A Popular History of the Art of Music

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For warlike purposes the Egyptians had a short trumpet of bronze, and
a long trumpet, not unlike a straight trombone. They had drums of many
kinds, but as none of these instruments have reference to the
development of the higher art of music, we do not delay to describe
them.

One thing which might surprise us in casting an eye over the foregoing
representations as a whole is the small progress made considering the
immensely long period covered by the glimpses we have of the music of
this far-away race. From the days of the harpers in our earliest
illustrations to those of the last is more than 2,000 years, in fact
considerably longer than from the beginning of the Christian era until
now. The explanation is easy to find. In the first place, the
incitations upon the side of sense perception were comparatively
meager. Neither in sonority nor in delicacy of tonal resource were the
Egyptian instruments a tenth part as stimulating as those of to-day.
Moreover, we have here to deal with childlike intelligences, slow
perceptions, and limited opportunities of comparison. Hence if these
were all the discouraging elements there would be but little cause for
wonder at the slow progress. But there was another element deeper and
more powerful. The Egyptian mind was conservative to reaction. Plato
in his "Laws," says: "Long ago the Egyptians appear to have recognized
the very principle of which we are now speaking--that their young
citizens must be habituated to the forms and strains of virtue. These
they fixed, and exhibited the patterns of them in their temples, and
no painter or artist is allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the
traditional forms or invent new ones. To this day no alteration is
allowed in these arts nor in music at all. And you will find that
their works of art are painted or modeled in the same forms that they
were 10,000 years ago. This is literally true, and no exaggeration--their
ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better or worse than
those of to-day, but are with just the same skill." This, which Dr.
Draper calls the "protective idea," was undoubtedly the cause of their
little progress.

In another place Plato gives a very interesting glimpse of the
Egyptian method of education, and describes something having in it
much the spirit of the modern kindergarten. He says ("Laws," Jowett's
translation, p. 815): "In that country systems of calculation have
been actually invented for the use of children, which they learn as a
pleasure and amusement. They have to distribute apples and garlands,
adapting the same number to either a larger or less number of persons;
and they distribute to pugilists and wrestlers, or they follow one
another, or pair together by lot. Another mode of amusing them is by
taking vessels of gold, and brass, and silver, and the like, and
mingling them, or distributing them without mingling. As I was saying,
they adapt to their amusement the numbers in common use, and in this
way make more intelligible to their pupils the arrangements and
movements of armies and expeditions, and in the management of a
household they make people more useful to themselves, and wide-awake."
This, together with the well known expectation of the Egyptians to be
judged after death according to the "deeds done in the body," as our
sacred writings have it, affords a high idea of their serious and
lofty turn of mind, as well as of the great advance they had made
toward a true notion of the means of education.

CHAPTER II.

MUSIC AMONG THE HEBREWS AND ASSYRIANS.

Second in point of antiquity, but first in modern association, comes
the music of the Hebrews, and of the other allied nations of Assyria
and Babylon, from whom they learned a part of their art of music. The
place of music in the cult of the Hebrews was very large and
important, yet in spite of this fact they never elevated their music
into an art, strictly so called. There are no evidences of a
progressive development of instruments and a tonal sense among this
people. As they were when first we meet them, so they continued until
they pass out of the view of history as a nation, when the sacrificial
fires went out in the great temple at Jerusalem on the 11th of July,
A.D. 70, and the heathen Roman defiled the altars of God. In the
beginning Genesis tells us of one Jubal, who was the father of such as
handle the harp and the organ (kinnor and ugabh--the little triangular
harp of Assyria, and the shepherd's pipe, which here stands for all
sorts of wind instruments). In the course of the centuries the harp
changed its form somewhat, and perhaps had an increased number of
strings; the flute was multiplied into several sub-varieties, and the
horn was added. From Egypt they had the timbrel, a tambourine, to
which Miriam, the sister of Moses, intoned the sublime canticle, "The
horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." There were also the
sistra, those metallic instruments serving in the temple service the
same purpose that the bells serve in the mass at the present
day--that, namely, of letting the distant worshipers know when the
solemn moment has arrived.

