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ANCIENT AND.
ORIENTAL MUSIC
THE NEW OXFORD HISTORY OF MUSIC
I Ancient and Oriental Music
EDITED BY EGON WELLESZ
П Early Medieval Music up to 1300 -
EDITED BY DOM ANSELM HUGHES
D
Ш Ars Nova and the Renaissance (1300-1540) ,
EDITED BY DOM ANSELM HUGHES AND GERALD ABRAHAM
IV The Age of Humanism (1540-1630)
EDITED BY GERALD ABRAHAM
V Opera and Church Music (1630-1750)
EDITED BY ANTHONY LEWIS AND NIGEL FORTUNE
VI The Growth of Instrumental Music (1630-1750)
EDITED BY GERALD ABRAHAM Jn preparation
VII The Age of Enlightenment (1745-1790)
EDITED BY EGON WELLESZ AND F. W. STERNFELD
VIII The Age of Beethoven (1790-1830)
EDITED BY GERALD ABRAHAM Jn preparation
IX Romanticism (1830-1890)
EDITED BY GERALD ABRAHAM In preparation
X The Modern Age (1890-1960)
EDITED BY MARTIN COOPER
THE CONCISE OXFORD HISTORY OF MUSIC
GERALD ABRAHAM
THE OXFORD ANTHOLOGY OF MUSIC
Medieval Music
EDITED BY W. THOMAS MARROCCO AND NICHOLAS SANDON
ISBN 0 19 316301 2
^
NEW OXFORD HISTORY OF MUSIC
VOLUMEI
EDITORIAL BOARD
J. A. WESTRUP (Chairman)
GERALD ABRAHAM (Secretary)
EDWARD J. DENT
DOM ANSELM HUGHES
EGON WELLESZ
THE VOLUMES OF THE
NEW OXFORD HISTORY OF MUSIC
Ancient and Oriental Music
Early Medieval Music up to 1300
Ars Nova and the Renaissance (c. 1300-1540)
The Age of Humanism (1540-1630)
Opera and Church Music (1630-1750)
The Growth of Instrumental Music (1630-1750)
The Age of Enlightenment (1745—1790)
The Age of Beethoven (1790-1830)
Romanticism (1830-1890)
Modern Music (1890-1950)
Chronological Tables and General Index
X
m 8.
KRISHNA PLAYING A FLUTE
Relief from a temple at Belür (Deccan). Hoys$ala Dynasty, 12th century
ANCIENT AND
ORIENTAL MUSIC
EDITED BY
EGON WELLESZ
LONDON
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK TORONTO
Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford ox2 бор
GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
CAPE TOWN IBADAN NAIROBI DAR ES SALAAM
DELHI BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI
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ISBN 0 19 316301 2
FIRST EDITION 1957
REPRINTED 1960, 1966, 1969, 1975 AND 1979
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
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PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
THE present work is designed to replace the Oxford History of Music,
first published in six volumes under the general editorship of Sir
Henry Hadow between 1901 and 1905. Five authors contributed to
that ambitious publication—the first of its kind to appear in English.
The first two volumes, dealing with the Middle Ages and the sixteenth
century, were the work of H. E. Wooldridge. In the third Sir Hubert
Parry examined the music of the seventeenth century. The fourth, by
J. A. Fuller Maitland, was devoted to the age of Bach and Handel;
the fifth, by Hadow himself, to the period bounded by C. P. E. Bach
and Schubert. In the final volume Edward Dannreuther discussed the
Romantic period, with which, in the editor's words, it was ‘thought
advisable to stop’. The importance of the work— particularly of the
first two volumes—was widely recognized, and it became an indis-
pensable part of a musician's library. The scheme was further extended
in the new edition issued under the editorship of Sir Percy Buck
between 1929 and 1938. An introductory volume, the work of several
hands, was designed to supplement the story of music in the ancient
world and the Middle Ages. New material, including two complete
chapters, was added to volumes i and ii, while the third volume was
reissued with minor corrections and a number of supplementary
notes by Edward J. Dent. The history was also brought nearer to the
twentieth century by the addition of a seventh volume, by H. C.
Colles, entitled Symphony and Drama, 1850-1900.
Revision of an historical work is always difficult. If it is to be fully
effective, it may well involve changes so comprehensive that very little
of the original remains. Such radical revision was not the purpose of
the second edition of the Oxford History of Music. To have attempted
it in a third edition would have been impossible. During the first
half of the present century an enormous amount of detailed work has
been done on every period covered by the original volumes. New
materials have been discovered, new relationships revealed, new inter-
pretations made possible. Perhaps the most valuable achievement has
been the publication in reliable modern editions of a mass of music
which was previously available only in manuscript or in rare printed
copies. These developments have immeasurably increased the his-
torian's opportunities, but they have also added heavily to his re-
sponsibilities. To attempt a detailed survey of the whole history of
256615
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vi GENERAL INTRODUCTION
music is no longer within the power of a single writer. It may even
be doubted whether the burden can be adequately shouldered by a
team of five. |
The New Oxford History of Music is therefore not a revision of
the older work, nor is it the product of a small group of writers. It
has been planned as an entirely new survey of music from the earliest
times down to comparatively recent years, including not only the
achievements of the Western world but also the contributions made
by eastern civilizations and primitive societies. The examination of
this immense field is the work of a large number of contributors,
English and foreign. The attempt has been made to achieve uniform-
ity without any loss of individuality. If this attempt has been success-
ful, the result is due largely to the patience and co-operation shown by
the contributors themselves. Overlapping has to some extent been
avoided by the use of frequent cross-references; but we have not
thought it proper to prevent different authors from expressing dif-
ferent views about the same subject, where it could legitimately be
regarded as falling into more than one category.
The scope of the work is sufficiently indicated by the titles of the
several volumes. Our object throughout has been to present music
not as an isolated phenomenon or the work of a few outstanding
composers, but as an art developing in constant association with
every form of human culture and activity. The biographies of indivi-
duals are therefore merely incidental to the main plan of the history,
and those who want detailed information of this kind must seek it
elsewhere. No hard and fast system of division into chapters has been
attempted. The treatment is sometimes by forms, sometimes by
periods, sometimes also by countries, according to the importance
which one element or another may assume. The division into volumes
has to some extent been determined by practical considerations; but
pains have been taken to ensure that the breaks occur at points which
are logically and historically justifiable. The result may be that the
work of a single composer who lived to a ripe age is divided be-
tween two volumes. The later operas of Monteverdi, for example,
belong to the history of Venetian opera and hence find their natural
place in volume v, not with the discussion of his earlier operas to be
found in volume iv. On the other hand, we have not insisted on a
rigid chronological division where the result would be illogical or
confusing. If a subject finds its natural conclusion some ten years
after the date assigned for the end of a period, it is obviously prefer-
able to complete it within the limits of one volume rather than to
GENERAL INTRODUCTION vii
allow it to overflow into a second. An exception to the general
scheme of continuous chronology is to be found in volumes v and
vi, which deal with different aspects of the same period and so are
complementary to each other.
The history as a whole is intended to be useful to the professed
student of music, for whom the documentation of sources and the
bibliographies are particularly designed. But the growing interest in
the music of all periods shown by music-lovers in general has encour-
aged us to bear their interests also in mind. It is inevitable that a
work of this kind should employ a large number of technical terms
and deal with highly specialized matters. We have, however, tried to
ensure that the technical terms are intelligible to the ordinary reader
and that what is specialized is not necessarily wrapped in obscurity.
Finally, since music must be heard to be fully appreciated, we have
given references throughout to the records issued by His Master's
Voice (R. C. A. Victor) under the general title The History of Music
in Sound. These records are collected in a series of albums which
correspond to the volumes of the present work, and have been
designed to be used with it.
J. A. WESTRUP
GERALD ABRAHAM
EDWARD J. DENT
ANSELM HUGHES
EGON WELLESZ
T
CONTENTS
GENERAL INTRODUCTION у
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME I xvii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xxiii
I. PRIMITIVE MUSIC. By MARIUS SCHNEIDER, Professor of Com-
parative Musicology, University of Cologne
Comparative Musicology 1
Melody and Mankind 2)
The Origin of Music 5
Totemistic Music 8
Culture and Race Д2)
The Formation of Scales 14
Structure of the Melodic Ambit 17
Origin of Polyphony 20
Variation and Types of Melody 23
Historical Development 28
Music and Speech 31
Instrumental ‘Language’ 32
The Musical Instruments 33
Repertory 38
The Importance of the Musician 40
Spiritual Culture 41
Music Examples 61
II. THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA. 1. CHINA
By LAURENCE PICKEN, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge
Introduction 83
Prehistory and Ethnology of the Far East 84
The Place of Music in Chinese Civilization 86 ~
Chinese Musical Instruments 88 —
History of Theory and Notation 93
History of the Music 101—
Chinese Instrumental Heterophony 124
The Structure of Chinese Instrumental Music [у
A. Tsyr Melody 125
Opera 126
Folk-Song 130
- Buddhist Music 133
x CONTENTS
ПІ. THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA. 2. OTHER
COUNTRIES. By LAURENCE PICKEN
Mongolia 135
Shinjiang (Chinese Turkestan) 136
Tibet 137
Korea 142
Japan 144
Miau 150
Luoluo and Minjia 154
Nagas 155
Annam 156
Cambodia 159
Siam (Thailand) 162
Burma 164
Java, Sumatra, and Nias 165
Bali 170
Other Islands of the Indian Archipelago 176
Cultural Interrelations 180
Glossary of Chinese Characters 190
IV. THE MUSIC OF INDIA. By ARNOLD BAKE, Reader in Sans-
krit, University of London
Introduction 195
Cultural and Philosophical Importance 196
Vedic Music 199
The Classical System 204
Classical Instruments 220
Modern Developments 225
V. THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA. By HENRY
GEORGE FARMER
Introduction 228
The Primitive Element in Music 229
The Music of the Temples 231
Secular Music 236
Instruments of Music 239
The Theory and Practice of Music 246
Notation 249
The Heritage 250
VI. THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT. By HENRY GEORGE
FARMER
Introduction 255
Primitive Musical Survivals 256
Religious Music 258
CONTENTS xi
Secular Music 262
Instruments of Music 266
The Practice and Theory of Music 274
The Legacy 279
VII. MUSIC IN THE BIBLE. By CARL H. KRAELING, Director
of the Oriental Institute and Professor of Hellenistic Oriental
Archaeology, University of Chicago, and LUCETTA MOWRY,
Professor of Biblical History, Wellesley College
Limitations of Biblical Information 283
The Nomadic Period 284
Early Palestinian Period 286
Monarchic Period 290
Music in the Temple 291
The Prophets and Music 293
Secular Music 294
Lyrical Metres 294
Instruments 295
After the Captivity 296
Graeco-Roman Period 300
Services of the Synagogue 301
Music in the New Testament 303
The Church outside Palestine 307
Early Christian Antiphony 311
Gnostic Hymns 311
VIII. THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM. By ERIC
WERNER, Professor of Jewish Music, Jewish Institute of Religion,
New York
Introduction 313
Continuity of Jewish Tradition 314
Cantillation of Scripture 316
Psalm Tones 318
Autonomous Melody 318
The Modes of Synagogue Music 320
The Influence of Poetry on the Development of Synagogue Music 324
The Music of Italian Jewry 326
The Music of Central European Jewry 329
The Music of East European Jewry 331
Disintegration of Synagogue Music before the Era of Emancipation 332
IX. ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC. By ISOBEL HENDERSON, Tutor in
Ancient History, Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford
The Musical Tradition in Antiquity 336
Traditions of Harmonic Science 340
Grammar and Syntax 344
xii CONTENTS
The Tonoi
The Notations
The Extant Musical Documents
The History of Greek Music
(i) Music in Homer's Greece
(ii) The Music of the Early Lyrics
(iii) Aeolian Music
(iv) The Harmoniae of Plato’s Republic
(v) The ‘Enharmonic’ Music
(vi) Aristophanes and Athens
(vii) Plato and the Revolution
(viii) Music after the Revolution
X. ROMAN MUSIC. By the Reverend J. E. SCOTT
Introduction
Instruments
Social Status of Musicians
Military Music
Music in Everyday Life
Music in the Theatre
Recitals and Virtuosi
Imperial Amateurs
Music Teaching
XI. THE MUSIC OF ISLAM. By HENRY GEORGE FARMER
Islamic Civilization
The Cultural Background
The Rise of Islamic Music
Secular Music
Religious Music
Instruments of Music
The Practical Art
The Theory of Music
The Influence
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONTENTS OF THE HISTORY OF MUSICIN SOUND, VOLUME I
INDEX
348
358
363
376
378
382
384
387
390
395
397
404
406
410
411
413
414
416
417
419
421
422
427
433
438
442
447
456
464
479
504
507
ILLUSTRATIONS
KRISHNA PLAYING A FLUTE Frontispiece
Relief from a temple at Belür (Deccan). Hoyśala Dynasty, twelfth century.
Reproduced by courtesy of the Bollingen Foundation.
I. PRIMITIVE INSTRUMENTS between pp. 32 and 33
(a) Xylophone. Ten flat wooden keys with gourd resonators, two strikers,
and fibre cord for hanging. Baluba of Lake Moero, Congo.
(b) Slit drum, hollowed from one piece of wood, terminating at each end
with a woman’s head showing artificial cranial deformation. Struck
with a wooden stick. Made by the Mangbetu of East Sudan.
(c) Zither made from bamboo, with eight strips slit away from the surface
and bridged to form strings, the hollow bamboo acting as a resonator.
Dyak, Borneo.
(d) Wooden rattle, enclosing small stones, representing the raven, sparrow-
hawk, and a demon absorbing through his tongue from the frog the
power of working spells. Painted blue, red, and black. Haida Indians,
North-West America.
(e) Zansa with eight iron keys and gourd resonator. The hands are put
through the slots and the keys plucked by the thumbs. Ibo of Onitsha
Province, Nigeria.
Reproduced by courtesy of the Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
II. PRIMITIVE WIND INSTRUMENTS
(a) Side-blown trumpet carved from elephant tusk. West Africa.
(b) Bone vertical flute with three finger-stops and one thumb-stop drilled
by stone borer. Ancient Peruvian, Chancay.
(c) Conch-shell trumpet, side-blown (Triton giganteus variegatus). Nares
Bay, Admiralty Islands, Pacific.
(d) Whistle made of a reindeer phalanx. One blows between the two nearer
articular condyles against the edge of the hole. Upper Palaeolithic,
about 20,000 years old, from the cave of La Madeleine, Dordogne,
France.
(e) Globular gourd flute with two stops. Jarawa, Northern Nigeria.
Reproduced by courtesy of the Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
III. CHINESE INSTRUMENTS between pp. 64 and 65
(a) Seven-stringed zither (guuchyn); dorsal aspect, showing the seven silk-
gut strings and the thirteen mother-of-pearl studs marking the nodes.
The tassels are decorative extensions of the looped silk cords which pass
through the tuning pegs to secure the strings.
(b) The same; ventral aspect, showing the seven tuning pegs, the two knobs
round which the ends of the strings are tightly twisted, the two sound
holes (‘Dragon Pool’ and ‘Roc Lake’), the personal name of the instru-
ment: ‘The Dragon's Purr’, and the seal of the engraver.
(c) Globular flute (shiun). Three finger-holes are visible; two thumb-holes
are present on the side away from the camera. This is a modern replica
made to the specifications of the present Bureau of Rites and Music.
xiv ILLUSTRATIONS
(d) Two globular flutes of Tarng date in the form of human heads. The eyes
are the finger-holes.
(e) Mouth-organ (sheng). The apparent length of the pipes is not in every case
the effective length; holes on the inner face of the pipes may shorten the
length of the air column. The pipes speak only when the finger-holes
visible near the base are closed. The instrument is held with the pipes
almost horizontal. This is a Japanese instrument.
(f) Detail of the same. This shows the ends of two bamboo pipes removed
from the wind chest; one still carries a thin sheet of copper (white with
verdigris) in which a rectangular free reed has been cut. The frequency
of vibration has been adjusted by means of the small blob of wax near
the free end.
(g) Vertical six-holed flute (shiau), One of a pair of instruments from Yuhbi-
ing, a famous centre for flutes.
(А) Detail of the same. The blow-hole is cut in the nodal diaphragm,
and the wall bounding its outer rim is trimmed to a sharp edge. The
embouchure is not fixed (as in a Western recorder, for example), and
practice is required to make the shiau speak.
(i) Clay whistle flute in the form of a bear, from Shandong. The blow-hole
is in the forehead. The stream of air strikes a sharp edge bounding the
lower margin of the air-exit on the dorsal side.
(j) Bamboo ‘whistle’ from Shandong. Two bamboo free reeds are let into
the wall of each of two short bamboo tubes, closed at both ends. On the
side away from the camera, two small mouth-pieces are let into the
larger tubes. The reeds are tuned about a semitone apart and are set in
motion simultaneously by blowing into the mouth-pieces.
IV. (а) CHINESE PLAYERS OF MOUTH-ORGAN, SHENG, AND
PERCUSSION-CLAPPER, CHONGDWU.
From Prince Ju Tzayyuh, The Handbook of Music (1596).
(b) CHINESE SONOROUS STONES, CHINQ, ASSOCIATED
WITH LAUDATORY DECLAMATION, TOGETHER
WITH THE HAND-DRUM, TAUR.
From Prince Ju Tzayyuh, op. cit.
У. (а) CHINESE ROC-HEADED VERTICAL HARP WITH
EIGHTEEN STRINGS between pp. 128 and 129
From Chern Yang, Yueh Shu (13th-14th century).
(b) CHINESE SEVEN-STRINGED ZITHER TABLATURE
From the end of the twelfth century. This is a song with zither accom-
paniment and an interlude for zither alone. Reading from right to left
the columns are: first the title, and then alternately tablature and text.
The tablature is described on page 99 and transcribed as example 186.
The interlude extends from the sixth to the eighth column. From the
Syhbuh Tsongkan edition.
VI. CHINESE AND OTHER FAR-EASTERN INSTRUMENTS
(a) Two-stringed Manchurian fiddle.
(6) Mouth-organ in use among the Chingmiau near Anshuenn, Gueyjou
Province, China. The free reeds of the six pipes are of copper and are
lancet-shaped. They are tuned with blobs of wax. In this instrument the
wind chest is of wood.
ILLUSTRATIONS xv
(c) Jew's harp of three tuned elements in use among the Lihjiang Lolo in
Yunnan Province, China. Thethree elements are gripped between thumb
and closed fingers of the left hand and set in motion by plucking the pro-
jecting * keys' with the fingers of the right hand.
(d) Toy Jew's harp played by Minjia children in Shiijou, near Dahlii, Yun-
nan Province, China. The vibrating tongue is much thicker below the
forked tip than elsewhere. It is set in motion by jerking a silk-gut cord
attached to the lower end in the photograph.
(e) Three-stringed idiochordic bamboo tube-zither from Borneo. The
strings are slivers of bamboo raised from the surface of the tube.
(Г) Mouth-organ from Borneo. The wind-chest is a gourd.
(g) Detail of the same. Two of the free reeds are shown in pipes re-
moved from the wind chest. Each reed is a rectangular tongue cut in a
thin sheet of bamboo let into the wall of the pipe. Near the free end
of each there is a thickening, comparable to that on the tongues of
Minjia and Lolo Jew's harps (figures (c) and (4)). This figure should
be compared with Plate III, figures ( f) and (j).
Figures (a), (е), (Г), and (g) are reproduced by courtesy of the Curator
of the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
УП. (а) INDIAN VINA PLAYER between pp. 160 and 161
A representation of the Аа? Syáma Garjari. This râginî is said to be-
long to the rainy season and should be sung in the early hours of the
morning, expressing a mood of sadness and melancholy. See page 214.
(Bodleian Library MS. Laud. Or. 149 fo. 33".)
(Б) А BURMESE ORCHESTRA, SAING ТУРЕ
For theatrical and other performances on a large scale. Melodic instru-
ments: oboes with detachable brass bell-mouths; a graduated scale of
drums played with the hands; a graduated scale of brass gongs played
with wooden strikers tipped with disks of buffalo hide. Instruments for
rhythm and emphasis: a bass drum struck with the fist, and four
drums played by the hands; drums beaten with sticks; cymbals; wooden
spring clappers. Pictures copied from E. J. Colston, ‘A Monograph on
Tanning and Working Leather in the Province of Burma' (Rangoon,
1903), by courtesy of the Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
VIII. MESOPOTAMIAN INSTRUMENTS
(а) Assyrians playing lower-chested harps (reign of Ashur-nàgir-pal, 883—
859 B.c.). Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.
(b) Harp from Ur (twenty-fifth century B.c.). Reproduced by courtesy
of the Trustees of the British Museum.
(c) The royal Elamite orchestra, showing upper and lower-chested harps,
double reed-pipes, and drum (reign of Ashur-bàni-pal, 668-626 в.с.).
See pages 237-8. Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the British
Museum.
IX. EGYPTIAN INSTRUMENTS between pp. 352 and 353
(а) Lower-chested harp and flute (Eighteenth Dynasty, с. 1570-1310 в.с.).
Reproduced by courtesy of the Director of the Rijksmuseum, Leiden.
(5b) Harp, lute, and double reed-pipe (c. 1475 B.c.). From the tomb of
Amenemhet, Thebes. Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the
British Museum.
xvi ILLUSTRATIONS
X. GREEK INSTRUMENTS
(a) A kithara player singing.
An Athenian vase c. 480 в.с. Reproduced by courtesy of the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston.
(b) A Greek Music School.
The instructor is playing on a lyre and singing; about him are youths
playing double auloi, and holding flutes and lyres. Athenian vase of the
early fifth century B.c. Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the
British Museum.
XI. ROMAN INSTRUMENTS between pp. 384 and 385
(a) A Priest of Cybele.
Relief showing cymbals, tympanum, and twin Phrygian pipes. (c. A.D.
150.) See p. 405.
(b) Roman Musicians at the Circus
Showing the tuba, hydraulus (with female player), and cornu. From a
mosaic at Zliten (late first century A.D.).
XII. AROMAN CONCERT
Showing twin pipes and kithara. See page 413. From a fresco at
Herculaneum. Reproduced by courtesy of the Museo Nazionale, Naples.
XIII. ARABIC INSTRUMENTS facing p. 416
From the Kitab al-Adwar of Safial-Din ‘Abd al-Mu'min (d. А.р. 1294)
(a) Lute of five double strings (Bodleian Library MS. Marsh 521, fo. 157".
A.D. 1333-4).
(b) Psaltery of thirty-two strings (from the same MS., fo. 158).
(c) Harp of thirty-four strings (Cairo MS. f. j., 428. A.D. 1326-7).
The Arabic in figure (a) gives the names of the parts of the instrument,
whilst that in figures (6) and (c) indicates the tuning. See pages 462-3.
XIV. ARABIC MUSIC MANUSCRIPTS facing p. 448
(a) British Museum MS. Or. 2361, fo. 32. Late thirteenth century.
(b) British Museum MS. Or. 136, fo. 38". Late thirteenth century.
For a transcription of these see pages 454-5.
Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.
The Glossary of Chinese characters, pp. 190-4, was written by Dr. Tsaur
Tian-Chin, sometime Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME I
THE second edition of the Oxford History of Music had an Introduc-
tory Volume edited by Percy C. Buck which dealt primarily with those
facts and forms which preceded the rise of polyphony, and included
other subjects which had been omitted in the first edition. Expiaining
the scope and content of the volume, Buck stated ‘that the under-
standing of any subject can only be derived from the study of how
it came to be what it is’. This aim was not fully realized in the
Introductory Volume, because its chapters were not designed to form
a unity, but to fill the gaps in the main body of the work. It has needed
the replanning and rewriting of the whole history of music as deli-
neated in the ‘General Introduction’ to make it possible to approach
Buck's far-sighted postulate.
During the two decades that separate the publication of the Intro-
ductory Volume and the planning of the New Oxford History of Music
musicological research has made great progress in the field covered
by the present volume. Phonograph and gramophone have made it
possible to study the music of remote and primitive peoples. The
methods of transcribing the music have improved. Comparative
musicology, that new branch of musical research, regarded in its
beginnings some fifty years ago as a side-line, has enlarged its scope
and developed its methods. Orientalists have taken an ever-increasing
interest in writings about music and passages in historical works
referring to it. Students of comparative liturgiology have given the
initiative to an investigation of the relationship between Jewish and
Christian chant, and their work has led to the examination of the
passages on music in the Holy Scriptures in a new light.
The present volume takes into account this widening of the field
of musicological studies, which has created a new outlook. The first
chapter gives an introduction to the essentials of all kinds of primitive
music. The main part of the volume, Chapters II-VIII, gives a histori-
cal survey of the music of the East. The next section, Chapters IX-X,
contains a survey of Greek and Roman music, and the last, Chapter
XI, deals with the music of the Islamic world.
It has been clear to the Editor from the beginning that the treat-
ment of such vast and divergent material in a single volume must
be carried out on different principles from those applied to the
other volumes of the History. There, as pointed out in the General
xviii INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMEI
Introduction, music is seen as an art, closely connected with various
trends of our Western civilization. Such treatment not only permits
but enforces the application of the so-called ‘historical method’ which
aims at describing the single work of art as a product of the creative
mind of a composer; or, where this is impossible, at description of
the creative tendencies of a group or school of composers who remain
anonymous.
When we come to deal with non-European music, however, we
cannot apply the same criteria as we use in studying and appreciating
the music of the West. In the East music has—or at any rate had
until recently, when social changes, the wireless and the gramophone
have so much altered the whole outlook—still preserved its ritual,
even its magic character. The factor of time which governs the struc-
ture of Western music plays hardly any part in Oriental music. An
Arabic song may last more than an hour, the performance of a
Chinese opera stretch out over several days. To the Western musician
conciseness of expression, clearly shaped form, and individuality are
the highest criteria by which a work of art is judged; the attitude of
the listener is an active one: he listens to what the composer has to say.
The Eastern musician likes to improvise on given patterns, he favours
repetition, his music does not develop, does not aim at producing
climaxes, but it flows; and the listener becomes entranced by the
voice of the singers, by the sound of the instruments, and by the
drumming rhythms.
All this makes it difficult to apply our critical values to music
which is so essentially different from our own. For example, in
judging Chinese music, we are in the same position as the Chinese
listeners to whom, as Amiot relates in his Mémoire sur la musique des
Chinois (Paris, 1779), French missionaries played music of Rameau:
it meant nothing to them. We have also a report from the nineteenth
century of the effect of songs by Schubert on a Chinese audience;
they liked the music as a play of notes, but objected that it did not
move the heart.
How, one may ask, can one hope to acquire any knowledge of
Oriental music, if such a cleavage exists in structure and expression
between the music of the East and that of the West? And one may
add, that objection applies to an even higher degree to our under-
standing and appreciation of primitive music, with which the present
volume opens.
It is here that the work of the comparative musicologist begins.
The student of this most recent branch of our studies will not confine
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMEI xix
himself to describing the peculiarities of each tribe whose music has
been recorded. That kind of research precedes his work which, in
the same way as the ethnologist’s, must consist in showing the
function of music in primitive life. Such studies must remain within
the scope of general statement, derived from the material which
precedes historical research.
A similar though more specialized approach must be applied to
Oriental music. Here one must rely to a great extent on the judgement
of those experts who have devoted themselves to the study of the
music of a particular part of the civilized world from enthusiasm and
a peculiar inclination, fully equipped with the knowledge of the
language, the customs, rites, and ceremonies of the people whose
music they investigate, and the experience of having heard the music
performed in the surroundings in which it was created and to which
it belongs. Some of the music, like that of India, Java, Bali, Laos, and
Indochina, for example, appeals to the Western mind directly; that
of China and Japan, however, needs a more thorough acquaintance
before it is appreciated and before it is possible to distinguish between
old and modern instrumental music; folk-songs on the one hand, and
ceremonial and ritual music on the other. The main obstacle for the
European listener in appreciating Far Eastern music comes in the begin-
ning from the different method of voice-production. For the European,
singing isa kind of elated speech; for the Far Eastern musician singing is
opposed to speech: the voice is used like a highly strung instrument.
For the study of the Ancient Orient, of which no music has
survived, we must turn to the visual arts to learn which instruments
were used, and to literary sources to discover what those who wrote
about their national music thought of it. In this case the task of the
scholar will be similar to that of the historian: to state what he has
read about the music, and to convey to the reader the impression
that he has gathered from his sources.
To deal with Jewish and Islamic music and that of Greece and
Rome a different approach has been felt to be necessary. Systematic
studies in Jewish music are of recent date and are based upon the
methods of comparative musicology. It has been necessary to deter-
mine how far the oral tradition can be traced back, and to what
extent time and cultural changes have altered the character of the
music. The result of these studies has been more positive perhaps
than one dared to expect. For example, recordings of the religious
music of Jewish communities who have lived for centuries separated
from their neighbours have shown that they are still related to the
XX INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMEI
common source and, furthermore, that their psalm-tunes and many
other liturgical chants are closely related to, if not identical with,
those of the Christian churches, both Eastern and Western, who took
them over in the early days of Christianity. Thus a new basis for the
study of Christian chant has been established.
The approach to the music of Islam and the methods employed in
investigating its character and history have been the same. Here
again the integration of these studies into the history of Western
music will shed new light on some problems which are still under
discussion. With the chapter on Greek music we enter a field of
studies which, since the days of Humanism, has been favoured by
classical scholars. We need only recall Meursius's edition of the
theoretical treatises of Aristoxenus, Nicomachus, and Alypius,
printed in Amsterdam in 1616, followed by the more comprehensive
edition of Meibom in 1652 and of Ptolemy's Harmonicorum libri
tres, printed at Oxford in 1682. Bellermann's edition of Die Hymnen
des Dionysius und Mesomedes in 1840 aroused the interest of musico-
logists in Greek music, and from that time its investigation has been
an important subject of musicological research.
However, the study of Greek music has shown also the difficulties
with which one is faced in studying the music of a period from which
only a limited number of musical documents have survived. From
the writings of Greek poets, philosophers, and theorists Greek music
seems familiar to us. In fact, the music itself, when we read or hear it,
seems to offer no problems to our understanding from the formal or
aesthetic point of view. We find in it those qualities which appeal
directly to our mind: clarity of shape and conciseness of expression.
But how can we attempt to comprehend Greek music as a whole from
the few fragments which have come down to us?
Hermann Abert, a musicologist of the former generation, whose
book on the ethos of Greek music has become a classic, discussed this
question in a lecture on Greek music, given to the Prussian Academy
in 1923. He asked his audience to visualize the position of a musico-
logist who, 2,000 years from now, would try to give a picture of our
music with the following documents as the only material from which
to draw his conclusions: three bars from the St. Matthew Passion,
a drinking-song from the eighteenth century, a Mass by Bruckner,
half a dozen modern pieces for the piano; but, in addition, a great
many theoretical works from J. J. Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum to a
modern textbook on harmony. Would he be able to give an adequate
picture of our music from these sources?
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME I xxi
Such is our position in relation to the material of Greek music at
our disposal. But we may ask further: even if we had enough docu-
ments to enable us to make an historical approach, should we be any
nearer to a real understanding of its aesthetics or to a knowledge of
the effect it had on the audience for which it was written?
This question may well be asked about Oriental music also. We
must face the fact that the music which we read, or even hear on
records, can give us only a faint idea of what it means to the people
who live with it. This may be illustrated by a few examples, taken
from personal experience.
During the concerts given for the members of the first Congress of
Arabic Music at Cairo in 1932 we heard a Persian singer who sang
of his sorrow at leaving his friends. The audience, which consisted
mostly of Egyptians, became so excited that they forgot they were
listening to a song and shouted: ‘Stay with us, do not leave us.’
One felt at once that the artificial barriers which in the modern
concert hall separate the singer from his audience had been broken
down. For his audience the plaintive song of the singer had become
reality. J was reminded of the Greek classical _play in which the
personae dramatis were for the audience not the actors in the role of
the heroes of the past, but actually the shadows of the dead heroes,
conjured up from Hades by the priest of Dionysus to perform their
deeds once more.
On another occasion we saw the solemn ritual of the ‘dancing
dervishes’. It was impossible to believe that old men who had per-
formed the whirling movement for more than an hour could sit down
when the dance came to an end without breathing more heavily, if
one did not assume that the music had produced a state of trance in
which the normal physical reactions were suspended. One was
reminded of the writings of the Platonists and Gnostics which describe
the sacred dances as the symbols of the movements of the moon, the
sun, and the stars, and music as a supernatural power, as an ézavóp-
бшсе ту 00у, as a means to improve the character.
Finally we saw the dance of Egyptian sorceresses, who danced to
an exciting music of flutes, fiddles, and drums round the imaginary
body of a sick man. Here one felt at once: such was the kind of
music to which Plato refers in his Laws (790 d) when he speaks of the
*female healers of Corybantic troubles’.
These examples, taken from the music of the Islamic world, could
easily be supplemented by a great number of others, all demon-
strating the magic effect of music. They would lead from travellers'
xxii INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME I
descriptions of the rituals of primitive tribes to the writings of the
sages of Ancient China about the power of music to organize or
disrupt the order of the State.
This brings us to an explanation of the plan of the present volume.
The reader may object to the separation of the chapters on Hebrew
and Jewish music in this volume from those on ‘Early Christian
Chant' in Volume II; with our growing knowledge of the develop-
ment of Christian from Jewish liturgy, one might have expected to
find both sections side by side. For similar reasons one might object
to the placing of Greek and Roman music in the first volume, because
both belong to European civilization and particularly because Greek
and Roman musical theory had a decisive influence upon medieval
theorists.
There is, however, a unifying idea in the volume. It deals with the
music of the non-Christian world: a world in which music is regarded
as a power creating a magic effect upon the listener. This magic
character of music ranges, according to the state of civilization of the
people who produce it, from totemistic connotations to music which
represents a certain rite or a certain ceremony and creates in the
listener the proper mood to participate in it. Considering the emo-
tional character of such music, one may well understand the many
warnings of the Fathers of the Church in the early days of Christianity
against any kind of singing which creates such an effect. Even St.
Augustine, brought up in the classical tradition and, as one knows
from the famous passage in his Confessions, enjoying music ' which is
pleasing to the ear’, advises that the chanting of the psalms should be
nearer to recitation than to singing—pronuncianti vicinior esset quam
canenti—and says in another place: *We sing with our voice to be
excited, we sing with our heart to please God’ (Enarratio in Ps. 147, 5).
This rigid attitude of the Church in its first centuries shows that
she was aware of the magic power of music in the surrounding pagan
world. When the Christian faith was established as the acknowledged
religion all over the Roman Empire, it was no longer necessary; the
magic spell was broken. Music could now be used primarily as laus
Dei, to heighten the splendour of the service, and, in our Western
civilization, the way was opened for its development as an art.
Various circumstances, unavoidable with a composite work of this
kind, have caused delay in bringing out the present volume and
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME I xxii
have necessitated continuous revision. The Editor wishes to express
his own and the Editorial Board's thanks for the indefatigable efforts
of the contributors to keep their work up to date.
EGON WELLESZ
Lincoln College, Oxford
January 1957
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS are due to the following for permission to re-
produce music examples from the works cited: Librairie Delagrave,
Paris (A. Lavignac and L. de la Laurencie, Encyclopédie de la
musique); Paul Geuthner, Paris (A. Gailhard, Thédtre et musique
modernes en Chine); Breitkopf and Hartel, Wiesbaden (E. Fischer,
Beitrdge zur Erforschung der chinesischen Musik); the Sven Hedin
Foundation, Stockholm (Reports from the Scientific Expedition to the
North- Western Provinces of China); W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., New
York (Curt Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, including
two examples after Frizzi (Peri)); T. Howard Somervell (“The Music
of Tibet’ from the Musical Times); Colin McPhee (Angkloeng Game-
lans in Bali, A House in Bali, and ‘The 5-tone Gamelan Music
of Bali’); the Editor of Anthropos, Poisieux; Mezhdunarodnaya
Kniga (500 kazakskikh pesen); Dr. Jaap Kunst (De enheemse muziek
in N. Guinea, ‘Music in Nias’, A Study on Papuan Music, and Over
zeldzame fluiten); Cha Fu-Hsi (extracts from recordings in the
Library of Congress, Washington); G. Schirmer, Inc. (article by
Colin McPhee, ‘The 5-tone Gamelan Music of Bali’, in Musical
Quarterly, April 1949) ; Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
(В. Lach, Gesänge russischer Kriegsgefangener) ; the National Museum
of Canada (Jenness and Roberts, Eskimo Songs); the Smithsonian
Institution (Bulletins of the Bureau of American Ethnology); the
Editor, Journal de la société des Américanistes; the Finno-Ugrian
Society (A. Kannisto, Wogulische und ostjakische Melodien); Uni-
versity Museum, Philadelphia (Speck-Sapir, Ceremonial Songs of the
Creek and Yuchi Indians); the Syndics of the Cambridge University
Press (Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres
Straits, ed. A. C. Haddon); the Oxford University Press (P. Kirby,
‘Bushmen’, in Bantu Studies); and George Allen & Unwin Ltd. (a
translation by Arthur Waley of four lines from The Book of Songs).
Chapter I has been translated by Mr. Stanley Godman.
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PRIMITIVE MUSIC
By MARIUS SCHNEIDER
COMPARATIVE MUSICOLOGY
UNTIL a few decades ago the term ‘history of music’ meant merely
the ‘history of European art music’. It was only by degrees that the
Scope of music was extended to include the indispensable foundation
of non-European and, finally, primitive music. Since only a few relics
of primitive music survive in European folk-music, to get any idea
at all of primitive music scholars had to turn first to the primitive
tribes still living in the Stone Age. At the same time the study of more
highly developed non-European cultures, which had begun much
earlier, was revived and a new branch of musicology concerned
exclusively with non-European music came into being. This new
discipline was called ‘comparative musicology', its primary aim
being the comparative study of all the characteristics, normal or
otherwise, of non-European art. This study led to the establishment
of connexions between European and non-European music.
It must be emphasized that the methods of the musical ethnologist
are entirely different from those of the historian. For the student of
primitive music Europe has played only a very small part in the total
framework of human history. But he has to attempt to rediscover the
bridges between European and non-European music which certainly
once existed and to reconstruct them, theoretically at least, by means
of comparative ethnology. The aim of the present chapter is to
describe the music of the hunting, pastoral, and peasant peoples
whose historical position is bounded at one end by the earliest primi-
tive cultures and at the other by the beginnings of more advanced
cultures. At the extreme end are those pastoral and peasant peoples,
for example the Caucasians, who already show the marked influence
of a highly developed culture and must be included because their
tradition, still alive today, provides the key to the understanding of
those ancient civilizations which can now be investigated only by
purely archaeological methods.
Although all the material dealt with here is of recent origin, we
shall'use the term ‘historical development’ as understood by the
2 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
ethnologist who attempts to bring into historical order the medley of
primitive, transitional, and advanced cultures which still exist side by
side in the world today. ‘Higher development’ simply means a
general historical process and is in no way intended as a criterion of
musical value.
MELODY AND MANKIND
Primitive music is a separate field of its own, but to a much greater
extent than art music it is bound up with everyday life and with many
special factors: psychological, sociological, religious, symbolic, and
linguistic. Some songs must be performed only by a certain individual;
others must be sung only by men or women. The same melodies may
have a quite different psychological meaning, according to whether
they are sung falsetto, or with a nasal or chest voice. For a proper
understanding of any given musical phenomenon direct contact with
the singers and their surroundings is therefore indispensable. The
conception that we can get from the written version of a simple
melody is quite inadequate (and may even be entirely misleading)
unless we have this practical experience. In particular we need to be
acquainted with the method of performance of the people concerned
and the tone quality they produce, in order to hear the song correctly.
It is a simple matter of experience that the actual transcription of a
melody will vary essentially according to whether it is made from
a direct hearing and seeing of the singer or only indirectly from a
gramophone record. In the first instance the rhythm of the song as a
whole will be more accurately transcribed ; in the second the melodic
details will be better reproduced. A primitive melody is always the
musical expression of an idea. Primitive man sings only when he has
something definite to express. Since his singing is the spontaneous
expression of his thought, song and speech are often mingled in the
course of his performance. If one tries to introduce a primitive man to
a new tune (without the foreign words which he cannot understand)
he will never stop asking what the song is about. For him the thoughts
expressed in the song are at least as important as the melody itself.
But if he hears a melody that pleases him, the words of which he does
not understand, he will at once add words of his own. Even his instru-
mental melody and his whistling are the expression of definite ideas.
Thus the roots of programme-music reach down into the earliest
strata of instrumental music. Whether the simple sing-song of certain
kinds of children's songs and lullabies is entirely bereft of ideas has
still to be proved. The idea need not be clearly formulated in words;
MELODY AND MANKIND 3
it may consist of a vaguely defined thought, felt rather than conceived,
expressed directly in sound without the mediation of an intelligible
sequence of words. It may also happen that the logical thought and
the musical motive pass little by little from the indefinite to the
definite in the course of the song, as if the initial dream-state were
gradually yielding to waking consciousness. Many of the supposedly
nonsensical syllables to which a melody is sung also have a magic
significance. Thus the syllable hee often serves to express the shooting
of an arrow and /oo has a medical value. Such syllables serve to evoke
a spirit or frighten it away. Just as one cannot sound a medicine-rattle
heedlessly or merely for fun without falling ill, so one must not sing
thoughtlessly to oneself, for every note summons up a spirit. Melody
has a great significance for primitive man, a magic power which
must not be squandered or abused. The agreement of sounds is
always a symbol of identity or at least of mutual understanding. In
the Solomon Islands, when an invitation is sent to a neighbouring
tribe it is customary to send the measurements of the tribal panpipes
so that the guests can tune theirs beforehand, thus ensuring the
greatest agreement in the mutual musical greeting. When young men
are singing, and it suddenly occurs to one of them to strike up so high
a melody that the other singers cannot follow him, sometimes a young
girl will take up the melody in this high register and continue it.
When this happens, it means that the two young people are in love.
A melody is not a chance combination of notes but an organic
and dynamic whole, a form which is more than the simple sum of the
notes of which it consists. A succession of single notes artificially
put together is ineffectual because it is a synthetic product, not
a living one. The aboriginal describes a melody of that kind as
‘powerless’ because it is not in a position to offer a dwelling-place to
a spirit. Primitive melody, which is scarcely more than a continually
repeated and varied motive, is regulated essentially by the tension
between the beginning of the motive and its final note. All the notes
between are determined by conscious striving towards the last note.
Both the motive and the series of its repetitions grow according to
definite patterns which can assume the most varied forms according
to the particular culture or the ideas and feelings expressed.?
This growth of melody is undoubtedly one of the main reasons why
music is so significant in the life of primitive peoples. Music and
dancing create a movement which generates something that is more
1 M. Leenhardt, Arts de l'Océanie (Paris, 1947), p. 58.
? See infra, p. 24.
4 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
than the original movement itself. As he sings and dances, man
discovers in himself an all-pervading element whose intensifying,
liberating, or healing power is unknown to him in everyday life.
Music which has such an intensifying effect grows to the point of
ecstasy. The quietly and regularly flowing rhythms lead to a great
inward release. I have myself observed the liberating and healing
power of music in the case of a native of Uganda who, at the funeral
of a brother (killed by a spirit), at first broke into a terrible howl
of rage and then, beginning to sing, gradually defeated the black
demon of despair by the soothing power of song.
The effects of musical rhythm are especially strong when singing is
accompanied by dance movements or by the singer's own playing
on an instrument. Of course this purely instinctive, primitive music-
making has at this stage nothing to do with art. Nevertheless, even
in the oldest cultures we find the preconditions of art: the mastery
and more or less conscious shaping of the medium of expression.
Where the singer who is at the same time dancing tries to achieve a
certain regularity in his movements, his singing takes on regular
musical forms. The pure play-instinct certainly has a great part in
this shaping of the melody into regular phrases. On the other hand
it must be noted that even ecstatic songs and dances often exhibit
very rigid phrase-structure.
This regularity of tectonic structure is even more striking when
the community takes part as a choir. But the participation of a choir
not only helps the regularity of the rhythmic movement: it also
contributes materially to the unification of the melodic line. The
African pygmy dances in Father P. Schebesta's collection! usually
begin with a wild cry for all the singers out of which a comparative
unison gradually emerges. The melodic lines and the various rhythms
of the opening gradually adjust themselves to one another and in the
end there emerges a completely regular community chant.
The powerful influence of collective performance on the develop-
ment of primitive music can be seen from the fact that even funeral
music and love-songs are also very largely choral. The life of the
individual is so strongly bound up with the community that the latter
will not relax its guardianship even during the short hours of the
wedding night, which it celebrates with continual singing.
The collective consciousness, however, does not lead at all to a
musical ‘levelling’. The distinction between soloist and chorus is
always maintained. This hierarchy is expressed both by different
1 In the Phonogramm-Archiv of the Berlin Museum fiir Volkerkunde.
MELODY AND MANKIND 5
methods of performance and by the degree of ecstasy to which the
singers gradually abandon themselves in the ritual songs. The soloist
is the master, the choir are his ‘assistants’. Even when both sing the
same song the soloist performs it sharply and abruptly, the choir in
a more cantabile (arioso) manner. The soloist dances; the choir forms
a magic protective circle around him. The soloist intensifies his
rhythms more and more in order to penetrate into the land of spirits.
But this he can do only with the help of the chorus, whose singing
and hand-clapping set him in motion and lead him to a state of
ecstasy. When the movement is in full swing, the relation between
singer and song seems to be completely reversed, for the dancing
soloist, who is the initiator of the melody, is now borne along by the
song. The music is a vehicle, a ship or a road, transporting the mortal
to another land. All movements become reflexes. While the dancer
adorned with dangling rattles abandons himself to the mysterious
powers of the rhythmic sounds, he senses that out of this game that
he himself has created something is growing that is greater than he.
He grows with the song and entwines himself about it until the
moment when he identifies himself with it and becomes a human
rattle. Then his soul ascends into the land of the spirits, while the
chorus guard his body until the soul returns to it.
THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC
According to the old European theory, music begins at the point
where clearly distinguishable intervals appear. In contrast, speech is
regarded as a succession of variations of pitch. This distinction is
not applicable to primitive music, however, or to non-European art
music, because these involve the use of all the vocal resources,
including whispering, speaking, humming, singing, and even yelling.
In the same way, at some time or other any implement capable of
producing a rhythm becomes a * musical instrument' in the hands of
a savage.
It is very difficult to say anything definite about the origin of music,
because the phenomenon is quite outside the range of our observa-
tion. Even in those primitive civilizations that still exist there is no
race so primitive that it can be considered a relic of the very beginning
of human culture. Naturally there is no lack of theories about the
origin of music. Charles Darwin attributed song to the imitation of
animal cries in the mating season. Against this, it is to be noted that
while it is true the imitation of animal cries plays a big part in the
oldest civilizations known to us, love-songs are very rare and usually
6 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
mythological rather than erotic in character. Rousseau, Herder,
and Spencer! argued that speaking with a raised voice was the begin-
ning of song; and a kind of ‘speech song’ or chant-like recitative is
indeed to be found in many primitive cultures. Whether this style is
derived from speech seems very doubtful, however, in view of the
many nonsense syllables (without verbal significance) which form the
‘text’ of these songs. Wallaschek? stresses the importance of rhythm in
the origin of music. Buecher’ even traces its beginnings to occupational
rhythms, overlooking the fact that occupational songs belong to a
very late stage of cultural history.
According to Father W. Schmidt* and Carl Stumpf5 music arose,
like speech, from the need to give signals by sound. A loud cry led
to lingering on a note of definite pitch. With this basic idea Stumpf
linked his theory of consonance: if the cry was uttered simultaneously
by men and women so that it sounded in two different pitches at once
ditones resulted, preference being necessarily given to octaves, fifths
and fourths owing to their high degree of blending. If such sounds were
then sung successively, instead of together, an interval resulted and
its progressive breaking up into smaller parts led to the formation of
melody. In Stumpf's view, the real step towards the development of
music was the breaking up of the original ditone into successive notes
and the transposition of 'cry' notes and musical motives. This
theory conflicts, however, with the fact that in many primitive
cultures the motives are often made up of very small intervals and
motive-transpositions usually occur at very close intervals.
Although we must reject the hypothesis that speech is proto-
morphic music, it is still possible to speculate whether the very
ancient ‘sound-languages’ may not represent the common source of
both speech and music. In these languages, which will be dealt with
more fully later, the meaning of a syllable depends on the pitch at
which it is uttered. Thus such a language is itself musical. If it is
sung, music merely gives a more arioso effect to the melodic speech-
curves already determined by etymology; it merely strengthens the
existing musical element. It is, of course, possible that the whole
1 The theories of Darwin and Spencer, no longer tenable today, are discussed in
detail by Stumpf in ‘Musikpsychologie in England’, Vierteljahrsschrift für Musik-
wissenschaft, i (1885), pp. 261—349.
? Primitive Music (London, 1893).
з Arbeit und Rhythmus (Leipzig, 1924).
4 *Über Musik und Gesänge der Karesau-Papuas’, Kongressbericht der internationalen
Musikgesellschaft (Vienna, 1910).
$ Die Anfänge der Musik (Leipzig, 1911).
5 See infra, p. 32.
THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC 7
language is merely a sort of levelled-down music; but it is more likely
that the sound-language is the older element from which developed
both speech and song, speech striving towards free rhythm and music
towards a more regulated one. The greatest difficulty in the way of
this new theory is that at present we know too little about the lan-
guages of the so-called primitive cultures. It is true that various
pygmy races display the elements of ‘sound-languages’ but so far only
a small number of examples have been collected. For this reason my
own researches have so far beenconfined to the African Ewe languages
and to Chinese songs. Some songs of the pygmy Batswa, of the
Congo, recently recorded by the Rev. Father Hulstaert and discussed
by F. Tegethoff in a still unpublished Cologne dissertation, however,
show such marked agreement of musical and speech sounds as to
appear to support the theory of the common origin of music and
speech.
It is idle to discuss the relative merits of these theories because the
primitive material available exhibits features which support one as
much as another. In the primitive cultures known to us speaking,
shouting, imitation of animals, and the rhythms of movement all
tend to musical forms whenever man feels the need of a more beautiful
or more effective means of communicating his impressions or wishes.
By so communicating them man frees himself from the impressions
which accumulate in his inner consciousness. Even a simple shout—to
a fellow human or to a higher being—expressing a desire for action,
betokens a liberation. The way it is used in war shows, however, that
it also serves to dispense strength. If the shout is followed by additional
sounds which are not strictly necessary, the psychic relief is even
greater; for by such growth the song not only releases but actually
unfolds the emotion which has hitherto been confined or seeking
expression.
In music there emerge very quickly hard-and-fast, conventional
melodic forms which by reason of their indeterminate significance
can easily become vehicles of the most varied subjective feelings; so
the objective formula, generally recognized and accepted, combines
quickly and easily with the subjective feelings of the singer. In this
way music has a unifying effect in human society. Melody liberates
and gives objective form to feelings that to begin with were amor-
phous, ultra-subjective, or exaggerated.
Singing allows innumerable repetitions of the same words, repeti-
tions which, apart from magical utterances, seem meaningless or
clumsy in ordinary speech; it also enables things to be said or hinted
8 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
at which it would be difficult to express in sober speech. To the
uninitiated the words of such songs are for the most part completely
unintelligible; but the aboriginal knows exactly what the few,
apparently quite disconnected words mean in association with a
particular melody. In some way or other music throws a neutralizing
veil over that which is individual and realistic, giving it the appearance
of something objective and universally valid or typical, without pre-
judicing its subjective emotional value. It is easier to sing a love-song
than to speak a declaration of love. A musical motive, which when
performed in a certain way is regarded as a formula of scorn, seems
more indirect than plainly spoken abuse. An idea set to music is more
formal, more general, or more ambiguous than the same idea ex-
pressed in words alone because it is subject to a regular rhythm. In
language something of the same kind occurs in the proverbs which,
for the same reason, are so popular with primitive peoples.
