

2  Turpin's  History  of  Siam.  579. 

3  "From    the    origin    of   their    monarchy"     says  Turpin  loc.  cit.    "the 
audiences  that  the  PCing  grants  to  ambassadors   are  carried  on  in  singing." 

4  Symes'  Embassy  to  Ava.  510, 


326  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

Ten  Drums  in  every  city  of  China  beating  together  the 
hours  of  the  day  ;  ^  large  choir  trumpets  in  every  city, 
coloured  with  Chinese  ink,  which  are  the  charters  of 
cities,  and  are  blown,  5  at  each  of  the  4  gates  of 
every  city,  at  certain  hours  of  day  and  night  eternally, 
and  can  be  heard  a  mile  off ;  =  and  the  bells  ringing 
behind  the  mandarins'  chairs,  which  are  rung  by  strings 
that  reach  three  miles  into  the  country,  that  the  country 
people  may  thus  give  notice  of  their  grievances  ;  ^  or 
the  perpetual  gong-beating  in  the  Japanese  pagodas, 
for  each  separate  worshipper  as  he  enters  the  temple 
strikes  a  sacred  gong,  to  give  the  god  notice  of  his 
arrival.4 

All  these  sounds  may  we  listen  to  as  they  rise  on 
the  air,  or  to  that  Great  Bell  of  Pekin  tolling,  which 
is  one  of  five  and  weighs  118,000  Ibs,^  or  to  the  Great 
Drum,  36  feet  in  circumference,  which  stands  in  a 
Tower  all  by  itself,  and  is  used  to  mark  the  hours. 
And  as  we  travel  southwards,  the  roar  of  Drums  and 
Gongs  gets  fainter,  and  we  hear  in  the  distance  the 
songs  of  the  Siamese  boatmen  floating  on  the  breeze,  6 
and  the  Tonquin  singing-guilds  rehearsing  their  anthems 
for   the   village  festivals,^  or   listen   to    the    workmen    of 


1  Renaudot's  Translation  of  an  Arabic  M.S.,  of  the  gtii  century,  of  two 
Mahometan  Travellers  who  went  to  China  and  India,  p.  20. 

2  lb.  3    Renaudot's  Translation  of  the  Arabic  MS.  p.  25. 

4  Wassili  Golownin's  Recollections  of  Japan,  p,  59. 

5  It  is  covered  all  over  with  inscriptions.  A  priest  told  Doolittle  (Social 
Life  of  the  Chinese.  II.  450.)  that  87  sections  of  the  Religious  Books  of  his 
order  were  inscribed  on  it. 

6  The  Siamese  principally  travel  by  water,  in  wherries,  called  b  a  lions, 
made  out  of  only  one  single  tree.  .The  boatmen  have  a  measured  song  as  they 
row,  and  sing  with  ease  and  grace."    Turpin's  History  of  Siam.  580. 

7  "The  Tonquinese  have  singing  guilds,  and  singing  houses, "erected  at  the 
expense  of  3  or  4  villages  who  club  together"  &c.,  Sec.  Taverniere  in  Pinkerton 
IX.  672. 


THE  CHINESE.  327 

Burmah  playing  musical  instruments  as  they  come 
home  from  work  in  the  evening  twilight,^  when  the 
drums  are  just  beginning  to  beat  in  the  bagnios  of 
Japan.2 

Now  could  we  have  but  crossed  over  to  Peru  before 
its  conquest  by  the  Spaniards,  we  might  have  heard  those 
songs,  forgotten  now,  which  the  reapers  used  to  sing 
in  the  maize  fields,  as  they  were  cutting  the  crops  of 
Atahualpa ;  and  whether  they  were  reaping  or  binding 
up  the  sheaves,  all  the  motions  of  their  bodies  were 
in  time  to  the  measure  of  their  songs.3  Here  was  a 
beautiful  sight !  These  reapers'  songs  were  renouned 
all  over  Peru  for  their  beauty.  Except  a  few  of  the 
very  best  love  songs,  there  was  nothing  that  could  come  up 
to  the  reapers'  songs ;  and  in  another  way  too  they 
were  remarkable,  for  Peruvian  music  consisted  almost 
entirely  of  love  songs  :  except  a  few  songs  about  the 
warlike  deeds  of  the  past,  which  were  sung  at  festivals 
and  these  reapers'  songs,  there  was  nothing  else  but  love 
songs.4  And  fortunately  we  can  form  a  very  fair  idea 
of  the  ancient  Peruvian  singing,  and  could  almost 
undertake  to  reconstruct  the  lost  Peruvian  melodies  ;  for 
we  have  some  very  curious  information  about  them. 
We  are  told  that  no  such  thing  as  unequal  time  was 
ever  heard  in  Peru  ;  that  all  the  notes  in  a  song 
were  all  of  exactly  the  same  length  ;  5  we  know  what 
the  favourite  metre    of   the     poetry  was ;    and    we    know 


1  Symes'  Embassy  to  Ava,  p.  508, 

2  "  The  Japanese  bagnios,  many  of  them,  do  not  yield  in  magnificence  to 
the  palaces  of  Emperors.  A  drum  beats  in  the  bagnios  whenever  each  new 
visitor  enters.  I  cannot  remember  a  single  night  passing  without  our  hearing 
the  drum."    Gollownin's  Recollections  of  Japan,  p.  23. 

