INSTRUMENTS AND VOICES.

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CHAPTER VII.

MUSIC.

INSTRUMENTAL music is first mentioned in the Bible as the art or calling of Jubal, the son of Lamech, the son of Cain, who may possibly have lived before the death of our first parents. It is said that Jubal "was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ" (Gen. iv. 21); by which we are probably to understand that, through the Divine teaching, Jubal invented those instruments, and the art of performing on them.

The use of instrumental music at so remote a period, without any allusion to the existence of vocal music, opposes the prevalent notion that instruments are only imitations of the human voice, but agrees better with that which we learn from experience on this subject. If the state of music among different nations or races of mankind be considered, it will be found, that among those nations where the instrumental music is extremely rude, the attempts at singing are also harsh and disagreeable; while any advance in the quality of the sound of the instrument produces a corresponding advance in the vocal music of all nations. This is the case, apparently, irrespective of the accidents of civilisation or barbarism. The South Sea islanders have instruments which produce tones of considerable sweetness; and their

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THE HARP AND ORGAN.

singing is said by travellers to have been superior to that of the Hindoos, whose instrumental music is strangely harsh and ineffective. The inhabitants of Mexico and Peru are said to have excited the horror and disgust of the Spaniards, their first discoverers, by their hideous attempts at music: but now that they have adopted the guitar and other instruments of their conquerors, they display considerable vocal powers, and greatly excel as musicians. The same fact has been illustrated, in a still more remarkable manner, by the missionaries of modern times. Races whose music had degenerated into a mere succession of groans, like the Esquimaux and Greenlanders, or into deafening shouts and yells, like the NorthAmerican Indians, acquire very rapidly the musical instructions of the missionaries; and after a few months of practice with European instruments, or even with voices attuned by them, sing with a sweetness of intonation and a perfectness of concert, which is said to be equal to any choral singing in the world.

These facts would seem to indicate that it is not the voice that suggests the instrument, as has been supposed, but the instrument that forms the voice in music.

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The instruments invented by Jubal are said to have been the harp and the organ . The harp was a stringed instrument. The word (translated organ") denoted an instrument, the form of which has been ascertained by a curious comparison of passages, some of which may not be uninteresting. Of the six musical instruments enumerated in the decree of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, recorded in the third chapter of Daniel, verses 3, 7, 15, three have

MUSIC IN ANCIENT EGYPT.

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Greek names, and the forms of them are known to us from the remains of Grecian antiquity. They were doubtless derived from the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, at that time the subjects of the king of Babylon, who had always been celebrated for their excellence in music. The last of these names, DID, which is translated, in our version, " dulcimer," is in Greek letters ovμowvia, which means a reed or pipe, and remains to this day the name of the hautboy, zampogna, in Italy and Asia Minor. The chapter of Daniel we are considering, is written in Chaldee: but there is a very ancient Hebrew version of it, in great reputation for fidelity amongst the Jews; and in it, this Chaldee or Greek word, which signifies pipe, is rendered by y, which, in Gen. iv. 21, is translated organ." This is very satisfactory authority for that which we might naturally have inferred from the text itself, that Jubal was the inventor both of strings and pipes, and therefore that these modes of producing sweet sounds were both known to mankind at this remote period.*

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According to the Greek authors, the ancient Egyptians had, from the remotest times, assiduously cultivated the art of music; and had committed the rules of it, which were very subtle and intricate, to writing. Such was their excellence in it, that strangers of other nations visited Egypt for the purpose of acquiring music.

The paintings in the tombs strongly confirm this account. No subject is more common, among the

*The same word is used in the same opposition to stringed instruments, Psal. cl. 4.

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HARP-NUMBER OF STRINGS ON.

many scenes of ordinary life with which their walls are decorated, than that of groups of musicians playing upon stringed instruments or pipes, singing in chorus, or beating tambourines or drums. We will give some account of each of these classes of instruments, which are well calculated to illustrate the different kinds of musical instruments mentioned in the Bible, upon the forms and use of which there is now so much doubt and uncertainty.

§ 1. STRINGED INSTRUMENTS.

THE HARP.

It has been too much the practice of those who have engaged in researches into antiquities, to set out with some preconceived notion, which every thing they observe in the course of their investigation is made to confirm, by the help of a little imagination. Upon the subject of stringed instruments it has been assumed, that the progress of their invention has been very gradual; and that this gradation has been marked by successive additions to the number of strings employed. Finding in Plutarch that the Egyptians attributed to Thoth the invention of the lyre with three strings, they at once conclude that it had originally one string, and that the addition of more strings was the work of many ages. But such is not the fact. Harps of two strings and of thirteen strings, and of nearly every number intermediate between these two, are painted in the most ancient of these tombs: nor does the comparison of the designs in them with those of tombs of a much later date, give the least countenance to the idea of such a progression as has been imagined. Music, to judge by

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HARP-WOOD USED IN MAKING IT.

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the shape and intricacy of the instruments, was at least as perfectly known at the earliest as at the latest epoch of which these tombs have preserved any record; a strong presumptive evidence of that which the Bible leaves us plainly to infer concerning this and all similar arts. They never underwent the progression which these writers have imagined. They were originally taught to mankind by God himself.

The harp presents the simplest and most obvious, as well as most efficient mode of stretching a string, so as to produce a musical sound, and was well known to the ancient Egyptians. With a very great variety in the arrangement of its strings, the Egyptian harp always retained a remarkable general resemblance to the figure of the modern instrument of that name.

These harps were made of a kind of mahogany, as appears from the remains of them which are not unfrequently found in the tombs. This wood is not indigenous to Egypt, and must therefore have been imported for the purpose. The importance of the quality of the wood employed in making musical instruments was evidently understood at an early period; for the harps and the lutes upon which the Israelites played, as they marched in procession before the ark, on its removal by David from the house of Abinadab, are said to have been instruments of firwood (2 Sam. vi. 5); which is preferred, even at the present day, to the wood of any other tree in the fabric of musical instruments. We find, in this passage, that its value in this particular has been long appreciated.

Some of the ancient Egyptian harps, found in the tombs, have the remains of strings attached to them;