Besides this spontaneous musical invention—of which sing-song, as
an expression of the simple play-instinct, is another example—the
imitation of natural sounds plays an important part. Admittedly
Schaeffner, disinclined as he is to generalize, is perfectly correct in
saying: * Toute une fausse optique de l'art musical découle d'une idée
abusive de limitation.’ When a savage beats a piece of wood it is a
spontaneous act not necessarily originating in any intention of imita-
tion, and although many songs and dances do imitate animal noises,
it is unnecessary to trace particular forms, such as the dialogue or the
alternation of solo and chorus, back to similar phenomena in the
animal world, since human society arrives at such forms unaided.
In any case there is no reason why animals should have ‘invented’
such forms more easily than human beings.
Nevertheless, the purely realistic (and also the approximately
musical) imitation of natural sounds forms an important constituent
of the music of the oldest primitive hunting and food-gathering
peoples among whom totemism is an individual affair, that is, not
yet the basis of society.
TOTEMISTIC MUSIC
To grasp the significance of totemistic cultures in the history of
music it must be remembered that the totemistic conception of the
world is anthropomorphic. The natural world is animated by a variety
of good and evil spirits, more or less endowed with voices, whose
continual interaction determines the course of the world. The sounds
1 André Schaeffner, Les Origines des instruments de musique (Paris, 1936), p. 14.
TOTEMISTIC MUSIC 9
of nature are the voices of the spirits who dwell in natural objects.
All objects and living things in the world were created by the totem
gods (the mythical ancestors of mankind), created, moreover, in such
a way that every totem-god during his sojourn on earth called into
being only one particular kind of object or creature, i.e. one definite
totem, by means of songs and war-dances: the kangaroo-god, the
kangaroo; the cloud-god, the cloud; the flute-god, the flute. In
Australian mythology these mythical ancestors, having finished their
work and taught men the rites and songs necessary for the mainten-
ance of Creation, sank down exhausted in a cave, died, and became
petrified or turned into bull-roarers. Their ‘mystical’ bodies survive in
their totems but they left to man the actual care of maintaining things.
In view of this fact men began to divide the task between them, in
each tribe entrusting one person or group with the care of a particular
totem and the worship of the corresponding god (or ancestor). As
each object (each kind of stone, plant, animal, wind, musical instru-
ment, &c.) represents a particular totem, in theory the totemistic
order of society constitutes a complete reflection of the world. In
practice, however, and possibly as a later development, the animal
totem predominates.
The connexion with the totem or the mystic ancestor is established
by the person concerned imitating the particular object which it is
his duty to maintain, that is, his own totem. If the totem is a tiger
or a snake, he must behave like a tiger or a snake and if need be even
have direct intercourse with one of the creatures. For example, if the
tiger-man has a drum he must not play it in the usual way, but must
bite and scratch it as would his totem animal. If, to take another
example, he has been assigned to the wind or storm, he will fulfil his
task by means of a corresponding pantomime, like influencing like.
But the essential part of the imitation is the simulating of sounds, for
of all the available means of imitation the human voice is far and
away the best. The form and movements of the human body can be
brought to resemble the outward appearance of the totem only to a
limited degree with the aid of dancing, masks, and other adornments.
The voice, on the other hand, can imitate so well as really to deceive.
One must have heard them to realize how extremely realistically
aboriginals are able to imitate animal noises and the sounds of nature.
They even hold ‘nature concerts’ in which each singer imitates a
particular sound (waves, wind, groaning trees, cries of frightened
animals), ‘concerts’ of surprising magnificence and beauty.
In totemism the voice has much the same significance as, on a
10 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
smaller scale, numbers had for the Pythagoreans. It is a mysterious
bond uniting all things in the universe. If a man is capable of repro-
ducing exactly the croaking of the frog or the hissing of the snake, it
is because his mystic ancestor was the totem-god of the frog or the
snake. When he imitates the voice of his totem with the greatest
realism, he imagines he is obliterating the boundary between subject
and object and identifying himself with his totem. Whoever croaks
like a frog, is a frog. By vocal assimilation he ‘recognizes’ the object
and in that moment becomes the thing recognized. He becomes in fact
a sound-symbol. This symbol, perhaps the oldest in the history of
human culture, which presupposes no technical or material skill, is
the voice of a dead ancestor, whose mystic body survives in the
totem. The song represents the dwelling of the dead ancestor, or is
itself the dead ancestor, who, together with all the other ancestors,
forms the substance of the world.! Vocal imitation is the strongest
form of mystic participation in the surrounding world.
Here we come upon one of the oldest forms of magic. By singing
the name, or the song, the acoustic substance of the totem-god, or
by playing his flute in the presence of the corresponding mask, one
recognizes him and forces him to sound in the singer's breath, in the
mask or in the flute, that is, to become substantially (acoustically)
present. Just as one can make an open string vibrate by sounding its
own note on another nearby instrument, so one can conjure up a
spirit by providing it with its mystic station. Evidently the voice or the
sound ranks as the ultimate indestructible substance of each object.
This substance leaves the body of a man at death by escaping through
his mouth in the form of the death-rattle, or through his nose as the
sound of his breathing, and carries his soul away. ‘You are blind
but your ears are not deaf! Listen to me!' said a Bakango chieftain,
rattle in hand, at the grave of a famous hunter. The idea of theacoustic
nature of the soul, which survived into the Middle Ages in Europe
(symphonalis est anima, said Hildegard von Bingen) and was taken
up again by the German Romantics (notably by Friedrich Schlegel),
is manifest among primitive peoples particularly in the belief that,
even after the disappearance of the last mortal remains, the soul of a
dead man (that is, the substance of the human being) survives as an
essence (spirit) which is perceptible only in sound.
Every human being has his own sound or is a particular melody. To
stop a magician (magicians are capable of imitating the otherwise
inimitable) from imitating this melody and so getting its bearer
! See infra, p. 43.
TOTEMISTIC MUSIC 11
into his power, primitive man thinks it necessary to keep his own
melody as secret from sorcerers as his ‘real’ name.! (The intona-
tion of the name is closely related to that of the melody.) Among
the Gogodara each clan has its own death-songs which must be kept
secret even from the other clans, because they contain the names of
the ancestors. The assumption that sound forms the mystic substance
of the human being explains the belief that two people having the same
name represent merely the dual expression of the same individual.
This leads to the question of the widespread ' personal song? which
is often identical with an individual's medicine-song or totem-song.
It may be sung only by the person to whom it belongs. Only after its
owner's death may a friend or relative venture to sing the dead
person's song at the funeral. This song honours the deceased but it
has real magic power only when sung by the ‘song-father’. The melody
of a personal song need not be an original composition but may well
belong to the current repertory of the tribe. What makes the melody
a personal song is the individual manner of performance. The term
*personal song' refers not to the melody as such but to something
almost inimitable in the method of performance, the timbre of the
voice, the particular rhythm the singer gives to the song. The concept
of the ‘personal sound’ seems to lie still deeper. It is to some extent
the primary substance out of which the ‘personal song’ is formed and
it seems specially closely connected with the timbre of the voice.
As the substance of every being is revealed in rhythmic sound, it is
obvious why the timbre of the voice plays such a crucial part in the
individual totem system in deciding a man's mystic descent. Similarity
of voice betokens a fundamental relationship. From this it follows
that it is only at puberty, that is, when his voice breaks, that a young
man is finally named, assigned to the totem, and introduced to his
ritual duties. At this time, too, his real musical education begins; he
learns the ritual songs and the use of the sacred musical instruments.
The idea of sound as the substance of things may derive from the
daily experience of the primitive huntsman as he tries to get animals
in his power by imitating their cries and by the use of magic words of
terror. But here too, perhaps, age-old mystical traditions regarding
the true essence of the natural world are at work. At any rate imita-
tion among primitive peoples is a form of mystic participation which
enables a man in everyday life to *invoke' and entice a natural object
| 1 i.e. the name which best reflects phonetically the essence of the human being. Primi-
tive peoples usually give their children a great number of names. The name by which the
child is normally called is unimportant.
12 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
and, by adapting himself to it, to subjugate it or assimilate it to him-
self—an end unattainable by force.
CULTURE AND RACE
To obtain a reasonably comprehensive picture of the various
peoples and cultures of the world, ethnologists have adopted a
classification of races according to the predominant forms of their
economy and the state of their culture (which probably corresponds to
these forms). They distinguish between primitive food-gathering, hunt-
ing, pastoral, and agricultural peoples, although there are many races
which do not clearly belong to any one of these groups, either because
they are culturally or economically in a state of transition, preserving
many archaic elements from lower stages of civilization, or because
they have been subject to cultural influences which (theoretically) do
not correspond to their normal way of life. Thus totemism appears to
belong to the early hunting stage, although there are strong traces of
it in the middle farmers' cultures and a particular late form has de-
veloped among some cattle-breeding tribes.
The primitive food-gatherers include in particular the pygmies and
pygmean races. Hunting, pastoral, and agricultural races are usually
divided into lower, middle, and higher groups. The lower groups com-
prise the totemistic patriarchal hunters, the agricultural and matri-
archal civilization based on two classes, and the patriarchal nomadic
shepherds. A late stage of hunting civilization is found among former
cultivators who have been forced out of their domiciles and have
turned to hunting from necessity. The middle pastoral peoples develop
cultures dependent on saddle-animals. The middle farmers use a more
developed form of hoeing, while the late farmers use the plough and,
like the shepherd-warrior group, show very many megalithic and
even later influences from high cultures. This theoretical order, which
is mainly due to the Vienna school,! may be represented by the so-
called inverted pyramid of civilization:
High cultures
Shepherds Farmers
3
2.
А
©
%
©
ГЫ
Historical
development
Food-gatherers
1 The reader will find a concise summary in O. Menghin, Geschichte der Steinzeit
(Vienna, 1931).
CULTURE AND RACE 19
To this ethnographic classification there is a corresponding musical
one. If one considers the material so far available! the three main
groups (hunters, shepherds, and cultivators) may be distinguished,
theoretically, as follows. Among the hunters, musical performance
is interspersed with much shouting, is formed from free speech-
rhythms, and has little tonal definition. Among the cultivators,
however, an arioso style of performance prevails; the style is tonally
regulated and the form is rounded off. The pastoral cultures occupy a
middle position. With the hunters, metre is the strongest factor in
determining form and is the expression of a very individual kind of
music-making, while with the cultivators the collective note and the
balance between metre and melody are more important.
This scheme which can be no more than a first attempt to organize
the wealth of material, is naturally to be taken cum grano salis, since
over each of these theoretical strata (based on the ' pure' cultures) are
laid others which do not always agree with the first and may even be
of quite a different nature, in fact with no cultural connexions at all.
Thus, for example, within the same culture, historically considered,
the singing of the woman is naturally more cantabile than that of the
man. Very often we find coexistent modern, archaic, and foreign
styles reflecting the historical development. The hunting songs of
farmers who have been formerly hunters are always more authentic
than those sung on the hunting expeditions of farmers pure and
simple. The true hunting song is rooted in the mystique of the hunt,
whereas the late hunting song is merely for entertainment.
If one considers the predominant cultural role of the man in hunting
and pastoral societies and that of the woman in agricultural societies
the following scheme results:
Hunters Shepherds Cultivators
Man Woman
Predominance of Metre Predominance of Melody
Polyphony Harmony
The concepts of polyphony and harmony naturally apply only to
the narrowly bounded regions in which part-singing occurs.
Racial characteristics in music are easily detected when one
actually hears a singer, but they cannot be described in words. Race
shows itself by timbre, by the general rhythm of movement, and by
types of melody, in so far as these exhibit particularly individual
forms. Deliberate screaming or abrupt transition from high falsetto
1 To which the present writer would add his unpublished transcriptions from the
Phonogramm-Archiv of the Berlin Museum für Vólkerkunde. 2 See infra, p. 24.
14 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
to chest and abdominal voices do not enter the category of racial
characteristics, however, because they represent ideals of performance
belonging to specific cultures and are acquired by conscious effort.
THE FORMATION OF SCALES
Up to now the question of the formation of a tonal system! has
been answered, notably by Hornbostel and Robert Lachmann,? by
the assertion that a fixed scale was impossible without instruments
giving clearly defined intervals. As such instrumental tunings are a
product of late civilizations, a real tonal system could not be produced
by primitive races. Strangely enough these two scholars, to whom
comparative musicology owes such a great debt, hardly took any
account of the fact that the very oldest instrumental tonal systems
(which led Hornbostel to the ‘blown fifths’ theory? now refuted by
Bukofzer and others) do not use the natural (pure) fifths, although
in the vocal music of primitive peoples these intervals not only
frequently determine the tonal framework of the individual motives
but are everywhere found to have the greatest influence in the forma-
tion of scales. In fact tonal systems are formed without the help of
instrumental tunings. They grow progressively in primitive vocal
music out of fanfare-like formations or out of the elementary fourth and
fifth relationships which are found above or below a melody of
narrowly restricted range (Exs. 10, 14, 53, 61, 67, 68, 79, and 80).*
These intervals are even all the clearer and more definite for being
free from any influence of instrumental music. The natural tone-
system is built up entirely of consonances, the only exception—
especially in primitive and middle cultures—being those notes which
are derived from the harmonic division of a consonant melodic
interval. Where, however, rows of overtones (Ex. 63) or slightly
flattened fifths or widened seconds are sung, we may take this as
evidence of the direct influence of instrumental tunings (musical
bow? or panpipes).* When the same song is performed simultaneously
1 Marius Schneider, ‘Ethnologische Musikforschung’, in 2nd edition of Preuss and
Trimborn, Lehrbuch der Völkerkunde (Stuttgart, 1956).
? Musik des Orients, ii, 1 (Breslau, 1929).
* According to this theory the oldest tone-systems arise from a succession of over-
blown fifths, i.e. they are formed by slightly flattened fifths. See E. M. von Hornbostel,
* Musikalische Tonsysteme', in Geiger and Scheel's Handbuch der Physik, viii (Berlin,
1927); Manfred Bukofzer, ‘Kann die Blasquintentheorie zur Erklärung exotischer
Tonsysteme beitragen?’, Anthropos, xxxii (1937), p. 241; Ll. S. Lloyd, ‘Hornbostel’s
Theory of Blown Fifths’ in The Monthly Musical Record, \xxvi (1946), pp. 3 and 35; J.
Kunst, Around von Hornbostel's Theory of the Cycle of Blown Fifths (Amsterdam, 1948).
* The musical examples to this chapter are grouped on pp. 61-82.
5 P, Kirby, ‘The Musical Practices of the Bushmen’, Bantu Studies, x (1936), p. 381.
6 Е. M. von Hornbostel, ‘Die Musik auf den nordwestlichen Salomo Inseln', in В.
Thurnwald, Forschungen auf den Salomo Inseln (Berlin, 1912).
THE FORMATION OF SCALES 15
or alternatively by voices and instruments, the melody proceeds in
two different tunings. The instruments perform it in their own scale,
the voices in theirs (built from natural fifths).
As songs with or without a definite tonal organization are often
found side by side in the same culture, we must distinguish two kinds
of primitive vocal music. The first, which is perhaps the older, is
closely related to speech, to the realistic imitation of natural sounds,
and to emotional outbursts of only slight musical form. It is manifest
not only in recitative, tonally very free recitative (Exs. 5 and 6), but
also in songs of abuse and laments. In religious songs it may even
be traced well into the late cultures. These songs are by no means
limited to a narrow compass; among the American Indians they even
extend to an astonishing range (up to 24 octaves), particularly when
motives are freely transposed.
Nevertheless, even in these freely intoned songs there is a recogniz-
able tendency to use a clearly defined fourth or fifth as the basic
melodic formula and to group the other tonally indefinite notes more
or less freely around it. If these formulae are transposed, at least one
of the two basic notes is generally found to have a consonant relation-
ship to the first exposition of the motive. In Exs. 18, 19, 22, and 25
this transposition and consonant relationship have a direct influence
on the development of the tonal system for, although the motives
are only small, and only their basic notes are tonally definite, yet by
reason of the transposition of the basic intervals the whole song
already displays in its broad outlines a succinct tonal order. Yet, in
view of the fact that transpositions of the smallest motives are to be
found in very early stages of cultural history at distances of a second
or third (Exs. 17 and 20), neither the pentatonic scale consisting of
seconds and thirds nor the form interspersed with semitones can be
considered older than the six- or seven-degree scale.
With the extension of the consonant relations there emerges a
tone-structure which may be traced back in the field of primitive
music as a rule to a more or less large extract from the series of fifths
(B flat) F, C, G, D, A, E, B (F sharp). The fact that the keys formed
from the series of fifths are so much closer than most of the primitive
instrumental tunings to our European musical sense can probably be
explained only by supposing that the vocal tone-system has been
evolved in a natural and specifically musical fashion, whereas in the
tuning of instruments (which are an artificial product) quite different
principles were applied—such as, for example, the breadth of the
thumb as the standard for the space between flute-holes. It is true
16 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
that there are frequent departures from the system of natural fifths
but in many cases the significance of such notes may have been over-
estimated. It seems very doubtful whether the measurement of vocal
pitches will ever lead to useful results, unless account is taken of the
difference between what the singér intends and what he actually
achieves. Measurements taken by the writer from a native of Uganda
showed that a high note which seemed diatonically too low became
quite pure in a second recording in which the song was pitched lower.
Moreover, such departures are sometimes quite deliberate. For
example, from the above-mentioned measurements it became clear
that a note was intentionally taken too low in order to represent the
“weeping note’.
The essence of musical functions is probably best grasped by
considering in the first place not the individual modes, but the whole
system of relations of the fifths to one another and by regarding
different ‘keys’ only as specific extracts from the series of fifths. In a
melody the functional tension (which can, of course, be essentially
increased or diminished by the metre) is intensified by increasing the
relative distance of the individual notes within the series F, C, G, D,
A, E, B. Moreover, the notes F, C, G, and D appear the strongest,
probably because they are the most fundamental. (We are assuming
that the corresponding melodies are all transposed toa pitch involving
the least possible use of accidentals.) In fact it appears that the tonal
relationships in the F or C mode are much less complex than in the
G, D, A, or E mode. If we take for the primitive motive, in so far as
it has a tonal character, F as the fundamental note and Е-А or D-F as
the germ cell, we find apart from the second above or below the tonic,
the fourth below (Exs. 61 and 86) or the harmonically or diatonically
divided fifth above (Exs. 80, 82, 83, and 84) as the main function.
The augmented fourth above (tritone melodies: Exs. 85, 87, and 113)
is probably a late phenomenon.! On the other hand, melodies in
the C mode (Exs. 10, 13, 22, 26, 37, and 52), in addition to the tonic
and its neighbours, stress particularly the fourth, that is the 'sub-
dominant’ F. Songs in the G mode (Exs. 15, 32, and 49) empha-
size both the subdominant C and the double subdominant F. Songs
in the D mode lay stress on G, C, and F (Exs. 19, 33, and 48). The
A and E modes are even richer in relationships (Ex. 21). In other
words, the number of functional relationships grows as the funda-
mental note of the mode advances from F through C and G to D, A
or E, for these relationships seem to grow not out of the brilliance
1 J, Kunst, Music in Nias (Leiden, 1939), p. 7; Music in Flores (Leiden, 1942), р. 35.
THE FORMATION OF SCALES 17
of the dominants but out of the dark depths of the subdominants
F, C, G, and D. This is, naturally, not to say that in the last-named
modes one cannot have a phrase of the greatest functional simplicity ;
but in these modes the functional possibilities are far greater than in
the simple ones of F and C. The scales of all modes can also have
seven degrees but the number of notes of real functional importance
is limited in the F and C modes to a few notes, while the more highly
developed modes (G, D, A, and E) include all the functions of the
modes preceding them. This may be expressed in the following table
in which the vertical lines represent the progressive increase in func-
tions of subdominant origin:
f mode e c Ts. mox Ша (9) бб се:
€ ss [6] К 9] e |f| g a b Ke)
gp dec Шу Ке ЕШ КЫ КӨ d se Kg
d , [е «d [e] |£| |g] a b je) (de
а, e |f| fg] Ка) [6] |с| |dje f ga
е , [d] i [f] 5 а b c dje
( ) Tonic; || Subdominant; — Dominant; [ ] Note next to tonic
This theory, put forward by the writer in 1934,! is confirmed in
vocal polyphony in which the tonal relations sketched above—
according to mode—are apparent in the selection and nature of the
concords.
STRUCTURE OF THE MELODIC AMBIT
The tonal functions discussed above are expressed within a given
ambit. The number of patterns which determine the main outlines
of a composition is very great and it would be a hopeless undertaking
to attempt to enumerate and describe them all here. We will therefore
confine ourselves to mentioning the normal patterns which have been
most important in the historical development of music. In considering
the structure of the ambit we shall take the motive or theme as the
given point from which the development of the ambit proceeds. It
must be admitted that the separation of the theme from its continua-
tion is in many cases very problematical, but the mass of available
musical material enables us to discern definite norms. Apart from
this, the musical structure can often be determined from the words.
Owing to lack of space, however, it is possible to include the words
in the musical examples only in the most important cases.
1 M. Schneider, Geschichte der Mehrstimmigkeit, i (Berlin, 1934).
18 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
The main principle in the continuation of a given theme consists
of varied repetition. In this repetition many melodies remain per-
sistently within the tonal ambit given by the motive in the first place.
This applies not only to narrow two- or three-note melodies but also
to more broadly constructed ones (Exs. 1, 2, 3, 7-9, 75-84, and
87-93).
There is a very common tendency gradually to diminish the com-
pass with which a melody has begun. Some songs consist merely of
a short introductory motive whose final notes are repeated at such
lengths that they represent the greatest part of the piece (Exs. 10 and
14). With themes of wider range one would be inclined to attribute the
progressive lowering of the top notes to fatigue. But it occurs just as
much with quite short motives of limited compass as with longer
songs (Exs. 11-13, 15, 16, 52, 72-74). Often at the end only therhythm
of the theme, instead of the melodic line, is repeated in the cadence
notes (Ex. 21). In Ex. 71 the first note of bars 2, 4, and 6 is
lowered each time.
An essential part in the determination of ambit is played by the
attack of the first note and by the form of cadence. Sometimes a song
is introduced by a long high note giving the effect of a shout (Ex. 86).
Very often the singer's voice is heard sliding down glissando-
fashion from a high note, musically almost indefinable, to the first
tonally defined note of his song (Ex. 4). On the other hand, the end of
a song may also consist of a loud cry (Ex. 12) or a short high motive.
An upward swing is rare at the beginning of songs of narrow compass,
but quite common when the motive is based on a fourth or fifth,
although it is much commoner in later cultures than in early (Exs. 45,
49, 51, 58, and 66).
Simple transpositions of motive occur even in quite primitive
cultures. They are often simple displacements of the tonal centre
within the same melody (Ex. 27). The Australians, the Marind-
anim of New Guinea, and the inhabitants of the Torres Straits use a
model in which a short motive descends stepwise at each repetition.
By this means the motives are joined to form a unified line (Ex. 17).
Where the motives are longer or the transposition intervals wider, the
repetitions are more clearly separated. At the same time, the motive
can be repeated exactly or freely (Exs. 18 and 19), with smaller (Exs.
21 and 22) or wider (Exs. 25-26) intervals. If the motive is trans-
posed only once, the ‘two-zone song’ results; this is found in its
simplest form among the Copper Eskimos (Ex. 53). In the later
development of this pattern, the repetition of the theme either merely
STRUCTURE OF THE MELODIC AMBIT 19
follows the shape of the original statement or answers the exposition.
The answer is often only metrically related to the theme, while the
melodic line goes its own way. Instead of varied repetition, the theme
is ‘developed’ (Ex. 108).
The tonal ambit can also be extended by giving more emphasis to
the lower notes of the motive in the second exposition or by stretching
the melodic material so that in the repetition the closing note is lower
than it was in the original statement (Exs. 27-29, and 32). The
extended form of the motive obtained by the lowering of the cadence
(Ex. 30-48) can then be carried further by transposition (Exs. 31, 38,
and 39). Often a progressive breaking away from the motive sets in, so
that the last repetition may contain a completely new component
phrase (Exs. 32, 35, 40, and 42). The arrangement of Exs. 30-51 shows
the increasing intervals between the cadence notes.
In another pattern the voice, while repeating motives of narrow
compass, takes a sudden upward or downward leap (Exs. 54—56).
These newly acquired notes lead in some cultures to forms of yodelling
(Exs. 62 and 134), in others they are linked with the melodic basis in
a more continuous fashion (Exs. 57-60). Such patterns may in many
cases have led to the songs constructed on the triad. That such forms
can also originate independently, however, is shown by the occurrence
of fanfare-melodies in cultures in which this pattern does not exist
(Exs. 63-65). Here too we find transpositions (Ex. 66) and repetitions
within diminished compass (Exs. 72-74). Exs. 67—70 also use motives
in contrary movement which divide the song into two parts within
the narrowest range. In general these patterns, like the ‘triad’ forms
(Exs. 75-82), are not very favourable to a concentration of functions.
In these structures based on thirds, fourths, or fifths there is a tendency
to utilize the functions contained in the limits imposed by the motive
only when the wide-leaping movement becomes somewhat more
restricted. Exs. 75, 83, and 84 introduce the upper fifth by a stressed
second above it. In fourth-motives the relation between the third and
fourth is emphasized (Exs. 92 and 93). In fifth-motives the relation
between fourth and fifth, or third and fourth, becomes structurally
important (Exs. 88-91). This structural wealth within a constant
compass seems to represent the highest development of these limited
melodies.
Apart from the upward transpositions of motive and the rising
curves at the beginning of the ‘triad’ forms, both comparatively rare,
upward extension of compass is an historically late product (Exs.
95-97). In early cultures such upward extension is generally very
20 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
small. But it increases when it is introduced by means of a new phrase,
i.e. a new motive (Ex. 94). If this second phrase is followed by the
repetition of the first we have the ternary form ABA. Rising melody is
generally richer in functions than falling. Some patterns are arch-
shaped (Exs. 98-102); others widen their compass by exceptionally
wide leaps (Exs. 103-7).
The last phrase of a song often has a special significance in the
structure. Besides the elastic repetition of the final notes or the trans-
formation of the last exposition of the theme into a free phrase, a
concentric condensation of the thematic substance is common (Exs.
36 and 37). Of particular importance is the cadence in form of an
ostinato motive (Exs. 8, 15, 51, 65, 88, and 145-9), which, unlike
the other sections, is not varied when the stanza is repeated, is often
sung polyphonically, and sometimes slows up the tempo by a third
(Exs. 65 and 147).
ORIGIN OF POLYPHONY
All these patterns which develop the compass by progressive
variants lead to polyphonic forms when they occur simultaneously
with the theme. Polyphony originates when two singers—consciously
or not—perform the same theme in different forms (within a given
pattern). In many cases the varying of the theme is paralleled by a
variation of the words! (Ex. 147). Primitive melody does not grow
out of harmony; harmony is rather the product of melodic variants.
The attempt to trace the origin of vocal polyphony to chance observa-
tion of consonant intervals emitted by sounding objects must be
rejected for three reasons. First, consonances occur in a perfectly
natural way when the same melody is sung simultaneously by men
and women or children. The frequent alternation of unison with
octave, fifth and fourth, is due to the extent to which these intervals
blend. It seems very doubtful whether an organic polyphony could
develop from these forms, because its geographical distribution sug-
gests that it cannot be any older than canon and the heterophonic
variation (Ex. 110) which exhibits a great number of dissonant
intervals. It would seem that strict parallel motion is devoid of all
possibility of development. For this reason it is found quite unchanged
in primitive and late cultures alike. Secondly, even if consonance
were a necessary precondition for the creation of polyphony, its
discovery could not have been due to musical instruments, since
melodic instruments are historically far younger than vocal polyphony.
1 М. Schneider, ‘Gesänge aus Uganda’, Archiv für Musikforschung, ii (1937), p. 185,
ех. 29.
ORIGIN OF POLYPHONY 21
The distribution of polyphonic singing also shows that (apart from
chance parallelism and the musically undeveloped drone) the ‘chance
discovery’ of consonance must have been confined to the white and
black races, while it is just in those regions where gongs originated—
to whose simultaneous sounding the beginnings of harmony have
often been traced—that no vocal polyphony exists. Thirdly, such an
organic structure as canon could never have arisen from the chance
observation of consonance; yet canon is one of the most primitive
forms of polyphony. These things arose spontaneously and cannot be
explained in a mechanical fashion. Canon, which develops from the
idea of following and hunting, was still called chasse or caccia in
medieval Europe. Song and bodily movement are so closely related
among primitive peoples that it seems completely misguided to attempt
to explain their spontaneous musical creation by speculative methods.
Ex. 110, belonging as it does to a very primitive cultural stratum,
proves that the oldest polyphony occurs without the use of consonant
intervals at all. This kind of polyphony exhibits a special development,
springing from strong emphasis on the individual. Acoustically it
aims rather at the fusion of noises than at the pure concord of definite
notes. In the concerted imitation of natural sounds (see p. 9) each
singer adopts the voice of his own totem quite independently of the
other performers, yet the total impression is entirely pleasing to the
ear and just as ‘harmonious’ as when we hear simultaneously the
song of birds, the buzz of insects, and the rippling of a stream. Atonal
polyphony achieves a special form in concerted instrumental music.
Canon is one of the oldest patterns of vocal polyphony. Among
the Kenta (pygmies of the Malay Peninsula, cf. Ex. 112) the imita-
tion is usually very strict. The same applies to their neighbours, the
Sakai. The African pygmies and bushmen use a more or less free
imitation (Exs. 111 and 114). On the island of Flores, where many
remnants of ancient Papuan tribes survive, the canon is sometimes
worked out over a third free part or over a drone (Ex. 113)—the pes
of the canonic forms of medieval Europe. In contrast with the small
intervals before the imitative entries in these examples, among the
Badiki of the primeval African forest (Ex. 115), in the head-hunting
songs of the Naga (Ex. 117), in the Congo, in the Solomons and in
Samoa (Ex. 116) we find forms in which the voices enter at longer
distances.
If the theme is repeated simultaneously (instead of canonically) and
strictly, parallel parts result (Exs. 118-20). Often two voices first pro-
ceed in unison until they separate through each placing a different
22 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
functional interpretation on a certain note. The extremely wide
geographical distribution of parallelism in fourths and fifths may go
back to the ancient Negroid patriarchal (old Sudanese) cultures.
Among the pygmy and hunting tribes and in the Solomons it is
usually mixed with elements of descant (Exs. 124, 127, and 128-30).
Parallelism asserts itself throughout history with the utmost tenacity
and we still find it in the Caucasus and in Europe (Exs. 121, 122, and
127). It may be doubted whether parallelism in thirds is really so
recent as is generally supposed, since it occurs in the middle cultures
(Exs. 126 and 133). Parallelism in seconds possibly represents the
debased product of a highly developed culture! (Ex. 125). The
alternation of fourths and thirds (Exs. 131-3) is extraordinarily
widespread, as is also parallelism within tonal limits, i.e. a vocal
parallelism interrupted at the points where its bitonal implication
would disturb the unity of the phrase by introducing notes foreign
to the tonal system. The harmonic system which has developed
particularly strongly in Africa is closely connected with the develop-
ment of the tonal system. The new notes which are added by poly-
phony to the canto fermo represent functional variants of the melodic
notes within the given key; and just as every mode contains in itself
the melodic functions of the preceding ‘key’ (see p. 17), so also every
‘key’ comprises the harmonic possibilities of the preceding scale.?
Intervals (24(56) 34(57) 235 | 234(5) | 34
f mode. Notes cR d [Е] g a
(2)4(56) | 34(57) 235 | 234(5) 235
c mode. g a 9 [d] а f g
235 234(5) | 34 | 235 . (2)4(56) | 34(57) |235| 235 | 234
g mode. (g) a b e oH d f Tg] a
(2)4(56) | 34 | 235 | 235 235| 4 234
d mode. a (b) c» vd] fi g a
If the simultaneous repetition of the melody is varied by contrary
motion, a kind of descant appears (Exs. 134 and 135) which gradually
develops into higher forms (Exs. 136-9). According to whether the
linear or the harmonic element is predominant, polyphonic or chordal
forms arise. In the Caucasus a choir is often contrasted with a solo
yodeller. Broad series of triads are found in Indo-China, in the
Caucasus, and in Europe (Exs. 140-3). In the primitive and middle
cultures the endings of the songs often show a striking consistency,
while the other sections vary greatly in each verse. These closes—
1 M, Schneider, Е/ origen musical de los animales símbolos (Barcelona, 1946), р. 239.
? The bracketed intervals are found less often.
ORIGIN OF POLYPHONY 29
ostinato-like in effect—are very often accompanied by the choir
(Exs. 144, 145, and 148) or left to it entirely. If this ostinato overlaps
with the solo voices a special form of polyphony results, as seen in
Ex. 146. A further development, suggesting a primitive form of
chaconne, is shown in Exs. 150-2 which are taken from the shepherds
of Ruanda, the Ossetes of the Caucasus, and from medieval polyphony
(Códex de Las Huelgas).!
The very ancient drone form (Exs. 153-9) is as persistent as parallel
harmony but with greater possibilities of development. To this too,
an element of descant is very soon added. The long note held by the
choir (Exs. 160 and 161), as well as the short, repeated motive, appears
also in instrumental music (Ex. 162). The drone of the bagpipe, how-
ever, belongs to the higher civilizations.
VARIATION AND TYPES OF MELODY
The patterns described above appear in different forms according
to the musical energies which pervade them. These different aspects
must now be described in greater detail from the point of view of
variation and types of melody. The term 'variation' will be used to
cover all methods of continuing a given theme, although in later
cultures a kind of thematic development is already found alongside
the original variation form. By using the term ‘variation’ in this wider
sense we shall absolve ourselves from a hopeless attempt to establish
the extremely fluid boundary beyond which a given phrase can no
longer be regarded as a mere variant (a!) of a theme (a) but must be
interpreted as a new phrase (b). It is particularly difficult to define
this boundary in primitive music because the purely rhythmic element
is so much more important than the specifically melodic. What is
really repeated or developed in the continuation is the rhythm of the
motive. In early and middle cultures the simple repetition of the metri-
cal pattern takes second place and that of the melodic line third.
Therefore in analysing primitive melodies the varied repetition (a!) of
the motive (a) must be interpreted more freely than in many songs
found in highly developed cultures. A motive, the rhythm or melodic
line of which is considerably modified in the repetition, must not be
interpreted too hastily as a really new phrase (5) since the essence of
continuation in primitive music consists in variation and in progres-
sive breaking away from the given motive rather than in the thematic
contrast of the phrases.
1 The examples are published in full in M. Schneider, ‘A propósito del influjo arabe’,
Anuario musical del Instituto Español de Musicologia, i (1946), exs. 61 and 61a.
24 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
The melodic type is determined by the dynamic expressed in the
subject and its continuation. The variation reinforces and develops
in the continuation the thought presented by the theme; how this is
done depends on the particular type of melody. Although some types
of melody are very closely connected with certain forms of movement
(time) or patterns (space) (Exs. 46 and 47), the metrical or linear
aspects of a theme do not determine the type of melody to which it
belongs, nor does the ambit. The typological affinity of two melodies
often becomes more apparent only when similar metrical patterns
and melodic curves join the same dynamic (Exs. 99 and 100). But the
type is revealed above all in performance and in the particular way in
which metre and melodic line coalesce in the rhythm. On paper it
can be grasped only incompletely, but the ear detects it immediately.
The same melodic idea, appearing simultaneously in the music of
two different peoples, can be used by each of them in a different type
(Exs. 148 and 149).1 On the other hand, the same type may appear
in two different melodies although the actual notes may have little
in common. Just as, for example, pastorales, gigues, or spiritually
kindred human beings emit the same kind of atmosphere, so typo-
logical affinity between different melodies is based on a common
atmosphere which cannot be defined by the actual notes or by weight
or measurement, but which any musician should be able to recognize.
The subject broached here offers one of the most important fields
for future research in comparative musicology. Hitherto, melodic
types have been defined according to ‘the most obvious characteristics
of the particular melody' (Hornbostel). The criteria employed have
included that of compass (‘narrow’ melodies, melodies in fourths,
‘triad’ forms) or spatial concepts (steplike melodies, terraced melo-
dies, leaping melodies). But these designations cover only part of
what is understood by the whole complex of a melodic type. Thus
Hornbostel by *narrow melody' (enge Melodik) really meant only
the narrowest primitive melodies performed in a fairly free rhythm.
‘Fanfare melody’ means a particular style found among pygmies, but
it does not include by any means every kind of fanfare-like song. With
a few exceptions (for example, in tritone melodies) interval-structure
is a bad criterion for determining melodic type, because it is too
general. In the present description of primitive music the concept of
space has therefore been excluded in defining types of melody.
1 A few years after the publication of the essay on ‘Wandernde Melodien’ in Archiv
fiir Musikforschung, iii (1938), p. 363, the author played the melody of Ex. 148 to a Ewe
man on the gramophone. As soon as the Negro heard the song, he claimed to know it
very well and sang Ex. 149.
VARIATION AND TYPES OF MELODY 25
Since metrical pattern is equally inadequate as a criterion, all we
can do in the present stage of research is to collate melodies which
appear to be related dynamically in some way or other! and to abstain
from a specific terminology. It might be useful, however, to revert
to the Indian conception of rdgas,? according to which a type of
melody is defined not by technical criteria but by its locality and
definite poetic mood-content. The criteria proposed by Dincser? for
the classification of variants:
Isomelodic—isorhythmic—isochronic—isometrical—or
heteromelodic—heterorhythmic—heterochronic—heterometrical
exclude any such fusion of musical and extra-musical elements. This
attempt to establish a uniform terminology and an exhaustive classi-
fication of types of melody is to be welcomed. But the classification
suggested is too formal: it separates things that essentially belong
together. And its categories are too rudimentary for serious research.
They cover only the external characteristics and omit the most im-
portant aspect of all: the dynamic nature, in other words, the quality
of the melody.
Since acoustic feeling has no terminology of its own but has to
borrow concepts usually applied to the other senses (we have to speak
of sounds as being light or dark, hard or soft) this terminology is
bound to encroach on non-musical fields. Taking fellah songs as an
example, I have shown! how in different melodic expressions of the
same basic type the intensity may fluctuate or remain constant, how
some variants may have strong or weak tonal relief, and how some
parts may be constant in all versions and others continually varied;
this was an attempt to work out the various forms of expression of a
qualitative (dynamic) kind that are possible within a given type of
melody, bearing in mind, however, that the growth of a melody is
absolutely biological. It is only from such criteria that we can infer
the nature of the type by which the variants are determined. By
adopting this kind of terminology one is not escaping into a ‘foreign
range of ideas inapplicable to music’ but merely accepting a make-
shift which it is impossible to do without unless one is prepared to
rest content with purely external, quantitative (and therefore, from a
1 СГ. W. Wiora, ‘Alpenländische Liedweisen der Frühzeit’ in Festschrift für John
Meier (Lahr, 1949); and M. Schneider, ‘Lieder ágyptischer Bauern’, in Festschrift für
Kodaly (Budapest, 1942) and ‘A propósito del influjo árabe’ and ‘La canción de cuna? in
Anuario musical, i (1946) and iii (1948).
? See Chap. IV.
* O. Dincser, Die Probleme der Varianten in der Volksmusikforschung (Geneva, 1947).
* M: Schneider, ‘Lieder ágyptischer Bauern’, in Festschrift für Koddly.
26 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
typological standpoint, secondary) criteria of form. The term *iso-
melodic’ which Dincser suggests using for two similar (typologically
identical) melodies, the notes of which are different,! is misleading
since it ignores the most important thing of all: the existence of
characteristic turns of phrase (variants) which are different in two
songs although they belong to the same type. The great difficulty in
all typology is establishing the dividing-line beyond which the variant
of a melody deviates qualitatively so forcibly from the model that it
can no longer be assigned to the same type.
Although the all-important acoustic impression cannot be repro-
duced here, an attempt must be made to show by a few obvious
examples how the various types fashion the theme and its continua-
tion in their own particular way. (If in the following lines examples
of similar compass are grouped together, despite earlier insistence that
compass is inessential, this is done in order to show the great differences
that can exist within the same model.) Even in the most primitive cul-
tures two basic forms of melody are to be found. The one proceeds
from a clearly defined melodic idea which it varies in the course of the
song. In the second form it is impossible to separate the primary
idea from the variation since the entire song does not proceed from
an idea clearly expounded at the beginning but expresses in constantly
changing forms an idea that is never absolutely stable (Ex. 92). If
the idea is clearly and concisely formulated at all, this formulation
often occurs only during, or at the end of, the song.
The more primitive the models, the less differentiated they will be
in type and in the working out of the musical idea. Songs such as
Exs. 1, 2, and 27 occur very frequently in early cultures. In rather
more developed cultures they often take on a definite metrical form
(Exs. 3, 9, and 28), but both styles persist side by side right into
advanced cultures. The same is true of purely recitative ‘songs’
(Exs. 5 and 6).
If one studies how different principles of continuation are applied
in the various models, one often finds only a slight typological
relationship between melodies based on the same model. In the
examples where the compass is abbreviated (Exs. 10-16 and 72-74)
only Exs. 13 and 14 or 72 and 73 seem to be related typologically.
The songs of which the compass is formed by transposition or lower-
ing the cadence (Exs. 17-52) fall into various groups. There seems
to be a dynamic relationship between Exs. 17, 18, and 21; 30 and 31;
19, 32, 33, and (to some extent) 107. On the other hand Exs. 50 and
! Dincser, op. cit., p. 85.
VARIATION AND TYPES OF MELODY 27
5] differ completely in their rhythmic patterns although they follow
the same model so far as compass is concerned. Exs. 20, 34, and 58
are closely related although the last belongs to a different model.
Exs. 25, 26, 39, 40, and 47 also belong to each other so far as type is
concerned. Ex. 40 which, in pattern, is very much like Ex. 39, never-
theless belongs to the same type as Ex. 41. Exs. 23, 42, and 65 (which
last belongs to another ambit-group) form a separate dynamic group
of their own. Despite the very similar melodic outlines, Exs. 81 and
82, and 83 and 84, are not related dynamically. On the other hand,
there is a typological relationship between Exs. 78 and 79; 80 and 81;
59 and 88; 56 and 68; 69 and 70; 72 and 73. Despite the similarity of
the models on which Exs. 54, 55, 57, 59, and 60 are based, only the
first two seem to show some typological affinity. The dynamic
relationships are closer in the extended melodies of Exs. 92 and 93,
99 and 100, 103 and 104, 105 and 106.
It seems as if the more intensely specialized melodic types are bound
up with certain racial factors; otherwise it is difficult to explain the
coincidence of identical types found in America and Asia, Europe
or Australia, the relationships between Bushmen and Lapps or the
similarity between songs found in Indo-China and India proper,
Pamir, Afghanistan, and Central Asia and songs from Europe and
the Caucasus. It is difficult to accept the theory of cultural exchange
as an explanation, since the geographical distribution of these songs
coincides more with areas of similar race than with those of similar
culture. In fact, the innermost essence of the more intensely specialized
types of song cannot be transmitted at all, that is to say, cannot be
imitated, since the dynamic and the vocal timbre which is inseparably
bound up with it cannot be acquired by learning. However note-
perfectly a European may sing a Bedouin song, he will still be unable
to reproduce the essence of the type since the notation merely
represents the /ast and external result of the type. The European will
inevitably reproduce the song in one of the types with which he is
familiar. How deeply the type is rooted in men's constitution can be
seen by the fact that even within the confines of the Iberian Peninsula
a Spaniard from the north is incapable of singing correctly the highly
specialized cante jondo of Andalusia. Admittedly there are particu-
larly gifted individuals of great adaptability who succeed, after year-
long contact with a foreign musical culture, in acquiring its songs
to a high degree. But the expert will never mistake such an outsider
for a native singer.
The virtuosity of a few foreign individuals exerts only a very small
28 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
influence on folk-music. Melodic types migrate only when the people
themselves migrate. It is certainly a great error to imagine that,
wherever some foreign utensil or cultural object has been introduced,
the corresponding music must inevitably have been adopted as well.
Songs do not travel as easily as carpets, vases, or ornaments, because
they are bound up much more intensely with the *owner'.
The composition of a primitive song is also closely connected with
the melodic type. There is no doubt that a song proceeds from a
particular individual. Nevertheless almost every primitive composi-
tion is still in some way a collective work, since the folk-musician
composes very much in accordance with definite moulds. In Exs. 92
and 93 it is the fourth and the strongly accented leading note, in
Exs. 46 and 47 the metre which provides the model. The writer once
observed three Duala Negroes composing a song together. One of
them invented a short motive and also the words: ‘The stranger has
invited us to drink.’ To begin with, the motive had a fixed metre but
little melodic shape. Then all three sang the motive, each in a some-
what different melodic shape, and very gradually, after endless
repetitions, a quite charming motive emerged. The three following
phrases were then quickly added, since they merely varied the motive.
When the song was finished it represented no more than a fresh
melodic expression of a familiar metrical formula. In his book on the
Andaman Islanders, A. R. Brown writes: ‘A man composes his
song as he cuts a canoe or a bow or as he paddles a canoe, singing
it over softly to himself, until he is satisfied with 11.71
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
It is very difficult to discern a historical process at work in any
given primitive race; at best one can do so only for a comparatively
short period. A song considered ‘as old as the world’ often turns out
to be no more than two generations old. If the whole range of primi-
tive music is studied in the context of the early cultural development of
mankind, however, the results are more promising. In any given
people there is hardly ever a straightforward process of development,
with primitive forms being displaced by higher ones. In the ‘pyramid
of civilization’ the various elements are superimposed on one another
rather than progressively displaced. Admittedly, a particular stratum
can become completely forgotten but normally what happens is that
as the variety of musical forms and styles increases each layer is
allotted a certain place where it can continue to thrive. In the middle
1 А, R. Brown, The Andaman Islanders (London, 1933), p. 132.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT 29
cultures where the new forms are usually secular songs, the old songs
pass into the religious field or become children's or women's songs.
Native elements and those borrowed from other cultures often exist
side by side within one tribe. Nevertheless, foreign forms are not
adopted so much as is generally supposed. Even when two races of
different culture are in constant economic or military contact there
is little evidence that they adopt each other's musical forms. It is true
that a tribe that is stronger economically or militarily often uses
musicians from subject tribes for its festivities (for example, the
pastoral tribes of Ruanda make use of pygmies), but the degree of
reciprocal influence appears to be relatively small. Even when foreign
musical instruments are adopted, the relevant literature seems to be
taken over only to a small extent or in mutilated form.
If the whole complex of primitive music is surveyed, a number of
historical characteristics can be discerned according to the degree
of cultural development. Most of the ambit-patterns appear in early
cultures but their application is at first limited, gradually developing
later. The dynamic element which gives life to the pattern determines
the type of melody and thereby the special historical and geographical
development of the elementary model. Thus, according to the culture
in which it occurs, a pattern which circles round a central note may
become a recitative which is interrupted now by a high note, now by a
low one (Exs. 53-55), or it may develop into a gently oscillating song
(Exs. 59, 60, and 88). In the evolution of the more highly specialized
types, certain patterns will be highly developed while others will fall
into the background. Thus the ‘transposition’ pattern is far more
significant in Australia and America than in Africa. Among the Red
Indians double or triple transposition is one of the commonest
methods of continuation, while the Negroes (in so far as they use
the method at all) usually content themselves with a single trans-
position (Ex. 22). On the other hand, they use not only successive but
simultaneous transposition, producing polyphony (Exs. 119 and 120).
Where the patterns are realized in a primitive fashion, the European
generally finds them easy to understand since they reflect rudimentary
musical thought. On the other hand, where they are used within a
highly specialized type of melody, the idea that music is an inter-
nationally comprehensible language is exposed as an utter illusion;
such melodies can be approached only by way of careful analysis.
The absolutely unlimited wealth of rhythm revealed in the songs
of primitive cultures is very striking. In later cultures, however, there
is a strong tendency to organize the rhythm by devising definite
30 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
metrical schemes. Fixed metrical formulas become to a certain extent
moulds into which the melodic material is forced. These schemes can
sometimes be so complicated and extensive (Exs. 51 and 101) that
they appear to be free rhythms; but close observation of the repeated
stanzas will show that the rhythmic patterns are in fact organized.
There is no evolutionary relationship between tonal and atonal
music. Both forms occur very early side by side. It is true that atonal
is gradually displaced by tonal music, but even in highly developed
cultures it survives in recitative and in songs in praise of the dead or
of animal gods.
In the phrase-construction the form a a' a" predominates. To the
modest extent that primitive music allows, the development to ab, abc,
and aba forms is already found in early cultures. The form ab appears
to develop quite as much from a phrase a with an epilogue in the
form of a shout or ostinato, as from the progressive differentiation of
the repetitions of the motive. Fundamentally all musical forms are
present in embryo in primitive cultures. Evolution proceeds essentially
by the extension of the application of the given principles. The
original patterns are moulded in many different ways: the rhythms
extend over longer phrases or. become more regular, the melodic
phrases are given a wider span. The bi-partite Exs. 69 and 70 show
concisely what Ex. 108 exhibits over a wider area. The transposition
of Exs. 17 and 18 appears in an extended form in the numbers that
follow. The progressive condensation of the series of functional parts
is particularly important. Primitive themes are mostly very even,
functionally, since their melodic lines often persist in the same `
function for a long time or because the contrast between two functions
is only rarely emphasized by a metrically distinguished place. Even
the different positions in which the motive appears when transposed
are not always able to break up the dead level of the series of func-
tional parts. The close series of melodic functions is best developed in
melodies in which the compass is medium and constant in range
(Exs. 87-93), or in spacious ascending melodies (Exs. 96 and 97). In
the songs of late cultures the individual phrase is usually longer, and
divides itself into two sub-groups.
It is only very slowly that the short motive with its varied repetition
is replaced by a real theme developing consistently in the course of
the song and leading to a new phrase which can be called the com-
plement or answer. It is true that a tendency towards this process
appears very early on (Exs. 69, 70, and 94) but it is not really applied
until comparatively late (Exs. 95-97 and 101).
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT S
Since some scholars have attempted to make a widening of the
compass a criterion of historical progress it must be emphasized that
wide and narrow compasses are found in almost all cultures. It must
also be remembered that wide fanfare-like melodies and transposition
are found in very early cultures. An attempt to classify the music of
primitive races according to the concept of cultural cycles has been
published by Werner Danckert.!
MUSIC AND SPEECH
There is no doubt that in the earliest cultures words and music are
closely associated. The few reliable transcriptions of melodies and
words available show that—except in purely syllabic songs—the
smallest alteration in the words leads to a modification in the melody.
In recitative and the mythological narratives, in which the melody
often has a stronger curve, the relationship between music and
words is different because the text predominates and the musical form
is of secondary importance. A certain balance between music and
words is sometimes attained by interpolating mystic syllables in the
text, thus dividing the song into regular periods.
Often the text consists of merely a few words repeated over and
over again, like the motive itself. In Ex. 13 the words ‘The frog leaps’
are constantly reiterated. Certain vowels or sonorous consonants
sometimes take the place of actual words. A shout, or a few words
expressing a wish, a surprise, a name or a short proverb, often
constitute the entire text of a song. The result is that in primitive
cultures the musical form is often more highly developed than that of
the text. The whole emotional content of the text seems to be sus-
tained entirely by the rhythm of the music. The broader the melodies
and the words, the more the realistic expression of the words through
song gives way to purely musical line-drawing and the close connexion
between words and music is relaxed. Strophic forms or different words
set to the same melodies are found particularly where the repetition
of the melody is not very consistent. The Chippewa take the view that
new words may not be set to old melodies unless the subject-matter
is the same.?
Many of the texts are quite unintelligible to the uninitiated because
they often presuppose the knowledge of some story, event or custom.
When the Californian witch doctor says ‘In Dalmona I dig up the
earth and find nothing but rotten turnips', one has to know that
! Anthropos, xxxii (1937), р. 1.