3  Garcilasso  de  La  Vega.  Commentarios  Reales,  II.  26. 

4  Garcilasso  de  la  Vega,  Commentarios  Reales.  II.  26. 

5  No  supieron  echar  glosas  con  puntos  diminuidos ;  todos  eran  enteros  de 
un  compas.  lb.  * 


328  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

what  the  scale  was,  that  it  was  the  same  5  note  scale 
which  we  talked  about  in  China. ^^  So  that  putting  these 
hints  together,  it  would  be  no  hard  matter  to  reproduce 
much  of  the  Ancient  Peruvian  music — for  that  piece  of 
information  about  all  the  notes  being  of  the  same  length* 
is  particularly  valuable,  indeed  it  is  this  which  renders 
the  attempt    possible. 

Here  is  an  example  of  the  metre  which  the  Peruvians 
were  so  fond  of,  that  nearly  all  their  songs  were 
written  in  it : — 

Caylla  Llapi  Victa  cantu 

Puiiunqui  which  may  be  translated  Dormies 

Chaupituta  syUable  for  syUable,  Multa  nocte 

Samusac^  Veniam. 

This  gives  the  meaning  and  at  the  same  time  the  precise 
swing  of  the  Peruvian  ;  and  it  will  be  plain  what 
a  wonderfully  rhythmical  metre  it  is.  The  Chinese 
have   a   metre   very    much  like   it 

—  \j  — 

—  \j  — 

—  \j  — 

3 

—  w  — 

And  the  oldest  metre  in  China  is  an  exact  counter- 
part to  another  Peruvian  metre,  which  was  perhaps  the 
second  commonest  one  in    use  ;  for  they  both    are 


—  \j  —  \j 


1  Engel's  Music  of  Most  Ancient  Nations. 

2  Garcilasso.  Commentarios  Reales.  II.  396.     Like  the  Spanish  roundelays. 

3  Davis  in  Transactions  of  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  11.  396.  The  Chinese, 
however,  make  a  difference  in  counting  their  lines— 2  of  these  are  counted  one 
line ;  in  Peru  it  was  not  so. 


THE  PERUVIANS  AND   MEXICANS.  329 


—  \j  —  w 

The    Burman    metres    also    are    not  unlike  these,    for 
in   Burmese  poetry   we   get  such   forms   as 


—    W    —    \J 

—    KJ    —    \J 

—  Kj  

_  \j 

or 

—    W    — 

—    W    — 

_    W    _    W 

2 
—    W    — 

And   the  Siamese 

metres    in    the   same  way 

_  w  _ 

—    W    — 

—  Kj  — 

—  \j  — 

or 

—  \j  —  \j 

—   \J   —   w 

—    KJ    —    W 

_W_^ 

All  nations  with  a  strong  feeling  for  Rhythm  and 
Melody   will  develop  such  metres  as  these. 

What  a  contrast  do  these  neatly  chiselled  distichs 
present  to  the  great  swelling  torrents,  which  do  duty  for 
metres  among  the  Lyre  Races  ! 

The  Peruvians  were  not  great  singers  and  these  are 
just  the  kind  of  metres,  to  have  had  an  instrumental 
origin.     "In  my  time,"   says    Garcilasso,    "the  people   of 


1  Davis'  in  Trans,  of  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  II.  396. 

2  Low,  in  Journal  of  Asiatic  Society,  IV.  50.  3  lb. 


330  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

Peru  never  sang  at  all,  but  they  used  to  play  their 
songs  on  the  Flute  instead,  which  came  to  much  the 
same  thing,  for  the  words  of  the  songs  being  well  known 
and  no  two  songs  having  the  same  tune,  the  melody  of 
the  flute  immediately  suggested  the  words  to  the 
mind."  ^  It  would  be  possible  perhaps  to  argue  from 
these  and  similar  hints  for  a  purely  instrumental  origin 
for  the  Peruvian  metres,  and  what  was  true  of  the 
Peruvian  metres  would  doubtless  be  generally  true  of 
those  other  metres  which  we  have  already  compared 
them  with.  But  passing  by  this  question,  let  us  remember 
rather  the  first  thing  that  Garcilasso  says  in  this  little 
extract  I  have  quoted,  that  in  his  time  the  people  of 
Peru  never  sang  at  all  ;  and  he  adds  that  they  had  very 
bad  voices  into  the  bargain,  which  he  ascribes  rightly  or 
wrongly  to  this  disuse  of  the  art  of  singing.  Flute- 
playing  it  appears  had  put  singing  quite  out  of  court  in 
Peru,  and  while  it  had  always  been  in  high  favour  there, 
just  before  the  conquest  it  amounted  to  a  positive 
passion. 

