A Popular History of the Art of Music Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 x.x.x, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.syrian, 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 n.o.ble 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. cx.x.xvi.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10.]

The voice of these ma.s.ses stood to the Hebrews' mind as the feeble type of the great song which should go up from the entire Israel of G.o.d 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.syrians 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12.]

The general appearance of these processions indicates that the a.s.syrians were in the habit of ma.s.sing 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 n.o.bler 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.sages in the Odyssey will occur to the cla.s.sical reader in ill.u.s.tration 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 G.o.ds 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 h.e.l.las 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 ill.u.s.trated:

"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 pa.s.s'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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds, thrill'd back the broken sound.

And there were seen th' a.s.sembly of the G.o.ds Listening; encircled with beat.i.tude; 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 circ.u.mstance creditable alike to the talent of the poet-minstrel and the high estimation in which the cla.s.s 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 compet.i.tive 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 compet.i.tion 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 quant.i.ty, 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 ill.u.s.trated 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.