* Frances Densmore, Chippewa Music, i (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 45),
(Washington, 1910), p. 2.
32 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
rottenness stands for disease and that in Dalmona the earth and the
sick are both beaten with a digging stick.! Frances Densmore has
published a song? sung by a grandmother to a child: ‘Say to me
m m m and that I belong to you.’ Here the consonant m is a sign
of love.
A very special relationship between music and speech occurs in the
sound-languages? where the meaning of a word stem depends on the
level and direction of the intonation in which it is spoken (for
example, be = to hide. oneself; bé = to speak; bé = to take out).
My researches on Ewe texts,* Chinese songs and those of the African
Batswa, have led me to the conclusion that there is certainly a direct
correspondence between the high, medium, and low notes in speech
and in music, though established rules may in many cases destroy it.
Where there is a direct correspondence, the musical intervals move in
the same direction as the speech intervals but differ in size. Normally
the intervals are wider in song. Moreover, the tonal basis (from which
the concepts ‘high’ and ‘low’ are derived) may be transposed in the
course of the song (Ex. 43). An uninterrupted succession of high notes
in speech will either keep to the same level in music or form a slowly
ascending melodic line. In the case of low notes exactly the reverse
applies. The most important rule is that notes that are high in speech
can be low in music, if they coincide with a metrically emphasized
point in the song. Similarly, low notes of speech can be high in music
if they come on an unaccented beat in the song (Ex. 16).
INSTRUMENTAL ‘LANGUAGE’
The *language' spoken by flutes, drums, and horns also appears
to be closely connected with sound-language. Herzog? gives the
melody played on an African horn (Ex. 174) in which speech curves
are reproduced. The Bubi of Fernando Po speak into a calabash on
which they are able to reproduce five tones of their language. The
whistle language (on mouth pipes)? which Baumann regards as an
1]. d'Angulo and E. d'Harcourt, ‘La Musique des Indiens de la Californie du
Nord', in Journal des Américanistes, xxiii (1931), p. 203.
? Е, Densmore, Nootka and Quileute Music (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin
. 124) (Washington, 1939), pp. 277-8.
* С. Herzog, ‘Speech Melody and Primitive Music’, in Musical Quarterly, xx (1934),
p. 452.
* M. Schneider, ‘Phonetische u. metrische Korrelationen bei gesprochenen u. ge-
sungenen Ewe Texten’ in Archiv für vergleichende Phonetik, vii (19419), and ‘La relation
entre la musique et le langage dans la chanson chinoise’, Anuario musical, v (1950), p. 62.
S Op cit p 155.
в G. Tessmann, Die Bubi auf Fernando Po (Darmstadt, 1923), p. 31.
т J, Beecham, The Ashanti (London, 1841), р. 168; Biblioteca Canaria, El lenguaje
PLATE I
(a)
(b)
Ес (d) (e)
PRIMITIVE INSTRUMENTS
(a) Xylophone (х $); (b) Slit drum (х 4); (c) Zither ( 4); (d) Rattle (х 4); (e) Zansa (х 4)
For further details see page xiii
PLATE Tli
(a) (d) (e)
PRIMITIVE WIND INSTRUMENTS
(a) Side-blown trumpet (> 1); (b) Vertical flute ( 1); (c) Conch-shell trumpet (x 1); (d) Palaeolithic
whistle (x 3); (e) Globular flute (x< 2)
For further details see page xii
INSTRUMENTAL ‘LANGUAGE’ 33
element of hunting cultures! and the flute music which represents the
beginning of programme music both reproduce speech rhythms and
modulations in musical form. R. S. Rattray? has established that the
difference in pitch between two skin-drums used for transmitting news
corresponds to the high- and low-pitched vowels of ordinary speech.
Eboué also considers that drum language is an exact imitation of
speech rhythm? (Ex. 175). Heinitz has emphasized the significance of
the reproduction of the *dynamic profile' of the spoken phrase, and
I myself have drawn attention to the differentiation of vowel-sounds
and the connexion with the sound-laws which condition the relation-
ship between speech and melody-function.* There are evidently also
pure ideograms such as those of the Nor-Papuas published by
Father J. G. Schmidt? (Ex. 176). It is probable that these speech forms
originally represented some kind of secret language or language of
respect. In any case it is significant that the African Twi and Ewe do
not utter the praise-names of their gods in speech but only beat them
on their drums.?
THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS (see plates 1 and 2)
The rhythmic articulation of time by means of an instrument of
some kind is far older than the construction of a true musical instru-
ment. Any object that primitive man happens to pick up when sing-
ing or dancing becomes a sound-producing ‘musical instrument’.
Implements used exclusively as musical instruments and for no
other purpose develop only very slowly. Many instruments (for
example, the pot-drum) are merely adaptations of already existing
utensils.
As the instruments used by primitive man have already been in-
vestigated more thoroughly than his vocal music it will suffice to
describe only the most important types. The ideas associated with
silbado en la Gomera; R. Ricard, A propos du langage sifflé des Canaris (Hesperis, 1932),
p. 140.
1 Н. Baumann, ‘Afrikanische Wild- und Buschgeister’, in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie,
Ixx (1938), p. 226.
2 Б, S. Rattray, The Ashanti (Oxford, 1923), pp. 242-86.
3 M. Eboué, Les Peuples du Oubanghi-Chari (Paris, 1933), pp. 80 and 94; Н.
Labouret, ‘Le Langage tambouriné et sifflé’, Bulletin du comité d'études de l'Afrique
occidentale française, (1923), рр. 120-58.
+ W. Heinitz, ‘Probleme der afrikanischen Trommelsprache', Beiträge zur Kolonial-
Forschung, lv (1942), p. 69; M. Schneider, ‘Zur Trommelsprache der Duala’, Anthropos,
xlvii (1952), p. 235.
5 J. G. Schmidt, ‘Neue Beiträge zur Ethnologie der Nor-Papuas', Anthropos, xxviii
(1933), p. 330.
8 D. Westermann, ‘So, der Gewittergott der Ewe’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, lxx
(1938), p. 154.
34 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
them will be dealt with later.! Curt Sachs's History of Musical Instru-
ments? gives a classification on morphological lines, and the same
author has described the cultural and geographical distribution and
morphology of primitive instruments in greater detail in his Geist
und Werden der Musikinstrumente. In his Origines des instruments de
musique,* Schaeffner has given a classification based on the materials
used in their construction, while Montandon has preferred to classify
them according to the method used in playing them.’ Kirby's The
Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa? contains the
richest collection of primitive instrumental music published so far.
Idiophones. The practice of beating the body with the hands or with
some object appears to be transferred very early to the beating of
horizontal tree-trunks and bamboos and to stamping on the ground.
Jumping on or beating a springy plank (‘dancing tree’) or an animal
skin laid across a hole in the ground is an early specialization of the
process. If a tree-trunk is split open and hollowed out lengthwise
like a canoe, the result is a slit-drum (often carved in the likeness of a
man) which is played either with the feet or with two sticks. The
ritual significance of the slit-drum will be discussed later. Its secular
purpose is the transmission of news (‘drum language’), and to obtain
the necessary variations of pitch, the drum is beaten in different places
or tongue-shaped strips of different thicknesses are detached from
the side. In the course of evolution, instruments originally made
2 to 7 metres long are reduced to hand-drums and finally to wooden
bells."
Stamping on the ground leads to the construction of special
*stamping sticks', which are used to beat the ground during a dance,
and thin bamboo tubes which are commonly used in pairs of different
length, thus producing different notes. When struck against a sheet of
water, they produce a loud and sombre sound. Another way of
producing sounds is by scraping the rough parts of sticks, tubes, or
receptacles against some suitable object; human and animal bones,
bamboo reeds, and shells are used for preference.
Idiophones can not only be beaten or scraped; they can be shaken.
Shaking has led to the construction of the extremely numerous types
of rattle. To make the rhythm of the dance audible, various small,
hard objects, such as sea-shells, bones, teeth, coconut-shells, are
strung together and hung on the human body. Rattles are also made
1 See p. 51. ? New York, 1940.
3 Berlin, 1929. * Paris, 1936.
5 G. Montandon, La Généalogie des instruments de musique (Geneva, 1919).
€ Oxford, 1934. 7 Sachs, Geist und Werden, p. 47.
THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 35
by filling the rinds of gourds, animal skins, or clay vessels with grains
of corn, stones, or magic objects and fixing handles to them. The
rattling objects may also be strung on a ring or enclosed in a hollow
staff. Priests use rattle-staves of this kind as a token of authority and
they are also used in dancing. In Indonesia staves filled with grain
are used as seed-drills.1 Small bells made from the bodies of animals
or fruit rinds are closely akin to rattles. Only small types of metal
bells are found in primitive cultures; they are often used in pairs
connected by a ring.
Whereas plucking as a sound-producing method for idiophones
has led only to the jews’ harp and the African zansa (which consists of
strips of wood or iron fastened to a board, keyboard fashion, and
plucked), the evolution of percussion has resulted in the construction
of a much greater range of instruments. These include two sticks
beaten against each other, wooden bats, and bell-like objects struck
against each other; cymbals were probably first adopted from more
highly developed cultures. The earliest forms of xylophone are also
found in primitive cultures. The prototype consists of two pieces
of hard wood which the player, seated on the ground with legs
extended and spread, places on the upper part of his thigh and beats
with two clubs; later on, two banana stems are used instead of the
thigh. Holes in the ground or gourds under the wooden bars act as
resonators. The xylophone is used not only to accompany but also
to play instrumental works in one or more parts (Exs. 164 and 169);
it seems to be regarded as an all-purpose instrument, rather like the
modern piano, for its literature includes many arrangements of songs
and pieces for drums and flutes;? it is also used for programme music.?
Of the other percussion instruments, only the lithophone is found in
early cultures. The gong, which has been developed by higher cultures,
represents an advanced element in the later farming cultures.
Membranophones. 'The oldest forms are produced by stretching a
skin over a tube, coconut, gourd, or bowl. All the early types are
struck by hand only. In comparatively early cultures we find a drum
the narrow middle section of which is spanned by a handle. This one-
skin drum, shaped like an hour-glass, perhaps originally looked like
a funnel or mortar. Thetwo-skin drum of this type was not developed
until later. The skin stretched across a round, hexagonal, or oval
wooden frame is often found in the hands of witch-doctors, hence
the name ‘shaman drum’. The wooden hoop, which sometimes has
aibid р. 121. * Kirby, op. cit., p. 56.
3 S. Nadel, Marimbamusik (Vienna, 1931).
36 PRIMITIVE MUSIC.
a handle, is criss-crossed by strings. The skin is struck with a beater,
often made in the shape of a knife. Cask-like receptacles made of
clay, covered by a skin stretched across with strings, are always
beaten with the hands, whereas the bellied wooden drums, whose
skins are nailed on, are played with sticks. They are usually fixed
to a post or hung up on a cross-beam. Their side-handles and the
fact that they are occasionally filled with rice, suggests that the
instrument was originally used for a practical, not a musical purpose.
In the case of the friction drum, the sound is produced either bya
stick fixed on the skin, or by rubbing with damp fingers a string
knotted through it. Drums usually reproduce the general rhythm of
a song (Exs. 11, 12, and 21). But in many cases they have a tempo of
their own (Exs. 50 and 150), or some formula completely indepen-
dent of the song (Ex. 153).
The last membranophone to call for mention is the mirliton (‘kazoo’).
This is a fine membrane which vibrates in front of the mouth or at the
open end of a pipe through which the player speaks, sings, or blows.
Chordophones. String instruments are very little developed in
primitive cultures. Sachs derives the oldest form—the earth-zither—
from a thinned-out wooden pole, beaten with a stick.t Actually the
oldest type of earth-zither is a 4-metre long rattan reed stretched
horizontally across the ground and joined in the middle with a
membrane, which lies above a small hole in the ground; the player
beats the string with two little sticks (Ex. 163). The earth-bow is a
genuine hunting implement. Its string, which is plucked or struck,
is fastened at one end to a springy stick or tree and at the other to
a piece of bark over a hole in the ground. In the ordinary bow (Ex.
162) the two ends of a flexible stick are connected by a string which
is sometimes cut directly from the outer surface of the stick. To
intensify the extremely soft sound a gourd or earthen pot is usually
attached or the string is held in the mouth. The string is plucked,
struck, or scraped with a stick.
A ‘reed zither’ is made by taking a narrow strip from thesurface of
a halved bamboo reed to form a string, of which only the two ends
remain connected with the reed. The tension of the string is main-
tained by some object placed underneath and it is struck with two
little sticks. In a more highly developed form, strings from the reed
itself are replaced by strings from other sources, stretched across a
board or a bowl. Lyres, lutes, and harps do not appear until the late
farming cultures and then very often in backward forms.
1 Sachs, Geist und Werden, p. 60.
THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 37
Aerophones. The bull-roarer consists of an oval or rectangular
wooden board, the upper end of which is fastened to a cord. When the
instrument is swung in a circle, it also revolves on its own axis and as
the speed increases an extraordinary variety of noises is produced.
The most primitive flutes are made of bones and have up to four
finger-holes. The mouth-hole in front or at the side is made by the
insertion of a plug into the pipe. When two pipes are combined into a
double flute, they are of different length. A flute in which the breath
is sent not through a pipe but through a small convex vessel is very
widely distributed; the player blows through a round unnotched hole.
On the other hand, the round flutes made of clay, which are filled
with water, are always notch flutes. The vertical flutes with notches
can be divided into three types, according to whether the lower end
is open or stopped or whether the stopped end has a hole through the
middle. Curt Sachs conjectures that the stopped flutes, which are
sometimes as long as 13 metres, are the oldest.! The simple vertical
flute with no special blowing appliance is historically later than the
fipple and notch flutes. The transverse flute stopped at the lower end
has some very archaic features. It may be as long as 6 metres and it
has a maximum of three finger-holes. To make a double transverse
flute, a mouth-hole is bored on both sides of the nodule of a bamboo
reed. In many districts vertical, transverse, and vascular flutes are
blown through the nose. The flute took a long time to develop into a
really melodic instrument. Its primitive forms are scarcely capable of
anything beyond signal-calls. The melody is also usually very
indefinite in rhythm and somewhat irresolute (Exs. 170—3). Panpipes,
on the other hand, exhibit far more definite musical forms. The reeds
are sometimes arranged in a single more or less symmetrical row,
sometimes they are tied in a bundle or in two rows (Exs. 166 and 168).
In the trumpet family the longish tuba made of wood or reed and
the snail- or mussel-shells with a mouth-hole probably represent the
oldest types. In the tuba the lips rest directly on the edge of the bore-
hole; the player does not so much blow as shout into the pipe. The
instrument may also be made from bottle-gourds instead of wood, or,
like the alphorn, from a hollow branch of a tree wrapped in bark
(Ex. 167). The animal horns which are played in Africa as transverse
trumpets, are also very widely distributed (Ex. 174). The oldest
clarinets have no finger-holes and are often quite long. The mouth-
piece is usually inserted in a gourd or horn.
Singing is often accompanied by a rattle, a drum, a flute (Ex. 173),
я 1 Ibid., p. 81.
38 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
panpipes, or xylophone. The combination of drum with conch, pipe,
horn, flute, or clarinet may be considered ‘classical’. Choirs are often
formed of similar instruments. In the drum orchestra (normally four
to six instruments) each drum has its own motive (Ex. 175), which
usually takes the form of a comment on the idea propounded by the
biggest drum. Kirby! gives the following South African example of
the widely distributed panpipe orchestras: 1. Four to six small reeds,
all tuned to the same pitch and played by one performer. 2. Three
reeds (the same pitch, one performer). 3. Six reeds (the same pitch,
one performer). 4. The player has one or two pipes in his hand. 5. This
reed gives the pitch to all the other pipes. Its name means * Weeping'.
6. A single pipe, whose name means ‘weeping afterwards’. 7. A single
pipe, meaning ‘the cow’. 8. A single pipe. 9. The pipe with the lowest
sound.
Ex. 168 gives a specimen of an orchestral hocket.
REPERTORY
Since primitive man sings much more spontaneously than civilized
man, the repertory of primitive tribes is considerably more varied than
that of art music. As it reflects the whole of life, most of it is *occa-
sional’ or ‘utility’ music. Primitive man sings to call out, to play, to
mock, to greet someone, to give thanks at the end of a meal. Many of
the songs are improvised. Songs can even be sung before a judge;
if two men quarrel or a couple want a divorce the contestants will
plead alternately in words and more or less improvised songs. When-
ever anything unusual happens—whether it be a boatman's oar falling
into the water or a domestic animal running away—primitive man
at once gives vent to his feelings in an improvised song.
He also sings at his work. When road-making, working in the fields,
or rowing, however, the working man usually confines himself to the
ostinato. Often a musician will keep the rhythm of the work going
with a drum or oboe instead of song; he is not thought of as an idler
but as an important helper. Most of the so-called working-songs are,
however, intended for amusement; only a few show any direct
connexion with the rhythm of labour. A special genre of working
song has evolved among ploughmen, who address their horses or
oxen in song.
In love charms the magic formulas are sung. The jocular love-song
does not appear till very much later. Songs which celebrate the beauty
of the loved one and are often accompanied on the flageolet (Exs. 104
1 Op. cit., р. 138.
REPERTORY 39
and 172) are closely connected in style with the songs of praise sung in
honour of the tribal chieftain; both types often refer in their words to
mythological events. But in the market-place even the small man gladly
pays for a song of praise about himself, improvised by a musician
in a voice loud enough for all who pass by to hear. Needless to say, all
popular merrymakings are accompanied by music and dancing.
There is a very extensive repertory of children's songs, cradle songs,
songs to accompany games, songs which describe dreams, and songs
containing riddles or proverbs. All the rites relating to birth, circum-
cision, marriage, hunting, war, weather, medicine, and death are
permeated with musical elements. Among the funeral songs, the
women’s laments and the songs which men sing in praise of the dead
deserve special mention.
In primitive cultures it is very difficult to distinguish musically the
various kinds of song since there is still so little differentiation of
form. Often the type of voice used determines the character of a
melody. Funeral songs and erotic songs are often sung in a nasal
voice; love-songs are accompanied by a significant play of the lips.
In more highly developed cultures formal differentiation is usually
determined by the various layers of tradition. An archaic style survives
in animal-songs and hunting-songs, and also in children’s songs,
funeral songs, epic songs, and in medicine and weather charms.
Lamentations have a style appropriate to their own nature. In songs
of praise the melodic line tends either to rise emphatically or to start
very high.
It should be noted, however, that the ‘literary’ approach to song-
classification is not altogether satisfactory. Not every song sung
during a rain ceremony represents a true rain-song, since such cere-
monies are very complex. They include introductory songs, mytho-
logical recitatives, interludes, sacrificial songs, and songs of praise,
and only a small part of the ceremony is occupied by the song that
is intended directly to influence the rain. In the same way, war-songs
are not necessarily intended to incite the listeners to battle; they may
also be protective songs or individual medicine songs. In any attempt
to discover the stylistic qualities of particular types of song, the words
must first be studied very carefully. The relation between the musical
style and the content of the song (i.e. the words) lies not in the external
occasion (rain, war) but in the prevailing psychological tension. If
the witch doctor implores the spirit of disease to release his patient,
the song will be friendly; if he fights it with his spear, the song will be
warlike; yet both will be medicine songs.
40 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MUSICIAN
The many-sided role which music plays in the life of primitive races
explains the personal importance of the musician. No girl wants to
marry a man unless he can play on the hunter’s bow,! and any girl is
particularly proud of her man if he has been victorious in a singing
contest. That singer is most highly esteemed who can sing a proverb
or saying at the right moment. The arrival of a musician often turns
a whole village upside down, and his departure is often accompanied
by scenes of lamentation, especially among the women. Scandals
between visiting musicians and married women are also a common
occurrence.
In spite of all that, good musicians often receive invitations from
neighbouring tribes. It is also customary for the musicians to lead a
village community when it pays an official call on a neighbouring
community and the latter presents the singers and instrumentalists
with gifts. The musicians are very often feared, for their song is
dangerous. Even if a singer is punished or banished for a satirical
song, the effect of the song cannot be checked. Many chieftains take
singers into their personal service in order to confirm their authority
with a repertory of songs of praise of themselves. Here we have the
beginnings of music as a profession.
Songs often represent real capital. When the girls of the Little River
Woman Society reach the age limit of 18 years and have to resign,
they sell their ‘Society songs’ to their successors and receive a horse
or a dress of buffalo-hide in return.”
The distinction between higher and lower musician appears to go
back to the very beginnings of musical history. In the primitive com-
munity of the Andaman Islands everyone is allowed to compose his
own songs but not everyone is authorized to recite the tribal legends.?
Among the peoples of central Asia the narrator of the tribal myths is
often also a shaman. The priest-musician endowed with medical
knowledge, whose songs reach the world of the gods, has a distinct
role in such communities. Mythological songs must not be paid for in
money; in return for their own legends, the Uitotos ask for another
sacred legend.* In the transition to more advanced cultures, musical
specialization leads to the distribution of musicians among various
1 Kirby, ор. cit., р. 233.
? Densmore, Mandan and Hidatsa Music (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin
80) (Washington, 1923), p. 97.
3 A. R. Brown, op. cit., p. 187. е
* Theodor Preuss, Religion und Mythologie der Uitoto, i (Leipzig, 1921), p. 15.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MUSICIAN 41
classes of society. In the Sahel and the western Sudan,! society is
divided into five castes: aristocrats, bondsmen, smiths, bards, and
inferior musicians. The bards (dialli) are the custodians of lofty epic
art and rank as great warriors. The inferior musicians, on the other
hand, devote themselves to popular entertainment and their task in
war is to goad on the mass of fighting men with their shouts and songs.
Like the court jester of later times, the dialli are privileged to tell their
masters things which others are forbidden to say, whereas the lower
musicians are held in very low esteem. The musician represents the
spiritual world. He is the ‘blacksmith’ of song and in West Africa he
sometimes wears a costume not unlike that of a smith. In Togo the
singer (who is quite distinct from the poet-composer) carries a horse-
tail in each hand as a badge of authority. He is naked to the waist and
his robe is fastened round the loins.?
In general the musician is highly esteemed while practising his art,
because he is regarded as the possessor of a higher power. But he is
also feared, or despised. He is honoured in public but avoided in
private. That he is able to traffic with the world of spirits makes him a
somewhat sinister figure, and the more intensely a community feels
his power the more it tries to keep him at arm's length. Since it also
needs him, it cannot banish him completely; so it acknowledges him
secretly or openly, yet rejects him because it cannot forgive his superior
powers.
SPIRITUAL CULTURE
So many writers have remarked on the astonishing unity of basic
religious conceptions which underlies all the varied manifestations of
primitive culture in so many different times and places that there is
no need to emphasize it again here. Universal predispositions of spirit
and the same fundamental observations have presumably resulted
everywhere in similar conceptions; myths, symbols, and social
organizations have been the clearest expression of these universal
ideas. The progressive development of the physical and metaphysical
conception of the world can be clearly traced from the earliest cultures
right into the Megalithic Age, and the systematic symbolism of that
age underlies the religious systems of the highly developed cultures.
Some tentative efforts to combine the now disconnected remnants of
these ancient conceptions into an organic whole have already been
таде. An attempt must be made here to represent the specifically
! L. Frobenius, Atlantis, vi (Jena, 1921), p. 261.
2 P. Witte, ‘Lieder und Gesánge der Ewe-Neger’, Anthropos, i (1906), pp. 66-67.
* Schneider, El origen musical de los animales símbolos and La danza de espadas y la
42 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
musical part of this ancient conception of the world, excluding as far
as possible the contribution of the highly developed cultures, although
it is very difficult to separate these latter elements since, on the one
hand, the religious conceptions of the highly developed cultures
include many primeval constituents and, on the other, many late
elements have been assimilated by primitive cultures.
Music is the seat of secret forces or spirits which can be evoked by
song in order to give man a power which is either higher than himself
or which allows him to rediscover his deepest self. This is true of
‘religious’ and ‘secular’ music alike, for no distinction between the
two kinds exists for primitive man, whose whole thinking is essentially
religious or magical. When primitive man sings at his work, the music
serves both to lighten his labour and to appease the spirit of the felled
tree or the gods of the water he is crossing. It is only in later cultures
that the working-song serves a purely practical end.
It has already been mentioned in connexion with totemistic ideas!
that every being has its own sound or its own song, the timbre and
rhythm of which embody the mystic substance of the owner. Just
as the ‘personal song’, which develops the sound-substance of the
bearer to magical power, is not the melody itself but the personal way
in which it is sung, so here too the term ‘sound’ is to be understood
not so much as a clearly defined note as a particular inflexion or
characteristic tone-quality. This rhythmical sound is the clue to the
nature and quality of an object. From merely hearing a voice we know
whether it is the voice of a human being and we can even identify the
particular human being and tell whether he is happy or sad, resolute
or undecided, bold or reserved. If we strike a tree or a stone, the
sound produced tells us not only the nature but also the condition of
the tree or stone. We can also tell by merely hearing the blows of an
axe how well it has made its mark.
The mystical sound-substance inherent in all things, manifesting
itself now directly, now indirectly, exists everywhere, even beyond the
range of the normal human ear. The fact that primitive man easily
attributes non-acoustic impressions to acoustic sources (owing to the
unity of his sense-perceptions, or to the priority of his sense of hear-
ing?) substantially widens the field of the rhythmic sound-substances
tarantela (Barcelona, 1946 and 1948); ‘Los cantos de lluvia’, Anuario musical, iv (1949).
Recent studies by the present writer after the completion of this section have strengthened
the arguments here given. Cf. Schneider, ‘Die Bedeutung der Stimme in den alten
1956).
1 See p. 8.
SPIRITUAL CULTURE 43
which can be grasped indirectly. This is particularly facilitated by
his psychological disposition to observe dynamic phenomena more
intensely and to rate them much higher than static ones. When the
sombre sounds and violent rhythms of a tempest convert the waves
of the sea or the bushes of the forest into the likeness of the trampling
and the swaying backs ofa herd of animals stampeding down a hillside,
the Duala Negro feels that these three phenomena are dynamically
related and is at once able to reduce them to a common acoustic
denominator by a suitable drum-song. Where the same sounds or
rhythms appear, there also analogous beings are at work.
In view of the inconstancy of the world of form, primitive man
questions the reality of static (spatial) phenomena and believes that
transient (temporal) dynamic rhythms are a better guide to the sub-
stance of things. Hence he calls the same animal or the same tree by
different names (1.e. rhythmic sounds) according to its age, condition,
colour, and so on. Even one and the same person represents entirely
different beings according to whether he acts in anger or kindness, as
friend or foe, or moves like a child or an old man. The primitive
conception of nature has a psychological basis. To the primitive mind
the phenomena here called ‘rhythms’ are spirits, the audible souls
of the dead ancestors who created all things! and in which they
constantly reincarnate themselves. They are the physical and meta-
physical reality which is the source of all life and all magical song.
In contrast to stones and plants the rhythms and sounds of which
are monorhythmic and therefore have only one meaning, man is
distinguished by his polyrhythmic constitution. The animals come
between these two groups. It is true that man too has his own
unequivocal basic sound, corresponding to the resonator of his out-
ward appearance, but since his resonating surface is not so limited as
that of inanimate nature, he is not only able to produce the sound
peculiar to his own nature but also to imitate non-human rhythms and
sound-colours. In addition, he can imitate sounds artificially since he
makes musical instruments. Thanks to all these abilities, man is able
to develop enormous power; for anyone who knows and can imitate
the specific sound of an object is also in possession of the energy with
which the object is charged. The purpose of magic is to utilize this
indwelling energy (orenda, mana, sila, manitu, kami, &c.) in some
way. The words orenda, mana, and so on denote the power of the
sound-substance which an object emits audibly or otherwise. Orenda
is the growth or the special curative power of plants, the purifying
1 See p. 9.
44 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
power of water, the dynamic power inherent in a song. It becomes
a magic energy whenever it appears to any exceptional degree. The re-
sourceful magician gifted with special vocal powers can control this
energy because he can imitate the sound-substance of the orenda; for,
although it is emitted by spirits or particularly outstanding human
beings, the orenda is an impersonal force which can be communicated,
especially by exhalation or by shooting, to other people or suitable
objects, such as musical instruments, and then withdrawn again. It is
not confined to its bearer.!
By sound-imitation the magician can therefore make himself
master of the energies of growth, of purification or of music without
himself being plant, water, or melody. His art consists first of all in
localizing the object in sound? and then co-ordinating himself with
it by trying to hit the right note, that is, the note peculiar to the
object concerned. He may attempt to do this by way of a rhythm in
the cadence of its original murmur, by briefly shaking a rattle or by
singing a short musical motive, thereby relating himself to the object
or spirit by sympathetic vibration. If the contact between subject and
object has led, by such musical analogy, to a mystic fusion of both parts,
the sound or the motive will gradually develop into a song. Through
the correct intonation, the spirit is held captive in the magicians'
body and sings through his mouth. But it is the song which the magic-
ian makes from the sound-substance of the spirit and the correspond-
ing visible rites that determine the dynamic and the course of action
which the magician attempts to force on the spirit. The spirit can be
localized and allured by its own personal sound but it can only be
captured, appeased, or overwhelmed by the song developed from its
sound-substance. Admittedly, the visible rites may include analogical
actions, such as the representation of the spirit by a mask, but their
essential purpose is to act on the spirit which the sound-analogy has
evoked. This activity may be expressed by the brandishing of a magic
spear or sword, but it may also be limited to the words which envelop
the sound-substance.
To understand this action of imposing the will on a spirit, it has to
be remembered that for primitive man the world consists of an inter-
action of spirits which think and act like human beings. The spirits
are conceived as fabulous beings (often in the shape of animals)
dwelling in rain-clouds, springs, crevices, dark caverns, under heavy
1 R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, vii (Oxford 1891), р. 119; J. М. B. Hewitt,
*Orenda', American Anthropology, iv (1902), p. 33.
2 On localization in rain-ceremonies see Densmore, Papago Music (Bureau of American
Ethnology Bulletin 90) (Washington, 1929), pp. 154-5.
SPIRITUAL CULTURE 45
stones, in old trees, or in bamboo reeds. As a particular spirit is
responsible for every disease and a particular healing-song exists to
cure every disease,! the doctor, after he has localized the cave-
dwelling or the note of the spirit by examining the patient, must try
to establish the name of the spirit, so that he can name it in the magic
song. By means of a song pleasing to the spirit, by shaking a rattle,
or by singing abusive and mocking songs, he entices the spirit from its
dark dwelling-place (that is, from the recesses of the patient's body).
If the spirit appears, that is, if the doctor is possessed by the spirit, the
spirit must be forced to ‘confess’. It must name its name, that is,
sacrifice its substance and become a song. Although this sacrifice is
entirely in the nature of the sound, the spirit makes it only on condition
that a return service is offered in the form of a song or a sacrifice and
that the patient patiently endures the suffering involved in the treat-
ment.
The spirit which gives its sound and its name to the healing-song
emerges from the dark cavern into the light, like sound escaping from
a resonator. All the dark dwellings from which the spirits ‘look out’,
that is to say, emerge in sound,? are symbols of the sleep that brings
health and purification, of the potential concentrated energy of the
womb and ultimately of the fruitful sacrificial energy of the dead
Spirits which are the givers of all life. The ordinary man and the
medicine man both receive their healing songs as a rule from a dead
ancestor who is revealed to them in a dream. When the shaman sings
a healing song, the spirit says to him: ‘ You are singing a song which
pleases me. It is my song. Therefore I will give you also my power.
If you will care for me, I will care for you. If I hear your song, I will
come.’ Spirit and medicine man need one another. The shaman
receives his strength from the song, but the ancestor (i.e. the spirit
which causes the disease and takes it away again) also needs to sound
in song. By drawing the sounds of spirits from the dream-cavern and
bringing them to light in the form of a song, the medicine man carries
the spirit, becomes the singing cave, the ‘drum’, the ‘ship’, the
‘wagon’, or ‘bird’. The usual expression for this is: ‘He carries the
tune.’
In view of the fact that sound represents the original substance of
the world, the singing dream-cavern (which is also symbolized by
* G. Speck, Ceremonial Songs of the Creek and Yuchi Indians (Philadelphia, 1911),
p. 211; Densmore, Papago Music, p. 88; Music of the Indians of British Columbia, p. 18.
(Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 90 and 136) (Washington, 1929 and 1943);
Schneider, La danza de espadas y la tarantela, p. 47.
? See p. 49, n. 5. 3 D'Angulo, op. cit., p. 201.
46 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
the moon or by water) constitutes not only the source of musical
inspiration but also the source of Creation. In his Religion und Mytho-
logie der Uitoto Preuss writes:
There is an inexplicable substance which seems to be a phantom and
yet exists in a form hidden from the senses and perceptible only in dreams.
The world came into being when God touched this unreal substance and
as a result of a dream held it fast by a dream-thread which passed through
the breath of his mouth. As he. dreamt, he held the substance fast, stamped
on the deceitful ground, and settled on the substance which he had dreamt,
and created heaven and earth by secreting their elements from his body.!
To produce a sound, however, an effort has to be made. The bow-
string has to be stretched and the breath must impinge on a sharp
resisting edge. The ‘ground’ must be ‘stamped down’. All life arises
solely from stamping, from the tension or friction of two opposing
factors, which have to sacrifice their strength and, if need be, their
life for the birth of new life. All new life comes from sacrifice and,
ultimately, from death. Since sound forms the substance of life, the
spirits—that is, the sounding souls of the dead—are the real givers of
life and preservers of the world. The dream-cavern is both the entrance
to the underworld and the source of life. When the cavern sings or
shouts, or the cloud thunders, each is sacrificing and emptying itself,
like a fruit when it reaches maturity. But by giving their fruitful
waters to frightened man, they liberate and regenerate themselves.
When man offers his song or his shout, he purifies himself from the
overripe guest of the cave and thereby helps it (the spirit) to achieve
its full existence, to become sound. Sound is the material expression
of the mutual sacrifice that is enacted between the living and the
dead.
The experience that concentration and effort are necessary for
every creative act led in ancient Indian philosophy to the cosmic idea
of sacrifice. According to this, the world arose from the expiration of
a light-sound, the ‘friction’ (sacrifice) of which created the gods and
the stars, until it finally *expanded' into matter. According to the
Brihadáranyaka Upanishad this original sound was a song in praise
of death or hunger which made all things grow or ‘swell’. The fasting
ascetic acts analogously when he offers the breath of life in singing
or reciting from the *cavern of his heart and lungs'. The sacrifice or
‘friction’ is the path or wagon on which man overcomes the dualism
of the world. Since the world can be preserved only by the mutual
sacrifices of the living and the dead, the ascetic can exert the same
1 Op. cit., i, p: 27.
SPIRITUAL CULTURE 47
kind of compulsion on the gods as they exert on man.! In the prac-
tical magic which has developed among primitive races from similar
ideas, the idea of a balance between the living and the dead is much
less pronounced. For primitive man the dead are always the more
powerful and he is therefore not afraid to feign sacrifices to mislead
the spirits, or to sing them flattering or plaintive songs in order to
achieve the desired result.
Although primitive races are not acquainted with the idea of sacri-
fice in the strict and theoretical form in which it appears in advanced
cultures, there is—quite apart from the fact that they are continually
making food-offerings, performing ritual war-dances, castigating
themselves and fasting—sufficient evidence to suggest that for primi-
tive man, too, light-sound (in particular lightning and thunder),
sacrifice, and an immanent dualism are recognized as the beginning
of all things. When the gods were still wandering on earth they sang
and drummed (= lightened and thundered) in order to create all
things in the war-dance (sacrificial dance). These ‘gods’ are probably
only sounds or vibrating objects conceived in the forms of human
beings or animals. The Australian creator-god created the solid earth
by beating the original seas with a reed. At the sound the waters
divided and the death-gods came forth from their caves and created
men and things.? In European folk-lore the tradition of the beating
of the water is ascribed to witches. The Marind-anim of New Guinea
say that God lit a fire of bamboo wood to warm the first freezing
(semi-human, semi-fishlike) creature; at the first crackling of the
fire the creature’s ears were opened, at the second its eyes, at the
third its nostrils, at the fourth its mouth: so man gradually came to
Ше. (It is very significant that hearing was the first sense to be created.)
The father-god of the Uitoto created the primeval waters by beating
the hollowed-out tree-drum (he was probably one himself).* The first
crocodile created the harmony of the world when it drummed on its
hollow belly with its tail. Theodor Preuss has already shown that the
gods are thought to have produced all created things from their own
bodies and, more especially, from their own mouths. Created things
are apparently released from the caverns of the divine bodies, just as
sound is released from a drum or thunder from a thunder-cloud.
1 Schneider, ‘Die historischen Grundlagen der musikalischen Symbolik’, Die Musik-
forschung, iv (1951), p. 113.
? C. Strehlow, Die Aranda und Loritjastámme, i (Frankfurt, 1907), р. 3.
3 P. Wirz, Die Marind-anim, i, 2 (Hamburg, 1922), p. 185.
* Preuss, op. cit., p. 29.
* M. Granet, Danses et légendes de la Chine ancienne, i (Paris, 1926), pp. 263 and 326.
48 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
Music not only creates the world; it also cultivates and preserves
it. On the island of Er they say that the first settlers, the original
ancestors Pop and Kod, who were probably twins, dwelt in a hollow
coral-tree (Erythrina) and made a song; then they climbed down to
earth and ‘had connexion on the ground'.! The custom of promoting
the growth of fruit with such instruments as bull-roarers, panpipes,
and flutes is very widespread. According to a story told in the Aleutian
Islands a girl raised a man from the dead by singing.? In the language
of the Ewe the word /o means both ‘to sing’ and ‘to weave’.
The idea of sacrifice is particularly marked in the cosmic myths
according to which the world was created by the self-castigation or
self-fertilization of a bisexual god. Sometimes the god is the god of
lightning and thunder, sometimes a drum-, tree-, or cave-god. This
immanent dualism is also represented by a fighting pair of twins,
whose flashing swords and thudding shields produce the creative
sound. The idea that this sound can develop only from fighting,
castigation, and sacrifice dominates all religious music in primitive
cultures. Song is a sounding sacrifice of the breath of life. Women
beat the abdomen rhythmically; men beat their arms until the blood
spurts. Stretched ox-hides are beaten with an ox-tail. The sound of the
drum acquires magic power only when it is ‘heated’ by special songs?
or has been smeared with blood. Often, the drum must be beaten until
the skin bursts. Many instruments have to be made from parts of
sacrificed animals or human beings (bones or skin) in order to acquire
magic power. A legend from the Sudan tells of a musician who ac-
quired a lute from a blacksmith. But the lute ‘did not sing’. The smith
said, ‘This is a piece of wood. It cannot sing if it has no heart. You
must give it a heart. You must take it into battle with you on your
back. The wood must resound at the blow of the sword; the wood
must soak up dripping blood; blood of your blood, breath of your
breath. Your pain must become its pain, your fame its fame.'*
From painful darkness self-sacrificing man reaches the joyful light,
as sound enters the light of day from the darkness of the cave. On the
Andaman Islands it is said that the ancestor of the tribe once crushed
between the palms of his hands the grasshopper sacred to the lightning
and thunder god Biliku; the creature groaned like a human being and
1 Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vi (Cam-
bridge, 1908), p. 19.
? E. Ermann, ‘Ethnographische Wahrnehmungen auf den Küsten des Berings-Meeres’,
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, iii (1871), p. 212-13.
з Densmore, Menominee Music (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 102)
(Washington, 1932), pp. 154—5; Preuss, op. cit., i, p. 140.
* L. Frobenius, Spielmannsgeschichten der Sahel (Jena, 1921), pp. 56-57.
SPIRITUAL CULTURE 49
darkness fell; then the ancestor taught men songs and dances which
continued till the light returned.! Like night and sleep, music is the
dark giver of power which leads to the light. That is why the cavern of
night is the right time for music-making. It preserves life in the dark-
ness and every morning is a new act of creation through which dark
sound is brought to radiant light. In the mythology of the Pawnee
Indians the morning star repeats the act of creation every day, by
appearing as a warrior (beside its little brother) and bringing up a
dark ball (the sun). Reddening, it throws the ball in the air and sings:
‘This I did, when I became angry in order that in the future the earth
might be formed.'? (Ex. 52.)
The luminous nature of sound, which in Indian tradition 1s based
on the similarity between svar (light) and svara (sound), recurs in the
creation myth of the Navaho. Originally all mankind lived in a cave
in the heart of a mountain. Their light glimmered only for a few hours
a day but two flute-players enlivened the darkness with their music.
Accidentally one of the players hit his flute against the roof of the
cave. A hollow echo resulted and the men decided to bore a hole in
the direction from which the sound came. The flute was held against
the roof and the boring continued until they reached the outside of
the mountain. Then a wind arose which dried out the sea and the
people climbed out of the cave and played their favourite song
*Patole'. Then they built the sun and moon and entrusted the two
flute-players with the conduct of these lights.? The association of the
light-producing explosion of the bamboo nodules with the origin of
man has been mentioned earlier.* Jakob Grimm held that the original
etymological affinity between ‘peeping’, ‘string’, and ‘piping indi-
cated that the idea of the association of light and sound also existed
in ancient Europe.
Music for worship consists in a repetition of the act of creation.
Admittedly it has not the creative power which enabled the divine
ancestors to call forth matter from nothing by their shining songs and
war-dances, but its power is analogous and has the power to renew
life. The sound produced by sacrifice or battle establishes the con-
nexion between heaven and earth. In many legends the sky formerly
1 A. R. Brown, op. cit., p. 215.
? Densmore, Pawnee Music (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 93) (Washing-
ton, 1929), p. 20.
$ E. Fuhrmann, Tlinkit und Haida (Hagen, 1923), p. 18.
* See p. 47.
5 Grimm drew attention particularly to the English words ‘peep’ and ‘pipe’ and to
the German word svege! which means both ‘pipe’ and ‘light’. See Deutsche Mythologie
(Göttingen, 1844), pp. 706-8.
50 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
hung so close to the earth that it was possible to come and go between
the two on an intervening rope (or tree). The obvious inference is that
the string of the earth-bow stretched between the bough of a tree and
a hole in the ground was the musical symbol of this rope. In any case,
sound nourishes and preserves both gods and men. In the sky
resound sun and moon, lightning and thunder, which give man sun-
shine and rain. The sounds of earth, human songs of praise, nourish
the celestial spirits. Since heaven and earth are regarded as analogous
spheres, though with opposite values, all earthly sorrow is a joy in
heaven and all earthly joy a heavenly sorrow. In accordance with this
inversion of values, the lamentations in which primitive music abounds
serve to attune the spirits to a happy, therefore favourable, mood.
The sound symbols developed from these ideas are very diverse.
Recitative bridges the dualism of the world by its psalmodizing
balance between music and speech, or a tremolo-like oscillation be-
tween two notes (a third, fourth, or fifth apart). Perhaps singing in
parallel seconds (Ex. 125) also goes back to the same source. Other
forms attempt to reach their goal by inversion. On earth-bows sighs
are produced which resemble those of the human voice. If a funeral
song does not sound completely realistic, it progresses mainly in
descending semitones.’ Among the Duala piercing cries are regarded
as arrows, and even today in Andalusia in the night of Good Friday
the saeta (from sagitta) is still sung in a high falsetto, with hands
clenched. In the advanced culture of India the syllable om (arrow)
(which is pitched very high in the udghita song) is the ‘nail’ which
pierces the whole world and holds it together. The expression ‘to fire
off a song' is also very widespread.
The long sustained (non-rhythmical) drone also appears to represent
a particular mystic force. In West Africa (Baule) it is thought to be
the expression of ‘female strength’. Among the Menominee it is
sung by the women to help the men.? In the Caucasus it is associated
with a melody used in healing the sick.? Among the Indians of western
Brazil a woman utters persistent piercing cries, while the men sing a
solemn communal song.* In the South African panpipe bands the
drone is called the ‘weeping note’. Since the nose conveys the breath
of life among the living and has phallic significance among the dead,
1 The thirteenth-century theorist Elias Salomonis still calls the semitones below B flat,
C and F, ‘lamented’ notes. See Gerbert, Scriptores, iii (St. Blaise, 1784), p. 18.
2 Densmore, Menominee Music, pp. 161-2.
3 V. Belaiev, ‘The Folk-Music of Georgia’, The Musical Quarterly, xix (1933), p. 423.
4 T. Koch-Griinberg, Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern М. W. Brasiliens (Stuttgart,
1923), p. 55.
SPIRITUAL CULTURE 51
erotic and funeral songs are often sung in a nasal tone. Piping during
the night is usually interpreted as the voice of one recently dead.
Among the Duala eating is stopped even in daytime whenever a
passer-by whistles, lest the spirit of a dead man settle cn the food.
The sound of the bowstring represents a compressed force. The harsh
sound of the scraper justifies the obstinate survival of this most
unmusical of all primitive instruments since it represents the act of
sacrifice most vividly as a process of ‘friction’.
In view of the significance of sound it is not surprising that certain
sounds constantly associated with some process or other are consi-
dered the most important constituent of the process. The superior
power of the rattle-spear, the setting stick, or priest's staff is based on
the specific noise they make. Deafening noise is particularly impor-
tant. The roaring waterfall from which the spirit of great Manitou
speaks, and any noise that proceeds from stone or iron frightens away
evil spirits because—by definition—they shun the act of sacrifice.
Noises are specially contrived in rain charms and at change of moon;
noise keeps off the evil spirits which attempt to arrest the rain-laden
clouds or prevent the birth of the new moon. At funerals the soul
(which still cleaves to the earth for the first weeks after death) is
banished as an evil spirit, until it is released from this world and
transformed by the sacrifice of banishment into a good spirit. A
systematic abstention from noise (prohibition of speaking and singing,
pounding rice, and beating down nuts) is also recommended as a
means of misleading the spirits.
Sound is regarded as just as much the substance of the powers of
darkness as their dwelling-place. For primitive races sound is a wholly
concrete expression of the spiritual world. In West Africa a series of
identical musical phrases is likened to a string of pearls. In Uganda,
where the soloist often breaks off in the middle of the theme and leaves
the rest to the chorus, the chorus is said to ‘catch’ the melody (like a
ball).! Among the Nyamwesi, parallelism of voices is called going arm
in arm. The expression ‘to carry a tune’ indicates that the singer is
thought of as the seat, wagon, ship, or cavern of the sound.
The musical instrument and in particular the sound-box also
represent a kind of sacrificial cavern. The ideas associated with
instruments are largely conditioned by two factors: firstly, by the
ideas connected with the surrounding world from which the material
of the instrument comes and secondly, by the way in which the
! Schneider, *Über die Verbreitung afrikanischer Chorformen', Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie, lxix (1937), р. 88.
52 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
outward shape of the instrument conditions the antagonism of forces,
thereby making the sound possible. Because of the place where it is
found, the conch is closely associated with the life-giving ocean of
death; its outward shape is thought to express the idea of bisexuality.
Since the sound-substance of the world is produced by a dual being
who overcomes (i.e. converts into sound) the immanent dualism by
self-castigation or self-fertilization, so originally every sound-producer
must be thought of as bisexual. The African drum which, in a moment
of danger, speaks of its own accord; the tree-drum which is the seat
of the deity and which beats itself to create the primeval waters; the
crocodile which beats itself with its own tail: all these embody the
immanent dualism. But where a male or female player approaches
the instrument, the immanent dualism may disintegrate into two
separate elements (instrument and player). Yet the two parts are
related like horse and rider, who always form a unity in symbolism.
By this conception of the basically dual nature of musical instru-
ments the writer differs from the view held by his revered teacher,
Curt Sachs, who tries as far as possible to attribute a male or female
character to each instrument. There is no doubt that in many instru-
ments the accent is on one sex or the other but instruments seem to
resemble the bisexual cave-god who is very often divided into two
persons and is therefore sometimes thought of as male, sometimes as
female (the god of spring or Magna Mater). If a predominantly
female instrument is played by a man, the bisexuality is maintained
in the relationship between instrument and player. The player, the
instrument, and the sound are related as father, mother, and child.
If a woman plays a predominantly female instrument, however (for
example, a drum), or a man a predominantly male one (for example, a
flute), the player acts only as the outward shape or even merely as the
technique of the instrument and the sound of the drum is masculine
and that of the flute feminine—a relationship which again recalls the
self-fertilization of the mythical dual being or of the ascetic whose
‘wife’ (sound-box) resides in his own nature and whose ‘child’ (sound)
represents his spiritual renewal.
In fact the idea that the present division of the sexes has gradually
developed from an original unity, by way of a hybrid being and a pair
of twins (the marriage of brother and sister), is already found in the
old hunting civilizations.1 Usually this mythological figure is a
bisexual forest god or a fabulous creature who manifests himself in
the echo, in the whizzing of the bull-roarer or in the complaining note
! Baumann, op. cit., p. 208.
SPIRITUAL CULTURE 53
of the bamboo trumpet. He is half man and half tiger or partly stone
and partly straw or bees-wax. Sometimes he is also thought to be a
grandmother or a hunter whose bow is carried by a brother or a
mourning leopard (the transition from the hybrid to the pair of
twins). The dualism is also expressed in psychological terms when
the gloomy hunter indulges in some wild sport, killing or seriously
injuring men and then healing them and teaching them medicine-
songs. His close association with the rustling of the forest and the
buzzing of insects suggests that the drone represents one of his most
essential symbols. He too lives in hollow trees, and, as he is moreover
lord of the dead, it is probable that the bisexual forest god is an
anthropomorphic formulation of the dream- and resonance-cavern.
In order to understand the dual conception of instruments properly
the whole man or the whole of nature as represented anthropomor-
phically must be taken into account, not merely the sexual aspect.
Man and nature are tripartite beings. Heaven, intervening world
(humanity), and earth correspond to the head, the trunk and the
lower part of the body or, alternatively, to the mouth and nose, the
heart and the digestive organs, the sexual parts and the feet. The body
is often thought of as a circle, so that mouth and feet touch one an-
other. When a man stamps in the rhythmic dance, or offers his sperm,
he creates new physical life. In the sacrificial meal he mediates between
heaven and earth, by passing on celestial food to the earth through
the ' digestive fire". When he gives his breath, his speech, and his song,
he creates spiritual values, analogous to heaven. These three zones
represent the three aspects of the creative sacrifice. They are analogous
to one another, but hierarchically ordered. A given symbol can be
valid in all three zones. In Europe this tripartition survived in music
right into the Middle Ages, when three kinds of music were distin-
guished: musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis.
As a mere tool, the instrument belongs to the third zone. The fact
that it is essentially a sounding instrument, however, means that it
cannot represent primarily a sexual symbol but belongs rather to the
first zone (head, heaven). The player or the sound-board belongs
to the second zone. The musical instrument therefore belongs to all
three zones, but as used by man its specific task is to connect the third
and first zones. And the power to do this comes to it from the ‘cavern’
of the second zone. If lightning and rain are usually interpreted as the
product of the marriage of heat and cold (sun and cloud, drumstick
and drum),! this simply means that an obvious aspect of dualism is
1 Sachs, op. cit., p. 35.
54 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
being transferred to the first plane. The terms ‘masculine’ and
‘feminine’ (instead of fire and water, day and night, &c.) are therefore
used below for all three zones in order to express as simply as possible
the dualism that runs through all three levels.
The conch which Sachs, too, regards as bisexual, is a clear example
of the dual structure and the three levels on which it is expressed.
Because it dwells in the sea and is spiral, it is thought to contain all the
seeds of life. Its role in the first zone as propagator of the breath of
life is apparent in creation myths, in its use as a call-signal, in its
ritual fixing on the forehead, and in its combination with ear and nose
shells. Its war-call or sacrificial call is used particularly in rain charms.
From the second zone downwards, it is used increasingly as a simple
implement besides its function as a musical instrument. It is heard in
fertility rites, but in libations and cures it is used predominantly as
a container. On the third plane it is closely associated with the wor-
ship of the dead, since conches are at the same time sexual symbols,
dwellings of the dead, and burial places, from which new life springs.