There  could  be  no  better  commentary  on  the  national 
character  than  this  perpetual  flute  playing,  which  is 
always  a  terrible  sign  of  effeminacy,  and  that  the  Home 
of  the  Flute  should  surrender  without  a  blow  to  Pi- 
zarro  is  only  what  might  have  been  expected.  Now 
passing  by  the  lovers'  serenades,  the  love  language  of 
the  Flute,  the  stories  of  how  the  flute  could  enchant 
women,  I  say.  passing  by  the  love  and  the  soft  doings 
which  associate  themselves  so  intimately  with  the 
Peruvian  flute  playing,  I  will  here  confine  myself  to 
a  merely  technical  account  of  it,  because  I  have  spoken 
about   those   other  things   before.     And   the  flutes  which 


I  Garcilasso  de  la  Vega.  Commentarios  Reales.  II.  26. 


THE  PERUVIANS  AND  MEXICANS.  331 

the  gallants  played  upon  had  4  or  5  stops,  and  were 
often  wrapped  in  embroidered  needlework. ^  The  reason 
the  stops  were  so  few  was  this,  that  only  songs  were 
played  on  the  flute,  and  5  stops,  which  gave  the 
complete  Vocal  Scale,  were  therefore  sufficient.  In  the 
same  way  many  of  their  Pan  Pipes  only  sounded  the 
5  note  scale,  so  that  probably  the  Pan  Pipes  were 
also  used  to  play  the  melodies  of  songs  on.  But 
most  of  the  Pan  Pipes  however  were  tuned  to  a 
fanciful  Instrumental  Scale  : — 


-I     I     I     I  ^  I    J    ^  jt#    r 


^"J     ;    :|^'     ^zzg^ 


and  these  would  no  doubt  toy  with  sweet  sound,  and 
play  music  not  unlike  the  Instrumental  Music  of  the 
Chinese.  And  they  were  such  skilful  players  on  the 
Pan  Pipe  and  delighted  in  the  instrument  so  much, 
that  they  used  to  form  bands  of  Pan  Pipes  alone. 
And  these  bands  were  composed  of  4  players,  each 
with  a  different  set  of  pipes, — one  player  had  a  set 
of  Bass  Pipes,  another  of  Tenor,  the  third  of  Alto 
Pipes,  and  the  fourth  of  Treble.  And  the  Bass  player 
would  begin,  and  the  Tenor  player  would  answer  him 
and  the  Alto  would  answer  the  Tenor,  and  the  Treble 
the  Alto.  And  so  the  Melody  would  soar  up  from  the 
very  lowest  note  right  up  to  the  highest,  and  they  would 
fling  it  about  from  one  to  the  other ;  ^  and  all  in 
excellent  time,  for  they  were  well  trained.4  These  bands 
used  to  play  in  the  front  of  the  palaces. 


I  Garcilasso  de  la  Vega.  Commentarios  Reales.  II,  26. 
2  Engel's  Musical  Instruments.     Some  were  in  8ves,  but  these  only  in  the 
Vocal  Scale.  3  Garcilasso,  II.  26. 

4  Ensenados  para  dar  Musica  al  Rey  y  a  los  Seiiores  de  VasaUos, 


333  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

The  idyllic  Music  of  Peru  is  a  great  contrast  to  the 
Music  of  Mexico  where  barbaric  pomp,  and  joy  in  the 
roar  of  sound  re-appear  again.  Copper  gongs/  copper 
rattles,^  conch-shells,^  trumpets,4  drums,^  cymbals,^  bells,7 
bell-rattles,8  rattle  organs9 — these  were  the  instruments 
the  Ancient  Mexicans  delighted  in.  If  the  Music  of 
Peru  was  founded  on  the  Flute,  the  Music  of  Mexico 
was  founded  on  the  Drum.  And  the  Mexicans  developed 
the  Drum  in  a  manner  which  was  quite  peculiar  to 
themselves.  It  was  an  instrument  of  melody  with  them, 
as  it  is  with  the  Chinese  and  the  rest  of  the  Pipe 
nations,  but  instead  of  resorting  to  the  somewhat 
clumsy  contrivance  of  combining  a  lot  of  separate 
drums  to  produce  the  melody,  the  Mexicans  had 
discovered  how  to  produce  different  melodic  notes 
from  the  same  drum.  And  this  they  did  by  the  use 
of  vibrating  tongues.  In  the  top  of  the  drum,  which 
was  an  oblong,  trough-shaped  ^block  of  hollowed  wood* 
in  the  flat  top  of  this,  I  say,  they  cut  two  long  slits 
one  at  each  side  reaching  nearly  the  whole  length  of 
the  drum,  and  then  cut  a  cross  slit  from  one  to  the 
other,  like  a  slit  in  a  money  box.  This  gave  them 
two   tongues  of  wood,  and  they  had  only   to   slice  them 


I  Ixtlilxochitl,  Historia  Chichimeca,  in  Aglio.  IX.  2  lb. 