Vast numbers of musicians were employed in the greater temple service,
4,000 being mentioned in I Chronicles xxiii, 5, as praising God with
the kinds of instruments appointed by David. According to Josephus,
this great number was vastly increased in still later times, the
numbers given being 200,000 trumpeters and 40,000 harpers and players
upon stringed instruments. Even if we take the figures as greatly
exaggerated, they show nevertheless that the art of music had a great
place among this people.

The instruments known were few in number, and their type underwent
little change from the earliest days. The principal instrument of the
older time was the _Kinnor_, or little triangular harp, which we find
in the record of the primeval Jubal, and which more than 1,000 years
later was played before Saul to defend him from the evil spirit. This
also was the instrument most prominent in the temple service, and this
again was hung upon the willows of Babylon. The name kinnor is said to
have been Phoenician, a fact which points to this as the source of
its derivation. It is not easy to see how this could well be, unless
we regard the name as having been applied to the invention of Jubal at
a later time, for Jubal lived many years anterior to the founding of
the great metropolis of the Mediterranean. The kinnor was a small harp
having from ten to twenty strings. The usual forms are shown in the
accompanying illustration. The strings were fastened upon a metal rod
lying along the face of the sounding board. The type of construction
is totally unlike that of the Egyptian harps, and its musical powers
were apparently considerably inferior. Its form was the following:

[Illustration: Fig. 8.]

Another instrument often mentioned in the English version of the Bible
is the psaltery, of which the form is somewhat uncertain, but is
thought to have been four-sided. Various ancient representations have
been supposed to be this instrument, but none of them satisfactorily,
at least not authoritatively. It was probably a variety of harp. The
nebel is also said to have been a psaltery, but its etymology points
to the Phoenician nabel, a triangular harp like a Greek delta. The
forms of the psaltery were four-sided or triangular. It was probably
the predecessor of the Arab canon, which again is much the same as the
santir. (See Fig. 25.)

There were two kinds of flute, both of them reed pipes, the smaller
being merely a shepherd's pipe. They were used for lamentations and
for certain festivals, as in Isaiah xxx, 29: "Ye shall have a song as
in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart as
when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, the
Holy One of Israel."

Many of the different names of musical instruments in the common
version of the Scriptures are merely blunders of the Septuagint
translators, who rendered the word kinnor by about six different
terms, where no distinction had been originally intended by the sacred
writers.

[Illustration: Fig. 9.]

Among the Hebrews we find the same progression from men alone as
musicians to women almost exclusively, and it is likely that the
Hebrews gained the idea from Egypt. Jubal was the discoverer of the
harp, according to the tradition in Genesis, and David manifested no
loss of manliness while playing before the Lord. Nevertheless when he
sang and danced before the ark his wife despised him in her heart.
Miriam, the sister of Moses, may well have been a professional
musician, one of the singing and dancing women, such as are
represented over and over again in the monuments. In the time of
Moses, and for some time later, women had no status in the public
service; but in the later days of the second temple the women singers
are an important element of the display. Ezra and Nehemiah speak of
them, and the son of Sirach, in the Apocrypha, recommends the reader
to "beware of female singers, that they entice thee not with their
charms."

According to the views of many writers, the Hebrews had a larger harp
than the small one represented in Fig. 8. It may have been something
like one which was found in Egypt, but the form is clearly Assyrian,
belonging to the same type as the small harps already given. It
certainly is not Egyptian. (See Fig. 9.)

The liturgy of the temple must have been singularly noble and
imposing. Never had a church so grand a body of poetry as this of the
Hebrews, which they heard in the very sonorous words of David, Moses,
Isaiah and Ezekiel, with all the subtle suggestion of a vernacular as
employed by minds of the first poetic order. The Hebrew parallelism
afforded exactly the kind of formula in which one congregation could
most effectively respond to another.

"The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof;
The world and they that dwell therein;
For He hath founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in His holy place?"

When the priests had intoned one line, we may suppose that the whole
choir of Levites made answer in the second line, completing the
parallelism.