On all three levels the conch is a sacrificial cavity, but its fertility is
spiritual in the first zone, physical in the second, and metaphysical in
the third.
Rattles consisting of hard objects strung together, and hung round the
body, turn the dancer himself into a rattle, into the homme-sonnaille
(to use Schaeffner's expression) from which the spirit speaks. In the
vessel form the dual structure is indicated by magic carvings (for
instance, of birds and aquatic animals) though itis already symbolized
to some extent in the combination of handle and hollow ball. The
first of the three planes is shown by its significance in the ‘cloud
festivals’ (i.e. rain ceremonies) in which each dancer wears a tall
head-ornament of feathers (representing clouds), to which a rattle
is attached.? Its use in field and medicine rites corresponds to the
second zone, as does probably also the interpretation of spherical
rattles as female breasts.? According to Frances Densmore a different
rhythm is beaten for every illness.* The third zone appears to be
specially indicated by wearing the rattle in the region of the knee.
Characteristically, the orenda of the rattle is also connected with
that of the cricket and the dragonfly, both of which are creatures of
the underworld.®
1 Schneider, ‘Los cantos de Пима’, Anuario musical del Instituto Español de Musico-
logia, iv (1949). 2 Wirz, op. cit., iv, p. 60.
5 Densmore, Pawnee Music, p. 18. * Papago Music, p. 102.
5 Preuss, op. cit., i, pp. 35, 80, and 128; Die Nayarit-expedition, i (Leipzig 1912),
pp. 75 and 81.
SPIRITUAL CULTURE 55
The idea of sacrifice which is expressed in the conch and the rattle
by the friction of the breath against the mouth-hole or the grains
rubbing against one another in the hollow inside of the rattle, is
symbolized in other instruments by the skin taken from a living body.
When the skin is stretched over a pit or a hollow vessel, a drum
results. Its specific effect depends on the quality of the sound it
produces, that is, on the sound of the animal or person from whom
the skin is taken. The dry hard sound of a goatskin attracts thunder,
because the mountain goat is a thunder animal. Cow-hides bring
rain. Although the low or belly-shaped drums ‘speak’ (in the first
zone) they seem to belong predominantly to the second, i.e. the animal
zone; they are regarded as mothers, cows, or frogs and are practically
simple *caverns'. On the other hand, the skin that produces the
sound is thought of as the head. The rgoma-drum of the Venda seems,
however, to extend over all three zones; it is called ‘egg of an ostrich’;
the side-handles are called ‘a frog's knee’; the opening at the bottom
is termed ‘vagina’; the head, ‘the skin of a man’; the smooth hairless
circular portion in the centre of the head, ‘a baby’s fontanelle’; the
pegs which secure the head, ‘the fingers’; the drumstick, ‘the hand
of a person’. The skin of these drums is often rubbed with sacrificial
foods, and sacred stones or bones of the dead lie inside the instrument.
If the skin bursts, no one is allowed to look inside.
It seems doubtful whether the friction-drum represents the sexual
act, as is generally assumed. Its use in initiation ceremonies in the
spring and at the winter solstice and also the term ‘menstruation
drum’ seem rather to point to puberty.”
While the low barrel-shaped drum represents fertility asa crouching
figure, longitudinal instruments express it in the upright or recumbent
position of the mystic dual being. Since the self-fertilization typical
of this dual deity is performed by most trees, it is not surprising that
the deity also appears as a tree god. The corresponding musical
symbols are the springy dance-tree (with a crocodile's or woman's
face) and the slit-drum. The hollow interior of the slit-drum is the
dwelling of the dual deity (or the deity itself) and the home of dead
or still unborn souls. It was its *word' that created the primeval
waters when the father-god beat the slit (or himself) with the drum-
stick. The Uitoto connect this sacrificial act with the darkened moon.
It is characteristic that the slit of the anthropomorphic drum is often
1 Kirby, op. cit., p. 36.
* Marius Schneider, * Zambomba und Pandero’, Spanische Forschungen, i, 9 (1954),
р. 1З,
56 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
found on the back, not on the front. The beating or whipping by a
power behind (that is, invisible) clearly shows that fertilization is not
conceived in specifically sexual terms. The head-hunters of the Naga
place captured skulls on these sounding ancestral figures, tree-men,
forest spirits! or soul containers. Gigantic drums are laid or hung
horizontally in a house specially built for the purpose or they are
hung on a tree (usually in a sloping position). In this position they
have quite exceptional power.because they are thought to be suicides,?
i.e. beings who have become especially powerful spirits owing to their
self-sacrifice.
Since the original types of flute were very large, like the earliest
drums, the tree or the long reed seems to have determined their
original symbolic form. Among the Tlinkit, flutes are carved in the
shape of ancestral figures or supplied with figures of eagles or fishes
(symbolizing fire and water). The dualism is also expressed by double
flutes or pairs of flutes. (In the creation myth of the Navaho mentioned
above,? the two flutes correspond to the sun and moon.) In the
initiation ceremonies of the Nor-Papuans the lads are laid on
the drum and beaten until the voice of the spirit Brag sounds in the
two flutes, of which the male is 1-5 metres and the female 1-25 metres
long.* It is said of the Parak flute, which holds the secret of life and
death, that it forms the veil in which the god Wunekau has enveloped
the mystery of procreation.? The flute is primarily the carrier of wind
and breath. ‘I have reared a bird’ means “Т have made a big bamboo
flute.'* If the face of the totem-god, to whom the instrument be-
longs, is known, the flute is provided with the corresponding head.’
Or when the spirit is evoked a corresponding mask is held ready,® so
that the totem-god can manifest itself vocally as well as bodily. Flutes
are also played to promote the growth of the fruits of the field.
The flute is related to the drum in a number of ways. Neither instru-
ment must be played indoors since both give rise to thunderstorms.®:
Both ‘speak’ not only alone but to one another. In such dialogues the
flute assumes the symbolic role of the drumstick. This relationship
1 А. Steinmann, ‘Uber anthropomorphe Schlitztrommeln in Indonesien’, Anthropos,
xxxiii (1938), p. 244.
2 Ibid., p. 243. 3 See p. 49. 4 J. G. Schmidt, op. cit., p. 344.
5 R. F. Н. Mayer, ‘Sonnenverehrung in Neu-Guinea’, Anthropos, xxviii (1933), р. 48.
8 P. A. Schaeffner, ‘Zur Initiation im Wagi Tal (Bismarck Archipelago)’, Anthropos,
xxxiii (1938), p. 401.
7 К. Koch, ‘Totemismus und Zweiklassenkultur in Neu-Guinea', Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie, lxxi (1931), p. 325.
8 J. С. Schmidt, op. cit., рр. 341 and 666.
? J. Kunst, Music in Flores (Leyden, 1942), p. 127; R. F. W. Arndt, ‘Die Religion
der Nad'a', Anthropos, xxvi (1931), p. 356.
SPIRITUAL CULTURE 57
seems to be confirmed by the fact that in later cultures the flute is
predominantly a male instrument and the drum female. Among the
Banoro the sexual relationship between flute and drum is expressed
in the longitudinal bisection of the spirit house. In the flute section
(opposite the drum section) of the house, the bride is deflowered by
one of her father-in-law’s kinsmen.! According to a story told by the
Mandan and the Papago a boy saw his grandmother (the moon)
take a full pot into bed with her every night, and the pot was empty in
the morning. One day he found a snake in it and killed it. The snake
(the sun) was the grandfather. The woman buried him (the grand-
father) in a lake, took the stalk of a sunflower (or a reed from the lake)
and made the boy a flute with which he could summon snow and
rain.?
The high notes of the flute are particularly effective in sexual magic
and a special style of singing has developed in association with this
instrumental sound-symbol. The special songs sung while a flute is
being made, which still survive in some European folk-customs, may
also be connected with this. The reeds which grow on graves and
betray the name of the murderer, the singing bones and the tomb-
flutes close the life-circle by letting new life sound from the sacrifice
of the old.
The power which springs from dualism is particularly obvious
where a tree or a stick has been bent by an opposing force. The easily
bent slit-drum or the sighing spirit-voice of the bow, with which the
player holds converse, arises in this way. Even though the musical
bow seems to be an earlier development than the hunter's bow, the
ideological relationships between the two cannot be overlooked.
According to a legend of the Hehe, the musical bow sprang from a
girl thrown into the water; her head became the calabash, her back-
bone the stick, and her limbs strings.? According to a legend of the
Marind-anim, however, the hunter's bow is also a human being,
sometimes even a pair of human beings. The stick is the man, the
string the woman. When the Papuan goes hunting he conjures the
‘wife’ to clasp her ‘husband’ firmly so that the string shall not break.*
The Washambula believe that men whose strings break while they are
playing the bow will not get wives.®
The harp, which derives historically from the bow, often appears
1 Koch, op. cit., p. 328.
* Densmore, Mandan and Hidatsa Music, p. 81; Papago Music, p. 61.
3 Sachs, op. cit., p. 63.
4 P. Wirz, op. cit., i, 2, p. 128; iii, p. 106-9.
5 Sachs, op. cit., p. 63. ў
58 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
among primitive races as the retrogressive form of aninstrument from
anadvanced culture. It is the fish-hook of the death- and water-spirits
or a man whose back is bent with sorrow and care. Because of its
long neck it is also called crane, goose, or swan.! With this identifica-
tion with the swan (the ship of the dead) is probably connected the
later ‘swan song’.? Inthe outward shape of the harp, the hunter’s bow,
and the easily bent tree-drum, one can detect the mystic shape of the
ship which, like the cry, the arrow, the path, the wagon, the waning
moon, and man is a symbolof sacrifice. According to totemistic myths,
the canoe is a human corpse which has been stamped into shape.?
According to other traditions, the drum is a forest spirit which origin-
ally stood at the bow of a princely ship.* Schaeffner has already drawn
attention to the connexions between the construction of a harp and
of a ship.’
The bull-roarer also appears to be a small boat. Many Australian
legends tell of the circular voyages of the totem-gods who left their
caves after the dividing of the waters, singing and dancing with
spears, and set out to create all things. Then they taught men the
songs on which the preservation of the world depends, returned to
their caves, and turned into bull-roarers. These instruments represent
the ‘mystical body’ of the totem-god and renew its creative energy
as soon as they begin to travel, that is, as soon as they begin to whiz
in the air. As carvings representing the journeys of the totem-gods or
ancestral figures (in animal forms) are often: found on Australian
bull-roarers,® the whizzing of the bull-roarer appears to represent a
revival of the voice and ritual journeys of the cave-gods. The bull-
roarer which a grandfather carves out for a child is kept in a cave
before the child is born and returned there after its owner's death.
It confers on its owner the joy of mystic communion with his an-
cestors so long as he hides it from the women. It is customary to give
the sick a few shavings from the wood as medicine."
The bow or the tree-man that has been painfully bent into a circle
or oval forms the framework of the shaman drum. It is used particu-
larly in medicine, rain rites, and soothsaying. The victim (reindeer or
horse) which gave its skin for the drum, is the lord of this ‘singing
1 A. О. Vaisaenen, Wogulische und ostjakische Melodieen (Helsinki, 1937), p. 22;
Sachs, Handbuch der Musikinstrumentenkunde (Leipzig, 1920), p. 231.
2 The Rigveda, iii, 53, 10 and ix, 97, 8 also requires the singers to sing like the swans
who perform the prelude to the hymns.
3 Wirz, op. cit., i, pp. 122 and 176.
* Steinmann, op. cit., p. 244.
5 Op. cit., pp. 164-5. PES
6 Strehlow, op. cit., pls. 1 and 2. Ibid., ii, p. 79.
SPIRITUAL CULTURE 59
bow tree'.! Since the doctor's original implement is a bow and arrow?
(medicine is * shot"), it is not surprising that the drum, which replaces
the bow, is also called ‘bow’ and the drumstick ‘arrow’. Among the
Shor of the Altai mountains the six ‘horns’ on the frame of the drum
are used to attack, and the six iron rings (ring-mail) to ward off,
evil spirits. The ‘iron bow-string' runs right across the frame and
beside it is the ‘sword’ (six knife-shaped iron plates).? Like all sym-
bols of sacrifice, the frame-drum represents a way or a means of
transport by which the shaman travels to the world of spirits. If the
drum is a horse, the drumstick is a whip.* The skin, on which blood
or libations are poured, is often decorated with symbolic drawings
(of the sun, moon, drums, or animals) which represent ‘the whole
world'.5 The number-symbolism of Samoyed drums probably points
to a very late cultural development. On the other hand, the description
of the drum as ‘grandfather’ and the Lapp custom of never bringing
the instrument into a tent through the main entrance but only through
the small ‘sacred door’ through which the hunters crawl? are probably
of earlier origin. Since the drum is a dead man it is worth mentioning
in this context the custom of carrying the dead out of the house
through a small door that is usually kept shut.?
A dark god also speaks out of the hourglass-drum and is even
depicted on it occasionally. Two similar, approximately triangular
but inverted sections form the body of the drum. These outlines,
which occur in many archaeological representations as the body of
the tightly-girdled dancer (and later, in the shape of Shiva), represent
the inversion brought about by sacrifice. The same significance
attaches to the depiction of the waxing and waning crescents of the
moon. The conches and the whale or crocodile jaws at the lower end
and the resonant skin at the upper end of the instrument symbolize,
like lizards and snakes, the dualism of water and fire.
In the transition to the higher farming and pastoral cultures many
of the ideas touched on here undergo considerable extension or
specialization. They become more and more the esoteric preserve of
1 E. Emsheimer, ‘Zur Ideologie der lappischen Zaubertrommel', Ethnos, ix (1944),
d 9d p. 143.
3 L. Menges and P. Potapov, Materialien zur Volkskunde der Turkvólker des Altay
(Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalischen Sprachen) (Berlin, 1934), p. 62.
* Emsheimer, op. cit., р. 147.
5 Menges and Potapov, op. cit., p. 64.
5 E. Emsheimer, ‘Schamanentrommel und Trommelbau’, Ethnos, ix (1946), р. 173.
7 Emsheimer, ‘Zur Ideologie’, p. 162.
8 Baechtold-Staeubli, Handwórterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, v (Berlin, 1932/3),
p- 1134. і
60 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
individuals; the people as a whole only partially continue the old
tradition and usually lack any deeper understanding of it. But in the
depths of the subconscious the ideas continue to be active. No art
fascinates primitive man more than music; he is as vividly aware of
its dynamic fluctuations between light and darkness as he is of the
mysterious relationship between life and death.
PRIMITIVE MUSIC 61
A,1. Asia: Wedda (Wertheimer)
5. psy DIE: Cure ef the sick (Hornbostel)
UM
4
Кеш Em emu SC p een II eed emm] eee ГРЕЕТ (pou poer.) oen
ЕЕ e ERE d pe = ааа занин) |
А 49-1 GEEN E W- d. — ee oo л = L9 ee
ОО CSR SS | LP cape
6. ашы Yuna, Initiation into tribal laws (Schneider)
a
7 ту eS чри ee ee Б ГТ етта ың]
an eS ee ee МЕ
ГА ртов ее РЕ
pe е сео де 8.885 533——-23—d—9-——d3-—9—9-6-—9
9. Боре: Votyak, Love song (Lach)
1
2120
62 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
B 10. Asia: Semang (Kolinski) -
:176
x
13. vu Menominee, Frog-dance (Densmore)
7:100 d
¿Q ma-ka-ko — kakwu-na uj
14. Ti Pawnee, Song of Buffalo (Fletcher)
SSS Hs nU
fo eee ee ee ae
[^ Ar e [4
E
—
Né yi-dà,
C né-yi-da mavo,, Néyi-da, n&.yi-dá ma-vo
17. Torres = Straits: е, Death song (Myers)
LE
IT С EE as Е
= (ea 2. 3 ҮЛ 2: Ш sup mi иная
A a gee ee Lm ГГ» Л
PRIMITIVE MUSIC 63
18. dii En Osage, Song to water spirits (la Flesche)
8
19. aug Guinea: Bukaua (Kolinski)
22. Africa: Hausa (Schneider)
4:132-144 „у ^ m. ^
Chorus р
233 gue Nyamwesi, Travel song (Hornbostel)
=138
25. Europe: Cheremiss (Lach)
d:126
SS ae ney, rT
QS SS ES Ss — GSS) Lo ee eee ЕБЕТ
aS SS = Eee oe ee eee eee ee eee
* =
64 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
D
27. America: Yamana, Song of bird (Hornbostel)
28. Tu Malabars, Prayer (Hornbostel)
112
BS Ses SA EE S ың ык ГО с.
ЛИ ag з т © ии 1i
а Se a HEU Полна лину „к=з ERE] S DIM.
г" ЕЕ BEN, a Eum ee Gea OAR! GSE) 2 1.
т о и
(—9 LM. i) 2 TS ARE «8107 Meese nan
Mn Mimi =
BS ES hl] АЕ А | SSS SSS ae
— он Ed. T
p-0-0-2 —À SS Ss
2—27 ee Coe
a
17. Si CERNIT DS] писту ЕН НВА
rr E a RN" (09. SES = г га eT Ie See ›
Lcd == ЕЕ,
A SS Ss ee = IB sees T um я по ДИ н
33. Bismarck ud— _
9-100 3
a
wmm NNI SE RESET SETTE ES Ps зена ;
r Oe im — Led — — — 9 | —I
34. ren Vogul, Mythological spirit song (Kannisto)
-186 а
PLATES II
() (a) (b)
CHINESE INSTRUMENTS
(a) Zither (x 4); (b) The same ( 45); (c) Globular flute (х $); (d) Two globular flutes (= 1)
(e) Mouth organ (x45); (f) Detail of the same (4); (z) Vertical flute (>35);
(Л) Detail of the same ( x 1); (i) Whistle flute (x 4); (J) Whistle (> 1)
For further details see page xiii
PIE АЕ
yl WE А
хо Wk у
p 5 Ж NS
Voy,
К а Jd
(b)
(a) CHINESE PLAYERS OF MOUTH-ORGAN AND
PERCUSSION-CLAPPER
(b CHINESE SONOROUS STONES AND HAND-DRUM
From Prince Ju Tzayyuh, The Handbook of Music (1596)
PRIMITIVE MUSIC 65
36. Asia: Seram, Rowing song (Tauern) A
41.4 rica: Wahehe, Dance (Schneider)
42. Africa: Tanganyika, Hunting song (Molitor)
66 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
43. Africa: Ewe,Incantation (Schneider)
А - Ға má 10 ёе а wó-nó 14-ki ée! Bo-k6-n6 mà-küá-dó
ee
gi-di-gi-di mè, Bó-kó-nó mà-ká-dó gi-di- gi-di тё
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44. Asia: Flores (Kunst)
"пиз mes [==
к у р Ш.Ш Әлини eee НӘН
Lm £L г—_ E ПРОГ ЛГ В
PRIMITIVE MUSIC ° 67
50. pom Pawnee,Buffalo dance(Densmore) Drum 4-132 & 116
ЛУ ЭШЕГИ To „ЭШ. мм)
SS ас 00 E зы {ан Эй Кан оиы dion in БЕЛ БЕП ПЕ
== d iud аш ша
54. MEER "ipd Eskimo, Dance x eae
68 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
58. Asia: Vogul, Bear song (Kannisto)
1 -
F §8. Africa: Bushman (Kirby)
Hand
dertr ret Pur put ete mm
4
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бї SSS’ BSS Sy дюр. сс BE c
f.. UE A SS eS Ee 2 Ree See Е SS ee oe E
Е ee [—[ m 4:2] ee 2.
69. Europe: Lapp (Schneider)
д 4:190 == >
69
PRIMITIVE MUSIC
frica: Bushman,Dance (Schneider)
2
70.
„Hunting medicine (Densmore)
erica: Menominee
73
eE
74. America: Nootka, Lullaby (Boas)
75. Bismarck Archipelago: Mioko (Schneider)
sia: Engano (Schneider)
pa,Song concerning the Diver (Densmore)
77. America: Coco
a: Semang (Kolinski)
132
Di
Rattle Lf (t г Cete
79. Bismarck Archipelago: Baining (Schneider)
78.А
PRIMITIVE MUSIC
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Kartvelia, Love song (Lach)
89. Caucasus:
d -125
giz (Zataevic)
90. Asia: Karakir
91. Africa: Hehe, Dance (Schneider)
62
a!
92. Africa: Egyptian Peasant (Schneider)
93. Europe: Spain (Schneider)
ica: Jabuti, Dance (Schneider)
| 94. Amer
4
95. Africa: Fipa (Schneider)
172
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ЕТ ЕТ
d — WEN —
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8.-120
PRIMITIVE MUSIC 73
106. Asia: Ortos, Lament over lost horse (Oost)
oderato
112. Asia: Кеша (Kolinski)
d -160-192
74 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
113. Asia: Flores (Kunst)
а ^
зү т So е 0 ee poet re REEL o
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d.-84 d a FI 4
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2104
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119. Africa; Wanicha
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75
PRIMITIVE MUSIC
amwesi
(Hornbostel)
23. Africa: Ny
2:152
E
Feast song (Schneider)
ürea,
122. Europe: 12th century (Trope) Adsit Johannes 1
124. Africa: Wabali (Schneider)
125. Oceania: H
w Guinea: Sepik (Schneider)
126. Ne
grelia (Lach)
aucasus: Min
Ov
ga (Schneider)
127. Africa: Kindi
-Pygmy (Schneider)
129. Africa: Batswa
4
PRIMITIVE MUSIC
76
tel)
130. Oceania: Solomon Islands (Hornbos
: Ngoni (Schneider)
132. Africa
d -96
131. Africa: Chewa, War song (Schneider)
133. Africa: Ngoni (Schneider)
Kongara (Hornbostel)
134, Oceania: Solomon Islands,
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н со pas —
Ф с Ф a Ф
=) - = а.
е о eo pen
E : E с
H
a а E 5
Л si а
г Е д Е
20 3 5 S
a P. Е E
Nn m ae
3 T = 9 a
o Ф ш Oy .
pj E =] o <
a en d m ot
3 Е g a
cá a © “= =
Ds О О = S eo
d o 6 3 d <
9 со Qa [= -
Е я zy B B
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a S 9, 9,
5 Z = =
aS а ho bo
SM o Sow E
vo a Eo МЭ e
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PRIMITIVE MUSIC
78
145. Africa : Chagga (Schneider)
Se 1]
FN a— Aca eee SS
der)
о an
› war song (Schnei
LL
146. Africa: Masai
LLLI o M — Rm
Mocking Song (Schneider)
bi
147. Africa: Acooli
don-go bane
Eyee ма - сі - іо ka
149. Africa: Еме (Schneider)
150, Africa: Ruanda (Hornbostel)
d
79
PRIMITIVE MUSIC
152. Europe (medieval): Codex Las Huelgas. Clama (Anglès)
ЕЕ Е es ŘS
кечу шы ы —g-4dZ51—29
гас
g (Schneider)
УР:
C turo,
154. New Guinea: St. Mathias, Death son
РЕГ
Corema. Rennell Island (Burrows)
SE
d
5 ЕР A EES) TE A o EE
156. Oceania: Marquesas (Schneider)
АЯ
KU EZ
155.
JN
E
Ф
5
a
©
а
‚я
О
un
—
bo
а
о
N
"e i
Ф д
Б О
5 E:
Е -
М.У
j Я
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2 <
с
Е a
с 3
п a
E
+
88 E
$t b:
<
157,
4
158. С
4
=
4
80 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
165, Africa:Ivory Coast, Hunting song
4242
164. Asia: Flores, Xylophone (Kunst)
81
PRIMITIVE MUSIC
168. Africa: Bechuana, 4 reed flutes (Kirby)
2 Xylophones (Kirby)
o
E
ua
<
s Elli
9 |
Е |
EU
2 iN m
5 flute (Schneider)
Shepherd
›
Africa: Ubangi Chari
170.
4
(original a minor 3rd higher)
, Flute (Kirby)
a: Chwana
171. Afric
Js
ая
ЕК nal
EL rnc
EES SS GU ЕЕ ИЕ
medicine (Densmore)
Flute, Love-
?
б Vee Menominee
172
82 PRIMITIVE MUSIC
173. Asia: Eastern Mongolia, The blue banner (Emsheimer)
174. Africa: Liberia,
4-138 Horn (Herzog)
ló-kb di-wé i - yd -||We dance with joy
Medium drum 4 Ü у Py
Deep drum н
You dance with joy
Deep drum 4
T.
176. New Guinea: Nor-Papua, Drum signal (Schmidt)
ооо ое invitation to
= tobacco-smoking
loud ut eco
II
THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASTA
1. CHINA!
By LAURENCE PICKEN
INTRODUCTION
IN spite of considerable differences between the musical practices of
one locality and another, the vast territory of Far Eastern Asia—
China, Mongolia, Tibet, Shinjiang (1),? Shikang (2), Korea, Japan,
Indo-China, Siam, Burma, Malaya, Java, Bali, &c.—can be re-
garded, with respect to its musical culture, as a unit, to be compared
and contrasted with India perhaps on the one hand and western
Europe on the other. A wave of musical culture seems to have swept
over China to the seaboard of the great land-mass of Asia and beyond,
so that there survive at the present time, on the periphery, types of
orchestras and habits of polyphonic treatment which have vanished
almost entirely from the central region.
1 Recent general accounts of Chinese music are: Kenneth Robinson, ‘Chinesische
Musik, I. Geschichtliche Entwicklung von der Frühzeit (Shang-Dynastie) bis zum Ende
der Han-Zeit (1523 a. Chr. bis 206 p. Chr.) (Deutsche Ubs. und Bearb.: Hans Eckardt)’,
Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ii (ed. Friedrich Blume) (Kassel und Basel,
1952), columns 1195-1205. This account is based directly on the Chinese sources. H.
Eckardt, ‘Chinesische Musik, П. Vom Ende der Han-Zeit bis zum Ende der Sui-Zeit
(220-618). Der Einbruch westlicher Musik’, ibid., columns 1205-7; ‘III. Die T'ang-Zeit
(618-907). Die Rolle der westlandischen (Hu-)Musik. Die Zehn Orchester. Die Musik
der Zwei Abteilungen. Akademien und Konservatorien', ibid., columns 1207-16; P. C.
Crossley-Holland, “Chinese Music’, Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (ed. E.
Blom), ii (London, 1954), pp. 219-48. Dr. Eckardt's bibliography includes a valuable
selection of recent Japanese publications, and materials on central Asian music and
East-West musical interchange. Mr. Crossley-Holland's bibliography is virtually com-
plete for works in European languages.
? Figures in brackets refer to serial entries in the Glossary of Characters, p. 190. The
system of Romanization adopted here is that primarily due to Professor Jaw Yuanrenn
of the University of California. Its main feature is that the tones are inherent in the
spelling as they are in the spoken word. Knowing the system, the Romanized form can
be read in its correct tone, thus reducing ambiguity. Typographically this system has
the advantage that it avoids the use of all aspirates, diacritic signs, and superscript
numerals. Some familiar words appear in new guise: Jou = Chou’, Hann = Нап“,
Wey = Wei‘, Tarng = T'ang?, Sonq = Sung; chyn = ch'in*, pyipar = p'i?-p'a?,
shiau = hsiao!, seh = sêt; Symaa Chian = Szü'-ma? Ch'ien!, Ju Shii = Chu! Hsi’.
Again, the two types of pitch-pipes, previously written alike as lü, but pronounced in
two different tones: lü? and lü*, are differentiated as leu and liuh. A guide to the system
will be found in W. Simon, The New Official Chinese Latin Script, Gwoyeu Romatzyh
(London, 1944).
84 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
This interpretation of the total musical picture of the Far East is
to a considerable extent explicit in the surveys of Far Eastern music
made by Sachs.! Though the course of the exposition adopted here
has been largely determined by this interpretation, it must not be
accepted as more than a working hypothesis.
PREHISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY OF THE FAR EAST
China is to be regarded as.a continent apart, turning her back on
the rest of Eurasia, more isolated even than India; and it is this geo-
graphical setting which has determined the main features of Chinese
history.? Behind her natural barriers there developed a culture of such
integrity that when, in the fourth century, invaders and conquerors
came, it was they who were absorbed; and thus it has always been.
The Chinese of Tarng (3) times was an entirely different person,
ethnically speaking, from the Chinese of Chyn (4) and Hann (5)
times, because of this constant absorption of invaders from the north
and conquered peoples in the south.’
Palaeolithic sites have been found in the Ordos region, and it is
known that neolithic civilizations flourished in Mongolia as well as
throughout the Yellow River valley. At the time of the development
of high civilization at the turn of the third millennium B.C., the
Chinese, or rather, the Proto-Chinese, differed from surrounding
peoples in the superior organization of their agriculture rather than
in physical character. Even at the present time they have linguistic
relatives all over the Far East; indeed it is customary to recognize
a Sino-Tibetan language-group which includes, on the one hand,
Chinese and the various Thai languages of southern China and Indo-
China and, on the other, the Tibeto-Burman languages of Tibet
and Burma and (in China proper) of the Luoluo (6) and Mosuo (7)
peoples of Yunnan (8) and Syhchuan (9). This group does not by
any means embrace all the mongoloid peoples of China, however.
Not included in it are the Turco-Mongols of the Gobi Desert,
and the Miau (10) and Yau (11) peoples of southern and south-
western China; the linguistic affinities of the two latter are still
uncertain.
The invasions of north China in historic times all came from
1 The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940); The Rise of Music in the
Ancient World, East and West (New York, 1943).
2 В. Grousset, L' Asie orientale des origines au ХУ? siècle (Paris, 1946), p. 139.
з С. Haloun, ‘Die Rekonstruktion der chinesischen Urgeschichte durch die Chinesen’,
Japanisch-Deutsche Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Technik, iii (Kobe, 1925), pp. 243-
70.
PREHISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY 85
Mongolia or Manchuria, never from Shinjiang (Turkestan); that is
to say, the invaders were always barbarians, never bearers of high
civilization, such as were the merchants or pilgrims, transmitters of
cultural gifts of the highest importance—mathematics, Buddhism,
music, &c.—who passed along the Silk Road or the Buddhist Pilgrim
route.
This pressure from the north provided an incentive to the progres-
sive sinicization of southern China and perhaps led to the constant
movement southwards of earlier offshoots of the mongoloid stock,
the Proto-Chinese or, more generally, the palaeomongoloids. Among
these one may perhaps include the Proto-Malays. The Japanese are
also sometimes grouped with the palaeomongoloids. A number of
characters suggest that they are a branch of the mongoloids separated
off at a very early date; it is known that they are not the original
inhabitants of much of the territory they now occupy.
Coming south to Indo-China and Indonesia, it is certain that the
present ethnic complexity of this region goes back to prehistoric
times. In addition to Negritos, the most ancient inhabitants seem to
have included relatives of the present inhabitants of Australia, New
Guinea, and Melanesia. A second and later wave of prehistoric immi-
grants to this region brought the Proto-Malay element, to be found
in the present Bataks and Dyaks of the islands, and in the Cham and
other vanished peoples of the mainland. These folk are in many
respects mongoloid; their ethnological position is uncertain, but they
may perhaps be placed at the base of the mongoloid stock. They have
a bamboo culture, and this fact may perhaps be important as an
indication of affinity with the third wave of immigrants, the brachy-
cephalic mongoloids, who also have to some extent a bamboo culture.
These entered across the north-west frontier of Indo-China, and it is
possible that they brought with them the first Bronze Age culture to
reach Indo-China. As compared with Europe this culture arrived
comparatively late.
At the time of the unification of China at the end of the third
century B.C., the southern limit of Chinese territory scarcely extended
beyond the Yangtz (12) River. Not until Hann times was southern
China added to the Chinese domain; but by 111 B.C. Annam, in
Indo-China, had been annexed. The Chinese continued to dominate
this region during Hann times and from then until the tenth century.
As early as the second and third centuries of our era, however, the
colonization by the Hindus of Burma, Siam, Indonesia, and the coast
of Indo-China, had begun and reached a peak in the fourth and fifth
86 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
centuries,! so that from the earliest times there has been a clash of
cultures in this area.
The presence of the Ainu in northern Japan must not be forgotten
even in this brief sketch of Far Eastern ethnology. They are not
mongoloids and have existed in their present position since before the
arrival of the Japanese.
Considering the ‘continent’ of China, Indo-China, and Indonesia
as a whole, evidence points to a constant movement southward of
more or less mongoloid peoples. To diffusion in other directions may
be ascribed the colonization of the American continent: the Eskimos,
and the Indians of North and South America are mongoloids whose
affinities with the Pacific area, in the widest sense, is exhibited, among
other characters, in their armoury of musical instruments. With the
exception of a few instruments of universal occurrence all these (or
their close relatives) are to be found exclusively in China, the territory
between China and India, the Malay Archipelago, and the Pacific
Islands. Of the instruments used by American Indians 50 per cent.
occur in the Burmese hinterland and adjacent countries.?
In the light of this short account of ethnological relationshipsin the
Far East, it is surely not surprising to find a marked uniformity in
musical culture over the whole area, particularly with respect to more
primitive features. It is known that primitive characteristics of musi-
cal culture are often preserved with great tenacity by peoples other-
wise at a high cultural level: European folk-song, for example, retains
extremely primitive features? The persistence in China proper, in
spite of constant contact with other musical cultures (via Turkestan),
of the characteristic minor third pentatonic genus, with the fourth as
the dominant melodic unit, is the expression in musical terms of that
vigour in her autochthonous culture to which, at the beginning of this
section, her powers of absorbing conquerors and conquered were
ascribed.
THE PLACE OF MUSIC IN CHINESE CIVILIZATION ^
The views on music held by the Chinese in antiquity were remark-
able in that its essence was conceived to be not sound but a trans-
cendent power. To a considerable extent this view of the nature of
music survives even to this day. The music of the seven-stringed
zither (p. 90) tends constantly towards imagined sounds: a vibrato is
1 С. Coedés, Les États hindouisés d' Indochine et d'Indonésie (Paris, 1948), pp. 36, 81.
? Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments, p. 203.
5 Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, p. 296.
THE PLACE OF MUSIC IN CHINESE CIVILIZATION 87
prolonged long after all audible sound has ceased; the unplucked
string, set in motion by a suddenly arrested glissando, produces a
sound scarcely audible even to the performer. In the hands of per-
formers of an older generation the instrument tends to be used to
suggest, rather than to produce, sounds.
As early as the date of compilation of the Joulii (13) (The Cere-
monial of the State of Jou) in the third century B.C., a system relating
musical sounds to the order of the Universe had been worked
out. Its elaboration forms part of that scientific systematization of
knowledge which took place between the fifth and the third centuries
B.C. (the period of the Warring States), after the decay of the feudal
system and at a time when the process of fusion to form states! had
already begun. At a very early date, at least as early as the Leu Shyh
Chuenchiou (14) (The Spring and Autumn of Leu Buhwei (15)), 239
B.C. a theory was devised by which the notes of the Chinese
musical world could be derived from a fundamental pitch-pipe by
simple arithmetical operations. The orderly generation of sounds
from a fundamental by this procedure was equated with other types
of order in the Universe: with the four directions, with the categories
of substance, with the orderly sequence of the seasons.?
(F) Autumn
(C) Spring
(G) Winter
(D) Summer
This system was extended and worked out in a manner analogous to
that of similar systems in India, Islam, ancient Greece, and the
Christian Middle Ages.
In an attempt to preserve the harmonious correspondence between
their system of sounds and the order of the Universe, the Chinese
were early faced with the problem of fixing an absolute pitch. The
pitch-pipes were not only of standard length but of standard capacity,
and it is understandable that the Imperial Bureau of Music became
part of the Imperial Bureau of Weights and Measures.
The belief in the power of music to sustain (or if improperly used
to destroy) Universal Harmony was but an extension of the belief in
the magic power of sounds. As a manifestation of a state of the soul,
a single sound had the power of influencing other souls for good or
ill. By extension, it could influence objects and all the phenomena of
Nature. Symaa Chian (16) (163-85 B.c.) describes two zither tunes of
1 Haloun, op. cit., pp. 243-6.
? Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 110.
88 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
magic power:! when the first was played, two groups of eight black
cranes appeared at the opening strain; at the second strain, they
stretched out their necks and cried, extended their wings and began
to dance. j
The conditions under which the zither might be played (up to fifty
years ago) were originally of magical significance, but gradually
their significance was forgotten until they became merely symbolic of
the ideal way of life of the /iteratus.? In Ming (18) times the playing
of the zither was forbidden to women (though that did not prevent
their playing it), and it was forbidden to perform before any but
cultured persons. The fact that the zither became the favourite instru-
ment of Taoist and Buddhist monks meant that it exchanged its
more ancient magical associations for those of the monastery, but
that it retained at all times the power to command a respectful hearing.
The categories of hieratic and popular music are to be distinguished
in most cultures, in antiquity as in recent times, but China is perhaps
unique in the extent to which ritual music came to be regarded as an
effective regulator of the harmony of the Universe in general and of
the State in particular, so that the first duty of the Ruler was to look
to the perfect maintenance of tradition in the execution of the music
and ritual of the State.
CHINESE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
The earliest Chinese documents (c. 1300-1050 B.c.) are inscriptions
on fragments of bone recording the decisions of the tortoise-bone
oracle. A number of these contain characters either certainly or pos-
sibly depicting musical instruments, and it has been suggested that
they provide evidence for the use of drums struck by a drum-stick,
bells on a wooden stand struck by a stick, suspended triangular stones
struck by a padded stick, and a horn struck with a stick.?
Excavations on the famous Shang (19) sites in the plain of north-
east China at Anyang (20) have yielded sonorous stones (ching) (21)
(pl. 4 (b)) and a globular flute (shiun) (22) (pl. 3 (c) and (а)). The
former are L-shaped slabs of calcareous stone which (according to the
pictographs in bone inscriptions) were hung from a frame and struck
with a padded stick. The shiun from the Shang site is barrel-shaped
and about 2$ inches high, carved with an ogre-mask. Hollow, with
1 Symaa Chian, Shyyjih (17), xxiv, fo. 37 у. Translated in В. Н. van Gulik, The Lore
of the Chinese Lute (Tokyo, 1940), p. 137.
2 R. H. van Gulik, op. cit., рр. 134-48.
* E, H. Gibson, ‘Music and Musical Instruments of Shang’, Journal of The North
China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Ixviii (Shanghai, 1937), pp. 8-18.
CHINESE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 89
an apical blow-hole and five finger-holes in the side, it is said to pro-
duce the note-series: do re mi fa solt
In many of the folk-songs and dynastic songs from the Book of
Songs (Shyjing) (23)—often said to have been selected by Confucius,
but probably only used by him for purposes of instruction—refer-
ences to music occur specifically mentioning some of the instru-
ments supposed to be represented in the bone characters or found in
Shang sites. According to Sachs's tentative chronology of primitive
instruments, flutes with holes, and drums, such as are mentioned in
these songs, belong to the middle neolithic stratum; they occur in
neolithic sites and are distributed over several continents. The sonor-
ous stones are also included among neolithic instruments. In some
songs there are references to bells; these are the Bronze Age counter-
part of sonorous stones.
Whistle flutes of clay, with or without finger holes, occur in China
as children's toys. One type from Shandong (51) without finger holes
and in the form of a bear is shown in pl. 3 (i). In Shikang there is
a whistle flute with four finger holes in the form of a frog; and there
are specimens with two finger holes from Gueyjou (24) in the form
of a bird. The fact that in each case the whistle has the shape of an
animal may well be significant. Such clay whistle flutes are also to be
found in central America and may be a legacy from a late neolithic
substrate. A bamboo whistle-flute is reported to have been seen in
funeral processions fifty years ago.?
The Shang were overthrown by the Jou (25) about 1050 B.c., and
many songs in the Shyjing suggest a considerable increase in the
number of instruments used by the Jou (1050-255 B.c.). In addition
to sonorous stones and stone-chimes, bells and bell-chimes, their
idiophones include the percussion clapper (chongdwu) (26) (pl. 4 (a)
the trough (juh) (27) resembling a rice-pounding mortar with pestle;
and the tiger (yeu) (28), with a serrated strip of wood along its
back, thrice scraped to mark the end of the music. Scrapers (accord-
ing to Sachs) are idiophones reaching back to the earliest neolithic
stratum; there is some evidence that they have a life-giving signifi-
cance as charms. The Jou armoury of instruments also included
chordophones, for the existence of which in Shang times there is no
evidence. Thus the first of the songs (in the traditional order) refers to
welcoming the noble lady: ‘With chyn (29) and seh (30) we hearten
1 Н. С. Creel, The Birth of China (New York, 1937), p. 99.
? А, С. Moule, ‘A List of the Musical and other Sound-Producing Instruments of
the Chinese’, Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, xxxix
(1908), pp. 1-160.
90 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
her.' The two instruments referred to are both half-tube zithers (using
Sachs's nomenclature) of which the former (or a descendant) is still
in use as the classical seven-stringed zither (chyn) (pl. 3 (a) and (b)
and the latter (seh) survives in a descendant with thirteen brass
strings, the јеле! (31). New aerophones include the mouth-organ,
sheng (32) (pl. 3 (e) and (f), and pl. 4 (a)), two cross flutes, yoh (33)
and chyr (34), a double pipe, goan (35), and the panpipes, shiau (36).
(The modern shiau, a vertical flute, is shown in pl. 3 (g) and (A).
Several sorts of drum, including one of earthenware, are mentioned.
From the Yilii (37) (Rites and Ceremonies), edited at the latest in
the third century B.C., we have the following description of the distri-
bution of the orchestra at the great archery tournament:
On the day before the shoot are suspended, for the musicians, to the
east of the eastern steps, facing west, the sonorous stones associated with
the mouth-organs; south of these are the bells (jong) (38) associated
with the mouth-organs, and south of these are other bells (Бой) (39): all
these are arranged in order towards the south. West of the eastern steps
a drum is set up; it is beaten from the south. The answering drum (byi) (40)
is to the east of this; it is struck from the south. To the west of the western
steps are the sonorous stones associated with laudatory declamation; they
face east. To the south of these are bells (jong) and to the south of these are
other bells (boh); these are all arranged in order towards the south. To the
south of all these a drum is set up; it is struck from the east. To the north
of this is the starting drum byi. A drum is set up to the east of the western
steps, it faces south. In the space between the set-up drums are the bamboos
[flutes and mouth organs, presumably]. The hand-drum, taur (41) [struck
by two buttons on two strings] rests on the western cords supporting the
sonorous stones associated with laudatory declamation.? (See pl. 4 (b).)
The chyn probably had but five strings originally, the number being
later increased to seven. The seh had twenty-six strings of silk-gut.
The jeng, which survives particularly in southern and south-western
China,? has thirteen brass strings and seems to be a small version of
the seh; it is the only one of the half-tube zithers which includes the
bamboo determinative in its ideograph. This may perhaps be regarded
as support for the theory that it was originally made from an inter-
node of bamboo divided down the middle into two half-cylinders.
The mouth-organ, sheng,* is always symbolized by a gourd (as the
1 Cf, The History of Music in Sound (H.M.V.), i, side 1. ? Yilii, vii.
3 R. H. van Gulik, ‘Brief Note on the Cheng, the Chinese Small Cither’, Тбуб Ongaku
Kenkyii, ix (Tokyo, 1951), pp. 10-25.
4 Е. W. Eastlake, ‘The "Sho" or Chinese Reed Organ’, China Review, xi (Hong Kong,
1882-3), pp. 33-41; L. C. Goodrich, "The Chinese Shéng and Western Musical Instru-
ments’, China Magazine, xvii (New York, 1941) pp. 10, 11, 14; L. M. Traynor and S.
Kishibe, ‘On the Four Unknown Pipes of the Sho (Mouth Organ) used in Ancient
Japanese Court Music’, Toyo Ongaku Kenkyu, ix (Tokyo, 1951), pp. 22-53.
CHINESE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 91
shiun is by clay, and the flutes by bamboo) and at some period a gourd
formed (and in some places still forms) the wind-chest; among a
number of primitive peoples playing the instrument today, however,
the wind-chest is made of wood, and in China and Japan it is often
made of lacquer. Thirteen or so slender bamboo pipes, differing in
length, are arranged so that each opens into the wind-chest by an
aperture covered by a free reed of copper (pl. 3(f)). A small hole
in the pipe near the reed is stopped at will, so that a sufficient back
pressure can be produced for the reed to be set vibrating when the
pressure in the wind-chest is raised or lowered by blowing into or
sucking the mouth-piece. The reed may be tuned by weighting with
wax (pl. 3(f)). The number of pipes has varied considerably in
China at different epochs, and among non-Chinese tribes the number
is much less at the present time (see pl. 6 (b) and (f)). They are so
arranged that the lower notes can be accompanied by their octave or
fourth or fifth. The tessitura of the modern Chinese instrument is
soprano, but it is very probable that the early forms were of consider-
ably lower pitch. It is known from late Bronze Age figured drums,
probably of the fourth century B.C.,! found in northern Annam,?
that the sheng in use at that time closely resembled the large
forms found among the tribes-people in southern China at the
present day, and accordingly must have had a range approximating
to D-d.
Mention must also be made of the jiun (42), a stringed instrument
used by the Jou for determining the pitch of bells; it consisted of
strings mounted on a resonating table, 7 feet long.
The political unification of China brought about between 250 and
220 в.с. by King Jeng (43) of Chyn (Chyn Shyy Hwangdih) (44) was
followed by the downfall of the unifier's dynasty and the succession
to power of the Hann, during whose reign extensive contacts with
various nomadic peoples on the north-western frontier of the Chinese
empire, as well as with central and western Asia and India, led to the
appearance of new musical instruments in Chinese orchestras. Chief
of these was the pyipar (45), a short lute. It is reported to have been
played on horseback? and seems to have been a short-recked in-
strument with a circular body, four strings, and twelve frets.
1 B. Karlgren, ‘The Date of the Early Dong-so'n Culture’, Bulletin of the Museum
of Far Eastern Archaeology, xiv (Stockholm, 1942), pp. 1-28.
4 у. Goloubew, ‘L’Age du bronze au Tonkin et dans le Nord-Annam', Bulletin de
l'école francaise de l'extréme orient, xxix (Hanoy, 1929), pp. 1-46.
* Liou Shi, Shyhming (46). See L. E. R. Picken, ‘The Origin of the Short Lute’,
Galpin Society Journal, viii (1955), pp. 32-42.
92 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
Jing Farng (47), Imperial Secretary in 45 B.c., devised a stringed
instrument after the fashion of a seh, the joen (48), in function resem-
bling the iun of the Jou, for it was used to fix the sound of the sixty
notes into which Jing Farng divided the octave (p. 96).
Some of the earliest representations of zithers, stone chimes, sheng,
vertical flutes, panpipes, and the drum known as ingguu (49) occur
in the shallow bas-reliefs from Hann times on the walls of the Wuu
(50) family tombs in Shandong (51) province.! On other Hann reliefs
cross-flutes occur. In some of these Hann scenes the chyn is shown
with but five strings.
By late Wey (52) times, that is, some two centuries after the over-
throw of the Chinese empire in the third century A.D. by mercenaries
settled on the northern frontier, the pyipar begins to appear in bas-
reliefs as a four- or five-stringed, pear-shaped, bent-necked lute and
may have resembled the gaku biwa of the Japanese court orchestra—
an instrument over 3 feet in length.
A vertical angular harp also came to China in late Wey times, and
representations are to be seen in the frescoes at Duenhwang (53) and
on many stelae of the sixth century A.D.! According to size the harp
had sixteen to twenty-five strings and is referred to in Chinese texts
as konghour (54) (pl. 5 (a)). It did not establish itself in China as
did other instruments originally imported in court orchestras from
abroad. |
The Shoosooin (Nara, Japan) preserves several Chinese pyipars
of Tarng date (A.D. 600-900). This was an era of extensive inter-
course between China and central Asia. Many new instruments and
many types of orchestra were introduced, usually associated with
their own dancers, jugglers, or acrobats, characteristically costumed.
The size and composition of these orchestras is known from Tarng
frescoes in the Thousand Buddha Caves at Duenhwang and from the
Tarng histories.
Toy globular flutes with two finger holes occur in Tarng kiln-sites
in the neighbourhood of the provincial capital of Syhchuan. Two
specimens are shown in pl. 3 (d); both have the form of quasi-
human heads. They furnish an instance of the survival as toys of
ancient musical instruments whose ritual use has been forgotten.
Relatives of the pyipar in use at the present time, and possibly
introduced in Tarng times, are the yuehchyn (55), a four-stringed flat
! H, E. Fernald, *Ancient Chinese Musical Instruments', Museum Journal (Phila-
delphia, 1936). Reprinted in Hsiao Ch'ien, A Harp with a Thousand Strings (London,
1944), pp. 395-440.
CHINESE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 93
lute, the strings of which are said to be tuned in pairs a fifth apart;
and the sanshyan (56), a three-stringed flat lute, played with a jade
plectrum; the strings are tuned: do fa do or do re la.
To the same period of importation probably belong the various
bowed instruments, of which a considerable variety are in use in
China today. Bowed instruments are first mentioned in Persia in the
ninth century,! and a reference to a bowed zither, related to the jeng,
occurs in a Chinese account of a Khitan orchestra playing at the
Chinese court about A.D. 900. An instrument of this kind was in fairly
common use in Pekin up to fifty years ago.?
Bowed lutes (that is, fiddles) arose at a slightly later date, and all
varieties found in China are known collectively as hwuchyn (57)
(‘barbarian’ chyn), suggesting that the instrument came to China
from central Asia. The e//hwu (58) is perhaps the commonest form of
hwuchyn. It has a hexagonal tubular wooden body a few inches long,
one end of which is covered with snakeskin, the other end is open;
the whole acts as a resonator. The handle is inserted into the body at
right angles to its long axis. There are two strings of silk-gut tuned a
fifth apart, stopped by the fleshy part of the fingers, and the hair of the
bow passes between the strings. The instrument is played with con-
stant vibrato and glissandi and has a veiled tone of great beauty.
It is interesting to note that a dulcimer in use in south China today
bears the name of yangchyn (59), the ‘foreign’ zither. It resembles the
Persian dulcimer known as santir, but its distribution on the south-
eastern seaboard suggests that it reached China from the sea rather
than from central Asia.
HISTORY OF THEORY AND NOTATION
The writings of Leu Buhwei from 239 B.c. contain an account of
the making of the pitch-pipes by Ling Luen (60): Jing means music
or musician, luen is а rule or to rule.* The name and the person were
invented in the course of that scientific reconstruction by the Chinese
of their own prehistory which occurred in the period of the Warring
States already referred to (p. 87). There are no grounds for regarding
1 Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments, p. 216.
2 A. C. Moule, op. cit., p. 120. In relation to a number of points in the history of
Chinese instruments see T. Norlind, ‘Beiträge zur chinesischen Instrumentengeschichte ',
Svensk Tidskrift fór Musikforskning, xv (1933), pp. 48-83. See also: F. A. Kuttner,
‘The Musical Significance of Archaic Chinese Jades of the Pi-Disk Type’, Artibus Asiae,
xvi 1/2 (Ascona, 1953), pp. 25—50.
3 A hwuchyn leads the ensemble in The History of Music in Sound, i, side 3 (b).
* G. Haloun, Tocharer und Indogermanen (Leipzig, 1926), pp. 156 ff.
94 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
the passage so often quoted from Leu Buhwei as other than a
rationalization; it does not concern a historic figure nor does it
include any precise geographical indications—the terms usually trans-
lated as place names are in fact general terms for geographical
features:
He [Music Ruler] gathered bamboos in a valley on a mountain pass,
taking those grown of uniform bore and thickness, and cut between two
nodes; the length of the piece being three inches and nine tenths, he blew
it, making this to be the do of Yellow Bell [the fundamental of the Chinese
system].!
At the present time the scale most characteristic of the Far East (as
defined at the beginning of this chapter) is pentatonic without semi-
tones, consisting of three whole tones and two minor thirds, the
thirds being separated by one or two whole tones. The scale has the
form:
do re mi sol la.