3  '  Caracoles  marinos.'  Sahagun,  Historia  de  las  Casas  de  Nueva  Espaiia.  114. 

4  Bemal  Diaz,  folio  71.  4.  'bocinas  y  trompetillas,'  'trumpets  large  and 
small,'  5  Sahagun,  115. 

6  Gondra,  Esplicacion  de  las  laminas  &c.  p.  108. 

7  Sahagun,  158.  Gondra  says  they  had  no  bells,  but  he  must  be  referring  to 
the  metal  they  were  made  of,  for  though  these  instruments  were  made  of  wood, 
they  certainly  had  the  true  bell  shape,  since  son  hechas  como  cabezas  de  ador- 
mideras  grandes,  '  they  were  like  big  poppy  heads.' 

8  lb.  It  is  nevertheless  odd  that  the  Mexicans  should  have  the  regular  Bell 
shape  and  yet  never  think  of  making  them  of  metal,when  the  metal  they  employ- 
ed for  every  purpose  was  the  regular  beU  metal,being  an  alloy  of  copper  and  tin. 

9  Sahagun.  113. 


THE  PERUVIANS  AND  MEXICANS.  333 

to  tune  them  to  what  note  they  pleased.  Sometimes 
they  would  make  two  sets  of  these  on  the  same  drum, 
by  cutting  only  half  the  top  at  a  time.i  so  that  they 
could  have  two  tongues  on  the  left  half  of  the  top, 
and  two  on  the  right,  with  a  little  space  of  plain 
wood  between  each  set.  But  this  was  not  common — 
two  tongues  on  every  drum  was  the  common  thing  and 
these  tongues  were  tuned 


^or<l^Ji^orW3=^ 


Some  of  them  also: — (^    ^J  t^^ 


these  tongued  drums  were  called  teponaztlis  and  had  a 
very  deep  tone.  When  they  were  played  with  other 
instruments,  they  served  ^as  the  double  bass,3  so  that 
perhaps  it  would  be  more  correct  to  write  : — 


m 


q=      5^^=p=l: 


&c. 


-^^    — 3--^- 


But  they  were  also  played  solo  ;  for  teponaztlis  of 
various  pitches  might  be  so  arranged  as  to  play  a 
consecutive  melody  between  them,  much  as  the  Peruvian 
pipe  players  did  with  their  Pan  pipes.  But  the  melody 
at  the  best  must  have  been  very  indistinct — more  like 
rumbling    thunder    than    musical    melody ;    although  this 


1  e.  g.  in  the  teponaztli  figured  in  Gondra.  fig.  i.  pi.  p.  I06. 

2  Nebel's  Voyage  Pittoresque  et  archeologique  dans  la  partie  la  plus  inter- 
essante  du  Mexique. 

3  Gondra.  Esplicacion  de  las  laminas  &e.  p.  103.  All  the  teponaztlis  I 
have  played  on  have  been  C.  G.  To  play  a  teponaztli  properly  you  should  have 
2  drumsticks,  one  for  each  tongue. 

4  Icazbalceta's  Mendieta,  p.  141, 


334  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

would  be  quite  in  the  Mexican  taste,  for  they  were 
passionately  fond  of  everything  bass.  So  enamoured 
were  they  of  bass  voices,  for  instance,  that  "  they  would 
keep  bass  singers  singing  their  bass  songs  for  days 
together."  '^  And  the  kind  of  bass  they  liked  best  was 
the  deepest  of  deep  bass — the  basso  profundo.^  For  the 
tenor  voice  they  did  not  care  at  all.  I  think  this  ought 
to  show  us  how  totally  different  was  the  Mexican  ear 
to  what  ours  is,  and  a  love  of  bass  may  perhaps  be  the 
real  account  of  the  preference  for  the  Drum  Form  over 
every  other  style  of  Musical  Instrument  among  those 
peoples  we  have  called  the  Pipe  Races.  And  contrasting 
these  Pipe  Races  with  ourselves,  we  may  say  that  one  of 
the  main  causes  of  the  eternal  differences  between  our 
musics  is  that  they  prefer  bass  and  we  prefer  treble. 

