A Popular History of the Art of Music From the Earliest Times Until the Present — Reading Companion

By a curious fortune we are able to form an approximately accurate idea of the musical instruments in use in Egypt as long ago as about 4000 B.C. The earliest advanced civilization of which any coherent traces have come down to us was developed along the Nile, where the equable climate and the periodic inundations of the river raised the pursuit of the husbandman above the uncertainties incident to less favorable climates, while at the same time the mild climate reduced to a minimum the demands upon his productive powers for the supply of the necessaries of life. This interesting people had the curious custom of depositing the mummies of their dead in tombs elaborately hewn out of the rock, or excavated in more yielding ground, in the hills which border the narrow valley of the Nile. Many of these excavations are of very considerable extent, reaching sometimes to the number of twenty rooms, and a linear distance of 600 feet from the entrance. The walls of these underground apartments are generally decorated in outline intaglio if the rock be hard; or in color if the walls be plaster, as is often the case. The subjects of the decorations embrace the entire range of the domestic and public life of the people, among them being many of a musical character. One of the first discoveries of this kind was made toward the close of the preceding century, when Bruce, an English traveler, found in a tomb at Biban-El-Moulouk representations of two magnificently decorated harps played by priests. These have since generally been called "Bruce's Harpers." The instruments have been represented in many ways by different writers, the most curious perversion of the facts being found in Burney's "History of Music," where they have the form of the modern harp.

on the harp." (2) Singer, seated; above him, hes t (_b_) "singer." (3, 4) Similar harper and singer, and same inscriptions (_c_, _d_). (5, 6) Singer and player on the direct flute or pipe; before the former, hes (_h_) "singer"; before the latter, mem t (_g_) "pipe." (7, 8) Singer and player on the oblique flute, seba (_e_); before the former, hes (_f_) "singer."]

Several large works have been devoted to plates of the pictorial discoveries in these ancient tombs, but not until the colossal work of Lepsius, issued under the auspices of the German government, were we in possession of data for the study of this civilization from the standpoint of a progressive development.

The oldest of the musical representations are found in tombs near Thebes, and already we find the art in an advanced state. The preceding cut shows one of these pictures. A musical group is represented, consisting of eight figures. Their occupations are designated by the hieroglyphics above them. The harper is designated as "harp scraper."

It is not possible to make out in the present state of these drawings the exact number of strings upon the harps, but explorers agree that it must have been either five or seven. From the length of the strings and the structure of the instrument without a "pillar" in front for resisting the pull of the strings, the tones must have been within the register of the male voice. The long flute played by the figure bearing the number 8 must also have produced low tones. It is not plain whether these players are supposed to be all playing at the same time, or whether their ministrations may have taken place separately. Most likely, however, they all played and sang together.

The most advanced harps found in Egypt were the elegantly colored and ornamented priestly instruments which Bruce found in what was afterward discovered to be the tomb of Rameses III, at Biban-El-Moulouk. The black and white cuts give but a poor idea of the elaborate structure and rich ornamentation of these fine instruments (Fig. 2). The instruments are not playing together; each harper plays before his own particular divinity. They occupy opposite sides in the same hall. The players, by their white robes and positions, evidently belonged to the highest order of the priesthood. The harp upon the right is represented by some writers as having had twenty-one strings; whereas the one upon the left has only eleven. This would be an interesting fact if it were well founded. But, unfortunately, the truth is that the painting was somewhat defaced after Bruce saw it, and it was only within later years that a clever explorer discovered that by passing a wet sponge over it the original lines could be made out. According to Lepsius it has thirteen strings.

In the XXth dynasty, about 1300 B.C., there were harps having twenty-one strings, of which a good example is shown in Fig. 3. This instrument, also, is elaborately colored and ornamented in gold and carving. The strings are shorter than those of Bruce's harpers, and the pitch was most likely within the treble register. The second figure clapping hands is marking time. The one upon the right is playing upon a sort of banjo, of which mention will be made presently.