The ancient names for this series, as pronounced today, are:
gong shang jeau jyy yeu. (62)
The evidence for the existence of five-note melodies in early Jou times
is confined to references to the ‘five degrees’, and to the names of the
five notes in texts compiled in the third or fourth centuries В.С. The
same texts contain references to the seven sounds or the seven ' begin-
nings’, and it has been supposed that these indicate that a seven-note
scale with two semitones was known even in Jou times. The first
definition of the notes is that given by Symaa Chian in the second
century B.C.
The process by which the lowest note (Yellow Bell) engendered the
rest of the notes in the Chinese system is also described in the writings
of Leu Buhwei: 'To the three parts of the generator add one part,
making the superior generation. From the three parts of the generator
reject one part, making the lower generation.'? The interpretation of
this passage is that the complete note-series (of which the names are
also given) was obtained by cutting bamboo tubes (of the same
diameter) to lengths calculated by alternately subtracting and adding
one-third of the length of the preceding tube, so that the ratio of the
length of any pipe to that of the next in the series was as 3:2 or as 3:4.
The notes given by pipes two-thirds of the length of their predecessors
in the series were said to belong to the inferior generation; these are
1 [ец Shyh Chuenchiou, v. Guu Yueh (61).
* Leu Shyh Chuenchiou, vi. Inliuh (63).
HISTORY OF THEORY AND NOTATION 95
the six female Jeu (64), made (according to legend) from the singing
of the female roc. The six remaining notes were said to belong to the
superior generation; these are the six male /iuh (65) made (according
to legend) from the singing of the male roc. Theoretically this pro-
cedure yielded a chain of ascending fifths and descending fourths:
C D E Ft Сї Af
PNG NA NB хе Dg
and, if arranged in ascending order, the note sequence: Е, ЕЎ, С,
G#, A, Aft, B, C, C£, D, Dł, E.
The /iuhleu (66) (the complete note-series) was not a ‘chromatic
scale', but an array of all the notes in the Chinese musical firmament
of the third century B.c. The process of generation described in the
writings of Leu Buhwei presumably provided an approximate
theory, satisfying the desire for order of those engaged at that time
in systematizing the sum total of human knowledge. Similarly, the
two ‘whole-tone scales’ of the male and female Пий (both leu and
liuh are referred to collectively as the twelve liuh) were the result of
a classification of the series into two groups by origin; there is no
evidence that the Chinese musical genius at any time found expression
in melodies referable to whole-tone scales.
It is certain that melodies making use of various scales must have
existed before the /iuhleu. The latter provided a theoretical means of
deriving an array of notes, any one of which (again in theory) could
act as do (that is, gong) in the five-note series. A pentatonic scale has
five loci of modal inversion: that is, the series may begin (and end) on
each of the five notes in turn, giving five modes. Each mode takes the
name of the note which is finalis, which ends melodies in that mode.
It is probable that the fact that different melodies were in different
modes had been recognized at a very early date, and that transposi-
tion of the modes, changing the liuh selected as tonic, was practised.
Obviously, variation in the unit of length on which the length of the
fundamental pitch-pipe was based at different times must have meant
that absolute pitch was never attained. Under the Jou the minimal
length of the Yellow Bell pipeis estimated to have been 20 centimetres.
Europeans have accepted pitches of F (Amiot), E (Courant), D
(van Aalst), E (Mahillon).! For convenience the value of Е will be
adopted here.
The fact that so many of the /iuAleu bear the name of jong (bell)
suggests that part of the original note-series may have been a set of
! For references see Bibliography, pp. 482-3.
96 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
bells (like the celestas or kettle-gong chimes in the Balinese orchestra).
It is known that by 500 B.c. bells were cast in sets of six or seven
members bearing, in some cases, names similar to those of bells in the
liuhleu series. It is also possible that the names of the /iuhleu were
originally applied to a note-series differing from the /iuhleu of Leu
Buhwei.
Hann Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) to Swei Dynasty (581-618)
While references in Hwainantzyy (67) suggest that a scale of seven
notes was known in the second or first century B.C., there can be no
doubt as to its use in the time of Jing Farng in 40 B.C. ; nor can there
be any doubt about the practice of transposition. Jing Farng gives
an exact definition: ‘At the Winter solstice one takes F (Yellow Bell)
as do, Gas re, A as mi, C as so, D as la, E as si (becoming do) and
В as fe (becoming so), as the notes of the scale. Since the /iuh(s)
corresponding to the day act in turn as the fundamental, re and so
follow (the fundamental) in accordance with their nature.”
It was under the Hann emperor Wuudih (68) (141-87 B.c.) that the
Imperial Bureau of Music (Yuehfuu) (69) was founded. This was
responsible for supervising rites, ceremonies, and music of all kinds
(foreign, court, and folk-music); for preparing archives of national
melodies; and for establishing and maintaining the correct pitch of
the liuhleu. In an attempt to bring the last note in the cycle of the
liuh nearer to coincidence with the octave of the fundamental, Jing
Farng in 40 B.c. increased the number of Пий from 12 to 60. But even
when continued through five cycles, the twelfth fifth of the fifth
cycle would still differ from the octave of the fundamental—always
supposing that a stringed instrument such as Jing Farng used (the
joen) could be made to produce accurately the sixty theoretical liuh.
That some notation or tablature existed in early Hann times is clear
from the beginning of the story, already referred to (pp. 87-88) of
Duke Ling (70) of Wey, recounted by Symaa Chian. Ling heard a zither
tune played by spirits and requested his music master, Jiuan (71), to
write it down for him. Jiuan did so and asked for time to practise it.
Symaa Chian, writing in the second century B.c., was therefore fami-
liar with some method of zither notation.
The decay of the practice of ritual transposition during the next
three or four hundred years may perhaps be correlated with the dis-
turbed state of the empire during the period of the Three Kingdoms.
1 Maurice Courant, ‘Essai historique sur la musique classique des Chinois” in
Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavignac and La Laurencie), 1'* partie, i (Paris, 1913),
p. 94
HISTORY OF THEORY AND NOTATION 97
Not until the Swei (72) dynasty (581-618) do we again find explicit
reference to transposition in relation to the lunar calendar.
In the early part of the sixth century a further theoretical extension
of the series of Пий took place, the cycle of fifths being extended to
360 liuh; but while some attempt seems to have been made to put into
practice the system of Jing Farng, the system of 360 Пий was un-
doubtedly of theoretical interest only.
In 587, Jenq Yih (73), Duke of Peh (74), in a memorial on the sub-
ject of ancient and contemporary musical practice, showed how to
vary the tuning of the pyipar (twisting the string-posts', that is, the
tuning-pegs) so as to extend the range available, and make 'twelve
yunn corresponding to the twelve liuh’; and the subsequent forma-
tion of eighty-four systems by transposition, each of the twelve liuh
serving as initial.1 The term ‘system’ (diaw) (75) includes both mode
and key in the Western sense; that is to say, for the Chinese as for
the Greeks the notion of a change of mode and a change of pitch were
inseparable. The twelve keys (Е, ЕЎ, б, G#, А, Аў, В, C, C£, D, D#,
E) are known in Chinese as the twelve yunn (76); the seven modes are
the seven diaw (the seven different kinds of systems) and this expres-
sion is identical with that used for the total number of different
systems (scales in the Western sense) possible, 12x 7 = 84 diaw. If
this appears confusing, it is so even to the Chinese. This is due to
the confusion between a change in key and a change in mode, which
arises because on an instrument with a fixed scale (a bell-chime, for
example), a change in mode must also mean a change in pitch, that
is a change in key. In due course the proposal made by Jenq Yih was
accepted, the legitimacy of the seven-note scale was recognized, and
the practice of transposition was re-established, although this did not
receive imperial favour and take effect until the next dynasty, that of
the Tarng.
Tarng Dynasty (618—907)
In 628, the emperor Taytzong (77) approved the eighty-four sys-
tems: the seven notes from below upwards 'form a scale: yunn. In
general, the twelve systems of do (that is the do mode in its twelve
keys) all have the true fundamental, they have no sound lower than
the fundamental. . . . The twelve systems of re all contain a note
lower than the initial, this is the fundamental. The twelve systems of
mi have two notes lower than the initial; these are the fundamental
! Courant, op. cit, p. 96, mistranslates. For further discussion of central Asian
influence in Chinese music see H. G. Farmer, *Reciprocal influences in music twixt
the Far and Middle East', Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1934), pp. 327-42.
98 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
and ге.” Each Пий starts a scale of the type: Е, С, A, B, C, D, E, Е,
and each of these twelve scales is called a yunn. Each liuh also acts as
each degree of the standard scale in turn, forming the initial to seven
systems (modes in the Western sense) known as diaw. Sixty of the
diaw are principal systems founded on the five points of modal inver-
sion corresponding to the five-note scale; the remaining twenty-four
are complementary systems founded on the auxiliary notes. The dif-
ferent systems are defined by naming the /iuh which is do, followed
by the degree which names the mode. Thus ‘ Yellow Bell (F) do’ is the
do mode on Е, that is, with Е as initial (and fundamental); *D£ re’
is the re mode оп ОЎ, that is, with D# as fundamental (do) and re of
the scale of D sharp (E£) as initial.
A single Tarng music manuscript has been found in the famous
Thousand Buddha Caves at Duenhwang.? It includes ‘Emptying-
the-cup Music' and is apparently written in a tonal notation, some
elements of which are indistinguishable from numerals. This notation
has not as yet been deciphered. It has affinity with the Sonq (78)
notation used by Jiang Kwei (79) (p. 109) and with that of Ju Shii (80)
and other Sonq writers, as well as with the gaku biwa notation of the
Japanese court orchestra (p. 147). The structure of this composition
will be considered later (p. 105). A tune of this name is mentioned in
the section on rites and music in the Tarng History (190).
Sonq (960-1126) and Southern Song (1127-1279) Dynasties
From the end of the ninth century onwards, the imperial music
again fell into disorder, and a statement made in 959 reveals that only
seven notes, forming the Yellow Bell scale, are in use; the other
eighty-three systems have disappeared. Of many hundreds of melodies
in the eighty-four systems only nine survived and all of these were
attributed to Yellow Bell (Е) do. During the decline of the Sonq, the
invading Tartars were practising a simplified version of Tarng ritual
music, basing their tuning on the pyipar. The Jin (81), who conquered
the Sonq, made use of a set of twelve hymns for all ritual circum-
stances, comparable to the twelve hymns of the Tarng. In the thir-
teenth century the Mongol invaders were again practising ritual
transposition.
In addition to the pyipar notation already mentioned, the Sonq
1 Courant, op. cit., p. 97.
? Bibliothéque nationale de France; Collection Pelliot, No. 3808 v°. Professor In
Faaluu of Pekin National University possesses a photographic copy which I have
examined and of which I possess a written copy.
HISTORY OF THEORY AND NOTATION 99
poet and musician, Jiang Kwei,! made use of another notation, prob-
ably of very great antiquity, namely that of the names of the Пий. In
four of his songs he also uses two notes sharpened by one or two
commas, thereby extending the scale to nine notes (p. 110). In all
cases the fractional tones are approached from, and quitted for, the
note below, so that they are heard as a microtonal sharpening of
two of the notes of a seven-note scale.
Jiang Kwei is also the first composer for the seven-stringed zither
whose work survives in a contemporary tablature (pl. 5 (b)). This is
based on these principles: each string is represented by one of the
numerals from one to seven (82); the action of the right hand—
whether the string is plucked with a forward or a backward motion,
and which of the fingers 1-4 is performing the operation—is indicated
by abbreviated characters written over, under, or embracing the num-
ber of the string concerned; the string may be open—indicated by an
abbreviated character written over the complex—or stopped, in which
case the finger of the left hand doing the stopping, and the point of
stopping in relation to the nodes of the string, are indicated; the posi-
tion adopted when playing harmonics is indicated by a prefatory
character, as is the return to the usual position. The tablature of
Jiang Kwei differs from that in use today in the very restricted use
of ornaments and of ligatures, both of which are produced by shifting
the position of stopping after the string has been set in motion. Jiang
Kwei's tablature is transcribed and the work described on p. 111.
The notation most widely used for flute music and songs, up to the
end of the empire and the founding of the republic in 1912, first ap-
peared in China in Sonq times. Ju Shii makes use of this notation,
taken from books of popular music, and equates it with the other
Song notation already referred to, possibly developed for the pyipar.
Yuan Dynasty (84) (1271-1368)
In the first Mongol dynasty of the Yuan, the ritual music was
carefully preserved and the practice of transposition cultivated. It was
under this dynasty that the diatonic major scale was introduced into
China as the main mode, and it is in the flute notation associated with
this scale that all music of the theatre is written to this day. The
characters for the note-series: c' d' e' f' g' a' b' c" 4”, are given in the
Glossary of Characters (84a); alternative forms are omitted.
In the latter part of the Yuan dynasty, and from the rise of the
! Bairshyr Dawren Gecheu, Syhbuh Tsongkan (83) (Shanghai, 1929).
100 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
Ming onwards, the practice of ritual transposition again fell into
disuse.
Ming Dynasty (1368-1628)
During the Ming dynasty there appeared what is perhaps the most
remarkable of Chinese theoretical works on music: The Handbook of
Music (85) by Prince Ju Tzayyuh (86) of the house of Jeng (87). This
work, running into nineteen volumes, is a complete survey of music,
dance, and ritual in ancient China. It attempted a reconstruction of
the music of Jou times, providing full scores of many ritual hymns,
and proposed an equal-tempered chromatic scale a hundred years
before Werckmeister made the same proposal in Europe. Not content
with establishing a just scale, Ju Tzayyuh reached the concept of equal
temperament and succeeded in calculating values for the length and
diameter of a series of equally tempered Пий: an equal-tempered
chromatic scale of two octaves.
This dynasty saw the publication of superb collections of zither
tunes in tablature.? The number of abbreviated characters in use had
increased considerably from Sonq times, judging by the single ex-
ample of Sonq tablature from Jiang Kwei. This was due to the develop-
ment of the finger technique and to the increased use of ornaments
and ligatures of various kinds.
Ching Dynasty (88) (1644-1911)
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the reign of Kangshi
(89), the ritual music was restored, and the practice of transposition
reintroduced. It was also at this time, Tzayyuh forgotten, that the
octave was divided into fourteen steps, in an attempt to combine the
process of derivation through the cycle of fifths with the octave
standard. This scale differed from that of the flutes and chimes on the
one hand and of the stringed instruments on the other, and the official
melodies of the Ching cannot be played on an equal-tempered key-
board instrument without gross distortion.
At the present time, the ritual music survives only, if at all, in the
Confucian temple at the home of Confucius at Cheufuh (90). Know-
ledge of the systems has decayed until a majority of the melodies in
the modern repertoire of the seven-stringed zither are in the do mode
on F. Even among zither players, who as a class are knowledgeable in
the old music, confusion exists between a tuning, a key, and a mode.
! Yuehliuh Chyuanshu (85).
? В. H. van Gulik, op. cit., p. 85.
HISTORY OF THEORY AND NOTATION 101
In addition to staff notation imported from the West, the Chinese
also make use of a sort of sol-fa system developed by the Japanese,
representing the notes of the diatonic scale by the numerals 1-7. For
homophonic music this is typographically simpler than staff notation.
Practically all collections of popular songs published in the past ten
years in China have been written in this notation. The first four bars
of Ex. 209 (p. 127) would be written as follows:
5]5 65 4 42|5 0 45|5 65 4 42/5 0
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC
Jou and Chyn Dynasties (before 206 в.с.)
No specimens of music survive in any text earlier than Tarng times,
so that our knowledge of early and late Jou music is limited to
descriptions of orchestras, names of songs associated with a particu-
lar ritual or with particular occasions, &c. A passage from the Shujing
(91), the Canon of Documents, provides support for the view that
Chinese music was essentially ‘logogenic’ in character at a time con-
siderably earlier than the period of classical opera, in describing which
Sachs makes use of this term.! In Shuenn's Code (92) we read: ' Poetry
expresses the will; song prolongs the expression; music depends on
the prolongation.' In a subsequent chapter? we are given some idea of
the nature of ritual music:
Kwei [the director of music] said, when the sonorous stones are struck
lightly or heavily, when chyn and seh are struck lightly or heavily, and their
sounds alternate with human voices, the spirits of the ancestors come: the
guest of Yu [the emperor Shuenn] takes his place, the crowd of princes
display their virtue in mutual courtesy. Down below, the flutes [double
vertical flutes] and the small drums play together as soon as the signal is
given by the wooden trough and cease as soon as the signal is given by the
tiger-scraper. The mouth-organs and the bells play in the intervals.
Prince Tzayyuh, writing before 1595, chose the 'Hymn for the
Sacrifice to Confucius', as played in the sixteenth century, to illustrate
the ancient practice of transposition. The melody dates from the four-
teenth century and may retain something of the character of the cor-
responding hymn performed in Tarng times. To suppose, as did
Tzayyuh, that it represents the music of the Jou, 2,000 years before
his time, would appear unwise. The hymn illustrates not only trans-
position into five keys other than the initial key (each key being one
1 The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, p. 137.
2 Shujing, Yushu Yihjyi (93).
102 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
tone higher than the preceding key) but also the constant distance of
a fourth between the accompanying orchestra and the voices. Ву a
brilliant emendation of a passage from the Joulii which, though it
made cosmological sense as it stood, made no musical sense, Tzayyuh
produces the following formula: ‘The instruments play in F, the chant
is in A sharp . . . for the sacrifice to the celestial spirits. For the sacri-
fice to the terrestrial spirits the instruments play in G, the chant is in
С... "1 Sachs points out the similarity of this practice to that of one
type of medieval organum: the organum (originally an instrument)
accompanied the cantus at the fourth or fifth below.
Ех. 177
; = ; ,
dette
This is the first stanza of the hymn quoted by Tzayyuh; the bar
lines mark the ends of the four-word lines and the commas mark the
rhymes. In this type of transposition the melody is transposed in the
Western sense, without change in mode. But Tzayyuh also gives an
example of transposition involving a change in mode as well as in
pitch. While the evidence that the Jou did anything of the kind is
slender, the effect is enchanting, as the following example shows. It
is the ‘Hymn for the Sacrifice to the Imperial Ancestors’, first in its
original form (do mode on F) and then in the first modal transposition
(mi mode on D)?
е!
ourant, op. cit., р. 102. ? [bid., pp. 114, 115.
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC 103
One of the most remarkable aspects of the work of Tzayyuh is his
reconstruction of the orchestral accompaniment to the ritual melodies,
based on his own interpretations of ancient texts and on those of the
Sonq Confucian philosopher, Ju Shii. Of this reconstruction perhaps
the most brilliant feature is the elucidation of the ancient practice of
prolonging a note, on plucked stringed instruments (such as chyn and
seh) whose sound quickly decays, by means of a rapidly executed
figuration—the procedure known as tsawmann (94). In a phrase used
by performers of his day to tune their instruments, the Prince dis-
covered what he believed to be the vestiges of the old tsawmann: the
intervals of the octave and the fifth were played in succession to words
meaning ‘the moon is bright, the wind is soft’. The following example
sets out in score the opening line of the second stanza of the ‘Hymn
from the Temple of the Ancestors’. The figuration differs in rainor
details from that given by Courant, and the mouth-organ part has
been converted into chords of octave and fifth or fourth. The pitch
of the mouth-organ may well be an octave lower than that at which
it is written.!
Ex. 180
Voice
Sheng
Chyn
Seh
In addition to the ritual orchestra already described, there was a
military orchestra, which included many varieties of drums, bells, and
cymbals; this was also used in various exorcistic rites.
Hann Dynasty (202 B.c.-A.D. 220)
The imperial orchestra of Hann times comprised four different
1 б, E. Moule, ‘Notes on the Ting-chi, or half-yearly sacrifice to Confucius’, Journal
of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, xxxiii (Shanghai, 1901), pp.
37-73, may be consulted for an account of the Confucian ritual as it survived at the
turn of the century. '
104 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
sections and employed more than 800 musicians. A great increase in
the number and variety of drums in use as compared with the previous
dynasty is to be noted; their designation by local names suggests that
regional music was played.
During this period occurred the first stages in the evolutionary pro-
cess which led finally to the development of Chinese opera. As in the
evolution of Greek drama, a performance originally of religious and
even of magical significance came to be repeated for the sake of its
value as entertainment. In Jou times there had existed a ceremony of
exorcism performed by a wizard, the fangshiang (95): this consisted
in dances and songs executed by a troop of performers masked as
animals and led by the wizard. It was made use of on two occasions:
in the annual nuo (96) ceremony for driving away disease; and at
funerals, to drive away the ghost. In Hann texts there appears for
the first time the expression koeileei (97) used, apparently, as a
synonym for fangshiang, and this term survives to the present
(though written with graphic variants) as a term for marionettes of
all kinds (98). What is unusual in the history of the Chinese theatre
is the importance of the puppet theatre as an intermediate step
between ceremony and entertainment by human actors.! In Hann
times the musical accompaniment for the fangshianq-koeileei per-
formance of the gentry probably consisted of an orchestra of strings,
flute, and handbells. The strings were chyn, seh, pyipar, and jeng,
and the flute was a vertical flute, shiau (99). This was the band used
for military and general purposes in the Court. The shiau and hand-
bells were lacking from the popular orchestra, however, which in-
cluded the mouth-organ and the cross-flute, dyi (100). It seems
probable that in the transformation of the koeileei from an exorcistic
ceremony to an entertainment of songs, dances, and music, there
was also a change in the status of its music from that of the court
to that of the common people.
Tarng Dynasty (618—907)
The only specimen? of Tarng music supposedly transcribed from a
contemporary document, and having some claim to be regarded as
authentic, is the melody for the first song in the Book of Songs, printed
by Prince Tzayyuh in 1596. According to Tzayyuh the melody was
taken from the edition of the classics engraved on stone in the ancient
1 Souen K'ai-ti, L'origine et le développement du théâtre des marionnettes chinoises’,
Bulletin du centre franco-chinois d'études sinologiques, i (Pekin, 1944), pp. 81-105
(summary in French) (194).
2 The melodies preserved by Ju Shii may perhaps be included here. Seé p. 109.
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC 105
capital, Shi An (101), in Tarng times. Engraving began in 835 and was
finished in 837.1
This melody is one of those which Tzayyuh scores for drum, clap-
per, seh, sonorous stones, and voice. Another score is for voice, chyn,
seh, two sorts of bells, sonorous stones of two kinds, clapper, mortar,
tiger, drum, and small drum. The tune is remarkable in that it con-
stantly avoids re but makes frequent use of both the auxiliary notes,
fe and si. The chords supplied by Tzayyuh use only notes іп the mode.
Each four-syllable line of the poem is separated from the next by two
bars of percussion, and there are 3} bars of percussion at the end of
each of the five stanzas. The first stanza only is quoted here. In
Waley’s translation the text runs:
‘Fair, fair’, cry the ospreys
On the island in the river,
‘Lovely is this noble lady,
Fit bride for our lord’.?
The mode is mi on F. The voice sings the top part.
An indisputably authentic relic of Tarng music survives in the
manuscript from the Thousand Buddha Caves at Duenhwang already
referred to (p. 98). From external features this is a suite in eight move-
ments, headed as follows: ‘Emptying-the-Cup Music; another slow
tune; another tune; quick tune; another tune; another slow tune;
quick tune; another slow tune.’ These terms may well have a technical
significance.? With the exception of the first section (‘Emptying-the-
Cup Music’) and the last, each movement includes a repeat and a
1 Professor E. С. Pulleyblank, Professor of Chinese Language and History in the
University of Cambridge, has recently (November 1954) examined the stone-engraved
ninth-century text of the Book of Songs in Shi Anon my behalf. He reports that there is no
trace of notation on the stones. This discrepancy between Prince Tzayyuh’s ascription
and the surviving stone-text at Shi An has also been noted by Professor Yang Inliou of
the Central Institute for Musicological Research, Pekin. Thus the authenticity of Prince
Tzayyuh’s ‘Tarng’ melody remains unconfirmed.
? A. Waley, The Book of Songs (London, 1937), p. 81.
? This is undoubtedly the case for the term here translated as ‘quick’, which survives
as a designation for final movements in the suites that form part of the repertoire of the
Imperial Musicians of the Japanese Court (p. 147). (See H. Tanabe, Nikon Ongaku
Kowa (Tokyo, 1926), pp. 534 ff.). It would be of the greatest interest to compare the
surviving part-books of the Japanese versions of the ‘Emptying-the-Cup Music’ with the
Tarng manuscript.
106 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
coda. In the Tarng History this work (or a work with this title) is
specifically referred to as a dahcheu (102) and is said to consist of at
least ten movements. |
The structure of this work corresponds to some extent with what
is known from other sources of the structure of the ‘extended
melody’ (dahcheu) of Tarng and Sonq times.! These orchestral com-
positions consisted of a number of movements (piann) (103), each of
which might be divisible into several subsections. The character of
these varied in the different types of dahcheu. The Tarng poet, Bair
Jiuyih (Po Chü-I) (105) refers to: ‘free prelude’, ‘middle prelude’,
and poh (106) or ‘ broaching the theme’. Some types include as many
as twelve different movements. This structure has been compared
with that of the suite in western Europe; but a more direct comparison
would seem to be with the structure of Indian rágas, with the Turkish
fasıl, and with the nüba, as it survives in Morocco and Algeria?
With regard to this last type of composition, it is interesting to note
that the dahcheu occasionally included vocal movements. It is surely
not without significance that the extended melodies of the seven-
stringed zither repertoire are always referred to today as dahcheu. As
we shall see, their structure offers points of resemblance to the struc-
ture of Tarng and Sonq dahcheu as inferred from literary sources, and
it is reasonable to suppose that the zither compositions of the present
day, lasting twenty to thirty minutes, echo an instrumental form
which flourished from the seventh to the twelfth centuries.
From the period of the northern Chyi (107) (550-77) to the end of
the Tarng (905), the music current in court circles on all but state
occasions was known as Awuyueh (108): barbarian music. The fact
that this foreign music was associated with the life of the court makes
it improbable that the foreign styles had as yet become current among
the people, though some influence cannot be excluded even at this
early date. Since the popular music was essentially secular, it is not
described in any of the records; but it seems probable that the musical
accompaniment of the koeileei performances in Tarng times was a
survival of the court military orchestra of Hann and Wey times.*
The Tarng emperor Shiuantzong (109) (713-55) maintained a troop
of 300 actors, founded by himself in 714 and referred to as the Pear
Garden; and to this period are traditionally ascribed certain melodies
1 In Faaluu, * Tarng-Sonq Dahcheu jy Laiyuan jyi chyi Tzuujy', Wuuchang Hwajong
Dahshyue Gwoshyue Yanjiou Luennwen Juankan, i. 4 (Dahlii, 1945) (104).
2 See p. 98 and Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, p. 290. A comparison
with the Turkish fasıl is in some respects closer than with the pesrev, instanced by Sachs.
* Souen K'ai-ti, op. cit.
107
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC
still current in the Chinese theatre. The following example is part of a
duet with accompaniment for cross flute, drum, and gong, transcribed
from a gramophone record and ascribed to Shiuantzong himself.! It
occurs in the opera, The Little Shepherd:
Ex. 182
Voice
The purely pentatonic character of this and other operatic melodies
has been regarded as evidence of their antiquity, but as the examples
> and the Song
cry the ospreys
РЕД
,
fair
melodies of the next section show, it is questionable whether any such
deduction is legitimate. One would not expect the music of the Court
“Еа,
of the Tarng (?) melody
of the time of Shiuantzong to be purely pentatonic. On the other hand
such a melody might well be an echo of the popular koeileei music of
tre et musique modernes en Chine
182 is
Théá
,
Soulié de Morant and A. Gailhard
кб.
(Paris, 1926), p. 134. See M. Granet, Fétes et chansons anciennes de la Chine (Paris, 1919)
for commentary (p. 269) and translation. A slightly different version of Ex.
recorded in The History of Music in Sound, i, side 2 (c).
108 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
Tarng times, which indeed seems to have provided the basis for the
development of classical opera (largely pentatonic) in Sonq times.
TABLE SHOWING THE COMPOSITION OF
VARIOUS TARNG ORCHESTRAS
(after In Faaluu, op. cit.)
Kanggwo (207)
Gauchang (208)
(E. of Turfan)
=
©
©
e
ЭЯ
=
=
3
E
S
©
=
Orchestra
Yannyueh
(116)
Chingshang
(199)
Shiliang (201)*
[India]
Tianjwu (202)
[Korea]
Gaulih (203)
[Shinjiang] (1)
Jioutzy (204)
(Kutcha)
[Bukhara]
Angwo (205)
[Shinjiang]
Shuleh (206)
| (Kashgar)
[Samarkand]
[Shinjiang]
Instruments
1
—
Sonorous stones .
Stone-chimes , as 1 во
Bells . д А 1 : t
Bell-chimes + Ss 1 2
Iron chimes А 1 2 «m
Conches . š 2 хо
Copper horns 1
Long vertical
flutes. . 1 2
Short vertical
flutes. е 1 GE 1 oe 2
Cross flutes : 1 2 1 т 2
Chyr flutes А Be 2 Mm
Free reeds E 1 2 1 T cay a sis
Other reeds = №20) 1 3(1) 1 б. 2
Halftube- and
board-zithers . 1 4(1) 28 200 eis "n do БЕ
Lutes z > 1 1 1 1 1 2
Vertical harps . | 2(1) 1 2(1) 3(1) 1 1 Ж. 1
Drums д „ № 302) 1 3(1) | 3 | 4(1) | 80) | 201) | 501) | 20)
The number of each sort of instrument used is shown in the appropriate
column. Where a figure in brackets is given, this is the number of each of
as many kinds of instrument as are shown by the number outside the
bracket. Thus, under ‘Drums’, the Jioutzy orchestra contained one of
each of 8 different types of drum; this is indicated in the form: 8(1). The
category ‘Other reeds’ includes both oboe- and clarinet-type reeds.
Though practically nothing of the music of Tarng times has sur-
vived, a great deal is known from contemporary accounts of the
nature of the orchestras employed in the palace, the number of per-
formers taking part, the costumes they, and the dancers and jugglers
associated with particular orchestras, wore, and the names of the
melodies they played.! The composition of these orchestras has re-
cently been reviewed? and the table above is modified from a table
1 H. Trefzger, ‘Das Musikleben der Tang-Zeit’, Sinica, xiii (Stuttgart, 1938). See also
Courant, op. cit., p. 192, Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, p. 150, and
Waley, The Life and Times of Po Chü-I (London, 1949), pp. 150-5. ? In Faaluu, op. cit.
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC 109
in this review. Foreign orchestras in China during this dynasty in-
cluded orchestras from India, Bokhara, East Turkestan, Cambodia,
Burma, Annam, Tibet, and Mongolia.
Song Dynasties (960-1279)
This is the first period in the history of Chinese music from which
printed music of the time survives to the present. The famous Sonq
Confucian philosopher Ju Shii, whose ideas exhibit some affinity with
the monadology of Leibniz and who may indeed have directly in-
fluenced Leibniz,! left twelve melodies for twelve songs from the
Book of Songs.? The following is a setting of the first song, of which
we have already seen what is possibly a Tarng version (p. 105):3
This melody is in several respects remarkable. It is heptatonic con-
sidered as a whole, but the first stanza is entirely pentatonic and the
last stanza is pentatonic except for the last line: the mode is stated to
be re on D sharp but is in fact a mixture of this and do on F. Ju Shii
ascribes all twelve melodies to a Tarng source and to the reign of the
emperor Shiuantzong, Kaiyuan (713-741).
A figure from Sonq times deserving of much more attention than
he has as yet received, either from Chinese or from Western scholars,
is the poet and composer, Jiang Kwei, the White Stone Taoist. His
works include Nine Songs for Yueh (111) (Yueh is the ancient name
for Jehjiang and Jiangshi Provinces) written in liuhleu notation; а
song with zither accompaniment and interlude (p. 111); and a number
of tunes in the Sonq pyipar(?)-notation which, though they have
received some attention,! have not as yet been transcribed.
! E, R. Hughes, The Great Learning and the Mean-in-Action (London, 1942), p. 167.
2 Ju Shii, Yilii Jingjuann Tongjiee Shyyueh Pian (110). Reprinted in the Yueh Dean
(168) of Hwang Tzuoo (1692). 3 Stanza-divisions following Waley, Songs, p. 81.
* Shiah Cherngdao, *Bairshyr Gecheu Parngpuu Biann', Yannjing Shyuebaw (113)
(Peiping, 1932). According to a recent report from Pekin (Dahgong Baw, 7. ix, 1954), this
notation has now been deciphered; and a substantial body of Sonq music in the same
notation has newly been discovered.
110 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
Of the nine songs for the people of Yueh, the first six make use of
only the seven notes of the diatonic scale, the mode being do or re in
various keys. The text of the following example describes the singer
awaiting the goddess of the Wuuchang Gulf (112), pouring a libation
and riding the waves. The bar-lines mark the end of the lines (deter-
mined from the sense and from the verse-form) ; the comma indicates
the caesura; and the double bar marks the ends of the stanzas. The
mode is re on G sharp.
Ex. 184 The Spirit of the Billows
Four of the songs of Jiang Kwei make use of fractional tones
(р. 99). In this example the mode is Ja on C. Fractional tones are
indicated by diamond-shaped notes, following Levis.
Ex. 185 General Parng
The single song with zither accompaniment by the same composer
is prefaced by explicit directions for tuning the seven strings to the
scale: Е GA В аер. The song is entitled ‘Old Regrets’. It is a
woman whosings, considering with bitterness the passing of her beauty.
After the first stanza there is an interlude in harmonics for zither
alone; at the end of this the normal position is resumed and the voice
enters once more. In the transcription below (Ex. 186) the tablature
has been emended, where necessary. Ali notes not a direct transcrip-
1 J, Н. Levis, The Foundations of Chinese Musical Art (Peiping, 1936), p. 175.
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC 111
tion from the text are printed small in the transcription.! The bar-lines
mark the end of the lines (determined from the sense); the double bar
marks the end of the stanzas (explicit in the layout of the text); and
the comma marks a caesura. The tablature does not indicate the dura-
tion of the notes; the minim values are supplied on the principle that
a note at the end of a line is likely to be prolonged for at least two
beats of the basic note-value. A change in the direction of the stems
of successive notes at the same pitch, but played in different positions,
indicates that the timbre is changed. Though the finger technique is
rudimentary compared with later zither technique, the variety of posi-
tions in which the same note is taken, and hence the variety of timbre,
is very considerable. If the example is played on the piano, the sus-
taining pedal and una corda should be depressed until the end of each
*bar', and as much variety in touch as possible should be given to
notes at the same pitch. The voice presumably reduced the zither part
to the range of one octave.
From various sources it is known that the street performances of
the koeileei in Sonq times were accompanied by the music known as
chingyueh (114).? This was the term used by Swei and Tarng writers
to cover the old-style (non-ritual) music of Hann and Wey times; the
term persisted until Sonq times and was used in contrast to hwuyueh
1 Versions in the Syhbuh Tsongkan and in the Cheangtsuen Tsongshu have both been
utilized in making this transcription. See pl. 5 (b). * Souen K'ai-ti, op. cit.
112 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
(barbarian music). The chingyueh orchestra included several instru-
ments lacking in the imperial band of Sonq times, such as the fang-
sheang (115) (a chime of sixteen pieces of iron),! sheng, dyi, &c. It
seems it was in Sonq times that the evolution from the puppet to
the human theatre occurred, and that this development took place
through an intermediate step of living puppets, that is, of children
dressed as adults. Two separate types of performance developed
from the street entertainment of the ‘flesh puppets’; each consisted
of dances and songs. They differed with respect to the origin of
their music and of the texts of their songs. One type made use of
the words of songs originally belonging to the repertoire of secular
entertainments in the palace—the yann (116) (banquet) music of
Tarng and Sonq times, but their music was the chingyueh, in which
the cross-flute, dyi, was the chief melodic instrument supporting the
voice; this type is known as Nancheu (117) (Southern Songs) in the
repertoire which survives to this day as classical opera. The other type
made use of the words and music of yannyueh songs, and the chief
instrument supporting the voice was the pyipar. This was the origin
of the Beeicheu (118) (Northern Songs) of the repertoire of classical
opera. The names of the two genres are understandable, since the
Northern Songs were strongly influenced by foreign music reaching
China from the north, while the Southern Songs reflected the musical
atmosphere of the more conservative south.
If anything of the music of these entertainments survives, it has
undoubtedly undergone constant revision at the hands of successive
generations of performers. The following three ‘overtures’ are sup-
posed to be of pre-Yuan date.? They are entirely pentatonic and might
well belong to the Nancheu tradition, but there is no documentary
evidence of their antiquity.
Ex. 187
1 A. C. Moule, op. cit., p. 146.
* Soulié de Morant and Gailhard, op. cit., p. 121.
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC 113
===
—щ — ee P po
КШБЕШ == ESL
The lyrics of Nancheu and Beeicheu were written in a special verse
form, the tsyr (119), in which the lines are of irregular length and the
syllables succeed each other in an ordered pattern of tones. The
Chinese language is essentially monosyllabic, and since there are no
double or triple initial consonants and only two finals in the northern
dialect (for example), the sound equipment is poor. The number of
different monosyllables is increased to something less than 1,400 by
pronouncing each syllable with four different varieties of melodic
accent (in the northern dialect)—the four tones. They have been re-
presented in staff notation by Courant! as follows:
Ex. 188
| au I o 1 — 7 TN
ш ТУ
The melodic accents are functionally neums,? and the types of
melodic movement displayed in the four sheng (120) (the tones) are
described as level, rising, falling, and entering. Shen Jau (fifth cen-
tury) (121) was the first to make deliberate use of a pattern of accents,
level and oblique (pyng (122) and tseh (123)), in a new style of poem,
the /iuhshy (124), in lines of five or seven syllables. At the end of the
Tarng dynasty, one of the types of poem making use of a conscious
neum-pattern was the £syr.? The length of line is irregular in this type,
and the poem is held together by the repetition, with variations, of a
number of different unit patterns of tonal accents. If we represent the
level tones by — and oblique tones (rising, falling, and entering) by /
the structure of a poem of this kind can be displayed diagrammatic-
ally as shown overleaf.
The melody of many Chinese songs is but an exaggeration of the
tonal accents and is inherent in the first pyngtseh draft of the poem;
a melody devised according to the pyngtseh scheme shown here, by
1 M. Courant, La Langue chinoise parlée (Paris, 1914), р. 19.
* J. H. Levis, op. cit., pp. 21 ff.
* A. Hoffmann. Die Lieder des Li Yü (Cologne, 1950), pp. 105 ff.
114 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
the Ching poet-composer, Shieh Yuanhwai (125), is transcribed on
p. 125. The importance of the tsyr form in the history of Chinese
music lay in its providing a great variety of types of melodic structure
of considerable subtlety which could be used as moulds for new
poems.
The cheu was a quasi-popular development of the Sonq tsyr; it
adhered less strictly to the tonal and rhythmic structure ofthe original
pyngtseh draft; it was less 'classical' in its language and often
betrayed local dialectical peculiarities in its tonal structure.
Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368)
Although there existed in Sonq times a type of theatrical perform-
ance known as Tzarjiuh (126) (literally * Variety’), it was not until Yuan
times that complete operas, comprising action, declamation, and
songs, were devised.! The Yuancheu (127), as these works are known
collectively, are of high literary quality and are the first representa-
tives of the dramatic genre in the history of Chinese literature. While
the importance of the Yuancheu as literature has been recognized by
Western writers,? the fact that these were operas, not plays in the
Western sense, has tended to be overlooked, and their very remark-
able musical structure is virtually an unexplored field for future
study.
At the time of the coming to power of the Yuan, two schools of
opera were already established, the northern and southern schools of
the Sonq dynasty; their differences reflect differences between the two
regions in temperament and in contacts, and affect versification,
music, and style in the broad sense. Musically the schools differed in
that the southern school was strictly pentatonic and used the cross-
flute as the chief accompanying instrument (if strings were used they
! Chiang Un-kai, K'ouen K'iu — le théátre chinois ancien (Paris, 1932).
2 A. P. Г. Bazin Ainé, Théâtre chinois (Paris, 1838); Le Siècle des Youen (Paris,
1854).
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC 115
were secondary); while the northern school made use of the hepta-
tonic scale, with free use of semitones, and the accompanying instru-
ment was a stringed instrument. At the beginning of the Yuan, the
northern school was particularly active and works composed entirely
in the northern style were known by the same name as the Sonq
‘variety’ theatre, that is, as tzarjiuh.
One of the most fascinating musical features of these early operas
(a feature still characteristic of Chinese opera) is the use of a label,
the cheupair (128) or song-label, for each verse-form. The cheupair is
a fragment of a cheu poem, usually consisting of three characters, and
its function is to recall to the reader the structure of that particular
verse-form. Its function may be compared with that of the metrical
formulas in hymnals in the West which indicate to what type of
melody a hymn text can be sung or for what texts a given tune is
suitable. Very often the author was guided by association in his choice
of a particular cheupair in a particular situation. Thus he might use
the cheupair: shii shiangferng (129) (‘delights in conjunction’) if he
felt a correspondence between the situation to be presented and the
spirit of this cheupair. Since a particular cheupair was limited to a
particular mode, this system tended to reinforce the association of
that mode with a particular verse-form and a particular emotional
situation. The number of different melodies current was (and still is)
far smaller than the number of lyrics. A casual opera-goer, who did
not happen to know a particular lyric, would nevertheless have some
clue to the emotional situation, if he were familiar with the tune. This
is still true at the present time and is essential to the average person’s
enjoyment of opera, since the lyrics are written for the most part in
a language too literary to be comprehended by the ear alone.
Up to 1297 the northern was the more important of the two schools,
but after this date mixed works, including acts in both northern and
southern styles, were written, and by the end of the Yuan the southern
school had become dominant. Five works of the ancient southern
school survive, of which the most famous is the Pyipar Jih (130), The
Story of the Lute, by Gau Ming (131). These were written at the end
of the Yuan or at the beginning of the Ming. At the present time they
are better known from private reading than from stage performance
and are often played by amateurs en famille.
Ex. 189 is an overture said to date from the end of the thirteenth
century and often made use of in The Little Shepherd (p. 107). A note
outside the mode occurs in bars 15 and 16.!
1 Soulié de Morant and Gailhard, op. cit., p. 121, по. 4.
CHINA
iz
THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA:
116
Ex. 189
Ex. 190 is an intermezzo (guohmen (132); literally, ‘crossing the
threshold") said to date from the fourteenth century and chosen on
account of its free
flowing line. A Bp outside the mode occurs fre-
1
quently:
Ex. 190
|
и
}
Г
{
H
| er |
И gg. | it Рег i rir
раа ee с к=з ПОЗЕ
ег]
ЕЕ ae pcm m
Р” ОЕР" -agi
A most interesting feature of Chinese opera is the use of a charac-
) as a leitmotive
9,
elegant flute
€
i (133) (literally,
or to express certain feelings. Three instances,
teristic theme or yeady
in certain situations
are given in Exs. 191,
possibly earlier than the thirteenth century,
апа 193 :2
>
192
Ex. 191
Anger, despair, plotting
Ex. 192
* Ibid., p. 124.
quarrels
,
1 Soulié de Morant and Gailhard, op. cit., p. 123, no. 4.
Lovers
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC 117
Ex. 193
Joy, pleasure, drinking
A collection of Yuan melodies for zither, only one of which has been
transcribed, is contained in the Sehpuu (Music for the Seh) of Shyong
Pernglai! This includes four volumes of tunes in both /iuhleu and
flute notation. One volume consists of twelve tunes identical with
those of Ju Shii previously considered (p. 109); two volumes are
entitled New Tunes for the Songs (that is, for songs from the Book of
Songs), and a fourth is devoted to the Confucian ritual.
Ming and Ching Dynasties (1368-1911)
(i) Seven-stringed zither. The tablatures of seven-stringed zither
tunes, printed in sumptuous large-paper copies and published in the
Ming period, were one of the less conspicuous products of that un-
paralleled craftsmanship which has made the name of this dynasty
a household word in the West. It will be convenient to treat the period
from 1368 to the end of the Ching and even to the present day without
further subdivision. The most famous zither tunes (with but few
exceptions) were already in existence at the beginning of the Ming,
but they are played today in Ching versions.
The nature of the development which the tunes have undergone
between early Ming and Ching editions, is clear from successive ver-
sions (Exs. 194, 195, and 196) of the prelude from the tune ‘Clouds
over the Rivers Shiau and Shiang', ascribed to the Sonq composer,
Guo Mean (134). Wherever a group of notes occurs in the early version
which also occurs in the tune as played today, it has been given the
same rhythmic structure in transcription as in current performance, so
that the similarity between the versions is emphasized. The three pre-
ludes are in harmonics throughout.
! Shyong Pernglai, Sehpuu (198). See Yang Inliou, Jonggwo Inyueh Shyygang (Shanghai,
1953), p. 194. A Yuan melody for zither is recorded in The History of Music in Sound,
i, side 1. i
118 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
Ex. 194
accelerando a tempo
Ex. 194 is the prelude as it appears in the Rare and Valuable Secret
Treatise of an Emaciated Immortal! (135), dated 1425. It bears the
title: ‘Mist and Rain on the Donqtyng Lake.’ The text contains one
complex which does not make sense; in its place a single note has
been supplied to complete the phrase. The slur indicates that the
* Chyushian Shernchyi Mihpuu (135), by the Prince of Ning.
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC 119
repeated notes are all played on the same string. Ex. 195 is taken from
the Wugaang Chynpuu (136) of 1546. It has undergone amplification
by extension and repetition of its members, and by interpolation. In
this edition the prelude no longer carries a subtitle. One note has been
supplied where the tablature seems to be faulty. The third version of
the prelude is that current today. It differs but little in line from the
seventeenth-century version in the Chingshan Chynpuu (137) (1673)
though the notes are frequently produced in different positions. The
transcription is made from a manuscript copy from an unknown
Source. The note-values approximate to those adopted by Shyu
Yuanbair (138), one of the virtuosi of the present day. The prelude
has now become an extended melody which, even when it finishes,
leaves the way open for more to follow. Interest is maintained by
a continual shifting of the tonal centre.!
From the cheu structure of the classical operatic melody to that of
the seven-stringed zither tune, the difference is one of degree rather
than kind. The smaller tunes (sheaucheu (139)) are essentially cheu
melodies; the words usually survive and are commonly sung by the
performer as the tune is played. This is so for the tunes ‘Faang
Tzyychyi’ (140) (‘Visiting Tzyychyi’), and ‘Yangguan San Dye’
(141), (‘Three Repetitions of the tune: “Тһе Yang Pass”’’), which will
be referred to later. The larger tunes or dahcheu (102) are purely instru-
mental, and their structure is that of a melody of higher order; they
are for the most part rondos, in which the returns of the main tune
are transposed up or down by one or more octaves—necessarily with
change in timbre, or presented in different ‘registration’—in har-
monics or in a different position, without change in pitch but with
change in timbre. The importance of timbre in this music is such that
any transcription into staff notation can give but a faint impres-
sion of the original.
The larger tunes almost invariably begin with a prelude in slow
time, often on the open strings, but frequently in harmonics. The
prelude may include a characteristic turn of the main melody, as in
the Ching version of ‘Meihua San Nonq’ (142) (‘Three Repetitions
of the tune: “Plum Blossom”’’) which is here transcribed from
Ja Fuhshi’s (143) recording in the Library of Congress? (Ex. 197).
Versions of this tune occur in Ming tablatures of 1530 and 1546. The
first six notes of the prelude are related to the central phrase in the
1 Library of Congress, Music Division, Mr. Cha playing Chinese music, Order No.
1095, 4 sides: 4B, 5A, 5B, 6A. A slightly different version from that of Mr. Shyu.
* Library of Congress, Music Division, Mr. Cha playing Chinese music, Order No.
1095, 3 sides: 3A, 3B, 4A; also in The History of Music in Sound, side 2 (b).
120 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
Ex. 197
Adagio molto
main tune; the latter appears three times in harmonics, always in a
different position. The following example is a transcription of the
tune at its third appearance, again as played by Ja. This is one of
the most immediately engaging tunes in the zither repertoire.
Ex. 198
A prelude of unusual type, echoing Buddhist cantillation, is that to
the famous tune *Puuan Jow’ (144) (‘The Spell of Puuan’):
Ex. 199
Puuan was an Indian Buddhist of the twelfth century, but the tune
of this name was probably not composed before the seventeenth cen-
tury. The prelude opens with octaves, one string being caused to
produce a succession of sounds by shifting the finger after plucking.
The second section of the prelude is in harmonics (beginning at the
change of clef in the example). Although in many respects a work
sui generis it deserves mention here because of its great popularity
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC 121
with zither players. Its square-cut rhythms recall Pekin opera-tunes
and folk-songs of the north-western border.!
The climax of a zither tune is frequently marked by a passage in
harmonics. If the work is of considerable extent there may be more
than one such—as in ‘ Meihua San Nonq’, for example. These passages
are felt to be of the greatest emotional tension: at these moments the
music leaves the earth.
Most of the zither tunes, whether short or long, end with a
coda in harmonics. This may be very short, or it may contain
a reference to the main tune and summarize the whole work, as in
the coda to ‘Yangguan San Dye’ (‘Three Repetitions of the tune:
“The Yang Pass")?
Ex. 200
Tinn Mi, У
This includes a reference to the second phrase of the opening melody.
The whole of the first section, including the thrice repeated refrain is
transcribed in Ex. 201.
Ex. 201
The pass referred to in the title is that in the north-west through which
so many have travelled to real or virtual exile. A Northern Song to
the same words is transcribed in Ex. 210 (p. 127). It is not unusual for
the last note of the coda to be a note other than the expected tonic,
as in Ex. 200. Another example is provided by the end of a short tune
1 Also recorded by Cha under the title "Universal Benediction’, Library of Congress,
Music Division, Order No. 1095, 3 sides: 1B, 2A, 2B.
* A transcription of the opening phrases of a version of this work is printed by F. Bose
in Musikalische Völkerkunde (Freiburg i. Br., 1953) as No. 50 of the musical examples,
taken from a recording: Overseas Branch Rec. 17-2954, collected by Reinhard.
122 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
peculiar to Syhchuan Province, ' Visiting Tzyychyi’. The harmonics
begin at the change to the treble clef.
Ex. 202
Andante
|.
poco a poco rallentando
Successive appearances of the main tune are usually at different
pitches but in the same key. Modulation in the sense of a change of
key is relatively infrequent. It occurs commonly, however, in the sense
of a shift in the tonal centre, even in the course of one and the same
melody, as shown in Exs. 196 and 201 ; the melody temporarily behaves
as if some other note in the note-series of the mode were the tonic.
Occasionally a true modulation to the dominant occurs, as in the
following example from ‘Puuan Jow’.
Ex. 203
Andante
TEE SRM Dn 2 и d 4 nl NE
Кет ж-ш" үс ерү Бы cie
= № г а
ЕЙ
ЧЕ 7 ЖЕ. A
Бана ARS та E
This is the passage in harmonics at the climax of the work. Two
arpeggios of harmonics bring about a modulation to the dominant
and there follows a pause on tbe dominant. Where the clef changes
to the bass clef in Ex. 203, the normal position and the key of the tonic
are resumed. Another example, in a work predominantly ‘minor’ in
colouring, occurs in the short tune ‘Yih Guhren’ (145) (( Remem-
bering a Friend’) in which transition to the new key is prepared
through the mediant. In this example the B is flattened throughout
(Ex. 204).
1 Library of Congress, Music Division, Mr. Cha playing Chinese music, Order No.
1095, 2 sides: 9B, 10A; under the title ‘In Memory of a Deceased Friend at a Lonely
Hill’.
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC 123
Occasionally a note outside the mode may be introduced with over-
whelming effect. Towards the end of ‘Shiau-Shiang Shoei Yun’ (146)
(‘Clouds over the Rivers Shiau and Shiang’) such a note occurs; it is
sometimes interpreted as a monastery bell.