Now  the  Great  Drum  of  the  Mexicans  was  called 
Veuetl,  and  it  could  be  tuned  to  any  pitch  by  tightening 
or  loosening  the  drum  head.3  The  reason  of  this  was 
that  it  might  play  in  concert  with  the  teponaztli.  The 
copper  gongs  were  struck  with  copper  drumsticks,^  but 
the  drums  with  drumsticks  tipped  with  Indian  rubber.^ 
And  they  had  musical  stones  too  like  the  Chinese,  but 
they  used  them  in  a  different  way,  for  they  clashed  them 
together  like  cymbals  ;  ^  and  they  had  not  the  variety 
either  which  the  Chinese  have,  for  the  only  musical  stone 
to  be  found  in  Mexico  is  a  kind  of  limestone  which 
is  a  solitary  species.  And  the  copper  rattles  were  made 
like  small  oil  flasks,  and  the  neck  was  the  handle,  and 
it   was    hollow ;     and    the    rattle    was    filled    with    small 


I    Mendieta.  Historia  Ecclesiastica  Indiana.  140.  2    lb. 

3    Mendieta,  141.  4    IxtlilxocMtl.  Historia  Chichimeca.  In  Aglio.  IX. 

5  Bancroft's  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific,II.  293.  The  Veuetl  however  was 
beaten  by  the  hands.   See  Mendieta.  Historia  Ecclesiastica  Indiana.  141. 

b  Gondra.  Esplicacion  deks  laminas  perten^cientes  a  la  histona  antigua  de 
Mexico,  p.  108, 


THE  PERUVIANS  AND  MEXICANS.  335 

stones.^  Sometimes  these  rattles  were  made  of  silver, 
and  sometimes  of  pure  gold.^  In  their  ignorance  of  any 
stringed  instrument,  the  Mexicans  were  put  to  it  to 
devise  perpetual  variety  in  those  simpler  instruments  they 
had,  not  only  in  their  form  but  in  their  quality  of  tone. 
So  in  their  rattles,  having  tried  the  sound  of  pebbles 
rattled  against  copper,  against  silver,  against  gold,  or  of 
terra  cotta  pellets  rattling  against  terra  cotta,  for  they  had 
terra  cotta  rattles  too,  they  went  on  to  try  the  sound  of 
wood  rattling  against  wood,  or  perhaps  these  wooden  rattles 
may  have  been  the  oldest  of  all,  and  the  terra  cotta  and 
copper  rattles  the  subsequent  ones.  But  at  any  rate  they 
made  those  strange  things  which  I  have  called  Rattle 
Organs,  and  of  which  the  music  consisted  in  little  pieces 
of  wood  rattling  against  one  another.  Of  these  Rattle 
Organs  there  were  2  kinds,  the  Small  Rattle  Organ,  and  the 
Great  Rattle  Organ  ;  the  first  was  called  Aiochicaoaliztli 
or  Nacatlgzioavitl,^  and  the  second  was  called  Ayanhchi- 
caoaztli.^  And  to  describe  the  second,  of  which  the  first 
was  only  adiminutive  copy,  it  consisted  of  a  board  12  feet 
long  and  a  span  broad,  (the  first  was  only  6  feet  long),  on 
which  were  fastened,  at  certain  intervals,  round  pieces  of 
wood  something  of  the  shape  of  drumsticks,  and  when 
the  board  was  moved  these  pieces  of  wood  rattled  against 
one  another. ■^  These  Rattle  Organs  were  principally 
used  in  processions,6  and  the  players  carried  them  on 
their  shoulder. 


I    lb.  105.  2    lb.  3    Sahagun.  Nueva  Espaiia.  115.         4    lb. 

5  A  trechos  iban  unas  sonajas  en'esta  tabla,  unos  pedazuelos  de  madero 
roUizos  y  atados  a  la  misma  tabla,  y  dentro  di  ella  iban  sonando  los  unos  con 
Ids  otros. 

6  As  in  the  processions  in  honour  of  the  God  of  Rain,  which  Sahagun 
describes,  &c. 


33^  HISTORY  OF    MUSIC. 

This  then  was  one  of  the  shifts  of  the  Mexicans  to  obtain 
variety  in  the  simple  instruments  which  were  at  their 
command.  That  is  to  say,  I  mean,  variety  of  sound,  for  if  I 
were  to  speak  about  the  variety  of  external  form  which  that 
artistic  people  gave  their  musical  instruments,  it  would 
be  hard  to  avoid  digressing  into  the  whole  subject  of 
Mexican  Art.  In  Mexico  as  almost  nowhere  else  the 
Arts  were  blent  and  combined  into  one  united  family 
with  Carving  for  the  Master  Art  which  touched  them 
all.  Painting  lent  itself  readily  to  the  influence  of 
Carving,  and  in  its  most  popular  form  of  Feather  paint- 
ing, in  which  the  artists  worked  with  feathers  instead  of 
colours,  it  was  not  far  removed  from  bas-relief  And 
similarly  Music  offered  a  side  where  Sculpture  could 
well  creep  in,  and  that  was  in  the  form  of  its  instru- 
ments. Under  the  dominion  of  the  master  pirit  the 
musical  instruments  became  regular  works  of  art.  We 
have  considered  this  wedding  of  Sculpture  and  Music 
in  the  case  of  China.  But  it  comes  out  still  more 
strikingly  in  Mexico.  They  made  their  whistles  in  the 
shape  of  birds,^  frogs,^  men's  heads  ;  3  their  teponaztlis, 
even  the  ordinary  ones,  were  covered  with  carvings  ;  ^  but 
the  teponaztlis  used  in  war,  the  war  drums,  as  we  should 
call  them,  were  cut  in  the  figure  of  a  man  crouching 
on  his  knees — his  back  was  the  drum — and  he  had 
eyes  of  bone,  and  beautifully  braided  hair,  ear-rings, 
necklaces,  and  boat-shaped  shoes  on  his  feet,  all  carved 
in  a  mulberry  coloured  wood,  and  highly  burnished.^ 
And  while  other  nations  have  been  content  to  make  their 
tambourines   of   a   round    frame  covered    with  a  piece  of 