There are other psalms in which the people have a refrain which comes
in periodically, as, for instance, in the one: "O give thanks unto
the Lord; [refrain] for His mercy endureth forever." (Ps. cxxxvi.)

[Illustration: Fig. 10.]

The voice of these masses stood to the Hebrews' mind as the feeble
type of the great song which should go up from the entire Israel of
God when the scattered members of the cult were gathered in their time
of fullness and glory. For us also the same image stands. And while
the art of this venerable and singularly gifted people did not attain
a place of commanding influence upon the tonal side of music, it
nevertheless has borne no small part in affording a vantage ground for
later art in the line of noble conceptions, inspiring motives and
brilliant suggestions. It has been, and still is, one of the most
potent influences in the art-music of the world. Nor is it without
interest that the scattered representatives of this race have been
and continue to be ministers of art in all the lands into which they
have come. The race of Israel has made a proud record in modern music,
no less than that of the ancient temple.

II.

The Assyrians held music in honor, and employed it for liturgical
purposes, as well as those of social and private life. Among the
discoveries at Nineveh and Babylon are many of a musical character.
Strong bearded men are playing upon harps which are of a triangular
form, but of a different structure to any which we have thus far
given. (See Fig. 10.)

The one upon the left is a eunuch. In the following figure we have the
banjo-like instrument so constantly seen in the Egyptian
representations.

[Illustration: Fig. 11.]

There are several instances of some sort of an instrument, apparently
consisting of metallic plates or rods, played by means of a hammer.
Many have considered these to have been the original type of the
modern instruments of percussion, where metal plates are vibrated by
means of hammers or mallets. The following is one of this kind.

[Illustration: Fig. 12.]

The general appearance of these processions indicates that the
Assyrians were in the habit of massing a large number of players upon
important occasions. We have no idea what the effect of this music can
have been, but upon the tonal side it cannot have had any great
resonance or power. Enough if it satisfied the ears of the dignified
players and those who employed their services as a part of the pageant
of their great festivals.

CHAPTER III.

MUSIC AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS.

Upon several accounts the development of the art of music among the
ancient Greeks is both important and interesting. Our word "music" is
theirs; it carries within its etymology the derivation from the Muses,
the nine agreeable divinities who presided over the more becoming and
nobler activities of the Greek mind. By music the Greeks meant much
more than merely the tonal art itself. Under this term they included
pretty much all that they had of a liberal education; grammar,
history, rhetoric, mathematics, poetry and song--all were included in
this one elastic and comprehensive term. Music itself, the art of
tone-sequence, they called harmony.

Our information concerning the general course of the development of
music among this people is pretty accurate through a period of about
1300 years. The entire course of the Greek history of music may be
divided into four great divisions, each of which was principally
devoted to a certain part of the art. These divisions begin at a date
which we might take approximately at about 1000 B.C., when the Homeric
poems began to be chanted or sung by traveling minstrels called
Rhapsodists. The schools of rhapsodies lasted for about 250 years,
when choral and patriotic song began to be developed. In connection
with this part of the history, there was in the later portion of it a
more ornamental and fanciful development of the smaller and social
uses of song, represented by Sappho, Anacreon and others. This period
endured for about two centuries and a half, and by insensible degrees
passed into the Attic drama, which came to its maturity at the hands
of AEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides about 450 B.C.

Here was the culmination of Greek musical art upon the purely artistic
and aesthetic side. Then followed a period of philosophizing, theory
and mathematical deduction, which extended to the end of the
Alexandrian schools, about 300 A.D. The limits of the present work do
not permit tracing this course of progress with the amplitude which
its relation to liberal education would otherwise warrant, or even to
the extent which its bearing upon the present ideals of the tonal art
would justify, were not the range of subjects indispensable to even a
summarized treatment of musical history so wide as it has now become.
But the general features of the different steps in the Greek music are
the following:

As already noticed, the earliest traces of music are those in the
Homeric poems, which are thought to have been composed about 1000 B.C.
In these we find the minstrel everywhere a central figure, an honored
guest, ready at call to entertain the company with some ballad of the
ancient times, or to improvise a new one appropriate to the case in
hand. The heroes themselves were not loth to take part in these
exercises. Ulysses, the Odyssey tells us, occasionally took the lyre
in his own hand and sang a rhapsody of his own adventures. Several
centuries later, Solon, one of the famed seven wise men of Greece,
composed the rhapsody of "Salamis, or the Lost Island," and sang it in
a public assembly of the Athenians with so much effect that an
expedition was organized, with Solon at its head, for its recovery,
which presently followed triumphantly.