Some time before the period of the Hyksos, the "Shepherd Kings" of the Exodus, there is a scene of a procession of foreigners presenting tribute to one of the sovereigns of Egypt. Among the figures is one playing upon a sort of lyre. Later this instrument became the established instrument of the higher classes, as it was afterward in Greece and Rome. Several complete instruments have been found, which, although dating most likely from a period near the Christian era, are nevertheless sufficiently like the representations of ten centuries earlier to make them instructive as well as interesting. Figs. 4 and 5 are from Fétis. One of these lyres had originally six strings, as is shown by the notches in the cross-piece at the top. They were tuned approximately by making the cord tense and then sliding the loop over its notch. From the clever construction of the resonance cases these instruments should have had a very good quality of tone. In some of the later representations there are lyres of twenty strings.

It will be observed that up to this point all the musicians represented are men. In later representations women are more common. Fig. 6 represents the entire musical culture of the later empire, this particular representation belonging apparently to an epoch not more than a few centuries before the Christian era. The harp in this case is of a different construction, and lighter than those in the former examples. It would seem to have been played while the player walked, for we find it in what seems to be moving processions. The lyre occupies here the post of honor next the harp. The banjo and double flute come next, and then a curious instrument of three or four strings, played while carried upon the shoulder. Several of these instruments have been found in a very respectable state of preservation. Their construction is better shown in the illustrations following:

The tonal relation of these instruments to the larger harps is difficult to conceive. Wilkinson gives the dimensions of the most perfect one in the British Museum as forty-one inches long, the neck occupying twenty-two inches, and the body being four inches wide.

The instrument with the long neck and the short body, seen in Figs. 3 and 6, belongs to the banjo family. Its resonance body consisted of a sort of hoop, or a hollowed out piece of sycamore, the sounding board being a piece of parchment or rawhide. Some of these have two strings, others one; three are occasionally met with. The name of this instrument was te-bouni, and it was of Assyrian origin. It was afterward known as the "monochord," and by its means all the ancients demonstrated the ratios of the octave, fourth and fifth, as we will later see.

We have no knowledge whatever of the tonal sound of the music which so interested these ancient players and singers. There is, however, an ancient poem, called "The Song of the Harper" found in a papyrus dating from about 1500 B.C., which gives an idea of the sentiments the music was intended to convey. Here it is, from Rawlinson's "History of Ancient Egypt," p. 48:

"THE SONG OF THE HARPER."

(From a papyrus of the XVIIIth Dynasty.)

The great one has gone to his rest Ended his task and his race; Thus men are aye passing away, And youths are aye taking their place. As Ra rises up every morn, And Tum every evening doth set. So women conceive and bring forth, And men without ceasing beget. Each soul in its turn draweth breath, Each man born of woman sees death.

Take thy pleasure to-day, Father! Holy one! See, Spices and fragrant oils, Father, we bring to thee. On thy sister's bosom and arms Wreaths of lotus we place; On thy sister, dear to thy heart, Aye sitting before thy face. Sing the song, let music be played, And let cares behind thee be laid.

Take thy pleasure to-day; Mind thee of joy and delight! Soon life's pilgrimage ends, And we pass to silence and night. Patriarch, perfect and pure, Neferhotep, blessed one! Thou Didst finish thy course upon earth, And art with the blessed ones now. Men pass to the silent shore, And their place shall know them no more.

They are as they never had been Since the sun went forth upon high; They sit on the banks of the stream That floweth in stillness by. Thy soul is among them; thou Dost drink of the sacred tide, Having the wish of thy heart, At peace ever since thou hast died. Give bread to the man who is poor, And thy name shall be blest evermore.

All princely households appear to have had their regular staff of musicians, at the head being the "Overest of Musicians," whose tombs still furnish some of the most instructive information upon this part of the ancient life. People of lower social grade had to be content with the temporary services of the street musicians, such as those represented in Fig. 6. They played and sang and danced for weddings and festivities, and undertook the entire contract of mourning for the dead, the measure being the production of a small vial full of tears, under the immediate inspection of the relative of the deceased whose grief might happen to need this official assistance.

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.

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:

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.

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.