I  Engel's  Musical  Instruments.  2    lb. 

3  Waldeck's  Palenque.  pi.  56. 

4  Gondra.  Esplicacion  delas  laminas  &c.  pp.  103.  4. 

5  See  the  beautiful  illustration  in  Gondra.  p.  106, 


THE   PERUVIANS  AND  MEXICANS.  337 

skin,  the  Mexicans  made  theirs  in  the  form  of  a  snake 
biting  a  tortoise's  head.^  The  snake  was  coiled  up  in 
three  coils  on  the  tortoise's  back,  and  the  arch  of  its 
neck  served  as  a  handle  ;  and  the  belly  of  the  tortoise 
served  as  the  tambourine,  being  made  of  a  flat  slice  of 
tortoiseshell  (the  rest  of  the  tortoise  was  of  wood),  and 
struck  by  the  right  hand,  while  the  instrument  itself 
was  held  by  the  left.^  And  here  was  a  peculiar  thing 
about  these  snake  and  tortoise  tambourines — there  were 
holes  in  the  tortoise's  back  which  served  as  stops,  and 
were  covered  by  the  fingers.^  So  delicate  an  ear  had 
the  Mexicans  for  all  the  shades  of  percussional  sounds, 
that  they  could  appreciate  the  variation  caused  by  the 
stopping  and  unstopping  of  a  hole  in  the  body  of  a 
tambourir :,  no  bigger  than  the  hole  of  an  ordinary 
flute  stop.  And  they  had  rattles  made  in  the  shape 
of  a  snake  crushing  a  toad  in  its  coils  ;  4  and  things 
very  much  like  the  Chinese  egg-instruments,  that  were 
really  flageolets  with  two  mouthpieces,  that  could  play 
a  bass  and  a  treble  at  the  same  time ;  ^  and  pipes  and 
rattles  combined,  in  the  form  of  three  human  heads 
supporting  a  pedestal — the  pedestal  was  the  pipe,  and 
the  heads,  which  were  filled  with  stones,  were  the 
rattles.6  Such  are  the  elegant  forms  in  which  musical 
instruments  go  out  among  a  nation  of  artists.  Had 
the  Mexicans  known  the  string,  into  what  trellised 
patterns,  what  radiating  traceries  of  golden  strings 
would  they  not  have  woven  their  materials !  But 
the  string,  which  offers  most  scope  for  artistic  treat- 
ment,  has    seldom    had    the    benefit    of    it,   for    it    has 


1  Gondra.  fig.  2.  pi.  p.  103. 

2  Gondra.  Esplicacion  de  las   laminas   &c.  p.  107.  108.    Gondra  is  not 
sure  whether  a  drumstick  or  the  hand  was  used  to  strike  with. 

3    lb,  108,       4   lb.  pi.  p.  103.        5    lb,  p,  104,      6   lb.  pi.  p.  103. 

Z 


338  HISTORY  OF  MUSIC. 

ever  remained  in  the  hands  of  spiritual  and  practical 
peoples,  and  has  been  neglected  or  unknown  among 
the  artistic   nations   of  the    world. 