Many passages in the Odyssey will occur to the classical reader in
illustration of the position of the minstrel in Argos in the earlier
times. For example (Odyssey I, 400, Bryant's translation):

"Silent all
They sat and listened to the illustrious bard
Who sang of the calamitous return
Of the Greek host from Troy, at the command
Of Pallas. From her chamber o'er the hall
The daughter of Icarius, the sage queen
Penelope, had heard the heavenly strain,
And knew its theme. Down by the lofty stairs
She came, but not alone; there followed her
Two maidens. When the glorious lady reached
The threshold of the strong-built hall, where sat
The suitors, holding up a delicate veil
Before her face, and with a gush of tears,
The queen bespake the sacred minstrel thus:
'Phemius, thou knowest many a pleasing theme--
The deeds of gods and heroes, such as bards
Are wont to celebrate. Take, then, thy place,
And sing of one of these, and let the guests
In silence drink the wine; but cease this strain;
It is too sad. It cuts me to the heart,
And wakes a sorrow without bounds--such grief
I bear for him, my lord, of whom I think
Continually; whose glory is abroad
Through Hellas and through Argos, everywhere.'

"And then Telemachus, the prudent, spake--
Why, O my mother! canst thou not endure
That thus the well graced poet should delight
His hearers with a theme to which his mind
Is inly moved? The bards deserve no blame;
Jove is the cause, for he at will inspires
The lay that each must sing.'"

Later than the Homeric rhapsodists, the Hesiodic poems were composed
and sung similarly by wandering minstrels, who, although wandering,
were not on that account lowly esteemed. There were regular schools,
or more properly guilds, of rhapsodists, into which only those were
admitted as masters who were able to treat the current topics with the
light and inspiring touch of real poetry, and only those taken as
apprentices who evinced proper talent and promise. The training of
these schools was long, partly spent in acquiring technique of
treating subjects and the mastery of the lyre, and partly in
memorizing the Homeric and Hesiodic hymns. It is supposed that these
poems were transmitted for more than three centuries orally in this
way, before having been reduced to writing.

In Hesiod's poem of "The Shield of Hercules" (Bank's translation,
365), the general idea of the Greek festive processions is
illustrated:

"There men in dances and in festive joys
Held revelry. Some on the smooth-wheeled car
A virgin bride conducted; then burst forth
Aloud the marriage song; and far and wide
Long splendors flash'd from many a quivering torch
Borne in the hands of slaves. Gay blooming girls
Preceded, and the dancers followed blithe:
These, with shrill pipe indenting the soft lip,
Breath'd melody, while broken echoes thrill'd
Around them; to the lyre with flying touch
Those led the love-enkindled dance. A group
Of youths was elsewhere imaged, to the flute
Disporting; some in dances, and in song;
In laughter others. To the minstrel's flute
So pass'd they on; and the whole city seem'd
As fill'd with pomps, with dances, and with feasts."

So again in the same poem (274) there is a scene of a minstrel contest
among the immortal gods themselves, described by the poet from one of
the scenes upon the shield of Hercules.

"And the tuneful choir appear'd
Of heaven's immortals; in the midst, the son
Of Jove and of Latona sweetly rang
Upon his golden harp; th' Olympian mount,
Dwelling of gods, thrill'd back the broken sound.
And there were seen th' assembly of the gods
Listening; encircled with beatitude;
And in sweet contest with Apollo there
The virgins of Pieria raised the strain
Preluding; and they seemed as though they sang
With clear, sonorous voices."