Ex. 205
(ii) Pyipar and Jeng. Of the instruments introduced into China in
historic times, only the pyipar can compare with the chyn in the extent
of its repertoire and the virtuoso skill attained by its finest exponents.
Published transcriptions of pyipar music! are atypical inasmuch as it
is characteristic of this music that the melody is frequently accom-
panied by a simple bass—perhaps a single note repeated as a pedal
point, and that considerable use is made of repeated chords. On the
whole, music for the pyipar is even more frankly descriptive than
that for the chyn. One of the finest performers, Yang Dahjiun (147),
executes a battle-piece that includes imitations of the groans of the
wounded and dying, and a moving version of the famous tune, ‘Geese
Descend on the Level Sands', with astonishingly birdlike noises.
In recent years Liang Tzaypyng (148) has travelled extensively
in the mountainous interior of Fwujiann (149) Province, collecting
jeng tunes from elderly performers and studying their technique. In
the south-west, and particularly in Kuenming (150), there is a vigor-
ous group of amateurs of this instrument, and itinerant performers
are to be heard in Cherngdu (151), the capital of Syhchuan Province.
One of the most memorable tunes is entitled *Cold Crows Playing
with Water’.
1 E. Fischer, Вейгаве zur Erforschung der chinesischen Musik (Leipzig, 1910), also
in Sammelbáünde der internationalen Musikgesellschaft, xii (1911), pp. 153-206. Other
transcriptions will be found in A. Dechevrens, ‘Etude sur le systéme musical chinois’,
Sammelbánde der internationalen Musikgesellschaft, ii (1901), pp. 484-551.
CHINA
1.
THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA:
124
CHINESE INSTRUMENTAL HETEROPHONY
A few transcriptions from phonograph recordings demonstrating
Chinese polyphonic practice have been made. The first example is
from a sheng recording.
Ex. 206
Е =
ЛЕ
or ee
|
т). The con-
-flute (dyi) and fiddle (умейсйу
The second is for cross
clusion only is quoted. The yuehchyn accompaniment is largely a
The interest of this
combination for a Chinese ear lies in the simultaneous presentation
variation on the flute melody at the fourth below.
of theme and variant, not in their incidental clashes.?
Ex. 207
1 E, Fischer, Beiträge, p. 1.
S ТЫ posti
(125)
THE STRUCTURE OF CHINESE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
From an analysis of nine recorded works, all popular in character,
it is clear that both binary (or quaternary) and ternary types of con-
struction occur.! In their formal organization the pieces analysed re-
veal a high level of development; indeed, many of the formal com-
plexities encountered can be paralleled in the procedures of the
Netherland school of the fifteenth century. The structure of these
nine pieces is generally as follows: after an introduction, a complex
of groups of phrases is repeated several times with variation. Among
the different types of variation the following may be mentioned; a
group of phrases may be lengthened or diminished, or entirely
omitted, or varied with such freedom that the variant is only recog-
nizable as such because it retains some characteristic turn. Within a
group, several bars may be transposed to the fifth or fourth; they may
be arranged in a different order or they may be replaced by others.
Transposition of entire themes to the fifth or fourth is fairly common,
and two-part writing in parallel fifths or fourths, comparable to early
medieval Western practice, is frequent.
In one instance a comparison has been made between recorded
performances (on sanshyan and on the large hwuchyn, p. 93), by
two different performers, and the noted version supplied by one of
the performers.? The tune in question has been subjected to detailed
analysis and in spite of its seeming simplicity is plainly anything but
artless in construction. Its title, ‘Visiting the Son of Heaven,’ goes
back at least to early Ching times; but the particular tune analysed
is not one of the tunes of this title printed in the great Palace Collec-
tion of tsyr of 1747.
A TSYR MELODY
Inhisstudy of The Foundations of Chinese Musical Art, Levis analysed
four tsyr melodies by the Ching composer, Shieh Yuanhwai, written
in 1848 according to the tonal structure followed by the Tarng or
Sonq author of the tsyr in question. The pattern of one of these Song
tsyr was given earlier, on p. 114. The following example is Shieh
Yuanhuair's realization of the neums, transcribed by Levis:
Ex. 208
1 В; Fischer, op. cit., p. 29.
* E, M. von Hornbostel, 'Ch'ao-t'ien-tze (Eine chinesische Notation und ihre
Ausführungen), Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, i (1919), рр. 477-98.
126 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
OPERA!
At the beginning of the Ming dynasty the southern school of opera
became divided into many small schools, working in different regions
and making use of local dialects in their scripts. Towards the middle
of the sixteenth century, a native of Kuenshan (152) in Jiangsuh (153)
Province, Liang Borlong (154), wrote the script of The Story of the
Laundress of Fine Textiles which was set to music by a fellow country-
man from a neighbouring town, Wey Liangfuu (155), who had in-
vented a new style of singing. The result of their collaboration was im-
mensely successful. The school which they founded at first bore the
name of Shoeimodiaw (156) (literally: ‘song ground in water’) but it
gradually assumed the name of Kuencheu (157): The songs of the
men from Kuenshan. The collaborators proceeded to revise the works
of the southern school, and their revisions were generally approved
and accepted as models. The name Kuencheu as used at the present
time, however, includes not only works of the southern school written
subsequent to the collaboration of Liang Borlong and Wey Liangfuu,
but also all the works of the Yuan period, particularly those revised
by Wey himself. The chwanchyi (158) was the characteristic form
developed by the school of Kuenshan and differed in length from the
Yuan tzarjiuh. While the latter had consisted of but four acts and a
single singing role, the chwanchyi were composed of thirty to fifty acts
of which perhaps four-fifths were in the southern style and the rest
in northern; several acts might be mixed in style. From the point of
view of the arrangement of the acts according to style, the seven-
teenth-century opera Charngsheng Diann (159) (‘The Hall of Long
Life’) by Horng Sheng (160) is today regarded as a model. Chwanchyi
also differed from tzarjiuh (p. 114) in the number of singing roles; the
former recognized six chief types whose identification by the audience
was (and is) facilitated by their characteristic costumes and maquillage.
Each act of a classical Chinese opera comprises both declamation
and measured song. An important character, entering at the begin-
ning of an act, will declaim a prologue in prose explaining the situa-
1 Excerpts from Chinese Opera are recorded in The History of Music in Sound, i,
sides 2 and 3.
OPERA 127
tion. This will be followed by a poem, which in turn will be followed
by a monologue in prose. Each act is given a pithy title such as the
following, taken from the Pyipar Jih: ‘Marriage by Imperial Com-
mand’; ‘Help to the Hungry’; ‘Difficulties in Maintaining Parents-
in-Law’; ‘Sale of Hair to Bury Parents-in-law’; ‘Entire Family
Decorated’.
A single act wil! generally include ten cheu, all in the same mode
and key, either all in the southern or all in the northern style or with
some in each style. Generally speaking the cheupair (128) are so
chosen that all are suitable for the expression of the same quality of
feeling, and the individual сйеи patterns normally succeed each other
in the order of their classification in the mode.
Exs. 209 and 210 are melodies of the southern and northern
schools respectively:
Ex. 209
These (and Ex. 208) are the only examples of Chinese vocal melody so
far quoted that display melismatic as opposed to syllabic structure.
All Song and Yuan melodies known from contemporary documents
are syllabic, as were (so far as is known) the most ancient Chinese
melodies; but it is to be remembered that none of the surviving
melodies is popular in character, and it may well be that a proportion
of the koeileei melodies of Tarng times were at least partly melismatic.!
Whereas in the past twelve flutes, each at the pitch of a different
a 1 Exs. 209 and 210 are transcribed from T'ung Fei, Fundamentals of Chinese Music,
ii (Shanghai, 1927) (195), pp. 19, 20.
128 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
liuhleu, were used to accompany kuencheu, only a single flute is used
today. The largest number of modes now used in any tonality is
four, and two tonalities are represented by a single mode only. Each
mode or system is associated with a definite character—fresh and dis-
tant, sighing and afflicted, rapid and varied, fierce and melancholy,
elegant and reserved, &c. It is perhaps worth recalling that similar
feeling about modal quality was current in Europe at least as late as
the sixteenth century.
The essential accompanying instrument in kuencheu performances
is the cross-flute, dyi, but other wind instruments—flute, mouth-organ,
oboe-type reed instruments—may be added; strings—sanshyan and
pyipar—1qmay support the dyi; and а body of percussion is indispens-
able—indeed, the hoop-drum, bangguu (161), leads the ensemble.
Changes of scene, and the beginning and end of the acts, are indicated
by vigorous interludes for percussion alone. There may be some
trace of Indian or at least central Asian influence in these interludes,
though Chinese drumming never approaches the rhythmic complexity
of that of India.
In Nanking or Pekin one may hear professional performances of
kuencheu; but the operas to be heard all over China, even in small
country towns, belong to the new northern style developed in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The style is associated with
the Manchu capital, Pekin, and operas of this type are often referred
to collectively as jingshih (162) (plays of the capital). Provincial opera
merits greater attention than it has hitherto received.! Like the classical
northern opera (of which it is to a certain extent the descendant)
Jingshih makes use of a stringed instrument (a Awuchyn of some kind)
as the chief instrument supporting the voice. Superficially the most
obvious difference between Kuencheu and jingshih lies in the rejection
of the tsyr form of lyric and the abundance of symmetrical melodies.
While kuencheu makes use of only two rhythms: a 2/4 with the
first beat strongly accented, and a 4/4 with the first beat strongly
accented and the third beat divided into two quavers, jingshih
makes use of a considerable number of rhythms, both regular and
irregular.
The following example is transcribed from The Kingfisher-Feather-
Screen-Mountain (Tsueypyng Shan) (163), a jingshih opera of the
genre bangtzyy (164). The vocal line in 2/4 time is accompanied by a
fiddle in 3/4 time, a sonorous wooden block beaten in 3/4 time
1 Chao Wei-pang, ‘Yang-ko, the Rural Theatre in Ting-hsien, Hopei', Folklore
Studies, iii (Peiping, 1944), pp. 17-40.
РЕ ASIE
Ang
Bite ay die а) ЧЕ SUE ч ЧУ) us TE aie їй 50) ай
зет: енд ж
жох) 3 хе d de М үг Or EE
(———— ШШШ
уг
мое wi М TK
ЗЕЕ X E 1 | der E EE SE zu EE
Е ree o ТҮ
iN В an € Кл р xut o А VER AL
Giu niei —
i X oa m rr CC
чу АМ Муны (с wy at КЫ de dorm A Y НЕА
ER Go ak apg CS нЕ mn eL derit
m x NN BRAY BRA TONS AED VE Gr RA э
AD WKAR р RA p Qos BARRA
ST er eo eT
m
(b)
(a) CHINESE ROC-HEADED VERTICAL HARP WITH 18 STRINGS
From Chern Yang. Yueh Shu (13th-14th century)
(b CHINESE 7-STRINGED ZITHER TABLATURE
From the end of the 12th century
For fuller details see pages xiv and 99
PLATE VI
(е) (g) uii
CHINESE AND OTHER FAR EASTERN INSTRUMENTS
(a) Manchurian fiddle (х 15); (b) Chingmiau mouth-organ (х 35); (c) Lolo Jew's harp (х 1);
(d) Minjia toy Jew's harp (х 3); (e) Borneo zither (х 5); (f) Borneo mouth-organ ( x 355);
(2) Details of the same ( 1)
For further details see page xiv
129
OPERA
LT
Ss
|
|
i
L|
ME. <
f
Г
IE aa е du
(the bangtzyy from which the genre takes its name), and а hoop-
drum:!
Ex. 211
it depicts
>
1 Soulié de Morant and Gailhard, op. cit., p. 137.
„р. 125
the following is of considerable rhythmic interest;
* Ibid
5
As an example of a leitmotive of much later date than those given on
p. 116
complete intoxication (Ex. 212).?
130 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
Evidence of the remarkable accuracy of the oral tradition in
Chinese opera is provided by the nearly complete agreement between
the kuencheu recording in Hornbostel's record-series Musik des
Orients, and the printed edition of 1792.! The intervals agree almost
entirely, but there are slight rhythmic deviations—a crotchet in the
edition of 1792 may become a dotted crotchet in the recorded version.
FOLK-SONG
The scientific study of Chinese folk-music has scarcely begun, for
though many collections are now being made, no collector, so far as is
known, has as yet made recordings in the field; all depend on the
ear. From personal observations made during a brief stay in central
China it seems probable that traces of other and older types of
scalar structure survive in the folk-music. This is suggested by
street-cries collected in Syhchuan and Gueyjou Provinces. The enhar-
monic tetrachord (a fourth built up from a major third and a minor
second) of the Japanese modes hirazyoosi, kumoizyoosi, and iwato-
zyoosi (p. 145) is rare in classical Chinese music and jingshih; it
occurs, however, in the following street-cry:
Ex. 213
Again, chains of thirds, so striking a feature of Western, African,
1 Wang Kwang-chi, ‘Uber die chinesische klassische Oper 1530-1860', Orient et
Occident, Bibliothéque Sino-Internationale (Geneva, 1934).
FOLK-SONG 131
Polynesian, and American Indian music, rarely occur in classical
Chinese music, so strong is the tendency for a minor third to form a
unit by adding a major second; yet Exs. 214 and 215 (also street-cries)
are both expanded triads:
Ex. 214
Ex. 215 illustrates a primitive stage of the 123 scale! (Eb, F, G, Bp)
in which two superposed thirds form a pentachord and the lower
third is filled in (123. 5). Ex. 216 is interesting in that the fourths are
only acciacaturas:
Ex. 216
One feature of everyday life in China which impresses the stranger
is the singing of the coolies; when pulling or carrying loads, they
improvise a seemingly continuous chant, which has the function of
co-ordinating activities and maintaining the rate of working at the
optimum pace set by the leader. It is in fact an antiphon between
leader and gang, in which statement and answer tread so closely on
each other's heels that the sound is effectively continuous. Ex. 217
might be sung (to the vowel sound 'ah") by men pulling a loaded cart
up hill.
Ex. 217
Leader
Gang
Step
1 Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, p. 123.
132 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
Ex. 218, on the other hand; might be sung by men trotting with a
load slung on poles.
Ex. 218
Leader
Step
Gang
In such improvised antiphons it is the leader alone who varies his
utterance with successive repetitions. The answer frequently overlaps
the statement. Sometimes one hears ‘shanties’ such as the following:
Ex. 219
Leader
Aw -ai - yeh
An excellent short collection of popular Chinese songs, many of
them folk-songs, has been published by C. Н. and S. Н. Chen. The
collection merits praise not only for the notable accuracy of its
transcriptions but for the quality of the accompaniments devised by
C. H. Chen. In themselves they provide useful material for studying
melodic variation and heterophony in Chinese music.
Ex. 220 is a well-known folk-song, sung to different words in
different districts.? It is a good example of the pure pentatonic genus,
still characteristic of Chinese melody in spite of the constant in-
filtration of other genera from central Asia. Another purely penta-
1 C. H. and S. H. Chen, The Flower Drum and other Chinese Songs (New York, 1943).
Other folk-tunes are to be found in A. G. Jacobs, The Chinese-American Song and
Game Book (New York, 1944), and S. M. Graves and M. F. Farley, Min River Boat
Songs (New York, 1946).
2 For another version of this tune see Hsiao Shusien, ‘La chanson populaire chinoise’,
Sinologica, i (Basel, 1947), pp. 65-86.
FOLK-SONG 133
tonic folk-song is shown in Ex. 221, taken from a setting by Liu
Shea-An [sic.]!
Ex. 220
Within the last few years many popular collections of folk-songs
from all provinces have been printed in China, transcribed in the
numerical notation (p. 101). Though popular in character, these col-
lections are of the greatest value and already enable us to determine
the regions of transition to types of melody resembling those of
western Asia.
BUDDHIST MUSIC
The music of the Buddhist office as practised in Chinese monas-
teries deserves special attention, since it embodies many features at
first sight foreign to the Chinese musical genius. While some of these
may well be due to Indian and Tibetan influence, some may echo that
more primitive stratum of folk-music revealed in the street-cries al-
ready discussed. In a small monastery in Anshuenn (165), Gueyjou
Province, novices in their teens have been heard chanting the scrip-
tures in thirds (cf. the English and Scandinavian gymel of the twelfth
century). The range of cantillation was a fourth, and the result could
be placed alongside Lachmann's juxtaposition of the German folk-
song ‘Laterne, Laterne!’ and Hornbostel’s Macusi Indian melody;?
1 Liu Shea-An, Three Songs (Tokyo, 1935).
3 R. Lachmann, ‘Musik der auBereuropdischen Natur- und Kulturvélker’, Handbuch
der Musikwissenschaft (Potsdam, 1929), p. 8; quoted by Sachs in The Rise of Music in
the Ancient World, p. 40.
134 THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 1. CHINA
as an example of the survival in China of tendencies observable in
very primitive musical cultures elsewhere. At a funeral in a small
country town, Meitarn (166) in Gueyjou Province, Buddhist priests
were heard singing, to the accompaniment of cymbals and triangle,
a metrical chant of that infectious gaiety so common in India and so
rare in China. The aspect of Buddhist music which most merits study,
however, is the singing of the office by precentor and novices. The
instrumental accompaniment is provided entirely by idiophones and
membranophones; the instruments include a large drum, a large bell,
a gong, cymbals, a triangle, a small bell, and a wooden fish. The office
begins with intoned statements and responses by precentor and
novices, with occasional interruptions by single instruments. As the
service proceeds the speed of recitation increases, and the precentor
no longer waits for the novices to end their response before recom-
mencing; as the overlapping antiphon develops, the frequency of
percussive interruptions increases.!
Concerning the Taoist office no information is available. Several
hymns making use of a notation unlike any other Chinese notation
are printed in the Ming Dawtzang (167). They have not been tran-
scribed.
Note on the Zither-Transcriptions
To avoid excessive use of leger lines and signatures, the transcriptions
on pp. 118-23 are made throughout as if the third string were tuned to F,
so that in the commonest tuning the seven open strings will yield the
series: CD ЕСА c d. In the hands of different performers, and on
different instruments, the sounding pitch of the third string will range
from F to Bp (below 'cello bottom C).
1 See also A. Stanley, ‘Putoshan’, Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal
Asiatic Society, xlvi (1915), pp. 1-18.
Ш
THE MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA
2. OTHER COUNTRIES
By LAURENCE PICKEN
MONGOLIA
A CONSIDERABLE range of music recorded in eastern Mongolia has
been published in transcription." *? The tunes are mostly pentatonic,
with tetrachords consisting of a major second and a minor third.
Major third scales, in which the tetrachords each consist of a major
third with a minor second above, have been reported in melodies
from the Buryat Mongols,* but the material from eastern Mongolia
does not afford a single example of this type. The melodies are often
less than an octave in range and fall into two main groups: those in
free rhythm and those which are measured. The first type is illus-
trated by the following example for male voice from the Chipchin
tribe, ‘Bargas’ (an old tribal name) ‘of the Holy Mountain’.?
Ех 222
The second example, the ‘Song of Chingis Khan”? (male voice) from
the Jalait tribe, is a symmetrical tune with a strong major flavour
imparted by the arpeggioed triad in the first bar (Ex. 223).
1 М. de Torhout and Humbert-Sauvageot, ‘Dix-huit chants et poèmes mongols’,
Bibliothèque musicale du musée Guimet, 11° série, iv (Paris, 1937).
? H. Haslund-Christensen and E. Emsheimer, The Music of The Mongols (Stockholm,
1943). Several small collections of Mongolian tunes have been published in China in
recent years. The tunes are all of the measured, symmetrical type.
з Chüichiró Takeda, ‘Songs of the Mongols, Notations and Explanations’, Тдуд
Ongaku Kenkyü, ix (Tokyo, 1951), рр. 147-54, and x-xi (Tokyo, 1952), рр. 67-73.
4 С. Stumpf, ‘Mongolische Gesänge’, Sammelbánde für vergleichende Musikwissen-
schaft, i (1922), pp. 107-12.
136 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
Ex. 223
A third example, a flute solo from the Khorchin tribe,! is Chinese
in character.
Ex. 224
Many of the songs have flute, fiddle, or ‘guitar’ accompaniments.
Descriptions are given of four-stringed and two-stringed fiddles
(pl. 6(a)); a zither resembling the Chinese jeng; three types of
‘guitar’ (lute), one of which is the same as the Chinese sanshyan;
and cross-flutes of the dyi-type. The resemblance between the
square-cut type of Mongolian melody and many of the tunes of
Pekin opera is striking.
SHINJIANG (CHINESE TURKESTAN)
The material collected by Haslund-Christensen in the region
of Urumchi (Dyihuah) (169)? has not as yet been published. This
was taken from members of the Torgut tribe and should be of
great interest. From a brief account of a troupe of dancers and
musicians from Chinese Turkestan who visited Shanghai it seems that?
their practices show marked parallels to those of Tarng times. Thus
! Haslund-Christensen and Emsheimer, op. cit., p. 37.
2 Figures in brackets refer to serial entries in the Glossary of Characters, p. 190.
3 In Faaluu, ‘Tsorng Lihshyy-shanq Luenn Shinjiang Gewuu', Shanghae Jongiang
Ryhbaw (Shanghai, 12 Dec. 1947) (172).
SHINJIANG (CHINESE TURKESTAN) 137
dancers, dances, and instruments correspond to descriptions in the
Tarng poet Bair Jiuyih and in poems from early anthologies (Yuehfuu
Shyji) (170); and their music displays structural features fitting the
descriptions of Tarng dahcheu (p. 106). One of their tunes has been
identified with the seven-stringed zither tune known as ‘Jaujiun’s
Lament’ (171). It is remarkable that such an identification should have
been made precisely in the case of this particular zither tune, since
Jaujiun was the lady bestowed on the Hunnish Khan by the Emperor
and carried away to Mongolian territory in 33 B.c. This account
suggests that study of the music of this region may throw light on
Chinese music of Tarng times and may lead to the identification of
those tunes or parts of tunes in early zither handbooks which date
from Tarng times. Chinese workers have begun to collect folk-songs
in Shinjiang, and some of the material collected has now been pub-
lished. A high proportion of these tunes are symmetrical, measured
and heptatonic.
TIBET
The availability in recent years of a small number of recordings of
Tibetan music made in Lhasa has transformed the picture of the
music of Tibet based on earlier accounts.! A recent review? includes a
number of examples transcribed from these recordings and brings
together for the first time a wealth of information on Tibetan music
and musical instruments and on the functions of music in Tibetan
culture. The instruments described include a vertical flute with bell
and whistle-mouth-piece (glin bu); a conical oboe similar to the
Chinese suoonah (rgya glin), bone trumpets (rkan dur); large copper
horns, in some cases extensible like telescopes to a length of 3 metres
(rag dun); and percussion: braced copper kettle-drums and nailed
drums, including an hour-glass drum made from two human
skulls.?
The recordings show that at least three distinct types of music,
exclusive of folk-music, are practised in Lhasa. These are: (1) Sino-
Mongolian music resembling Chinese provincial opera. This may be
religious or secular. The following example is part of a hymn sung in
perfect unison by two nuns? (Ex. 225).
1 А.Н. Francke, ‘La musique au Thibet’ in Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavignac and
La Laurencie), 1** partie, v (Paris, 1922), pp. 3084-93.
2 P, C. Crossley-Holland, ‘Tibetan Music’, Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
viii (London, 1954), pp. 456-64.
* An instrumental ensemble is recorded in The History of Music in Sound (H.M.V.),
i, side 4 (a). * Tbid, side 4 (c).
138 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
mc Metal Disk: + + + a 4
All the Lhasa recordings of this type are in binary rhythms. The
secular songs may be accompanied by flute, fiddle, zither (jeng), lute,
and percussion. (2) Liturgical chanting. The voices in approximate
unison and lowest register move in small, often microtonal, steps
with an occasional step of a minor third, to the accompaniment of
single metallophones, drums, and at times a horn-pedal. Instruments
and voices may be rhythmically independent of each other, or they
may coincide and proceed together in an unstressed rhythm of equal
pulses, as in the following example.!
Ex. 226
LLLI EL
Gu LJ wq Lud TN
ret
Е
See ee ЕЕ СЕТЕ
Dum ЕЕЕ
Be Ги РР НЫ на м MN
= И ЕЕ Е COR
——— g 5 ке утс сй 7
К ACRES: dr
Lm VERRE meme rl TUI
LZ eo au SEI a
|А » = D
LETRAS (o loce 4280 G8 Le дела.
1 Recorded in Тле History of Music in Sound, i, side 4 (b).
TIBET 139
The vocal range in this recording is a diminished fifth, approximately
subdivided into three minor seconds and a minor third. In the in-
strumental interludes for oboes, trumpets, pedal horns, and per-
cussion, the melodic line may have a range of as much as an augmented
sixth and resembles the vocal line of the third type (q.v.) Several
observers comment on the constant use of drones during choral
singing, and it has been suggested that this practice is due to Indian
influence.! Two horns, in unison, or a third or a fifth apart, may
sustain a drone for several minutes; this usage is comparable to
that of the large curved horns of India (гапа sringa). The drum and
cymbal rhythms, maintained by the orchestra, even when other in-
struments are silent, are Indian in character.? (3) Overlapping anti-
phonal singing; this style occurs in the recordings of historical
dramas. The melodic line is non-Chinese in character, unmeasured,
with arpeggioed triads (both major and minor) and major-third
cadential tetrachords with the semitone above, as shown in Ex. 227:
*Su-ki-nyi-ma (Lady, bright as the sun).'?
Ex. 227
Female
Voices
(falsetto)
There is no supporting melodic instrument, and perhaps for this
reason the pitch gradually drifts in the course of this type of singing.
The overlaps may occur at the unison, but sustained major seconds
and major and minor thirds are also to be heard. The partners in the
antiphon are not always of equal importance; the ‘confidant’ may
prolong the ends of the ‘protagonist’s’ melismata. In the following
example: ‘Da-we Sing-ge (The lion of the moon)’, the cadences of
1 Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West (New York, 1943),
р. 145:
з Ibid., р. 139.
* Kyumu-Lunga Troupe (Lhasa); H.M.V. Recording, N. 16678 (Calcutta).
140 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
the soloist are supported by a divided chorus, and there is a rhythmic
accompaniment of drum and struck cymbal.! In contrast to the purely
vocal antiphons for two voices, this example is measured.
Ex. 228
Soloist
(r 5
falsetto
Chorus
0 == —
= fg te ad
-2 aa IHA
ЕН назан tA
All the recorded examples in this style are sung in falsetto; this may
be related to the need to secure maximum audibility in open-air per-
formance. The style has some affinity with Tibetan working songs
(Ex. 229); examples of these have been noted in which (as in Ex. 228)
two- and three-note chords are formed on sustained finals.?
Bx. 229
In contrast to Exs. 227 and 228, the voices here are of equal standing.
The similarity to the antiphonal working chants of the Chinese
(p. 131) is striking and merits closer examination, as does the parallel
1 Kyumu-Lunga Troupe (Lhasa): H.M.V. Recording, N. 16623 (Calcutta).
з Francke, op. cit., pp. 3090, 3092.
TIBET 141
with songs for solo-voice and one-note chorus from Sarawak (Borneo)
(p. 178).
It seems probable that musics from different cultural strata, and
possibly from different cultural groups, co-exist in the Tibetan area.
This view is supported by a brief report from a traveller who entered
Tibet from Nepal.! The existence of a non-Chinese element in Tibetan
folk-music is indicated by the whistled arpeggios of common chords,
diminished sevenths, and fragments of whole-tone scales recorded.
The following example is of interest in relation to tetratonic, anhemi-
tonic melodies from Indonesia (p. 170) where, however, the range is a
tritone.
Ex. 230
A primitive three-note melody, consisting of two superimposed
fourths, sung as a duet for men's voices has been transcribed.? It may
be compared with Japanese Buddhist cantillation, or with the vocal
line of the Noo drama (p. 148).
Ex. 231
^ EN
— — —1——ÀZ4-—1u 7i =
-— À
None of the recordings available exhibits the type of melody in
ternary rhythm illustrated by Francke. Such rhythms, however, are
common in Kashmiri music;? their presence in Francke's material
may be due to border-conditions. One tune from Francke's article is
interesting in view of the occasional major-third tetrachords noted
in the dramatic duets; but it must be emphasized that no Lhasa re-
cording as yet shows a tune of this symmetry and rhythmic regularity
with ascending major-third tetrachords having the semitone above.
! T. H. Somervell, ‘The Music of Tibet’, Musical Times, lxiv (1923), p. 108.
2 Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 38.
3 Teachers’ Training College, Kashmiri Müsigi, i (Srinagar, no date) (in Urdu).
142 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
A single specimen of lamaist music in score has been reproduced
in facsimile.! Superficially it is similar to the Taoist notation already
mentioned (p. 134). This notation may have been brought to China
with Mahayana Buddhism and borrowed by the Taoists, in the
elaboration of their ritual.
KOREA
From the most extensive surveys? of Korean music available, it is
clear that a distinction must be made between the ritual music, directly
derived from the Chinese Confucian or Buddhist ritual, and the
secular music of the court and of the people. The latter differs
markedly from Chinese music, either popular or classical, in that it
makes almost exclusive use of 3/4 and 6/8 rhythms.
Korea acquired the Confucian orchestra early in the twelfth cen-
tury, and instruments bearing the names of those in the Jou orchestra
survive to this day. Some of the instruments preserved date from the
fourteenth century. A number of variants of Chinese instruments also
survive, several unique to Korea; there are, for example, six different
types of half-tube zithers (chyn, seh, jeng, &c.). There is an interesting
description of the completely mechanical performance of the ritual
music: the fact that bells in a chime are hanging in the wrong order
is of no importance; a difference of half a tone between bell-chime
and stone-chime occasions no discomfort. The most valuable part of
Eckardt's account is the description of the instruments and the sketch
of Korean musical history; the description of the music leaves many
questions unanswered; but on the whole Keh's transcriptions con-
firm Eckardt's findings.
Ex. 233, the beginning of the ‘Hymn for the Sacrifice to Confucius’,
dates perhaps from the introduction of the ritual orchestra in the four-
teenth century.? The first four bars may bea distortion of Ex.177, p.102:
Ех 20918)
1 L. A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism (Cambridge, 1934) p. 433. See also
P. C. Crossley-Holland, op. cit., p. 458.
? A. Eckardt, 'Koreanische Musik', Mitteilungen der deutschen Gesellschaft für
Natur- und Vélkerkunde Ostasiens, xxiv B (Tokyo, 1930); C. S. Keh, ‘Die koreanische
Musik', Sammlung musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen, xvii (Strasbourg, 1935).
3 Eckardt, op. cit.
KOREA 143
The official adoption of the Confucian orchestra and ritual dates from
1114; but it is certain that Chinese instruments (and presumably music
too) were imported in Tarng times. The verticalangular harp is known
to have existed in Korea.
A second example, in this case of funeral music, is rhythmically not
unlike some of the works given in full score by Prince Tzayyuh in his
*Rustic Dances', quoted by Courant.!
Ex. 234
Eckardt reprints Courant's? transcription of a piece for the black
zither (hyon kum) (173) which he checked against the performance of
a Korean musician. The last eleven bars are quoted here for their
rhythmic variety and to show the use of ornaments:
Ex. 235
а: пена
am) Fe) |
The following is part of one of the folk-songs noted: ‘The Song of the
Rising Sun and the Abiding Moon.” This is Keh's transcription.’
1 M. Courant, ‘Essai historique sur la musique classique des Chinois avec un ap-
pendice relatif à la musique coréenne’ in Encyclopédie de la musique, 1"е partie, i (Paris,
1913), pp. 135 ff. Moid р: 215-
3 Cf. С. S. Keh, op. cit., p. 7 of the musical examples.
144 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
E m
da Ear uml ee н Ime) iE ipe ELLE
= = [n
The folk-songs include the following, a ‘ National Song’, exhibiting
major-third-plus-minor-second tetrachords.!
Ех 287
It seems probable that тапу more vestiges of the Tarng and Sonq
Chinese theatre survive in Korea than in China.
JAPAN
A substantial body of information concerning Japanese music
has been available to the Western reader for more than half a cen-
tury. The following short account is based largely on Sachs,?
Piggott,? Courant, and Harich-Schneider.?
It might be expected that Japanese music would exhibit consider-
able Chinese influence; but it is perhaps somewhat surprising that it
also exhibits features of which only traces are to be found in the music
of China.
Pentatonic scales predominate, though there is a constant tendency
for these to become heptatonic, as in Chinese music. The ‘Chinese’
modes are displayed in folk-song, as well as in more sophisticated
1 Eckardt, op. cit., p. 60. 2 Sachs, The Rise of Music, р. 122.
з Е. T. Piggott, The Music and Musical Instruments of Japan (Yokohama and London,
1893 and 1909).
+ Courant, ‘Japon: Notice historique’, Encyclopédie de la musique, 1'* partie, i
(Paris, 1913), pp. 242-56.
5 Eta Harich-Schneider, ‘The Present Condition of Japanese Court Music’, The
Musical Quarterly, xxxix (New York, 1953), pp. 49-74.
JAPAN 145
music, and it does not seem justifiable to assume that their usage
dates only from the beginning of Chinese influence in late Wey and
Tarng times. The tunings of the Japanese jeng (p. 90), the soo no koto
(31), as used in the Imperial Ceremonial Orchestra, cover a range of
six Chinese pentatonic modes.! Three of these are so modes on A
(e f£ a b c#’), d (a b d'e' f£) and e (b c#’ e' fZ' gi) (using the Chinese
nomenclature; see p. 94); these are the ritusen (174) (female forms)
and on the whole are preferred to the three ryosen (175) (male forms),
the do modes on d (d e f£ a b), e (e f£ g# b c£") and g (g a b d' е).
Occasionally other Chinese modes occur in Japanese music, as in
Ex. 238, a ‘ Fisherman's Song’ collected by the late Dr. Takeo Kamada
of Tokyo University. This is in the re mode on C. Many other
examples will be found in the recently published survey of folk-songs
of Tokyo and district.”
Ex. 238
Though the re, sol, and la modes are usually thought of as modal
inversions of the 123.56 scale, the ritu-type scale cannot have been
derived from ryo: the latter, undoubtedly ancient, is based on the
fifth and lacks the fourth ; the former is based on units of a fourth.3
In contrast to the ‘Chinese’ scales, the ‘national’ scales, though
pentatonic, have semitone steps. Like rifu, they are scales built up
from units of a fourth, but the tetrachords consist of major third
plus minor second. This is the type of tetrachord already met with in
certain Tibetan and Korean melodies and occasionally encountered
in fragments of Chinese folk-music (p. 130). While the Tibetan and
Korean melodies do not exhibit scales exclusively built up from two
tetrachords of this type, Japanese music offers abundant examples of
melodies with pure ‘major third’ scales. Three principal modes are in
use. The first mode, hirazyoosi (176), may be represented by the
series: AB CEF A. Ex. 239 is a cowherd's song.*
1 Ibid., p. 56. * Y. Saionji, Nihon Мтуб Taikan, Kantó-hen (Tokyo, 1953).
3 Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 124.
* Y. Matsudaira, Seven Japanese Folk Songs from Nambu District (Tokyo, 1937).
146 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
EX8239
Lento 4-96 к е
The second mode, kumoizyoosi (177), may be represented by the
series: E F A B C E. Its plagal form is shown in Ex. 240, a Furuma
dance song.!
Ex. 240
Andante
The third principal major third mode is iwato; it may be represented
by the series: B C E F A B.
Itis clear that modulation from one mode to another occurs fre-
quently. The following example exhibits modulation from kumoizyoosi
(disjunct tetrachords) to hirazyoosi (conjunct tetrachords):?
Ex. 241
! Y. Kiyose, Six Japanese Folk Songs from Shinano District (Tokyo, 1937).
2 М. Peri, ‘Essai sur les gammes japonaises,” Bibliothèque musicale du musée Guimet,
2° série, i (Paris, 1934), p. 54, quoted by Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 126.
JAPAN 147
Both ‘Chinese’ and ‘Japanese’ pentatonic scales tend to be con-
verted to heptatonic forms; the former, by inserting a sharpened
fourth and a major seventh, yielding the typical Chinese heptatonic
scale: F G A (B) C D (E) F; the latter, by dividing the major thirds
into two major seconds: A B C (D) EF (G) A. Music in the ‘Japan-
ese’ scales frequently alternates between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ vari-
ants of the mode.!
It is of the greatest importance for the study of Far Eastern music
that there survives in Japan, albeit in modified form, music of the
Tarng dynasty, introduced from China, along with Korean and
Indian music, between the seventh and the tenth centuries.? Treatises
on this old music written in the thirteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
centuries are still available. Since the oral tradition of performance is
comparatively little concerned with the written parts, it is probable
that the latter, preserved in three different notations for flute, mouth-
organ, and bass lute, are authentic relics. This is also suggested by the
notations themselves, which have Tarng and Sonq parallels. As an
example of the melodies inherent in the written parts, but only to be
recognized with difficulty in the music as performed today, Ex.
242 gives mouth-organ and biwa (p. 92) parts of the first phrase
of the *Martial Virtue Music' as transcribed from the Japanese
notation, printed in facsimile by Harich-Schneider in an admirable
first-hand account of Japanese court music.
Ex. 242
mouth-organ LU
(shoo) S
bass lute Е
(biwa) : ES
o o
(О = open string)
pizzicato; other
notes with plectrum)
—
ПЕ!
Ех. 242 only shows the notes as written; it does not include percussion,
also shown in the original; nor does it indicate the figured-bass-like
expansion of the biwa part or the mouth-organ chords erected on
each degree of the scale. Ex. 242 may be compared with the full
score prepared by Harich-Schneider. The resulting elaborate hetero-
phony was first displayed in score by Mueller? who was able to test
1 See examples in Piggott, op. cit., р. 103. 2 Harich-Schneider, op. cit., p. 65.
* L, Mueller, ‘Einige Notizen über die japanische Musik’, Mitteilungen der deutschen
Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens in Tokio, i 6 (Tokyo, 1874), pp. 13-20,
i 8 (1875), pp. 41-48, i 9 (1876), pp. 19-35.
148 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
each performer separately. A version of the ceremonial ‘Etenraku’
(180) ( Music coming through from Heaven’) for a Western orchestra
has been prepared,! and a number of modern studies of the vestiges
of Tarng and Swei music surviving in Japan are available?
On the whole, the Chinese musical instruments of Japan are those
of the Tarng court orchestras rather than those of the Confucian
ritual. There seems to be no counterpart in Japan of the Jou orchestra
preserved in Korea, for example, though a number of very early
Chinese instruments have survived in the incomparable treasure-
house of the Shoosooin at Nara. This collection includes a Chinese
chyn of the fifth century.? What is perhaps the most ancient Japanese
music—that of the temple dances and of the Noo (182) plays—makes
use of flute or flutes and drums only, and seems to point to an even
earlier musical substratum than that associated with the Shang culture
in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium B.c.
Of considerable musical interest is the structure of the archaic lyric
drama known as Noo, which reached the peak of its development in
A.D. 1500, though in its use of masks and stylized expression it seems
to hark back to a period earlier than the fifteenth century. The Noo
orchestra consists of one stick-beaten and two hand-beaten drums
and a cross-flute. While the drums maintain a regular rhythm, the
voice moves to a large extent arhythmically and is only rarely
supported by the flute, which for the most part provides interludes.
Certain standard melodic patterns are introduced into a chant other-
wise at one pitch—though this may change from time to time.* A
very characteristic feature is the shift in level of the voice by steps
of a fourth, often by two fourths in succession. The notation of the
Noo music is a flute notation. Like the Chinese drama of Yuan times,
the texts of the Noo repertoire have considerable literary merit.
The most famous, by the fifteenth-century writer Seami, have been
studied extensively.
The music for the solo instrument known as the yamada koto (178),
essentially a large jeng with thirteen silk strings, has been the subject*
! H. and N. Konoye, Etenraku (Tokyo, 1935).
з К. Hayashi, Swei-Tarng Yannyuehdiaw Yanjiou (181) (Shanghai, 1936) (Chinese
translation); H. Tanabe, Nihon Ongaku Kówa (Tokyo, 1926).
3 В. Н. van Gulik, The Lore of the Chinese Lute (Tokyo, 1940), pp. 181-9.
3 Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 136.
5 М. Peri, ‘Etudes sur le drame lyrique japonais’, Bulletin de l'école francaise de l'ex-
tréme orient, ix (Hanoy, 1909), pp. 251, 707; also succeeding volumes. A. Waley, The
No Plays of Japan (London, 1921).
в Piggott, op. cit., p. 88. Examples of Кого music are recorded in The History of
Music in Sound, i, side 9.
JAPAN 149
of a special study. This is the most highly developed of the many
Japanese board-zithers and its music is largely in the various major
third modes. The style was fully elaborated in the seventeenth century,
when a blind musician, Yamazumi, created the various modern
forms. The same constructional principles are to be detected in
slighter, less elaborate and more popular melodies.! A short phrase
of perhaps five notes serves as the basis of the entire composition,
undergoing transposition and every kind of variation in the process
of elaboration. This is music conceived largely in terms of the instru-
ment and arising out of its mechanical properties; in particular the
extended form known as danmono (179) is purely instrumental. An
attractive feature is the use of arpeggios of the set of thirteen strings
tuned to the characteristic major third scales. The following is from
the first verse of ‘The Plum Branch’ :2
Ex. 243
Andante
When accompanying the voice, the koto approximately follows the
voice and maintains the rhythm if the voice sustains a note; it may
supply two-note intervals—octaves, perfect or diminished fifths,
fourths, thirds and seconds—to increase sonority.
An excellent account of Japanese Buddhist cantillation is available.3
The music is undoubtedly Chinese in origin, but elaborate ornamen-
tation leads to a single syllable being sung to a group of notes instead
of to a single note, as in the Chinese Confucian hymns. The notation
(of which there are various forms) includes symbols indicative of the
pitch of the main note to which a syllable is sung, and more or less
graphic neums indicating voice movements during the execution of
the ornaments about the main note. In the following fragment the
numerals mark the essential degrees of the scale (Ex. 244).
1 Ibid., p. 102. See also Tokyo Academy of Music, Collection of Japanese Koto Music,
(Tokyo, 1888).
2 [bid., p. 90.
r ? P. Demiéville, Hóbógirin (Tokyo, 1930); see article ‘Bombai’ Toyo Ongaku Kenkya,
xii-xiii (Tokyo, 1954), is largely devoted to essays on Buddhist music.
150 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
Ex. 244
: =F is
и ЕЕ Mie
_ СТОЛА OSICCILIWREUU Lc
Е OE SaaS ar m
MU ee
SS a
n
LL A d
MIAU
Leaving the peoples of countries bordering on north China, we
must now consider the music of various non-Chinese peoples living
in southern China and the highlands of Burma and Indo-China. The
anthropological and ethnological relationships of these peoples are
complex, and no attempt will be made to classify them.
The Miau (10) are a large group of tribes scattered over southern
China and the highlands of Annam. To them are related the Yau
(11) and perhaps some of the Thai-speaking peoples of Haenan (183)
and the border country of China and Indo-China. In certain respects
their culture presents features reminiscent of the earliest records of
Chinese civilization. The antiphonal courtship songs of the Miau
have been compared with similar songs in the Book of Songs (Shyjing)!
but this comparison has not gone unchallenged.?
The most striking feature of the music of the Miau tribes is the use
of large mouth-organs resembling the Chinese sheng. Among the
Chingmiau (184) of Gueyjou Province the sheng have six pipes, the
1 M. Granet, Fétes et chansons de la Chine ancienne (Paris, 1926), р. 147.
? B. Karlgren, * Glosses on the Kuo Feng Odes’, The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities
Bulletin No. 14 (Stockholm, 1942), pp. 71-247. See p. 75.
MIAU 151
longest of which may be 4 feet in length (pl. 6 (5)). In other tribes
still larger specimens occur, up to 13 feet in length, but the largest
forms often have only three pipes. The free reeds are cut from thin
copper. The six-pipe sheng of the Chingmiau is fairly accurately
tuned to the scale D F G A C D, beginning on the D below middle C;
this is the Chinese /a mode on F. A small blob of wax may be stuck
on to the tongue to modify the frequency of vibration.
At least two men play at a time and while playing they lead an open,
square, or round dance with the women following. The pace of the
music is always a leisurely andante, even when the performers are
leaping about with considerable speed and energy. The effect is grave
and moving; this is a music with none of the uncertain pitch of
Chinese opera or flexible rhythm of Chinese zither music.
Since the six pipes are played in groups of two or three at a time,
as with the Chinese sheng, it is understandable that the music has a
very limited melodic range. Ex. 245 was written down from a per-
formance by members of the Chingmiau tribe a few miles outside
Anshuenn in Gueyjou.:
Ex. 245
The alternation of sucking and blowing is approximately indicated by
the accents. A change in timbre between chords produced in these two
ways adds to the quality of the music in a manner which cannot be
guessed from the score. The phrasing suggested is not authentic; it
is merely the sort of phrasing of which the performers made use. Since
the pipes used for producing the middle voice in Ex. 245 (that is, A, G,
and F) and the lowest pipe, D, are those with greatest resonance, the
middle voice stands out in performance. Variety is obtained by vary-
ing the middle part; wherever possible, fourths and fifths are added
above and below, as shown in the example.
In one dance the rhythm of the steps only coincided with that
of the music to the extent that twenty steps were fitted to twenty
quavers of Ex. 245. The distribution of accented stamping steps in
152 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
the twenty-step unit (checked repeatedly during the performance) was
as follows:
1-923» 4 5 67 8-010 ШЇ? 13 14 15 16 17505 gi DOR
At times the second quaver of the ligatures was dotted, giving a
*Scottish snap' to the movement. The players tended to break off on
the interval e.
While this is the music played at the New Year Mating Festival in
the second fortnight of February, corresponding to the Old Style
Chinese New Year, music of another kind may be heard on market
days, when the Miau come into the Chinese towns from their villages.
The following is a fragment of a melody played in unison on two six-
holed cross-flutes by two men who stood facing each other; it con-
tains a major third tetrachord and would be converted into the
Japanese mode hirazyoosi if the octave G were added:
Ex. 247 is a remarkable three-note tune! from the Yau people of
Lienyang in Canton Province:
Ex. 247
Some of the Miau tribes use a Jew’s harp;? though no description
of this instrument is given, many of the peoples of countries bordering
on southern China have a bamboo Jew’s harp, and it is certain that
this is one of the very ancient instruments common to the whole
area (p. 185).
The fourteen-pipe mouth-organs of the people of Laos in northern
1 Hwang Yeoudih, “Lienyang Yauren-di Inyueh’, Minswu, i (4) (Canton, 1942), pp.
28-35. 2 Е, Savina, Histoire des Miao (Hong Kong, 1924), p. 25.
MIAU 153
Annam are made in three sizes: mezzo-soprano, contralto, and bari-
tone, and in sweetness and clarity they are said to surpass both Dyak
mouth-organ and Chinese sheng. Ex. 248 (‘The Possessed’) is written
on three staves, but whether played by three instruments is not clear:!
Ex. 248
Жай
<== e e e e
Some of the examples show that the instrument may also be used
entirely melodically: to play a one-line melody without chords or
with only occasional chords or a pedal-point.' ?
In the highlands of Burma and the country of the Yunnan-Burma
1 M. Humbert-Lavergne, ‘La Musique à travers la vie laotienne’, Zeitschrift für
vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, ii (1934), pp. 14-19. Laotian mouth-organ music is
recorded in The History of Music in Sound, i, side 6.
? С. Knosp, ‘Histoire de la musique dans lIndo-Chine’, Encyclopédie de la musique,
1'е partie, v (Paris, 1922), pp. 3100-46. See p. 3145.
154 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
border are the Karen people; possibly related to the Miau and pos-
sibly (though doubtfully) belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language-
group. They make use of mouth-organs not inferior in size to those
of the Miau,! though differing from these in that they lack a mouth-
piece a foot or more in length.
LUOLUO AND MINJIA
While the Miau and Karen are only doubtfully included in the
Sino-Tibetan language-group, the Luoluo (6) are unquestionably mem-
bers of the Tibeto-Burman branch. Those in the vicinity of Lihjiang
(185) in south-western Yunnan, belonging to the Mosuo (7) group,
have been studied by Professor Fuh Mawji (186) formerly of Hwajong
(187) University, to whom I am indebted for specimens of their
bamboo Jew's harps and of their tunes.? The first type consists of a
single vibrating tongue, cut in a length of bamboo; it vibrates in a long
narrow slit and is set in motion by jerking the end of a short length
of silk-gut attached to one end, while holding the other firm by a loop
of silk. The instrument is held across the mouth, in front of but not
touching the parted lips. By varying the shape and capacity of the
mouth-cavity, selected partials of the fundamental are reinforced—
as in playing all types of Jew's harp.
A more interesting type of Jew's harp consists of three tuned vibra-
tors, each yielding a note of fixed pitch. In this case the vibrators are
excited by plucking a slender projection on the free end (pl. 6 (с)).
The three notes are, judged by ear, from above down: F sharp,
D sharp (both above middle C) and the G sharp below middle C;
they are clear and musical in quality.? The player not only changes the
shape of the mouth but alters the position of the tongue, as if articu-
lating the words. Young men and women are able to exchange mes-
sages using this instrument as a generator of sound, modified by the
changing properties of the mouth cavity as a resonator, as in speech.
Two popular three-note tunes, played on the triple Jew's harp, have
been written down by Professor Fuh. The first, in ternary measure,
is called ‘The Bees Fly across the Golden Sand River’:
Ex. 249
1 Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940), p. 184 and pl. X d.
2 See also J. Е. Rock, ‘The Romance of ?k'A-*MÁ-!GvU-"Mi-?aKYr'", Bulletin de l'école
française de l'extréme orient, xxxix (Hanoy, 1939), pp. 1-152; in particular pp. 2-5,
7-13, and 122, * Another specimen is tuned F sharp, D sharp, and C sharp.
LUOLUO AND MINJIA 155
The second, in common time, is ‘A Dog Follows a Deer’. The unit
is repeated over and over again, sometimes at great speed.
Among the Lihjiang Mosuo the Jew's harp plays an important part
in the courtship pattern of the community.! With another Tibeto-
Burman people, the Minjia (188)? now considerably sinicized, living
about a hundred miles south of Lihjiang, on the Eelhae (189), the
Jew's harp is only a children's toy. It is a small version of the first
type described from the Mosuo, but with a cloven tongue (pl. 6 (d)).
NAGAS
Away to the west, over the southern continuation of the Himalaya
range, are people who belong to the central and southern Assamese
division of the Tibeto-Burman family: the Nagas. Their musical in-
struments include a bamboo Jew's harp with a single vibrating unit,
almost identical with those of the Lihjiang Mosuo and of the Minjia,
and played in the same way; a flute; a fiddle,’ and slit-drums—the
last often of gigantic size.^ 5 The Sema Nagas have no slit drums,
though they make use of various struck or shaken idiophones for
non-musical purposes, but they have a two-holed cross-flute and a
bamboo Jew's harp. The following example is a three-part chorus
sung by these people.9
Ех, 251
1 See Rock, op. cit.
* For a general account of this people (not, however, of any musical interest) see
C. P. Fitzgerald, The Tower of Five Glories (London, 1941).
* C. von Fürer Haimendorf, The Naked Nagas (Calcutta, 1946), fig. 49.
4 Ibid., figs. 38, 39. — 5 Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments, р. 30 and pl. Ib.
8 J. H. Hutton, The Sema Nagas (London, 1921), p. 370.
156 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
ANNAM!
The urban music of Annam is very largely sinicized. ^? In the towns
the instruments in use are Chinese, or variants of Chinese instruments,
and (with the exception of single sonorous stones or metal slabs) all
belong to the *modern' category, that is, they are instruments im-
ported into China in Tarng times or later. The instruments of the
Confucian orchestra survive only as illustrations in early books, or as
rare specimens, no longer played, in the imperial palace; even the
sheng has been forgotten in Annam.