As  a  curious  commentary  on  this  blending  and 
fusion  of  the  Arts  in  Mexico,  let  us  take  those  bodies 
which  existed  probably  in  all  the  cities  of  the  Chich- 
imec  empire,*  and  of  which  the  chief  one  was  at 
Tezcuco.  They  were  called  Councils  of  Music.^  And  the 
one  at  Tezcuco  may  serve  as  a  type  of  the  rest.  What 
then  were  its  functions?  It  was  concerned  primarily 
with  the  regulation  of  Music,  as  its  name  imports. 
Poets  sang  their  compositions  before  it,  and  received 
prizes  according  to  their  merits ;  and  it  doubtless  had 
much  to  do  with  determining  what  songs,  out  of  the 
many  that  were  written  and  rehearsed,  should  be  sung 
at  the  monthly  festivals.  But  it  did  not  stop  at  poetry 
and  music,  for  "  all  literary  arts,  oratory,  and  historical 
paintings  were  subject  to  its  revision."  ^  It  also  took 
care  that  no  imperfect  cameos,  or  intaglios,  or  goldsmith's 
work  should  be  exhibited  in  the  markets,  and  that 
no  feather  paintings  except  of  the  first  order  should 
be  sold  to  the  public.^  It  acted  as  a  general  ^Esthetic 
Inquisition,  and  yet  the  name,  Council  of  Music, 
was  sufficient  to  denote  its  functions,  because,  as  I 
understand  it,  the  arts  were  so  dovetailed  into  one 
another,  that  there  was  scarcely  any  possibility  of  paying 
attention  to  one  without  paying   attention  to  all, 

A  highly  plastic  and  sensuous  music  we  might  expect 
to  find  as  the  background  of  all  this,  and  such  the 
Mexican  music  eminently  was.  In  the  Vocal  Music, 
'metre    and    cadence   were   attended    to   so    much,    that 


1  Bancroft's  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific.  II.  492. 

2  lb.  3    Bancroft  II.  491.  4    lb), 


THE    PERUVIANS  AND   MEXICANS.  339 

unmeaning  syllables  were  constantly  interspersed  in  the 
poetry  for  the  sake  of  the  music.'^  Perfect  time — perfect 
unison,^  are  the  invariable  eulogies  that  are  passed  on 
the  Mexican  Music,  and  it  is  quite  in  keeping  with 
such  a  character  that  dancing  was  its  constant  attendant. 
The  Mexicans  were  the  greatest  dancers  of  the  world. 
The  princes,  and  the  nobles  and  the  elders  of  the 
city,  all  joined  in  the  public  dances,  along  with  the 
women  and  littie  children.  5000  dancing  at  once — 
Mendieta  gives  us  the  picture^ — 5000  persons  in  two 
rings,  3000  or  4000  in  the  inner  ring,  and  lOOO  in 
the  outer  ring,  and  both  these  rings  whirling  round, 
but  the  outer  one  going  at  double  the  pace  of  the 
inner  one,  which  was  composed  of  the  elders  and 
others,  and  all  in  it  moved  with  deliberation  and 
dignity.  And  in  the  centre  of  all  were  the  drums, 
teponaztlis  and  veuetls,  piles  of  them,  on  mats.  And 
they  beat  in  time  to  the  dance  and  the  song,  for  the 
dancers  were  singing  all  the  time.  And  the  first  song 
they  sang  was  in  a  low  voice,  and  they  carried  on 
their  bass  songs  till  the  children  of  the  nobles  came 
running  in,  little  things  of  seven  and  eight  years,  some 
only  four  or  five.  And  the  children  danced  with  their 
fathers,  and  began  to  sing  the  song  in  a  high  treble. 
And  then  the  women  joined  in,  and  the  musicians 
blew  trumpets  and  flutes,  and  whistled  on  bone  whistles. 
And  meanwhile  the  two  rings  were  whirling  round  and 
round,  never  stopping  or  lagging  for  an  instant.  And 
such  admirable  time  did  they  all  keep,  that  there  was 
never  an  incorrect  motion  nor  a  false  step  in  the  whole 


r    Bancroft  II.  294.  cf.  also  497,  2    lb.  293. 

3    Icazbalceta's  Mendieta.  p.  141.  sq.    The  same  dance  is  described  with 
some  variations  in  Sahagun.  p.  140. 


340  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

assemblage,  but  their  feet  twinkled  together  as  regularly 
and  as  symmetrically  as  the  best  dancers  in  Spain. ^ 
And  what  is  more,  not  only  their  feet  but  their  whole 
body,  arms,  and  hands  worked  in  perfect  symmetry,  for 
'  when  one  put  his  right  or  left  foot  out,  all  did  the 
same,  and  in  the  same  time  and  measure.  And  when 
one  lowered  his  left  arm  or  raised  his  right,  all  did 
the  same  and  in  the  same  time.'^  So  the  musicians 
went  on  playing  in  the  centre,  with  these  two  rings 
of  dancers  circling  round  them.  And  the  dancers  sang 
their  song  with  good  intonation,  and  neither  the  song, 
nor   the   dance,  nor   the    drums    were   ever  out. 