As early as 750 B.C. we find the famous rhapsodist, Terpander,
summoned to Sparta to sing patriotic songs, in the hope of preventing
a secession of this rather unruly state. He accomplished his mission,
a circumstance creditable alike to the talent of the poet-minstrel and
the high estimation in which the class was held.

The application of music to patriotic purposes was no novelty.
Plutarch, in his "Life of Lycurgus," says that "Thales was famed for
his wisdom and his political abilities; he was withal a lyric poet
who, under cover of exercising his art, performed as great things as
the most excellent lawgivers. For his odes were so many persuasions to
obedience and unanimity, and as by means of numbers they had great
grace and power, they softened insensibly the manners of the audience,
drew them off from the animosities which then prevailed, and united
them in zeal for excellence and virtue." Again, of the subject matter
of the Spartan songs, he says: "Their songs had a spirit which could
arouse the soul and impel to an enthusiastic action. The language was
plain and manly; the subject serious and moral. For they consisted
chiefly of praises of heroes who had died for Sparta, or else of
expressions of detestation for such wretches as had declined the
glorious privilege."

About this time the art of choral song began to be much cultivated in
Greece, particularly in connection with the cult of certain
divinities, especially Dionysos and Apollo. By the term choral song we
are not to understand anything resembling our singing of a chorus in
parts. There was no part-singing in Greece, but merely a singing, or
rather chanting, of national and patriotic songs in unison,
accompanied by the cithara, the national instrument.

Plato speaks of the imitative and semi-dramatic character of the
choral dance ("Laws," II, 655): "Choric movements are imitations of
manners occurring in various actions, chances, characters--each
particular is imitated, and those to whom the words, the song or the
dances are suited, either by nature or habit, or both, cannot help
feeling pleasure in them and calling them beautiful."

About 500 B.C. a room was rented upon the market place for the
practice of the chorus. Every town had its body of singers, who sang
and performed the evolutions of the representative dance appropriate
to the service of the particular divinity to whom they were devoted.
Presently competitive singing came into vogue, in connection with the
famous games, and the art of the poet was taxed, as well as the
musical and more purely vocal arts of the singers themselves, striving
in honorable competition for the glory of their native towns.

In some of the festival occasions the proceedings of the choral songs
were varied by the leader, who improvised rhapsodies upon topics
connected with the life of the divinity or upon national stories. At
proper points the chorus came in with the refrain, which remained a
fixed quantity, being put in, apparently, at whatever points the
inspiration or breath of the leader needed a point of repose. None of
these compositions have come down to us, but the allusions to them in
ancient writings give, perhaps, a sufficiently accurate idea of their
nature.

The added interest incident to the fresh improvisations of the leader
in this form of choral song presently opened toward a lyric drama.
Thespis is credited with having been the first to place the leader
upon a centrally located stage where he could be plainly seen and
heard by all concerned. Now the recitations became more dramatic, the
choruses more varied. The speaker illustrated by gestures the acts
which he described; he varied his style of delivery according to the
feeling appropriate to the incidents represented. The chorus meanwhile
was not upon the stage, but in a central location below, and during
their strophes they circled around the platform of the leader in a
sort of mystic dance, each man accompanying himself upon his cithara.
From this to adding a second speaker to the one already upon the stage
was but a short step. It was taken, and the result was a drama with a
chorus in connection. In the earlier plays the speakers represented as
many characters as necessary for carrying out the action. Later they
changed costume to some extent, the chorus meanwhile occupying the
time with their own songs, which generally had the character of a
comment upon the action as developed at the moment. The changes of
costume were extremely slight, merely a different head dress, a mantle
or some slight modification of appearance more or less symbolical in
character. All the dialogue was delivered in a musical voice, and, it
is thought, all accompanied by the cithara, which every player carried
in his hand. The instrument was sometimes played all the time, in the
same notes as those of the song or chant; at other, times the speaker
employed it for ritournelles, for affording breathing time or points
of emphasis. Once in a great while, it is thought, the instrument had
a note different from that of the song in connection with it. Upon
this point great uncertainty prevails.

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