Of the tunes and fragments available, none exhibit any trace of the
major third scale noted in Tibet, Korea, and Japan; with one excep-
tion all are ‘Chinese’, and all but two are strictly pentatonic. While
the do mode is the most frequent, examples in other modes also occur.
The following is a popular fiddle tune (for a fiddle of el/hwu-type,
p. 93) entitled * Running Water':?
E O a EG. P В eS SS 1
Р-Н г рЫ
Г SSS [ass Ss
A tune of unusually regular sequential structure is the following
‘Spring Breeze'* (Ex. 253).
1 Knosp, ‘Histoire de la musique dans l'Indo-Chine* p. 3100.
2 G. de Gironcourt, ‘Recherches de géographie musicale en Indochine’, Bulletin
de la société des études indochinoises, Nouvelle Série, xvii, No. 4 (Saigon, 1942),
pp. 7-174.
3 Knosp, op. cit., p. 3104. * Ibid., p. 3105.
ANNAM 157
Knosp gives an interesting account of improvisation and examples of
characteristic turns of phrase, including the following with its chain
of fourths :!
All the examples so far quoted are in duple or quadruple time. A
remarkable specimen is the following hexatonic tune in triple time;
this tune is more Indian in character than Chinese:?
Ex. 255
Some features of the material collected by Knosp suggest the presence
of a more ancient ethnic substratum in Annam, and this suggestion
has been fully confirmed by more recent studies.’ In rural areas, and
in particular among the Sedang people, north of Kontum, an entire
armoury of primitive bamboo instruments and stone chimes is in
use. There are even hydraulic orchestras, actuated by the overflow
from irrigation channels, including slit-drums, clappers, xylophones,
stone-chimes, and a bowed gourd; two or more instruments, playing
rhythmically and melodically differentiated parts, are mechanically
co-ordinated so as to play continuously. To this list of archaic
! Knosp, ‘Histoire de la musique dans l'Indo-Chine', p. 3106.
2 Ibid., p. 3103.
* G. de Gironcourt, op. cit.
158 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
instruments may be added two forms of ground-zither, played by
men only and used to accompany courtship-songs.!
The specimens of rural music available display archaic features as
striking as the instruments. The following example is the antiphonal
vocalization of a waterman and his wife, as heard at dusk on the
Hue River.? It makes use of four notes only, distributed over a range
of one and a half octaves; the repeated drop of a fourth is striking:
Se Ey E ЕР
ee ЕО
е лг A BL Gp 2.730 RUE)
i=. = eee AER REO SSeS Кез cum
Ex. 257
Pure expanded-triad melodies occur, such as, for example, this lullaby
from Phuc-tho:?
Ex. 258
Even in urban music thereare traces of an early substratum in funeral
music. The following example is played on a double-oboe with reeds
made from the pupal skin of a certain insect; the two components are
tuned so that each ‘note’ is an interval of a minor second. This
1 Knosp, ‘Histoire de la musique dans l'Indo- Chine' p. 3117.
? [bid., p. 3126. 3 С. de Gironcourt, op. cit.
ANNAM 159
instrument is doubled by a true oboe. The fragment is repeated
indefinitely : 1
Ех. 259
The 'fanfared' character of this example (р. 178) suggests that it
derives from the same ancient substratum as Ex. 258. Such expanded
triad melodies are characteristic of certain primitive peoples in New
Guinea. The existence in Annam of many ancient instruments, in-
cluding two of the oldest chordophones known, and of a great
variety of non-Chinese types of melodic utterance, is compatible
with what is known from other sources of the ethnological complexity
of this region. It is of interest that one type of ground-zither pre-
served in Annam occurs also in the southern Sudan among the Nuer.?
CAMBODIA
One account of Cambodian music? records that these people neither
sing in the street nor play single instruments, though they possess a
sonorous orchestra of instruments of superb workmanship. It may
be, however, that this author was unfortunate in his contacts, since
there is available from another source a collection of fifty-four songs,
both words and music, from all the provinces of Cambodia.* More
recently a further collection of twenty-one songs, and a number of
specimens of rural music (work-songs, &c.), and also of aboriginal
music from the most primitive inhabitants, have been published.
Although the Khmers, ancestors of the Cambodians, were raised
to a high cultural level for a thousand years by Indian colonists reach-
ing Cambodia at the beginning of our era, the musical culture of their
descendants, unlike that of Burma, shows very little Indian influence.
Of the fifty-four songs transcribed,* two only are based on major
third scales; half of the remainder are purely pentatonic minor third
scales, half are hexatonic with minor third tetrachords; only a few
are heptatonic. Some of those in the hexatonic group make only
occasional use of the semitone. With few exceptions they are all in
common time.
* Knosp, ‘Histoire de la musique dans l'Indo-Chine', р. 3109.
* А. М. Tucker, Tribal Music and Dancing in the Southern Sudan (Africa) (London,
па) р. 13. * Knosp, op. cit., p. 3129.
* A. Tricon and Ch. Bellan, Chansons cambodgiennes (Saigon, 1921).
* G. de Gironcourt, op. cit. A Cambodian lullaby is recorded in The History of
Music in Sound, i, side 5.
160 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
The following example exhibits the plagal form of the mode
hirazyoosi (to use the Japanese name); the upper tetrachord is occa-
sionally filled in. This and other examples appear to be syllabic:
Ех. 260 ‘D&mbang dék’ (‘Iron Rod’ or ‘Small and Tender’)
Moderato
The first part of the next example is in plagal iwato with the lower
tetrachord occasionally filled in; in the tenth bar it modulates to a
different genus and key, returning to a major third tetrachordal struc-
ture in the last two bars:
Ех. 261 ‘Peak prampel’ (‘Seven Words’)
Lento
f) ===> — | e
eae NES AE ue. PS Se ИЕН ee DÀ герар ЕНЕ
= = aS ee ee ОЕ Е 5
НИ АШ i 2 тл. «ша ELE S сс
eel
A number of the songs in the coliection have four equal notes to
the bar throughout, dotted notes or notes of two or three times the
unit value being absent or few, as in the following example:
Ex. 262 ‘Bok srou’ (‘Rice-pounding Song’)
Moderato
РШЕ JAN TELE, W/E
(а) INDIAN VINA PLAYER
For further details see page xv
(6) A BURMESE ORCHESTRA, SAING TYPE
For details of instruments see page xv
LATE МУШ
8-LEC 52584 aay
Coa 959-899) шир pue *sodid-poo1 o[qnop ‘Атец pojsouo-1o^o[ pue 1oddn Surmoys ‘esayo әпше yeAor ayy (2)
(5'8 Kinjuo5 4360) 1] шолу diey (q)
C'a 658—588) зАлеч pojsouo-1oo] Зи ва sueiiAssy (2)
SLNAWNULSNI NVIIN V.LOdOSSIA
CAMBODIA 161
The following four bars resemble the most ancient surviving
Chinese melodies:
ЕХ 263
In most of the songs, however, dotted ligatures replace single notes
here and there, though the four-beat rhythm is maintained.
Ex. 264
The following is a more highly organized tune:
Ex. 265
Moderato
Ex. 266 is a royal funeral chant sung antiphonally by soloist and
chorus accompanied by oboe and two drums:!
While popular rural tunes may show major-third tetrachords and
occasionally ‘filled-in’ tetrachords, the aboriginal music in some
instances exhibits pure ‘fanfared’ melodies.!
Cambodia has been included in the group of countries of eastern
Asia where chime-instruments tend to have an equal-tempered octave
! G. de Gironcourt, ‘Motifs de chants cambodgiens', Bulletin de la société des
études indochinoises, nouvelle série, xvi, No. 1 (Saigon, 1941), pp. 51-105.
162 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
of seven equidistant notes, each of which can serve as a locus of
inversion for pentatonic scales.!
The 21 instruments in use in Cambodia include 2 xylophones of
21 and 17 keys respectively and a chime of 21 bronze plates; 2 gong
chimes, the one an octave higher than the other; 3 long lutes; 3 fiddles,
of which one is a spike-fiddle of Persian origin; a stick-zither with
a gourd as resonator; an oboe and a flute; cymbals, 4 different types
of drum, and clappers of wood.? The striking difference, as compared
with the Annamese orchestra, is the presence of various chimes. The
stick-zither is not an orchestral instrument; it is unquestionably of
great antiquity, like the ground-harp and zither of the Annamese.
There are 2 court orchestras, one of male, the other of female,
performers. In the former, out of 11 instruments, 5 are chimes (gongs
and xylophones are the chief melodic instruments), 2 are flutes, one
is a spike-fiddle and the rest are percussion. To the 5 chimes, the
women's orchestra adds 6 different stringed instruments. The follow-
ing 3 bars illustrate in short score a point at which heterophony
becomes harmony:?
Ex. 267
Chimes
and
Flutes
Percussion [—————8R 8: —E-E— -2 ш № | —— LN —2-——]
SIAM (THAILAND)
Not until the end of the fourteenth century did Siam become a
political unit under the leadership of Thai conquerors from the border
country adjoining Yunnan, but by the end of the following century
the new unit had conquered Cambodia and annexed the Malayan
Peninsula. Prior to the end of the fourteenth century, the area later
to become Siam was occupied by a group of states all strongly in-
fluenced by Indian culture; in certain regions this influence was pre-
dominantly Hindu, but for the most part it was Buddhist.?
1 Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 132. ? Knosp, op. cit., p. 3131.
з J. Auboyer, ‘L’Indochine’ in L’ Asie orientale des origines au ХИ? siècle (К. Grous-
set) (Paris, 1941), pp. 378 ff.
SIAM (THAILAND) 163
The tonal system of the Siamese was one of the first Far Eastern
systems to receive attention from the West.! It may even be said that
Siam achieved a certain notoriety among musicologists when it was
discovered that the system of the Siamese tends towards equal tem-
perament of an unusual type: the octave is divided into seven equal
parts. Generally speaking their tunes do not make use of all seven
steps but of five only, skipping two to produce pentatonic scales that
the Western ear interprets as ‘Chinese’ pentatonic scales of major
seconds and minor thirds. Three modes are used, corresponding to
the Chinese do, sol, and [а modes.
When subjected to physical measurement this tempering is found
to be far from accurate, and singers appear to take little notice of
instrumental temperament. One recording includes a passage in which
the singer makes use of almost Western intervals, but alternates with
an orchestra playing in the tempered scale.? In this recording the
singer is never accompanied but alternates with orchestral ritornelli.
The Siamese orchestra seems to be almost identical with that of
Cambodia? In a recordingin the Music of the Orient series* the Siamese
orchestra is in fact identical with the Cambodian male orchestra of
the palace. An entire composition was transcribed by Stumpf? and
has recently been reprinted by Davison and Apel.9 Ex. 220, taken from
Seelig,” is a tune (No. 17(b) in that collection) entitled ‘The Slim
Cambodian’.
Ex. 268
1 A. J. Ellis, ‘Musical Scales of Various Nations’, Journal of the Society of Arts
(27 March 1885); C. Stumpf, ‘Tonsystem und Musik der Siamesen’, Sammelbdnde für
vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, i (1922), pp. 129-77.
2 Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 133.
* Phra Chen Duriyanga, Siamese Music (Bangkok, n.d.).
* E. M. von Hornbostel, Music of The Orient (Record M.O. 107) (Parlophone,
London).
5 Stumpf, op. cit., pp. 171 ff.
€ A. T. Davison and W. Apel, Historical Anthology of Music, i (Cambridge, Massa-
chusetts, 1947), p. 4.
? For a collection of 150 melodies see P. J. Seelig, Siamesische Musik (Bandoeng, 1932).
164 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
BURMA
From such transcriptions as are available! and from the constitu-
tion of Burmese orchestras, there seems little doubt that Indian in-
fluence predominates in the music of Lower Burma. The characteristic
Burmese orchestra is that accompanying plays in which the shadows
of two-dimensional puppets are projected on a screen. It consists of
two pairs of clappers, two pairs of cymbals, a gong-chime (like those
of Siam and Cambodia), a drum-chime, a large drum, and two oboes
(see pl. 7 (b)).? Omitting the gong-chime, this is the sort of instrumental
ensemble to be met with in southern India. It may be mentioned
that Burmese orchestras were known to the Tarng court, and that
the Tarngshu (190) contains an account of Burmese music.
The Burmese apply the term ‘Chinese’ to their pentatonic melo-
dies;! and these form but a small part of the repertoire. The following
is interesting in relation to some of the Cambodian tunes: if the rests
are filled in with repeated notes the resulting melody closely resembles
Ex. 262 (p. 160):
Ex. 269
Another ‘Chinese’ tune differs from classical Chinese tunes in
the way it is built up in a square, predictable manner:
Practically all the tunes quoted are symmetrical in structure;
some of them have that exciting rhythmic quality which one asso-
ciates with Indian drumming. Here is a tune with a conspicuous
major third-minor second tetrachord, but with the semitone above
(Ex. 997 I
1 G. Knosp, ‘La Birmanie’ in Encyclopédie de la musique, 1"° partie, v (Paris, 1922),
рр. 3094-9. See also Е. Bose, Musikalische Völkerkunde (Freiburg i. Br., 1953), p. 129
and examples 53 and 54.
? Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 153.
BURMA 165
The melody has a non-Far-Eastern character in that the strong
accent falls almost invariably on a note of the tonic chord of D major.
JAVA, SUMATRA, AND NIAS
The music of Java has been the subject of several memoirs of out-
standing importance.! No part of the world, other than Japan, shows
such a predilection for major third scales as does the Malay Archi-
pelago; and in west Java (culturally the most primitive part of the
island) singers perform in scales with two disjunct major third tetra-
chords, comparable to the Japanese mode kumoizyoosi. Instruments
and whole orchestras are tuned to scales which include one or more
major thirds, as in Exs. 272 (Sachs) and 273 (Groneman and Land);
this major third pentatonic genus, pelog, is to be found not only
throughout Java, but in Bali as well:
ВХ. 212
When the pitch of successive notes in these scales is accurately
measured, it is found that, on the same instrument, one third is not
the same size as another, and seconds may be of several sizes. The
reason for this is that the orchestras consist almost exclusively of
idiophones tuned by comparison with standard metal bars kept by
the gong-founders. Neither the cycle of fifths nor the harmonic divi-
sion of strings is known to these people; their scales are duplicated,
not constructed.?
! J. Groneman and J. P. N. Land, De Gamélan te Jogjákartd (Amsterdam, 1890);
D. de Lange and F. F. Snelleman, *La Musique et les instruments de musique dans
les Indes orientales néerlandaises', Encyclopédie de la musique, 1" partie, у, pp. 3147-78.
Jaap Kunst, De Toonkunst van Java (The Hague, 1934); Music in Java (The Hague,
1949); M. Hood, The Nuclear Theme as a Determinant of Patet in Javanese Music
(Groningen and Djakarta, 1954). ? Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 129.
166 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
In order to allow more than one mode to be played within the same
range, the idiophones of the pelog-orchestras are given seven notes;
this series may be approximately represented as follows, starting from
E:EF G A BC D. Although there were originally three ‘female’
(pelog) modes, nem, lima, and barang, much of the /ima-material now
available shows nem-characteristics.!
Ex. 273 pelog patet nen?
D
—--]
Gong stroke
Corresponding to the Chinese minor third pentatonic genus, the
Javanese also have a *masculine' genus, salendro or slendro, taking
its name from the Indian dynasty of the Sailendra which ruled Java
from the end of the eighth until the end of the tenth century. The two
genera—pelog and slendro—are played by different sets of instruments
in different orchestras. In effect, melodies in slendro sound to the
Western ear like Chinese pentatonic melodies; but the octave in fact
tends to be divided into five equal steps. The tuning of old instru-
ments excavated in Java suggests, however, that there was a time
when the octave was divided into steps approaching three major
seconds and two minor thirds. It has been suggested that, whereas in
the West, equal temperament arose from the need for freedom of
transposition, in Java, it arose from the attempt to play melodies in
different modes in the same range on instruments of fixed pitch.?
A recent study* has shown that both slendro and pelog are essen-
tially non-equidistant scale-systems. The results imply that the ten-
dency to equal temperament has been overstressed. Furthermore,
contrary to earlier views, pelog and slendro modes can be distinguished
by their structure—by the position of tonic and dominant, and by
their characteristic cadences, themselves determined by the limited
range of the dominant chime-idiophone. The parallel with cadential
formulae in the Tarng (?) melodies of Ju Shii (p. 109) is striking.
The following example is in the slendro mode nem.?
Ex. 274
Gong stroke
== == Ек =
1 Hood, op. cit., pp. 194 ff.
2 De Lange and Snelleman, op. cit., p. 3156; taken from Groneman and Land, ор.
cit., pp. 57 and 78.
3 Sachs, The Rise of Music, рр. 131, 132. + Hood, op. cit.
JAVA, SUMATRA, AND NIAS 167
It seems probable that the names for the modes were invented in
relation to the major third pentatonic genus pelog andit is now accepted
that this is the older genus.
Like Cambodian and Siamese orchestras, the Javanese orchestra
or gamelan includes the Persian spike-fiddle known as the rebab; this
instrument leads and is responsible for the prelude and for announc-
ing the melody which forms the basis of the whole composition. The
Javanese also have a solo reed instrument, a type of oboe, the selom-
pret, but this does not form part of the gamelan.
In addition to the gong-chimes the Javanese make use of a number
of celesta-like metallophones constructed on a plan similar to that of
Indo-Chinese xylophones, but with flat metal plates replacing the
wooden slats of the former. Both gong-chimes and at least one type
of celesta (the gendér) incorporate tuned resonators in their struc-
ture. As in the orchestras on the mainland, several solitary gongs of
large size are also used. The gamelan includes one instrument not
represented in the Cambodian armoury; this is a board zither of
fourteen strings tuned to a pelog scale of two octaves.
In west Java a number of primitive instruments occur. The chime-
idiophones among these are all made of wood; some are suspended
xylophones of tubes or laths of bamboo. In those made with tubes,
these are closed below and cut away at the open end until only a
long, more or less flat, vibratile tongue, tuned to the pitch of the
tube, remains. This form of tube is the same as that found in the
other type of idiophone, the angkloeng. In this, two or more tubes
tuned at the octave are arranged in a wooden frame in such a way
that they can slide in slots, and are caused to emit their charac-
teristic notes by striking against the end of the slots; a number
of such frames, each of two or three tubes, may be arranged in a
chime.
In Java occurs the first example we have met of a primitive zither
constructed entirely of bamboo. This is the tube-zither, ketoeng-
ketoeng.! It consists of an internode of bamboo together with its two
adjacent nodes. Round the periphery of the cylinder are a number
of ‘strings’ formed by lifting up strips of the outer layers of the tube
itself, and tuned by inserting small blocks of wood under the ‘string’
at each end. A hole is cut in the wall of the tube, so that the cavity
acts as a resonator (pl. 6(e)). Another primitive instrument is the
set of panpipes, consisting of ten or twenty reeds, closed below, and
1 The figure in de Lange and Snelleman, ор. cit., p. 3168 is wrongly labelled soeling;
the soeling is a vertical flute, cf. ibid., p. 3149.
168 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
assembled in such a way that their open ends can be blown across in
sequence.
A full score of an entire composition for a gamelan of twelve differ-
ent instruments has been prepared;! it includes ten distinct melodic
voices. Except for a greater range, the theme itself is indistinguishable
from Prince Tzayyuh's examples of the earliest Chinese ritual music
(p. 102). It is as follows:
Two bars of the full score are shown in Ex. 276.
Recent work has revealed a correspondence between the vibration
frequencies of certain early Javanese metallophones and the vibration
frequencies of particular modes on reed pipes.? The results suggest
that some of these early metallophones must have been tuned to a
note series generated by a pipe. The suggestion is of the greatest
importance, not only because it implies that at some period in the
past the Javanese had a means of generating scales instead of copying
them, but also because it raises the question whether pentatonic
genera of some kind necessarily precede hexatonic and heptatonic
genera in time.
In striking contrast to Javanese orchestras, none of the four dif-
ferent orchestras of northern Sumatra contains idiophonic chimes;
all have single idiophones (gongs), percussion and a solo instrument
of some kind—flute, clarinet, rebab, or other fiddle. This suggests
Arab or Indian influence and might perhaps be correlated with the
early conversion of this part of the island to Islam. Marco Polo
records the existence of a Mohammedan state in west Sumatra as
early as 1292.3 Among the more primitive peoples of the island, the
idiophonic chime occurs in the form of a xylophone of bamboo
laths; there is also a bamboo tube-zither, a two-stringed short lute,
and a bamboo Jew's harp resembling those of the Naga, Mosuo and
Minjia.
! De ш and Snelleman, op. cit., pp. 3160-4; taken from Groneman and Land, op.
Git.) р. 105:
2 Kathleen Schlesinger, The Greek Aulos (London, 1939), pp. 334 ff.
3 The Travels of Marco Polo. Book Ш, ch. xi.
JAVA, SUMATRA, AND NIAS 169
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170 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
A detailed account of the music of Nias, an island off the west coast
of Sumatra, has been given.! The inhabitants of the southern districts
are closely related to the Nagas. They exhibit a remarkable type of
anhemitonic, tetratonic, vocal melody of the range of a tritone
and usually in three-beat measures. The instruments of the island in-
clude single gongs; a three- or four-keyed xylophone, the keys of
which rest on the thighs of-the performer sitting over a trench; a
remarkable aerophone consisting of a bamboo ‘tuning fork’, the tube
of which selects and reinforces the fourth or fifth upper partial of the
fundamental; idiochordic tube-zithers with one to four strings, struck
or plucked; a Jew's harp; an idioglottal free-reed pipe; a nose-flute
and other flutes. The following example is a transcription of the gong
music played in central Nias on festal occasions. The original score
includes three drums:
Ex 27]
CS A ee DE зана Т RE:
a 2 ea y See
N
BALI
No part of the non-Western musical world has received more sym-
pathetic treatment from Western musicologists than the small island
of Bali, next in sequence to Java in the chain of the Archipelago.? In
contrast to Java which, from contact with Muslim India, was pre-
dominantly under the influence of Islam in the fifteenth century, Bali,
having rejected Buddhism at a very early date, escaped the Islamic
influence and remains to this day essentially Hindu. The ritual orches-
tras make no use, however, of instruments associated elsewhere with
Hindu influence.
The classical orchestra, originally used only in the ceremonies con-
nected with cremation, is composed almost exclusively of idiophones;
1 Kunst, ‘Music in Nias’, Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, xxxviii (Leiden,
1940), pp. 1-89 and p. 26 in particular.
? J. Kunst and C. J. A. Kunst-Wely, De toonkunst van Bali (Weltevreden, 1925).
C. McPhee, ‘The Balinese wajang koelit and its music’, Djawa, xvi (Jogjakarta, 1936);
* Angkloeng gamelans in Bali’, Djawa, xvii Jogjakarta, 1937); A House in Bali (New York,
1944).
BALI 171
the only non-idiophonic instruments are the drums. The scale
of the instruments is of four notes only. In many of the classical
orchestras (gamelans)! the idiophones are entirely metallophones;
but in certain parts of Bali the classical gamelan includes wooden
idiophones: angkloengs and two types of xylophones. Even when
angkloengs are absent the classical gamelan is referred to as gamelan
Angkloeng.?
The keyed metallophones are of two types: those in which the keys
are suspended freely over the resonators; and those in which they
rest on some damping material over the resonators. The former are
the genders, the latter, the gangsas. On the whole it is the gender type
which is used in gamelan Angkloeng. Each gender has four keys within
the range of an octave, and there are large, medium, and small
gendérs, tuned an octave apart. The gamelan includes a pair of the
largest size and four (two pairs) of each of the other two sizes. The
members of these pairs are tuned so that there is a difference in pitch
—which may be as large as three-eighths of a tone in the large
instruments—between corresponding keys; the effect of this is to
give a bell-like sonority to the higher registers and a throbbing
intensity to the lower.3
The remaining metallophones are the réjongs and gongs. A réjong
is a pair of tuned kettle-gongs mounted one at each end of a wooden
handle, and tuned a second or a minor third apart. They are played
in pairs by two players, who between them cover the whole of the
four-note scale. It is known from bas-reliefs that such réjongs existed
in Java at least as early as the fourteenth century. Each gamelan also
has a single gong, lower in pitch than the lowest note of the large
genders and tuned to а note which is not of the scale, but which
roughly converts the four-note scale into a pentatonic scale. Thus if
the scale is СА B D, the gong might be any note between Ep and Fd.
A second small gong is tuned to one of the notes of the scale but at
a high pitch. Cymbals and two small drums, tuned a second apart,
complete the gamelan.
Remarkably enough, the scale of the gamelan Angkloeng: GABD,
the 123.5 sequence of the commonest Chinese mode, common to so
many primitive peoples, is considered by the Balinese to be identical
with the four chief notes produced by a Jew’s harp, génggong:
С Вр C D, that is 134.5, and tunes for the one are played on the
other.*
1 А gamelan is recorded in The History of Music in Sound, i, side 7.
? McPhee, * Angkloeng gamelans in Bali’, р. 122. ° Ibid., р. 128. *Ibid., p. 127.
172 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
The nature of the parts played by the different instruments is as
follows.! Lowest in pitch is a canto fermo played on the largest
gendérs. This is in minims with a gong stroke at every ninth minim.
Above this the higher pitched gendérs play a melody in quavers based
on the canto fermo, and above this the réjongs play a two- or three-
part figuration in semiquavers. In the classical gamelan the line based
on the canto fermo may disappear, and the higher pitched gendérs may
assist the réjongs in the figuration. The following example illustrates
this figuration and its relation to the canto fermo?
Ex. 278
The type of melody developed from the canto fermo is shown in the
next example:?
Beja
JW lal —EI-—-—B———-—
ies Ft ae .-
In bars three and four the gendérs occasionally split into two voices
a fifth apart; because of their greater sonority the fifths stand out as
a cross-rhythm in relation to the movement of the canto fermo.
Similar fifths arise in the réjong figuration and give life to the
music, just as does syncopated drumming within a fixed framework.
There is a certain similarity between Balinese drumming technique
and that of réjong playing; and also similarity in form between
réjongs and Indian (and Japanese) hour-glass drums.* It is pos-
sible that the polyrhythm of the figuration is not Far Eastern but
Indian.5
The composition of an old-style gamelan Angkloeng is as follows.
1 McPhee, * Angkloeng gamelans in Bali’, pp. 128 ff.
2 ]bid., р. 131. 8 [bid., р. 135. * [bid., p. 129.
5 Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 139.
BALI 173
The usual four-note metallophones and a single set of réjongs are
supplemented by two small gangsas, four angkloengs, and two dif-
ferent kinds of xylophones: the grantang with angkloeng-like keys,
and a simple xylophone without resonators, the tjoengklik. In this
gamelan the réjongs and angkloengs are responsible for the figuration,
the lowest gendérs give out the canto fermo and the other keyed
metallophones play the melody in unison. Grantang and tjoengklik
each produce a different paraphrase of the melody. Only four of the
nine staves of the original score are quoted here, omitting two staves
of angkloengs, one of réjongs, one of cymbals, and one of drums.! The
third note of the series is a Bp in this example; this deviation is
accepted as a mere change in intonation:
Ex. 280
Gendérs
Grantang
Tjoengklik
Lowest gendérs
Gong
! McPhee, ‘Angkloeng gamelans in Bali’, p. 138.
174 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
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Yet another tuning is found in a different gamelan. One of the
melodies played by this gamelan is as follows:
Ex. 281
The following two bars in full score (Ex. 282) illustrate the texture of
another type of orchestra, the old-style ceremonial gamelan Gong,
consisting exclusively of metallophones and drums.? Here the gong-
chime expounds a flowing five-note pelog melody (scale: Сў A C#
D E) and the cantus of the gendérs receives a first amplification from
the gangsas in double octaves. This example illustrates the extra-
ordinary harmonic quality imparted by the punctuating gongs.
The pieces played by the gamelans nearly always consist of two
sections: a ‘body’ (pengawak) followed by an Allegretto (pengétjét).?
Each is introduced by a solo (the pengawit): a statement of the musical
material which it introduces. Whereas the *body' is a complete state-
ment which does not require repetition, the Allegretto is meant to be
repeated; its closing note is the note on which it opens, and it is in
fact an ostinato of at least a dozen repeats. The pengawit intimates
what piece is to be played and sets the pace.
Since the sixteenth century, the vowels of the five names of the notes
(ding, dong, deng, doeng, and dang) have been used in Bali to record
melodies. Though time values are not indicated, the metres are
named.
1 McPhee, ‘Angkloeng gamelans in Bali’, p. 141.
2 McPhee, ‘The Five-tone Gamelan Music of Bali’, The Musical Quarterly, XXXV
(New York, 1949), pp. 250-81. з McPhee, ‘ Angkloeng gamelans in Bali’, p. 132.
Ex. 282.
Ceremonial Gamelun Gong, Old Style
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9. drums,
gongs; 8. cymbals;
176 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
The last example is an improvised pelog tune!
Ex. 283
ig Low gong
Three admirable transcriptions of Balinese gamelan music, for two
pianos, have been published. One—‘ Music for the Shadow Play'—is
in the genus slendro: the other two are in pelog.
In Bali, Indian types of orchestra, consisting of rebab, flutes, cym-
bals, &c., are used for two purposes: one type accompanies the classic
drama, Gamboeh, played in fourteenth-century Javanese, the themes
of which are taken from romantic or mythical versions of Javanese
history ;? and a similar orchestra of flute and percussion accompanies
Ardja, a type of drama which draws to some extent on modern
Chinese tales. In the latter the use of an instrumental accompaniment
seems to be a relatively modern usage.*
OTHER ISLANDS OF THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO
There are two reasons for including the other islands of the Indian
Archipelago in this account. First, there are islands where primitive
forms of instruments already met elsewhere in more refined versions
survive; it would be wrong to give the impression that the distribution
of these instruments ceases abruptly in Java and Bali. Secondly, there
are traces in this area of a musical culture profoundly different from
that so far reviewed. Though the music of China at the present time
differs from the ritual music of ancient China quite as much as it
differs from the ritual music of the Balinese gamelan, all three have
greater affinity with each other than they have with certain musical
elements to be met with in the islands.
The ethnological picture of this region is of the utmost complexity;
in New Guinea alone, there are hundreds of tribes of varying mixtures
! McPhee, A House in Bali, p. 210.
* McPhee, Balinese Ceremonial Music transcribed for Two Pianos, Four Hands:
Pemoengkah; Gambangan; Taboe teloe (New York, 1940).
з В. De Zoete and W. Spies, Dance and Drama т Вай (London, 1938), pp. 134 ff.;
Gamboeh music is recorded in The History of Music in Sound, i, side 8.
1 [bid., p. 196.
OTHER ISLANDS OF THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO 177
of races with many and various cultural strata superimposed. The
evidence supports the view that there are in this area traces of a
different main stem of mankind, of a people more different from the
Mongoloids and the Proto- and Deutero-Malays than are these from
each other; and it is suggested that this fact is reflected in the total
musicological picture of this region. The most important work in this
field from the standpoint of comparative musicology is that of Kunst,!
though valuable information regarding instruments and the music of
certain tribes is to be found scattered through the anthropological
literature of this part of the world. A brief survey of the instruments
of the islands with some account of musical practices is included in
de Lange and Snelleman's article previously mentioned.
While many of the instruments recorded are such as we have already
encountered, there are others (many idiophones, certain flutes, certain
free aerophones) which are new and which are obviously primitive
instruments (in the sense of Sachs's classification). From the distribu-
tion of various instruments in this area, it is clear that New Guinea
and the adjacent islands constitute a region in which a high propor-
tion of these primitive instruments occurs. It is also in this region that
a type of music becomes conspicuous of which in this survey only
traces have hitherto been encountered.
Before coming to discuss the music of the Papuans, the occurrence
in Madagascar of stick-zithers with resonators (both plucked and
tapped), and of tube-zithers, should be mentioned; they were taken
thither by a Malay people (the Hovas) some time in the fifteenth
century.? The tube-zither of the Hovas (valiha) has the strings tuned
for the most part in thirds (D F A, E G B) in a manner recalling one
tuning of the Japanese yamatogoto or wagon (191) (d A D G B E),
claimed by the Japanese as an entirely national instrument and said
to have been derived from six long-bows tied side by side.? Chords
of thirds or sixths are frequently used in playing the valiha.
From Borneo (Sarawak) songs of great interest have been recorded
and transcribed;* in some instances these combine an upper minor-
! Kunst, A Study on Papuan Music (Weltevreden, 1931); Over zeldzame Fluiten en
veelstemmige Muziek in het Ngadaen Nageh-Gebied (West-Flores) (Batavia, 1931);
‘Music in Nias’; ‘ Music in Flores’, Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, Supplement
to xlii (Leiden, 1942).
* A. Sichel, ‘Histoire de la musique des Malgaches' in Encyclopédie de la musique,
1'* partie, v, pp. 3226-33. See also Sachs, ‘Les instruments de musique de Madagas-
car', Travaux et mémoires de l'institut d'ethnologie, xxviii (Paris, 1938), and The History
of Music in Sound, i, side 5.
* For a recent account see E. Harich-Schneider, op. cit, p. 57.
* C. S. Myers, ‘A Study of Sarawak Music’, Sammelbdnde der internationalen
Musikgesellschaft, xv (1914), pp. 296-308.
178 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
third tetrachord with a lower major-third tetrachord with the semi-
tone above. The following example, from the Long Kiput tribe is of
particular interest in relation to the style of antiphonal singing
described from Tibet (p. 139):
Ex. 284
The major-third tetrachord with the semitone below is also displayed
in music from Sarawak. Ex. 285 is a Kenyah dance-tune played on a
six-pipe mouth-organ (keluri). The triple rhythm and pendulating
tonic-dominant harmony are both noteworthy.
Ex. 285
The Papuans of the Nassau Range in New Guinea know no other
musical instrument than the Jew's harp, but they possess two entirely
different types of melody.! While the greater part of their melodies are
primitive in the sense that their range does not as a rule exceed a
fourth, others have a range of as much as an octave and are ‘fan-
fared’: that is to say, they are expanded common chords. Recordings
from the Kauwerawet people of the Van Rees Mountains on the one
hand, and from pygmoid tribes of the Central Mountains on the
other, also reveal two completely different types of melody. The fol-
lowing example is from the Kauwerawet; melodies of this kind are
characteristic of Australian culture:
Ex. 286
* Kunst, А Study on Papuan Music, pp. 24 ff.
OTHER ISLANDS OF THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO 179
The next example is from the Awembiak, one of the Central tribes;
it is fanfared and has a range of an octave and a half:
Ex. 287
Certain coastal melodies, such as those of the Waropen, seem to
betray Malayan influence, judged by their pelog character. The fol-
lowing is an example:
Ex. 288
Other coastal melodies are triadic in character but not fanfared. This
suggests that the fanfared melodies are correlated with the persistence
of the Negrito civilization in those regions most sheltered from foreign
influence: the mountain ranges of the interior of New Guinea. It is
assumed by some authorities that fanfared tunes can arise only in
regions where wind-instruments are, or have in the past been, played;
but fanfared melodies also occur in Formosa among the Vusun!
aboriginals and are there clearly linked with the use of the musical
bow. With this instrument the fanfare is derived from the upper
partials of the fundamental, selectively reinforced by the mouth
cavity. Similarly, the Jew's harp may be the source of the Negrito
fanfares; for any instrument producing sounds in which the harmonic
series of overtones is conspicuous may serve as a source of a fan-
fared series (2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th overtones), when coupled with the
mouth cavity as a selective resonator. It may be argued that the
Negrito civilization, although comparatively primitive, stands on a
higher level, from a musical point of view, than does the younger
component, represented by the ‘Australian’ melodies. This superior-
ity in musical culture is paralleled by the general cultural superiority
* Takatomo Kurosawa, ‘The Musical Bow of the Bununs[sic] Tribe in Formosa and
Suggestion as to the Origin of the Pentatonic Scale’, Toyo Ongaku Kenkyi, x-xi (Tokyo,
1952), pp. 18-32.
180 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
of the Negritos as compared with coastal peoples, in whom the pro-
portion of Australian and Melanesian blood is higher.!
Although the extreme type of fanfared melody seems to be confined
to central New Guinea and certain of the islands off the coast, melo-
dies of a pronouncedly triadic character have been recorded from the
coastal regions of New Guinea, among the Semang in central Malaya,
in Flores (east of Bali in the chain of islands), and in Samoa among
the central Polynesian Islands.? It is understandable that canons in
unison may arise from the antiphonal singing of triadic melodies, and
such have been transcribed from recordings made among the Semang.?
The most remarkable canons are those recorded in west Flores.* One
of these is a two-part canon in unison sung by two women over a
drone bass of tonic and fifth sustained by two men; a third man pro-
poses a chromatic variant on the melody (against the drone) while the
women interrupt their canon.» The following is another (partial)
canon on a tonic pedal held by two voices:*
Ex. 289
UA 0 РУ.
Zn A < © ЕК
SS РИ о ЫТ з ЕЕ
CULTURAL INTERRELATIONS
Jt remains now to consider the interrelations of musical cultures
over Far Eastern Asia, both in time and space. First, in contrast to
1 Kunst, A Study on Papuan Music, pp. 24 ff. ? See Exs. 44 and 78.
з F, M. Kolinski, ‘Die Musik der Primitivstimme auf Malaka usw.’, Anthropos, xxv
(1930), pp. 585-648. А бее ШЗ
5 See Sachs, The Rise of Music, р. 51, ех. 29. The complete canon will be found in
Kunst, ‘Music in Flores’, p. 77. в Kunst, Over zeldzame Fluiten, p. 78.
CULTURAL INTERRELATIONS 181
the condition observable in what has been defined here as the Far
Eastern area, orchestras of idiophonic instruments have never (so far
as we know) been a feature of the musical life of India. This statement
may require revision when more is known of the musics of primitive
Indian peoples. It remains true, however, that the whole tendency of
cultured Indian music is towards chamber music: a singer is accom-
panied by a double drone on the tambura, or by two fiddles and a pair
of hand-beaten drums, or by vind (a stick-zither), fiddle, and drum.!
Such ensembles obviously have more affinity with the Chinese theatre
orchestra than with the ritual orchestra described in the Yilii (p.
90) or with the orchestras of Siam, Cambodia, Java, and Bali. The
ritual music of Bali introduces us to a very different musical world,
a world with almost no point of contact with the orchestras of present-
day India and almost without contact with the music of present-day
China; but it resembles, to some extent, the world of ancient Chinese
ritual.
If we survey rapidly the present distribution of ‘idiophonic’ orches-
tras, that is, of orchestras including a high proportion of chime-
idiophones, we find, first, a few ritual orchestras surviving in China,
rarely, if ever, played. In Korea we find stone-chimes, bell-chimes,
celestas of iron plates, surviving in their ancient Chinese form and
still played. In Annam a few instruments survive in the palace, un-
played, but as we have seen (p. 157), in rural Annam both stone- and
bamboo-chimes and orchestras are to be found. In Cambodia and
Siam we meet with a functional orchestra of gong-chimes, celestas,
and bamboo xylophones, with flutes and drums as the only non-
idiophonic components. In Java we observe a division of the celesta-
like metallophones into forms with and without resonators; flute and
sometimes rebab are used as leading solo instruments— perhaps
a trace of Islamic dominance. Then comes the classical Balinese
orchestra of idiophonic instruments and drums only; next the wooden
chime-idiophones scattered over the islands, sometimes united as
orchestras, sometimes used as single instruments; and finally there
are the single wooden idiophones, simple as opposed to compound,
flung far out over the Pacific Islands even to the Americas: the slit-
drums and drum-substitutes made from bamboo tubes.
Were there no chime-idiophones in Korea and China one might
define an Indonesian musical culture centred on Java, fading out in
Annam in contact with China, in Burma in contact with India, in the
islands in contact with Australian and Negrito elements. But the
1 Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 192.
182 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
existence of chime-idiophones as the first-named components of the
Jou ritual orchestra, surviving to this day in Korea, necessitates a
different assessment: their existence suggests that that cultural ele-
ment in Indo-China, in Indonesia, and in the Pacific islands, which is
responsible for the existence of chime-idiophones today, was still
actively shaping Chinese musical culture at the time of the Warring
States in the third century B.c.
We might suppose that Chinese influence in our own era had
imposed this chime-idiophone culture on Indo-China and Indonesia.
But this is out of the question. Annam, for example, the region most
obviously under Chinese influence, was an integral part of the Chinese
empire from 111 B.c. until A.D. 939; it was again held by the Chinese
for a brief period in Ming times. Yet in spite of a deliberate attempt
by the Annamite dynasty to foster Confucianism in 1007, and a fierce
persecution of Buddhism in favour of Confucianism by the Chinese
in Ming times,! there is almost no trace of the ritual orchestra in
urban Annam at the present time. Indeed, chime-idiophones only
survive in regions least exposed to Chinese influence.
A second possible channel of Chinese influence was established
later: Khubilai Khan, Mongol emperor of China, attacked Java in
1292. His offensive was repulsed; but from this time onwards
Chinese influence in Java grew until, at the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury, it is noticeable in the treatment of landscape in temple bas-
reliefs.? The contact was established too late, however. It is not to be
supposed that Chinese influence in Yuan times led to the develop-
ment of an orchestra in some respects more primitive than the ritual
orchestra of Jou times.
In Siam and Cambodia, on the other hand, the chief formative
cultural influence is usually held to have been Indian—either Sivaist
or Buddhist; yet the music of Siam and Cambodia is characterized
by the use of orchestras of chime-idiophones with the rebab as the
sole Indian (or Islamic) borrowing. From bas-reliefs on the great
stupa at Borobudur in Java (750) it is known that orchestras of the
time included all the instruments of ancient India. The evidence
suggests that in Java, at any rate, Indian musical influence was at one
time paramount in court and ritual orchestras; it renders even more
striking the fact that Java now shows so little trace of this influx of
foreign instruments. If one assumes that Siam and Cambodia were
at one time no less Hinduized than was Java, it is remarkable that
! J. Auboyer, op. cit., pp. 396 ff.
2 Ibid., p. 412; 3 Sachs, A History of Musical Instruments, p. 235.
CULTURAL INTERRELATIONS 183
they also exhibit so little Indian influence in their current musical
practices.
An alternative explanation would seem to be that in the remote past
the inhabitants of the great plain of the Yellow River included an
ethnic element closely related to that now distributed all over southern
China, Farther India, Indo-China, Indonesia, and the Archipelago.
A number of cultural parallels have in fact been adduced at different
times in support of the idea of an ancient community of culture over
Far Eastern Asia. One such is the parallel between ceremonies in
different regions in which protective animals participate. Attention
has been drawn to the resemblance of the Balinese Barong to the lion-
dancers in Hokusai's album Daily Exorcisms;! and the Barong has
been compared with the Chinese lion that dances in the street at the
New Year.? To these may be added the Tibetan lion dancers. It must
be admitted, however, that the common factor in these parallels may
be Tantric Buddhism of Indian origin.
There are, however, certain other features, so far unconsidered,
common to the musical cultures of the different peoples in this area.
One of these is the importance of the bamboo plant. The Javanese
myth of the origin of music is described by Raffles in the following
terms: 'the first music of which they have any idea was produced by
the accidental admission of the air into a bamboo tube, which was
left hanging on a tree . . . the angkloeng was the first improvement
upon this Aeolian music.'? Here, as in the Chinese account of the
making of the pitch-pipes (p. 94), bamboo is of primary importance.
A second point in relation to bamboo concerns the curious mixture
of names of bells and of pipes in the Chinese names for the series of
pitch-pipes, the /iuhleu (p. 95). This mixture of names has functional
parallels in Indonesia. In the quotation from Raffles an idiophonic
instrument is regarded as the descendant of a wind-instrument; con-
versely one finds wind-instruments (goembang) in gamelans in West
Java, which functionally replace single gongs and are in fact bass
flutes; other examples of such instruments are to be found on other
islands—on Flores, for example.*
The functional equivalence of struck xylophones and struck metal-
lophones can be observed all over Indo-China and Indonesia. More-
over, in the area of the islands many of the simple struck idiophones
are resonating bamboo tubes; for a tube may either be struck or
1 De Zoete and Spies, op. cit., p. 95.
2 M. Covarrubias, Island of Bali (London, 1937), p. 356.
$ Quoted by McPhee, ‘ Angkloeng gamelans in Bali’, from T. S. Raffles, The History
of Java, i (London, 1817), p. 472. + Kunst, Over zeldzame Fluiten, op. cit., p. 14.
184 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
blown to yield a note. The observation, then, that names of bells and
names of bamboo tubes were freely mixed in naming a series of pitch-
pipes in ancient China, is surely less surprising when one finds:
(1) blown pipes functionally replacing struck metallophones; (2) bam-
boo xylophones existing side by side with metallophone chimes; and
(3) a living tradition to the effect that, although a blown pipe pro-
duced the first music, a struck tuned pipe (the angk/oeng) was the first
improvement on such a system.
Considerable interest has been aroused among musicologists by the
parallels between Chinese and South American panpipes.! In surviv-
ing specimens of Chinese panpipes, the pipes are divided into the two
sets, the Пий and the leu, arranged symmetrically on either side of the
instrument. In ancient Peru the two sets of panpipes (in ‘raft’-form,
as in China), played by two players, were connected by a cord. This
arrangement still exists in Bolivia and among the Karen in Burma.
Now the two sets of pipes in the Chinese instrument are the male and
female portions of the series (p. 95); and, as if echoing Chinese
practice, among the Cuna Indians of Panama, the player has two
sets of panpipes, a fifth apart, referred to as man and wife and con-
nected by a cord. These instruments seem to point to the possibility
that a knowledge of the properties of pipes is a part of the most
ancient cultural heritage of a people distributed in the course of time
from the Yellow River valley to the Burmese hinterland and Central
and South America.
The whole position of the bamboo plant in early Chinese civiliza-
tion is of importance in the discussion of cultural affinities. It seems
reasonable to assume that, whatever elements may have coexisted or
been added at a later stage, there must have been a considerable
bamboo-cultural element in the people who made and played and
sang about mouth-organs (in the Book of Songs) in the eighth cen-
tury B.C. Elephant and buffalo, as well as the bamboo rat, Rhizomys,
were known to the people of Anyang in Shang times, and the climate
in general was milder and more humid then than later.? Though large
bamboos do not grow today in the region of Anyang they may well
have grown there in the second millennium B.c. The presence of such
a bamboo-cultural element would make understandable the pre-
occupation of these people with the properties of pipes as sound-
producing organs of all types, both as wind-instruments and as
1 Sachs, A History of Musical Instruments, p. 178. '
? р. Teilhard de Chardin and Pei Wen-Chung, Le Néolithique de la Chine (Pekin,
1944). See pp. 15-20.
CULTURAL INTERRELATIONS 185
struck-idiophones. Furthermore it seems likely that a relationship
between struck-idiophones and free aerophones, such as one observes
in this area, could only, have been discovered in a bamboo culture,
since bamboo is unique among natural products in mechanical pro-
perties and in conformation.
Various wooden idiophones have been known in China since
ancient times: the tiger (a scraped idiophone), the percussion clapper,
and the trough (a struck-idiophone) were used in the Jou orchestra;
the wooden fish, still in use among Taoists and Buddhists, is a slit-
drum. By this armoury of simple wooden idiophones, China is linked
with many peoples of south-eastern Asia; and one of these ancient
idiophones, of the dimensions of a toy, distributed at the present
time almost universally over central Asia, Siberia, China, Indo-
China, Assam, Indonesia, and Melanesia, is the Jew's harp.
The position of the Jew's harp among musical instruments is re-
markable. It is, following Sachs's classification, a plucked idiophone,
that is, an instrument of naturally sonorous material requiring no
additional tension (as do strings or membranes) to convert it to a
substance of high elastic modulus. But in the form in which it occurs
among the Naga, Mosuo and Minjia, for example, it is only a step
removed from the free reed of the mouth-organ. There is evidence
that the free reed has always been recognized by the Chinese as an
instrument distinct from the mouth-organ in which it occurs. It is
referred to in the Book of Songs as hwang (192) written with the
bamboo determinative, and this is nowadays identified with the
metallic free reed of the mouth-organ: Waley! translates, for example,
‘Blow my shéng-pipes, trill their tongues’, where ‘tongue’ is ‘hwang’.
Although the free reeds are of thin copper in the Miau mouth-organs
(p. 150), as they are in the Chinese instrument, in those from other
peoples of south-eastern Asia—from the Dyaks of Borneo, for
example—the free reeds are cut in thin bamboo and let into the wall
of the pipe (pl. 6 (7) and (g)). From the photograph it can be seen
that in construction these reeds are miniature Jew's harps, with the
thickening near the free end of the tongue carved in the substance of
the reed, as in the Jew’s harps (pl. 6 (c) and (d)). ‘Whistles’ from
Shandong may consist of two short tubes of bamboo into the walls of
1 The Book of Songs (London, 1937), p. 192. This is the usual interpretation of this
passage; but it is worth noticing that there is a suggestive change in the verb in the
Chinese. A literal translation would be: ‘Blow sheng; strike hwang.’ Van Gulik (R. H.
van Gulik, Hsi K'ang and his Poetical Essay on the Lute (Tokyo, 1941)) has indeed
suggested that the hwang was a separate instrument—in his opinion a variety of sheng.
It may have been a plucked or struck idiophone.
186 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
which two bamboo free reeds are inserted, as in the Dyak instrument
(pl. 3 (j)).
From accounts of the Jew’s harp-technique in eastern Asia,"? it
is clear that although this is a plucked idiophone, and the mouth-
cavity acts as a loosely coupled variable resonator, the amplitude of
vibration of the tongue is influenced by the manner in which the
breath is expelled against it. The Jew's harp is not so far removed from
the free reed, activated by the breath and closely coupled with a
tuned resonator, as one might suppose. The frequent use of a large,
loosely coupled resonator with the Jew’s harp in Java, for example,
narrows still further the gap between free reed and Jew's harp. Only
in bamboo, however, is a continuous transition possible, in the same
material, from struck or plucked macro-idiophone to a plucked
micro-idiophone (a Jew's harp) and from this to a breath-activated
micro-idiophone (a free reed). This is because of the special proper-
ties of bamboo; its stiffness is greater than that of any other wood
and it occurs naturally in the form of resonators.
One remarkable aspect of the Jew's harp technique in various
regions of the Far East is its use to imitate animal or human sounds;?
similar use is made of its relative, the free reed. We have seen how the
Jew's harp is used by the Lihjiang Mosuo in China to imitate speech
during courtship (p. 154). The koouchyntzyy (193) (a free reed
‘whistle’) is used in Pekin puppet plays today for imitating animal
and human sounds—hens and infants, for example; and there is a Sonq
account of a man rendered mute who successfully used a ‘whistle’
for purposes of communication, ‘as do the puppet players'.* In Bali
there is a Jew's harp orchestra which not only plays music of the ritual
orchestra, but also provides an accompaniment of animal noises for
certain dances: in particular, noises of toads for a pantomime toad
сһаѕе.5 Lastly, tribes of the Nassau Range in central New Guinea ‘sym-
bolise consciously certain animals by means of the Jew’s harp. ..’.®
Even the onomatopoeic names for the Jew’s harp, current in
widely separated regions of eastern Asia, appear to be related. The
Balinese génggong recalls the gonggina of the Garos in Assam,’
1 McPhee, ‘ Angkloeng gamelans in Bali’, op. cit., p. 127.
? Emsheimer, ‘Uber das Vorkommen und die Anwendungsart der maultronmmel in
Sibirien und Zentral-Asien', Ethnos, vi (Stockholm, 1941), pp. 109-27.
3 Kunst, Music in Java (The Hague, 1949), pp. 360 and 443.
4 Souen K'ai-ti, ' L'origine et ie développement du théâtre des marionnettes chinoises’,
Bulletin du centre franco-chinois d'études sinologiques, i (Pekin, 1944), pp. 81-106 (sum-
mary in French) (194). 5 De Zoete and Spies, op. cit., pp. 249ff.