Now  the  dances  of  the  salt-makers,  who  danced  en- 
circled with  chains  of  flowers,  and  how  they  wore 
garlands  of  sweet  smelling  herbs  on  their  heads,  and 
what  measures  the  musicians^  played  on  instruments 
made  of  shell,  and  beat  their  drums  in  time  3 — all  this 
would  be  tempting  to  describe  ;  but  since  1  must  speak 
of  the  festival  which  was  held  in  honour  of  the  God 
of  Music,  and  this  seems  a  fitting  place  to  do  so,  I 
will  now  relate  the  details  of  it.  He  was  the  God 
of  Music,  and  was  called  Tezcatlipoca.  He  had  brought 
Music  from  heaven  on  a  bridge  of  whales  and  turtles  ; 
and  he  had  twenty  golden  bells  suspended  round  his 
ankles,  which  were  a  symbol  of  his  power.  And  once 
a  year  the  most  beautiful  youth  in  Mexico  was  chosen 
to  be  sacrificed  to  him  ;  and  the-  youth  was  chosen 
a  whole  year  before,  and  during  all  that  year  he  was 
dressed  to  represent  the  god,  and  was  regarded  as  the 
incarnation    of  Tezcatlipoca.     And   he  was   dressed   in  a 


1  Toda  esta  multitud  traelos  pies  tan  concertados  como  unos  muy  diestros 
daniadores  de  Espana.    Icazbalceta's  Mendieta.  p.  142. 

2  Cuando  uno  abaja  el  brazo  izquierdo  y  levanta  el  derecho,  lo  mismo  y  al 
mismo  tiempo  hacen  todos,  y  todo  el  corpo&c.  Icazbalceta's  Mendieta.  p.  142. 

3  Sahagun.  Nueva  Espaiia.  p.  124.  sq. 


THE  PERUVIANS   AND   MEXICANS.  341 

rich  mantle,  so  closely  embroidered  that  it  looked  like 
net,  and  he  had  epaulettes  of  white  linen  on  his 
shoulders.  And  on  his  head  he  wore  a  helmet  of 
sea-shells  with  white  cocks'  feathers  for  plumes,  and  a 
wreath  of  flowers  twisted  round  the  helmet.  He  wore 
strings  of  flowers  round  his  breast,  and  golden  bracelets 
on  his  arms  near  the  shoulder,  and  bracelets  of  precious 
stones  round  the  wrists.  Golden  ear-rings  dangled  from 
his  ears,  and  on  his  ankles  he  wore  the  twenty  golden 
bells  of  Tezcatlipoca,  who  had  brought  music  from 
heaven  on  a  bridge  of  whales  and  turtles.  And  he 
was  taught  the  art  of  flute-playing  by  the  priests/  and 
he  used  to  go  out  into  the  streets  and  play  the  flute, 
and  when  the  people  heard  him  playing,  they  used 
to  fall  down  before  him  and  worship  him.  And  so 
he  passed  his  time  in  flute-playing  and  in  all  manner 
of  delights,  till  a  month  before  the  sacrifice.  And 
then  his  delights  were  much  increased,  for  he  had 
four  of  the  most  beautiful  maidens  in  Mexico  given 
him  to  wife,  and  his  glory  was  increased.  And  when 
the  morning  of  the  day  of  sacrifice  arrived,  he  was 
taken  by  water  to  the  Pyramid  Temple  where  he  was 
to  be  sacrificed,  and  crowds  lined  the  banks  of  the 
river  to  see  him  in  the  barge,  sitting  in  the  midst 
of  his  beautiful  companions.  And  when  the  barge 
touched  the  shore,  he  was  taken  away  from  those 
companions  of  his  for  ever,  and  was  delivered  over  to  a  band 
of  priests,  exchanging  the  company  of  beautiful  women 
for  men  clothed  in  black  mantles,  with  long  hair 
matted  with  blood ;  their  ears  also  were  mangled. 
And   these   conducted    him  to  the  steps  of  the    pyramid, 


I     Instniido  en  taner  y  en  cantar.     Sahagun.  p.  55.  cf.  also  the  admirable 
account  of  the  festival  in  Bancroft.  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific.  II.  31  7 . 


342  HISTORY  OF   MUSIC. 

and  he  was  hustled  up  in  a  crowd  of  priests, 
with  drums  beating  and  trumpets  blowing.  And  he 
broke  a  flute  on  every  step  as  he  went  up,  to  show 
that  his  love  and  his  delights  were  over.^  And  when 
he  got  to  the  top,  he  was  sacrificed  on  an  altar  of 
jasper,  and  the  signal  that  the  sacrifice  was  completed 
was  given  to  the  multitudes  below  by  the  rolling  of 
the  great  sacrificial  drum.  This  was  the  drum  that 
Bernal  Diaz  saw,  and  he  says  it  was  made  of  serpents' 
skins,  and  that  the  sound  of  it  was  so  loud,  that  it 
could    be  heard    eight  miles    away.  ^  .     • 


1  Se  subia  por  las  gradas,  y  en  cada  una  de  ellas  hacia  pedazos  una  flauta 
de  las  con  que  andaba  taiiendo  todo  el  ano. 

2  Bernal  Diaz,  folio.   71.  4. 


END  OF  VOLUME   I. 


London: 
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