6 Kunst, A Study on Papuan Music, p. 8.
7 A. Playfair, The Garos (London, 1909), p. 44.
CULTURAL INTERRELATIONS 187
the kunka of the Golds (lower Amur, eastern Siberia)! and the gongoy
of the Gilyaks (lower Amur! and Sakhalin). The Chinese hwang,
for the free reed—derived (according to Karlgren?) from an ancient
form g'wáng, may also be related to these.
The coming of the Bronze Age to the Far East meant the transla-
tion of stone or bamboo idiophones, both simple and compound,
into bronze. The free reeds, we may suppose, were translated at this
time to metallic free reeds; and the Jew's harp has also undergone
translation into terms of metal. Bronze Age culture undoubtedly
reached the various regions of the Far East at very different times:
although it was advanced, for example, in the plain of the Yellow
River by 1500 B.c., it does not seem to have reached northern Annam
until the fourth century before our era (p. 91). In rural areas on the
mainland and in some of the islands of south-eastern Asia, the transla-
tion of bamboo idiophones into metallophones has never occurred.
We have seen (p. 87) that the five notes of the Chinese scale were
anciently correlated with various aspects of the cosmos. A similar
correlation exists in Bali, where the five notes are associated with the
gods of the five directions: North, East, South, West, and Centre.?
The Centre is the realm of Batara Siva (whose colour is white) and is
equated with the first note of the series, ding. Each of the four direc-
tions has its colour and is equated with one of the notes. It may be
that this system is Indian in origin, but it has not been possible to find
an Indian correlation of a five-note scale with the properties of the
cosmos. Moreover, even before the third century B.C.,* the Chinese
were certainly familiar with the Five Rulers of the Earthly Regions,
each with his characteristic colour. At the time of the compilation of
the Liijih Yuehling the following equation had been established
between the notes and the directions.?
Note Direction
mi east
sol south
do centre
re west
la north
1 Emsheimer, ‘Uber das Vorkommen und die Anwendungsart der Maultrommel in
Sibirien und Zentral-Asien'.
? B. Karlgren, Compendium of Phonetics in Ancient and Archaic Chinese (Stockholm,
1954), p. 319. 3 McPhee, A House in Bali, p. 40.
4 G. Haloun, ‘Die Rekonstruktion der chinesischen Urgeschichte durch die Chinesen’,
c. d Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Technik, iii (Kobe, 1925), pp.
43-70.
5 Courant, ‘Essai historique sur la musique classique des Chinois’, Encyclopédie de la
musique, Y'* partie, i, p. 93.
188 MUSIC OF FAR EASTERN ASIA: 2. OTHER COUNTRIES
From McPhee's brief statement it is not possible to be certain what
are the Balinese correlations of notes, colours, and directions, except
in the case of the tonic, ding, which is the Centre and is white. In the
Chinese system the Centre is yellow; but correlations varied. Symaa
Chian,! for example, quotes a system with re and [а reversed. The
existence of such a correlation in Indonesia, even though the terms
correlated differ, merits investigation.
Looking back now over the whole of the Far Eastern area, we
may surely regard it, with some justification, as a unit. From what
centre an ancient common musical culture spread throughout
the area under review cannot as yet be determined; nor are we in
a position to do more than note the possible significance of cul-
tural parallels recently established between the Balkans and south-
eastern Asia, parallels which suggest a far closer connexion be-
tween the Far East and the lands of the Pontine Basin in the
first millennium в.с. than has hitherto been envisaged;? but that
the *chime-idiophone' substratum is of great antiquity is clear from
the recent discovery in southern Annam of stone-chimes knapped
in the manner of neolithic flints from the Bacsonian of Indo-
China and tuned to a pentatonic scale close to the pelog scales of
Indonesia?
In spite of the foreign instruments and music which began to invade
China from Hann times onwards, and in spite of the one time domi-
nance of Indian instruments and music in Indo-China and Indonesia,
we are never likely to confuse Chinese, Siamese, Cambodian, or
Indonesian music with Indian music, so strongly marked is the indi-
viduality of the music of Far Eastern Asia. In some of the islands of
the Archipelago, however, we meet a different musical culture; there,
melodies take the form of expanded triads or fanfares. Pure fanfared
melodies also occur, as we have seen, in rural Annam and in Cam-
bodia. Their occurrence on the mainland accords well with the
general picture of population dynamics in south-eastern Asia; anthro-
pological studies also suggest the presence in parts of Indo-China of
! See M. Granet, La Pensée chinoise (Paris, 1934), p. 377.
2 Kunst, ‘Kulturhistorische Beziehungen zwischen dem Balkan und Indonesien’,
Mededeling No. CIII, Afdeling Culturele en Physische Anthropologie, No. 46, Koninklijk
Instituut voor de Tropen (Amsterdam, 1953).
3 Schaeffner, ‘Une importante découverte archéologique: Le lithophone de Ndut
Lieng Krak (Vietnam)’, La Revue de Musicologie, xxxiii? année, N.s.: Nos. 97-98 (Paris,
1951), pp. 1-19; G. Condominas, ‘Le lithophone préhistorique de Ndut Lieng Krak’,
Bulletin de l'école francaise de l'extrême orient, xlv (Paris, 1951), pp. 359-92. See,
however, F. A. Kuttner's criticism in ‘Nochmals die Steinzeit-Lithophone von Annam',
Die Musikforschung, vi (1953), pp. 1-8.
CULTURAL INTERRELATIONS 189
negritoid peoples. The possible relationship of certain peoples of
south-eastern Asia to African peoples must not be lost sight of;
and here again studies of music and musical instruments already
offer significant pointers.? Finally, there is reason to anticipate that
traces of other, and possibly earlier, musical strata than the common
substratum will be found throughout the Far Eastern area; it is for the
future to confirm their existence and determine their ethnological
significance.
1 W. Nippold, Rassen- und Kulturgeschichte der Negrito-Vélker Siidost-Asiens
(Góttingen, 1936), pp. 109-35.
* Kunst, ‘A Musicological Argument for Cultural Relationship between Indonesia—
probably the Isle of Java—and Central Africa', Proceedings of the Royal Musical Associa-
tion, lxii (1936), pp. 57-76.
190 GLOSSARY OF CHINESE CHARACTERS
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IV
THE MUSIC OF INDIA
By ARNOLD BAKE
INTRODUCTION
THE term ‘Indian music’ embraces a very wide and varied field of
musical phenomena. Classical theory was formulated in detail as early
as the second century B.C., the date now accepted for Bharata's
Nátyasástra, the earliest surviving treatise. This is actually a work on
stagecraft, but includes six chapters on music. On the subject of reli-
gious chanting there are even older texts, like the Rkpratisakhya
(fourth century B.C.?), and the oral tradition of that kind of music
goes back at least a thousand years more.
Apart from this historically developed and theoretically defined
system, one has to take into consideration the numerous ways in
which the different peoples and tribes of India give vent to their
musical impulses, which vary according to their respective stages of
culture. This wide range of musical activities has not escaped the
notice of the indigenous authors on music; they mention its existence
but do not take it into account when formulating the classical
theoretical system.
When we examine the system which the Indian writers themselves
have built up, we see that we are confronted with something closely
related to that of Ancient Greece. The conclusion reached by Antoine
Meillet in respect of the metres of Ancient Greece and India: ‘Le
nombre et la précision des concordances du védique avec le grec sont
trop nets pour qu'une rencontre fortuite soit vraisemblable',! is
equally applicable when comparing the systems of music of the two
ancient civilizations.
The music of India is the easternmost representative of a large
group of interrelated musical phenomena, in the same way as Sanskrit
is the easternmost representative of a large group of Indo-European
languages. On the northern and eastern border of India this group
meets, but does not intermingle with, the basically different concep-
tions of the Chino-Tibetan and the Far Eastern tone-systems. It is
! Antoine Meillet, Les Origines indo-européennes des métres grecs (Paris, 1923),
p. 76.
196 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
true that one finds strains of a composite nature in the folk-music of
Nepal, northern and eastern Bengal, Assam, and down into the
Chittagong Hills, but the official system does not acknowledge them,
nor are they found anywhere outside these very definite border-
regions.
CULTURAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL IMPOÓRTANCE
It is impossible to divorce Indian music from the whole struc-
ture of Indian culture and philosophy with which it is interwoven
in a number of ways from the earliest times of which we have
records.
A remarkable feature of Indian culture is its ability to integrate
many different and seemingly divergent tendencies against the back-
ground of a unifying philosophical thought. From an Indian stand-
point there is nothing strange in the fact that the Samgftaratnákara
(The Ocean of Music), a treatise dating from the thirteenth century,
should begin with a detailed cosmogony, gradually narrowing its
scope to the human body and the stages of pregnancy from month
to month, before it gets down to what we should consider the subject
of music proper. To the Indian student, music is not an isolated
phenomenon but one directly and inextricably linked with philosophy
and religion, and of cosmic importance. The right kind of music—
that is to say, the only kind of music worth considering—is that which
deserves the epithet vimuktida (bestowing liberation), that is the music
which, when properly practised, serves to break the cycle of birth,
death, and rebirth. The eminent French Sanskritist Sylvain Lévi once
said: ‘On ne sait pas assez le róle immense qu'a tenu la musique dans
les civilisations anciennes comme un élément intégrant de la vie
religieuse et politique." To look into that aspect of the matter well
repays the trouble.
In the finished system, as found in the texts of the classical, pre-
Islamic period, such as the Samgítaratnákara, we find the central
notion of náda (sound) which has, of course, a musical connota-
tion, but, apart from this musical meaning, a physical as well as
a metaphysical aspect.
In music—the Sanskrit term for which, Samgíta, includes vocal
music, instrumental music, and dance—vocal music is considered to
be pure sound, sound per se, in contrast to instrumental music
which is described as a manifestation of sound. Dance, the third
! In a letter to the Director of the Kern Institute of Leyden University (25 November
1929).
CULTURAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE 197
component of the triad, is dependent on both vocal and instrumental
music, so that music as a whole is dependent on sound.!
This definite distinction between the nature of vocal music and that
of instrumental music seems strange from a rationalistic standpoint.
Why should the one be pure sound in itself and the other a secondary
manifestation? It seems that at the time when these theories were
first formulated the function of the vocal chords was unknown. Thus
it is easily understandable that the miracle of the change from silent
life-breath (prâna) into sounds of meaning and beauty, without the
aid of any visible or perceptible agent, came to be considered as a
spontaneous manifestation of sound itself, basically different from
the sound produced by a man-made instrument.
That the function of the vocal chords was unknown, or at least
considered to be irrelevant, we may conclude from the description of
the five stages of this spontaneous manifestation :? ‘This prána then,
stirred by the fire of the body, goes gradually upwards and produces
an extremely subtle sound in the navel, a subtle sound in the heart,
a strong sound in the throat, a weak sound in the head, and in the
mouth a sound with the qualities of art.’
On the physical plane the entire human society is dependent on
sound, as explained by the following reasoning:? ‘By sound the letter
is formed, by letters the syllable, by syllables the word, by words this
daily life. Hence this human world is dependent on sound.’
It must be borne in mind that the sound that rules the world by
means of speech is the same spontaneous manifestation which pro-
duces the musical phenomena.
The metaphysical theory of sound, set forth in the Samgitaratnd-
kara, shows the position of music in the religious system of India. It
probably represents a medieval attempt at explaining the actual reli-
gious importance of music which struck the philosophers of those
days, but had its roots in much earlier, even prehistoric periods.
1 Sarngadeva, Samgítaratnákara (referred to later as SR) Anandéérama Sanskrit
Series, 2 vols. (Poona, 1896), i. 2. 1; Damodara, Samgitadarpana (referred to later as SD)
(Paris, 1930), i. 13:
gitam nádátmakam vádyam nádavyaktyá prasasyate
taddvayánugatam nrtyam паааайтат atas trayam
2 SR, i. 3. 3-5a. SD, i. 34, 35:
pávakapreritah so'tha kramád ürdhvapathe caran
atistiksmam dhvanim nábhau hrdi süksmam gale punah (34)
pustam sirge tvapustam ca krtrimam vadane tathá
J avirbhávayatity evam райсааћа kirtyate budhaih. (35)
PSE TE 2. 2. SIDA:
nádena vyajyate varnah padam varnát padád vacah
vacaso vyavaháro уат nádádhinam ato jagat.
198 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
The metaphysical explanations are principally concerned with vocal
sound, as being primary in nature. This, as we have seen above, was
produced by the gradual upward surge of the prdna or life-breath.
In its course the prana passes different mystical centres of power,
bearing the name of cakras (circles), portrayed as lotuses with a vary-
ing number of petals. Two of those cakras have special importance
from the musical point of view, namely the anáhatacakra situated in
the heart, and the visuddhacakra in the throat. The latter, having
sixteen petals, is considered as the seat of speech and of all the musi-
cal notes with their divisions and variations.!
The sound alluded to so far is only the Ghatandda (struck or mani-
fested sound), which cannot exist without its ideal counterpart, the
anáhatanáda (unstruck or unmanifested sound). It is this dual nature
of sound as áhata and anáhata, which brings it right into the centre
of religious-philosophical speculations, because the unmanifested
sound, the anáhatanáda, is identified with the creative principle of the
universe in its transcedental form of Shiva himself, as well as in its
immanent form as the syllable OM which is said to reside in the heart.
Hence the name of the centre of power placed there, the anáhatacakra :?
In the heart is a lotus with twelve petals, called anáhata, belonging to
Shiva in his aspect of the syllable om, a beloved object of adoration.
There the wise revere the unmanifested sound according to the instruc-
tions of the preceptors, the sound that is for liberation but not for en-
joyment. That sound, however, when manifested in the world, serves for
enjoyment, but also to break the cycle of existence.
In this context the breaking of the cycle of existence means the
merging of the individual self with the creative principle of the
Universe.
It is now easy to see how music was held to serve as a means to
that ultimate bliss. Sound, in its unmanifested aspect, was identical
with the divine creative principle of the Universe, not only in its
transcendental aspect, but also with that aspect which dwells in one’s
heart. So it remained for the individual to find the right way to realize
the connexion between the latter aspect of the unmanifested sound
and the manifested sound, in order to be brought into direct contact
with the divine creative principle of the universe itself, which amounted
to the desired liberation. The obvious means to this end was music,
1 SR, i. 2. 199 ff. SD, 1. 18-25a.
2 SR, i. 2. 164b-165. SD, і. 16-17a:
tatránáhatam nádam tu munayah samupásate
guropadista-márgena muktidam na tu rafijakam (16)
sa nádas tváhato loke ғайјако bhavabhanjakah.
CULTURAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE 199
and preferably vocal music, which by its own nature was pure sound
itself.
On the physical plane the power of music was easily grasped when
one understood that, on the one hand, sound regulated human society
through its power to form letters, syllables, and words, and that, on
the other hand, vocal music was that very sound in its spontaneous
form. The ideal means to influence and regulate the course of human
existence would thus naturally be a combination of words and musical
sound, that is to say the intoned formula, or mantra, which we actu-
ally find used for that end in every form of religion on Indian soil.
In the above philosophical construction of áhata and anáhatanáda,
we find consequently the crystallization of the ancient Indian belief
that music has a well-defined power to influence the course of human
life in this world, and that it even can lead to the ultimate bliss of
the merging of the self with the divine principle of the universe, in
other words that it can bring about the breaking of the cycle of
existence. Hence it fully deserves the epithet vimuktida (bestowing
liberation), given to it in the Sanskrit texts.
VEDIC MUSIC
The notion that the power of music, especially the intoned word,
can influence the course of human destiny and even the order of the
Universe, goes back to the very oldest surviving form of Indian music,
namely, the music of the Vedas. The intoned formula is the pivot of
the whole elaborate structure of Vedic offerings and sacrifices. It is
the power of the words, enunciated with the correct intonation, that
determines the efficacy of the rites: a mistake may destroy every-
thing. The priests claim that by their activity they not only uphold
the order of human society, but maintain the stability of the universe.
By means of well-conducted ceremonies they have compelling power
over the Gods themselves. The instrument that conveys that power
is the word. It is impossible to overlook the connexion between
Brahman, in the sense of divine principle, and brahman in the sense
of sacrificial formula or incantation.
The Vedic offerings comprise a great many actions: altars are built,
fires are lit, butter and other substances are poured into the flames,
and animals are sacrificed. Sometimes these activities may continue
for a year or longer, but none of them have any value unless accom-
panied by the prescribed recitations, uttered with exactly the right
intonation. Musically those recitations are of great interest, as in their
successive forms they represent the development from ordinary speech
200 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
to elaborate singing, with a compass ranging from one or two notes
to an octave. The bhdsikasvara (speech tone) has the narrowest com-
pass and is employed, according to tradition, in reciting the formulas
of the (White) Yajur Veda. It is an even recitation without variation
in pitch. A greater compass, however, is found in the Rigveda, the
basis of all the texts used at the Vedic offerings. It contains the hymns
to the different deities as they were composed by the sages of old
who are known by name, but about whose date nothing is known
with certainty. Opinions range over a couple of thousand years, one
school placing them in the fourth millennium B.c., another about the
middle of the second millennium.
The way of chanting the Rigvedic hymns has definite musical im-
portance, as the three accents employed, the udátta, the anudátta, and
the svarita, denote a distinct difference in pitch. There is some contro-
versy as to the original meaning of these accents and their relationship
to the pracaya (multitude)—a term denoting a succession of unac-
cented syllables. As we find the practice of Rigvedic recitation in
our days—and examples collected by Haug in 18741 and Felber in
1912? seem to indicate that at that time the same system was fol-
lowed—the accents indicate a compass of a minor or major third, the
middle note being the udátta, the lower the anudátta, and the upper
the svarita. The pracaya coincides with the udátta, which, as a matter
of fact, is itself unmarked in the Vedic texts. The anudátta is indicated
by a horizontal line under the syllable, the svarita by a perpendicular
line over it:
Ex. 290
nà-rà-ya-nam ma-hà-jüe-yam vis-vat-ma-nam ра-га - ya-nam
(Taittirfya-áranyaka X. 11, as sung by Manjeri Ramakrishna Iyar,
Allepey, Travancore.)
The melodic line follows the text in every detail; the words pre-
scribe the rhythm and the flow; there is one note to each syllable,
pitch is independent of duration. One might say that the melody only
supports the words.
The Rigveda is extensively used, not only during the great Vedic
1 Martin Haug, Über das Wesen und den Werth des vedischen Accents (Munich,
1874); see also Fox Strangways, Music of Hindostan (Oxford, 1914), p. 247.
2 E, Felber-Geiger, Die indische Musik der vedischen und klassischen Zeit (Vienna,
1912).
VEDIC MUSIC 201
sacrifices, but also during the lesser ceremonies in everyday life in the
house. À large measure of similarity in tradition over a very wide area
would thus point to a great antiquity and bear witness to a tenacity
of custom not surprising in a field where deviations from the pre-
scribed method were believed to have dire spiritual and material
consequences. Adherence to the hereditary style would last as long
as faith in the efficacy of the rites in question persisted. That faith has
not yet died in India in spite of the onrush of modern civilization.
In the Sdmaveda, which, in contrast to the Rigveda, is used ex-
clusively in connexion with the larger offerings and sacrifices, we find
a complete reversal of the rules laid down for the recitation of the
Rigveda. To begin with, the compass used is much wider, and some
schools of Sámavedic chanting are said to use the full octave (the
texts give the names of the seven notes, originally counted from the
highest note downwards) but even if, as among the Nambudiris of
the Malabar coast who follow the Jaiminiya tradition, the compass
of only a second is used, the tendency is to deviate as far as possible
from ordinary speech or even chanting. The words are broken up in
an arbitrary fashion and often the periods start in the middle of a
word; vowels are lengthened beyond recognition, and syllables with-
out rational importance are inserted in the text. In most cases the
basis of the Sámavedic chants is a hymn from the Rigveda, but it is
overlaid and changed to such an extent that the original is usually
well hidden. The object of this procedure is purely liturgical. By the
very minutely prescribed changes the spiritual efficacy of the formula
is heightened and the success of the sacrifice ensured.
The limitation of the use of the Samaveda to the actual offerings
and sacrifices is the cause of its much greater rarity, and it would be
useless to look for a sound tradition of the chanting of this Veda in
parts of India where, owing to social changes, these larger ceremonies
seldom take place: for instance, in northern India where continuous
foreign invasions have shaken the very basis of Hindu society. It is
in south India that the tradition according to the different schools is
carried on, handed down from teacher to pupil, as has been the case
for centuries. Priestly families in which the tradition is known to
have persisted unbroken for twenty generations are not uncom-
mon.
Research in this field, except by members of the priestly class itself,
is greatly hampered by the secrecy that surrounds this type of singing,
which is not meant to be heard, much less written down or recorded,
by uninitiated persons. This is hardly surprising when one realizes the
202 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
supernatural effect attributed to the correct reproduction of the
melodies.
At the actual sacrifices a hymnis executed by three priests who sing
its seven divisions alone or in chorus. The priests to whom the singing
of the Sámaveda is allotted are the Udgátar with his two acolytes, the
Prastotar and the Pratihartar. The introductory part, the Humkára
(the singing of the syllable hum), is done by the three together. Then
follow: 2, the Prastáva, or prelude, sung by the Prastotar; 3, the
Udgitha, or main theme, by the Udgátar; 4, the Pratihára, the first
responsorium, by the Pratihartar; 5, the Upadrava, second respon-
sorium, again by the Udgátar; 6, the Nidhana, or final chorus, by the
three priests in unison; and finally, 7, the Pranava, the chanting
of the syllable om, also in chorus, which seals the hymn like our
Amen.
For purposes of study or practice, however, the hymns are sung
by one person only according to the song-books, the Gánas, of which
there are four. The different schools of Sámavedic chanting all use
these four books, but sing them to quite different melodies. Even in
one and the same school the differences are sometimes considerable:
Ех. 291
Kauthuma Samaveda (Chidambaram and Trichinopoli) S.V. [6a
Ex. 292
Kauthuma Samaveda (Baroda)
VEDIC MUSIC 203
E —
— — — ———— [һы m ~
[ —— —- C. Lem — | à—G,| чы | „=
‘aan сделан мА Inr: ee Ge" es ee ee ee ha, ESSE
E E du [ gy 1 ЖЕР" [Ir n
It should be mentioned that the tradition of the Kauthumas, as
observed in Trichinopoly and Chidambaram, both centres of south
Indian orthodoxy, shows no differences at all, apart from those that
might have resulted from individual uncertainties of one singer or the
other. The totally different style of the example from Baroda which
called itself Kauthuma too, may be due to the very influence indicated
above—the foreign invasions and their cultural consequences—and
bears traces of the flourishes of the later, purely secular, musical style,
strongly influenced by Moslem practices.
One can see that the claim made by the classical Indian theory of
music, that the proper use of this art leads to salvation, has its roots
in the Vedic practices. It is true that the object of the Vedic cere-
monies, built on the proper enunciation of the intoned word, is not
salvation, in the later spiritual sense, but the upholding of the order
of the world and, by extension, of the universe. But in both cases the
sole aim is to get in touch with the powers of the world of the gods,
an aim that has perpetuated itself through the centuries, varying
only as to the nature of the gods and the nature of the desired
contact.
The second component of the triad comprised in the word батейа,
namely, instrumental music, has perhaps not such direct and clear
connexions with the Vedic ceremonies as vocal music. Instruments
are mentioned in the bráhmanas, the treatises that describe the pro-
cedure of the ritual, and drums and cymbals must have made their
appearance at a very early date. However, seeing the paramount
importance of the spoken or intoned word, it is but natural that
instrumental music should occupy the second place. In any case
it is more than probable that the development and perfection of
instrumental Indian music is of much later date than that of the
vocal art.
As to the third component of Samgita, dance, which shares the
epithet vimuktida with vocal and instrumental music, its links with
Vedic ceremonies are very direct and clear. We find that the chanting
was accompanied by movements of the hands, and perhaps also by
204 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
prescribed steps when executing certain tasks that involved going from
one place to another. The hand movements were partly mnemo-techni-
cal, the position of the thumb against the different phalanges of the
fingers indicating certain notes or figurations—rather like the Guido-
nian hand in Gregorian music—and partly had a textual meaning,
inasmuch as certain postures indicated certain ideas or symbolized
certain deities, thus approaching a sign-language that accompanied,
followed, and intensified the meaning of the chanted text. These
sequences of hand-postures and their development into a kind of
sign-language are the basis of the most classical form of all Indian
dancing, the Bharatanátya of southern India, and, to a lesser extent,
of the Hindu forms of north Indian dancing, as well as of the mimed
dramas of the coast of Malabar, the Kathákali and the Yaksagána.
As these movements are an integral part of the Vedic ceremonies
and share the holiness of everything that belongs to revealed religion,
one sees how they are by rights the third component of Samgita,
in so far as they have their roots in the practices of the Vedic
ritual.
In actual life it is not improbable that at times the third component
of the triad had a more prominent position than the other two. As
mentioned above, the oldest data about the theory of music are found
in the Bharatanátyasástra (c. 200 B.c.). This has thirty-six chapters,
of which only chapters 28-33 deal with music.
It seems doubtful whether, outside the ritual sphere, the spiritual
importance of music was always fully realized. After all, the Ghatandda
was said to be for enjoyment as well as for the breaking of the cycle
of existence, and one cannot wonder that the accent was often laid
on the first function rather than on the second. Still, many traces of
the original sanctity are preserved, for instance in movements of
adoration and obeisance which one sees musicians and actors per-
form even nowadays and, more especially, in the attitude of the pupil
towards his music-master, which is to a great extent that of a novice
towards his spiritual guide. It is not forgotten that—if the latter
understands his task properly—he ought to lead his pupil on the way
to salvation.
THE CLASSICAL SYSTEM
Quite apart from its religious importance, the classical system of
Indian music deserves attention in its own right. It explains every
aspect of construction and technique in great detail, from the notes
of the scale and their subdivisions onwards.
THE CLASSICAL SYSTEM 205
The Octaves
The basis of the classical system—as represented in the Samgitarat-
nákara, for instance—is the octave and its division into tones and
semitones, closely akin to our system. The number of octaves recog-
nized is three, one in each register, the low being the breast register,
the middle octave the throat register, and the high octave the head
register. This classification is another proof of the primarily vocal
conception of music in India.!
Consonance
The division of the notes of the octave is accomplished according
to the laws of consonance, three intervals being recognized as such,
namely, the octave, the fifth, and the fourth. Only they are consonant
(samvádt). Dissonant (vivádí) are only the semitones. All the others
are assonant (anuvádi).
Srutis
For the definition of what constitutes consonance or otherwise, the
Indian theory has recourse to a tonal subdivision smaller than the
West has taken into consideration for the construction of its scales.
This microtonic unit is called sruti, a word derived from the root sru
(to hear) and it is defined as follows:? ‘The sound that is just per-
ceptible as such by the ear, without reverberation (i.e. harmonic con-
nexion) is called sruti.'
There are twenty-two Srutis in the octave and the question has been
asked whether they are mathematically alike. Sir William Jones,
the first European scholar to interest himself in the matter, in
the late eighteenth century, maintains that they are not, but are
intended to be alike in a general way. He points out that mathe-
matics do not enter into the subject at all as far as the writers of
the Indian treatises are concerned.? Bosanquet recognizes a general
alikeness in the conclusion of his article ‘On the Hindu division of
the Octave',* a conclusion with which Rao Sahib P. R. Bandharkar
DES ONI
vyavaháre tvasau tredhá hrdi mandro 'bhidhiyate
kanthe madhyo miirdhni táro dvigunascottarottarah.
? SD, i. 49:
svarüpamátrasravanán nádo'nurananam viná
= Srutir ity ucyate bhedás tasmád dvávimsatir matáh.
* *On the musical modes of the Hindus’, in Asiatic Researches, iii (1792), p. 55.
Reprinted in S. M. Tagore's Hindu Music (Calcutta, 1882), pp. 123 ff.
* Proceedings of the Royal Society, xxvi (1877).
206 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
agrees.! Fox Strangways, however, attributes three definite mathe-
matical values to the sruti:? (a) the difference between a major and
a minor tone, 22 cents, called pramánasruti ; (b) the difference between
a minor tone and a semitone, 70 cents; and (c) the difference between
a semitone and the pramánasruti, 90 cents. Reasoning along altogether
different lines, a German scholar, Dr. B. Breloer? arrives at the values,
24, 66, and 90 cents, practically identical with Fox Strangways's con-
clusion. A more recent publication, however, A. Daniélou's book on
Hindu scales,* attacks these calculations for not being precise enough.
The exact value of the Sruti, therefore, is still debated. It would seem,
however, that, so far as the Indian opinion of ancient times is con-
cerned, Sruti is a generic name for any interval smaller than a semi-
tone. No mathematical approach to the matter is found in India
before the eighteenth century.?
Srutis are important in practice in defining the character of parallel
modes with similar intervals; a sruti smaller or larger in the one mode
than in the other creates a different mood or atmosphere. They are
also of practical importance in ornamentation when the voice, or the
vibrating string pulled sideways, swings above and below the actual
pitch of the intended note without deviating as much as a semitone.
But И is quite wrong to suppose that these Srutis are ever used in
succession, like our semitones in a chromatic scale.
Svaras
In theory the srutis are important to define the notes (svaras) of the
octave and to establish their consonance or otherwise. A note—or,
rather tonal interval—is defined as ‘an uninterrupted series of srutis,
belonging together in harmonic connection’.®
sadja or sa, consisting of four $rutis,
rsabha or ri, consisting of three $rutis,
gándhára or ga, consisting of two Srutis,
madhayma or ma, consisting of four $rutis,
paficama or pa, consisting of four $rutis,
dhaivata or dha, consisting of three $rutis,
and nisáda or ni, consisting of two $rutis.
! Indian Antiquary, 1912. 2 Ор, с. p- Ш2/
3 Grundelemente der altindischen Musik (Bonn, 1922).
* Introduction to the Study of Musical Scales (London, 1943).
5 In the Samgíta-párijáta (Paradise Tree of Music) of Ahobala.
SSR 1.3. 26:
$rutyanantarabhdvi yah snigdho'nurananátmakah
svato rafijayati $rotrcittam sa svara ucyate.
THE CLASSICAL SYSTEM 207
Bharata says that notes at a distance of nine or thirteen śrutis from
one another (viz. fourths and fifths) are consonant. Thoseata distance
of twenty srutis (viz. seconds or sevenths) are dissonant. The remain-
ing intervals are assonant. The later texts give two srutis distance as
the definition of vivádí notes.
Grámas
The scale according to the ratio 4, 3, 2, 4, 4, 3, 2, given above,
is only one of the two basic scales, or grámas, in practical use. It is
called the sa-gráma, because it starts from the sa of the middle regis-
ter.! Parallel to this we find the ma-gráma, which is identical, except
for the difference of one sruti in the pa, which in the ma-gráma con-
sists of three Srutis, causing the dha to have four. It is expressly stated
that the ma-gráma starts on the ma of the middle register.2 The
ratio of the ma-gráma thus is: 4, 3, 4, 2, 4, 3, 2.
The fourth sruti of pa which in the ma-gráma becomes the first sruti
of dha is called pramána (standard) Sruti, probably because it was the
only sruti readily demonstrable in practice. As both the sa- and the
ma-gráma were living conceptions in Bharata's times, it was possible
to set the middle of the sa-gráma, 4, 4, 3, 2, (ma, pa, dha, ni), against
the beginning of the ma-gráma, 4, 3, 4, 2, (ma, pa, dha, ni) on two
identical vínás, the pa being played on the second open string in both
cases. The difference in pitch between the two pas gave a demonstra-
tion ad auras of a sruti ($ru = to hear) which then could serve as а
measure—pramdna—for the determination of the other, purely theo-
retical tonal divisions.
Following the indications of the ancient texts, which—probably as
aremnant of theoriginal descending order of the scale in Vedic times—
accept the axiom that a note is realized on the last of its component
Srutis, the four srutis of sa lie between sa and ni and not, as we would
reckon, between sa and ri.
Consequently the sa-gráma roughly corresponds to a D mode, the
ma-gráma to a G mode, the former beginning with a minor third, the
latter with a major third. Bharata explains in book 28, in the prose
following verse 32, that one can play the ma-gráma starting from sa
by changing the initial minor third of the sa-gráma into a major third
by giving the ga four srutis instead of two.
A third basic scale, the ga-gráma, starting on the ga of the middle
register, has no practical value and is not mentioned by Bharata, but
27507 і. 79: tatra madhyasthasadjena sadjagrámasya mürchanáh. SR, i. 4. 12b.
? SR, i. 4. 13b. SD, i. 79. Madhyamadhyamam árabhya madhyamagrémamirchanéh.
208 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
only by writers some centuries younger than he. It is said, even by the
first writer who mentions it (Narada), to exist only in heaven. This
may refer to an arrangement of srutis that once existed, but had fallen
into disuse at the time when the theoretical treatises were written, or
to the fact that it is a purely theoretical construction. Its ratio is 3, 3,
3, 4, 3, 2, 4, and consequently it seems to have no connexion either
with the sa- or with the ma-gráma, except for the fact that the pa
consists of three and the dha of four Srutis, as in the latter. Apart from
mentioning it in passing, the texts take no further notice of this ga-
gráma and base their subsequent calculations exclusively on the sa-
and the ma-gráma.
Alterations
The difference in allocation of srutis to the pa and the dha found in
the two grámas is a basic and unalterable one. Apart from this, one
finds that the notes in each gráma can be subject to other alterations,
some comparable to our Western accidental sharps and flats. Includ-
ing the change of the sa- to the ma-gráma the Samgítaratnákara men-
tions twelve possible changes in sruti allocation, though, as some of
them overlap, they work out to only seven in reality. Out of these
seven only two (the kékali ni and the antara ga) are in general use and
taken into consideration when making permutations and combina-
tions.
As in the classical texts the names of the notes are attached to the
last of the series of their constituent $rutis, the basic sa-gráma presents
itself as follows:
234.567, 99, 10 11213 eh IS. IG GZ I I) 0) i 20
Sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni
It is evident that, as the notes were understood to be at the end of
their constituent srutis, the loss of a Sruti at the beginning of a note
was perceptible only by the fact that the note below it was raised one
Sruti in pitch.
The alterations are:
(i) Sa, having four srutis, comes down from the fourth to the third
$ruti, at the same time giving its first Sruti to kaisika-ni (see the
1 Joanny Grosset, ‘Inde’, in Lavignac, Encyclopédie de la musique, 1: partie, i
(Paris, 1913), p. 289.
SR, i. 3. 41-47:
ta eva vikrtávasthá dvâdaśa pratipáditáh (41)
cyuto'cyuto dvidhá sadjo dvisrutivikrto bhavet
sádhárane kákalitve nisddasya ca drsyate (42)
sádharane Srutim sádjim rsabhah samárito yada
THE CLASSICAL SYSTEM 209
eleventh alteration). Sa thus becomes a note of two srutis. This is the
first audibly altered note, cyuta (fallen) sa.
(ii) Sa remains on its proper, fourth, $ruti, but has its two initial
$rutis annexed by kékali-ni (see twelfth alteration). This sa is called
acyuta (not-fallen) sa, and is not audible as an actually different note,
as the position of the name-Sruti is not changed.
(iii) Ri remains оп its proper, seventh, Sruti, but annexes sa's top-
Sruti. Sa thus becomes cyuta-sa (first alteration).
(iv) Ga shifts from its proper (ninth), to the tenth Sruti, annexing
the first sruti of ma and thus becoming a note of three srutis. This is
the second really new note, called sádhárana (common) ga.
(v) Ga annexes one more sruti of ma, thus becoming a note of four
Srutis. This is the third really new note, antara (medium) ga.
(vi) Ma comes down from its original (thirteenth) sruti to the
twelfth, giving at the same time its first $ruti to sádhárana-ga and thus
becoming a note of two Srutis. This is the fourth really new note,
called cyuta (fallen) ma.
(vii) Ma remains on its original (thirteenth) sruti, but gives its
first two Srutis to antara-ga. It is called acyuta-ma, analogous to
acyuta-sa.
(viii) Pa cedes its upper sruti to dha (in the ma-gráma) and is called
tris$ruti (three $ruti) pa. This is the fifth really new note.
(ix) Pa gives its top $ruti to dha, but annexes the top sruti of ma,
which thereby becomes cyuta-ma. This ра is called kaisika (fine as а
hair) pa.
(x) Dha annexes the last $ruti of pa, in the madhyama gráma,
but remains on its original (twentieth) $ruti. This is called vikrta
(altered) dha.
(xi) Ni annexes the first sruti of sa. This is the sixth really new note,
called kaisika ni.
(xii) Ni takes the first two Srutis of sa. This is the seventh really new
note, called kákalf (soft) ni.
It will be seen that the alterations follow strictly parallel lines in
the two tetrachords of the octave.
catuhsrutitvam áyáti tadaiko vikrto bhaved (43)
sádhárane trisrutih sydd antaratve catuhsrutih
gándhara iti tadbhedau dvau nihSankena ktrtitau (44)
madhyamah sadjavad dvedhá 'ntarasádháranásrayát
paficamo madhyamagrdme trisrutih kaisike punah (45)
madhyamasya £rutim prápya catuhsrutir iti dvidhá
dhaivato madhyamagráme vikrtah syác catuhsrutih (46)
kalsike kákalitve ca nisádas tricatuhsrutih
prápnoti vikrtau bhedau дуду iti dváda$a smrtáh (47)
210 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
Mürcchanás
The word gráma in its general sense means village or community.
In its musical sense! it is defined as ‘a collection of notes and the
dwelling place of the mircchands and their derivations’. Weber sug-
gests in his Indische Streifen? that the Greek word gamma in its musi-
cal sense of scale, is a derivation from the Sanskrit gráma, through
some intermediate vernacular form. Certainly the modes in Greek
music are derived from the basic scale very much as the márcchanás
are derived from the two grámas. In the Indian theory each gráma
gives rise to seven mûrcchanâs (extensions or gradations) by taking
each successive note of the descending scale of the gráma in question
as the basis of a new series of seven. Thus the first mürcchaná of the
sa-gráma will be sa-ni, the second ni-dha, the third dha-pa, and so
on, theseventh being ri-sa. It is expressly stated that the first mürcchaná
of the sa-gráma starts on the middle sa, the first márcchaná of the
ma-gráma on the middle ma. It is clear that this procedure changes
the relative position of tones and semitones within the octave in
exactly the same way as does the Western method of building modes.
In each of the fourteen miircchands one can introduce either the
kákali-ni or the antara-ga or both kákalf and antara, which gives
three possible variations to each basic pattern, adding up to fifty-six,
i.e. four times fourteen, márcchanás in all. Apart from these altera-
tions, the Indian theory recognizes not only full, heptatonic
(sampárna) máürcchanás, but also hexatonic (sádava) and pentatonic
(audava) varieties, each again with such alterations as the remaining
notes allow. From this substratum the later modal system of ragas
and ráginís could develop naturally.
Márcchanás can be sung in their natural, diatonic order or in
meandering sequences. In a detailed text like the Samgítaratnákara
no possibility of combination or permutation is left unexplored. For
the development of the modal system, however, only the basic hepta-
tonic modes with their hexatonic and pentatonic varieties have to be
considered, as it is from them that the classical system of rágas and
ráginís was finally born.
Játis
There was, however, an intermediate stage in the development from
márcchanás to rágas, namely, the játis. Out of the fourteen máürcchanás
1 SR, i. 4. 1. SD, i. 68:
grámah svarasamühah syán mürcchanádeh samásrayah
tau dvau dharatale tatra syát sadjagráma ádimah.
? Albrecht Weber, Indische Streifen (Berlin, 1863), i. 3. 544.
THE CLASSICAL SYSTEM 211
of the two grámas only seven assumed the status of játi or basic mode.
Four, those starting on sa, dha, ni, and ri were based on the corre-
sponding márcchanás of the sa-gráma ; three, starting from ma, ga, and
pa, belonged to the magráma. Contrary to the custom followed with
the márcchanás, the sequence of the játis is always given in ascending
order: sádjí is the first játi, rsabhi, not nisddavatt, the second.
In addition to the seven basic játis, Bharata enumerates the names
of eleven more, combinations of two or more of the first seven. Each
Лай has its own ‘pillar notes’, incipient, final, and melodic centre, and
some additional individual features, which stamp them clearly as
the ancestors of the subsequent rágas. In the Bharatanátyasástra the
term rága in its technical sense is yet unknown, but the rágas incor-
porate all the melodic permutations and combinations of the older
system to which numerous new characteristics have been added. For
allits intricacies and delicate refinements, the classical system of rágas
has nothing intrinsically different from the Western modal system of
the Middle Ages.
Pitch
One difference of approach to melodic structure in India and the
West seems to be due to the fact that at a very early stage the Western
systems fixed a definite pitch for each note, whereas everything in the
Indian theory points to the fact that pitch was strictly relative and had
no connexion with the names of the notes separately. The tendency
to identify sa with c, very general in our days, cannot be much more
than fifty years old and dates especially from the introduction and viru-
lent spread of the portable harmonium through towns and villages.
The only indication as to pitch in the classical texts is! in verses
like the following, in which each successive note is identified with the
cry of a bird or beast, not always the same creatures in each case.
The peacock utters the note sa;
the cátaka-bird ri;
the goat the note ga;
the kraufica bird ma;
the woodpecker with its clear voice pa;
the frog, excited by love, the note dha;
the elephant, hit on the head with the driver's hook,
utters the last note (zi) through its nose.
MSR i, 9048: SD. 1. 1521153:
sadjam vadati тауйғаћ rsabhákhyam cátako brute
gándhárákhyam chágo nigadati paksi to madhyamam krauficah
gadati paficamam aficitavákapiko ratati dhaivatam unmadadardurah
$rnisamáhatamastakakufijaro gadati násikayá svaram antimam.
212 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
Now, unless this has some, not immediately apparent, symbolical or
mythological meaning, it has little meaning at all. For instance, the
cry of the peacock consists of at least two notes which are certainly
not even an octave apart; consequently it cannot stand for sa without
further elucidation. In the same way anyone hearing the confusion of
different noises emerging from a herd of goats would be sorely pressed
if he had to determine the fixed pitch of ga.
'The current practice—and there is no evidence that things were
materially different in former days—is, that a singer chooses his sa
according to his convenience, and keeps to it for the duration of the
whole performance, irrespective of the number of rágas he presents.
The same is the case with instrumentalists. A change of sa would entail
a very laborious retuning of the accompanying drums, one of which
usually gives the sa, the other the ma or pa. When more than one
musician performs at the same function, each generally has his own
drummer, or at least his own set of drums, which are tuned to the sa
he has chosen.
Rágas
Clearly this is all that is required in a purely modal system. It
is always this relative position of tones and semitones measured
against a certain fixed point which determines the character of a
mode, whether in the West or in the East, and the rágas—as the Játis
before them—have certain salient points of the scale which serve as
a skeleton for their individual structure. These points bear the name
of graha, amsa, and пудѕа л
Graha is the incipient note, *the note that is placed at the beginning of a
song’.
Amsa is the melodic centre, ‘the note that occurs often in the course of a
performance’.
Nyása is the final, ‘the note that finishes a song’.
In the performance of a mode, whether a játi or a rága, the first
thing necessary is to establish these three sufficiently clearly, and in
the lists of rdgas in the textbooks, the notes of the scale that have
these functions are always clearly given. It not infrequently happens
that one note assumes two or even all three functions, so that the same
note is graha, ата, and nyása.
1 SR, i. 7. 30, 33, 38. SD, i. 146, 147:
gitGdau sthápito yas tu sa grahasvara ucyate
nyásah svaras tu vijfieyo yas tu gitasamápakah (146)
bahulatvam prayogesu sa amsasvara ucyate (147)
THE CLASSICAL SYSTEM 213
It is customary to preface the performance of a rága—as it must
have been with the játis before—with a prelude, called_dldpa, i
which, against the note chosen for the function of sa, | the T
points are established, as well as the secondary ae such as hexa-
or pentatonality, frequency or paucity of certain notes or intervals,
high, middle, or low tessitura, and so on.
It is the combination of all these secondary characteristics that
makes a rdga into something more than a simple mode, and gives it
the quality expressed in the word rága as compared with jati. The
latter means simply genus, the former, however, from the root rafij
(to colour), means everything which that root suggests: colour, emo-
tion, and atmosphere. A rága is a mode which has developed such a
special ethos that it cannot be mistaken for another combination of
notes expressing a different emotion.! Two rágas can be based on the
same basic mode or játi, and yet be entirely different in the mood that
they convey. There can be several reasons for this effect; for instance,
if the first has its amsa—the centre of musical gravity—near the drone,
while in the second it soars far away from it, the first will create an
atmosphere of sadness and depression, the second one of exuberance.
In this way the variations, permutations, and combinations are end-
less, especially when existing rágas are combined to form new, com-
posite ones, partaking of the characteristics of two or even more
components. In the classical rága system such a new creation usually
bears the name of its parents, as, for instance, Megh-Malhár, Gaud-
Sarang, Málava-Kausika, or Sindhu-Bhairavi. This tendency is trace-
able to the oldest times on record. Bharata mentions the phenomenon
of játi-sádhárana (community of játis) in which one játi partakes of
the notes of the other. One also can link up rágas by a process com-
parable to modulation, starting in one rága and skilfully introducing—
after a suitable lapse of time—characteristics belonging to another,
thus weaving what is called a rágamála (garland of rágas). At a per-
formance by a famous artist the listeners, that is to say those who have
the intimate knowledge of the rágas performed, without which the
refinements and variations of the presentation of the known features
cannot be properly appreciated, will be startled and surprised the
moment a foreign element is introduced and approve only when this
leads towards the shape, feelings, and emotions of the next rága.
In the later stages of development of the classical system, that is
to say, mainly after the influx of Muslim culture, which set the
2 Songs in the ‘pathetic’ rága Todi and the ‘devotional’ south Indian rága Begada
are recorded in The History of Music in Sound (H.M.V.), i, side 12.
214 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
seal on the differentiation between the music of north and south
India, we find a tendency in the north to carry the specialization so
far that the musical shape gives rise to a physical shape. The Rágas
are depicted as divine or human beings in surroundings that suggest
the atmosphere they create. The gender, rága and rágint, masculine
and feminine, had been established at a fairly early date; connexions
with times of day and night and seasons of the year are also enumer-
ated in the older classical texts, both in north and south India, but the
paintings, the last possible stage in personification, belong to the
north. Thus, for instance, the rága Megha (cloud) is described as
follows in the Samgítadarpana:!
Megha is heptatonic, having dha in the three functions of graha, amsa,
and nyása, in the mürcchaná uttaráyatá (the third of the sa-gráma), to be
sung with the altered (vikrta) dha. A gush of erotic sentiment.
Ваза Megha, the Youth, having а body like the blue lotus, with garments
like the moon, dressed in yellow, implored by thirsty cátaka-birds (who
drink only raindrops), with a smile sweet as nectar, is resplendent among
heroes, in the midst of clouds.
Only the north Indian system bases its classification on the gender
of the rdgas. Usually one finds six rágas with five wives—rágint—
| making a total of thirty-six, with innumerable offshoots classified as
"children. It is a system that gives room to unbridled flights of fancy in
which no measure of uniformity between the different local traditions
has been achieved.
Side by side with it we find, however, the system of dividing the
rágas and ráginís into thats or groups, more or less along the lines
of the different original basic modes, the játis of the Náftyasástra. A
that groups together those rágas and ráginís which have a similar
construction. The word? originally applied to the arrangement of the
movable frets of a stringed instrument such as the setar, for the play-
ing of one chosen mode, which of course included several pes One
generally recognizes ten thats.
This second and less universal north Indian system, which, how-
ever, has gained a much wider popularity with the spread of music-
teaching in schools and colleges, is of a later date than the more
! SD, ii. 108, 109:
meghah pürno dhatrayah syád uttaráyatamürchaná vikrtadhaivato geyah $rngárarasa-
pitrakah (108)
nilotpalábhavapur indusamánacailah pitámbaras trsitacátakayácyamánah
piyágamandahasito ghanamadhyavarti viregu гай ушуй kila megharágah (109)
? Fox Strangways, op. cit., p. 106.
THE CLASSICAL SYSTEM 215
fantastic male rágas with five wives each, as shown by its name (taken
from the technique of an instrument imported from Persia). All the
same it has striking affinities with the universal south Indian system,
that of the melakartas which may be said to be a modified continua-
’ tion of the ancient arrangement in jatis.
Melakartas, of which there are seventy-two, are divided into two
exactly parallel groups of thirty-six each, identical but for the cir-
cumstance that the first group uses natural fourths, the second aug-
mented fourths from sa. The rágas follow one another according to
their gradually increasing number of accidentals in the two tetra-
chords. The names are arranged according to a definite plan, so that
anyone who knows the codeword can tell at once which notes have
to be sung in a particular rága and also what place the rága occupies
in the melakarta scheme.
North and south use different names.! The that based on notes
corresponding to our major mode is called Bilával in the north and
is the melakarta ‘Sankardébharana’ in the south. The north Indian
Bhairaví that (our medieval Phrygian mode) is Hanumantodi in the
south, and so on. On the other hand, one finds that identical names,
such as Hindola, denote different rágas in north and south. All the
same, there is no basic difference between the two systems; one may
regard them as two dialects of the same language. Generally speaking,
the classifications as well as the system of south India as a whole are
more logical and bespeak a more mathematical intellect than the
pronouncedly emotional northern traditions.
As mentioned above, accomplished musicians establish the ethos
of the rága they are going to perform in the 2/4ра. This unaccom-
panied prelude in free time may last for an hour or more. Each detail
of the rága that is being presented is minutely illustrated from all
possible angles. The accompanying drum comes in fully only when the
actual composition begins. In general a complete composition con-
sists of the following four divisions: asthai (the theme), antara (the -
. second subject), saficari (development), and ábhog ( (coda) which may
be replaced by a return to the asthai. The corresponding south Indian
divisions are pallavi, anupallavi, caranam, and pallavi.
For teaching in schools, the rágas are somewhat simplified and
instead of the improvised álápa, the children are taught a short song
which incorporates all the characteristics of the rága in question, as,
for instance, the following song, meant to illustrate the pentatonic
(audava) rága called Bháp or Bhüpkalián (Ех. 293).
1 Fox Strangways, op. cit., p. 139, footnote.
216 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
Ех. 293
Raga Bhüpkalián
Зав Glas EHE E? dhe sa - dhe su-ra sa - dhe
s
NE Ss
su-ra su-ra-lo - Ка de - na sa- dhe su-ra sa - dhe
sa re ga pa dha sa dha pa ga re sa u - la- ta -
In this song ga, the third note of the scale, quite clearly has the func-
tions of graha, ата, and nyása. According to Fox Strangways! this
represents the Poona tradition, as Bhüpkalián when sung according
to the tradition of Gwalior has ri, the second note of the scale, in
these functions. Ma, the fourth note, and ni, the seventh note, are
missing, but the former is touched on once in the first bar, which is
permissible. The way in which phrases have to be constructed in this
raga is exemplified as succinctly as possible. Such an example differs
from an álápa in two aspects: it has time (¢d/a) and it has words. Тһе
words, in this case, are a reminder of the real function of music. They
say:
Oh Sádhu (wise man), notes open the realm of Heaven.
This rága is pentatonic according to the laws of music:
—sa, re, ga, pa, dha, sa, dha, pa, ga, re, sa—. The notes can be sung in
a topsy- turvey Way, can т they?
Tálas
As for the time (tdla) of Ex. 293, this is one of the irregular time-
divisions of Indian music, the time of ten, consisting of 4+-2+-4 beats,
the strong beats being one, five, and seven. Consequently this is not
a doubling of quintuple time, which also occurs and consists most
commonly of 34-2 beats, though sometimes we find 24-3.
1 Fox Strangways, op. cit., chart facing p. 151.
THE CLASSICAL SYSTEM 217
Just as the time of ten is not composed of twice five, so the time of
fourteen does not consist of twice seven. The time of seven is com-
posed of 34-24-2, that of fourteen may be 44-44-2--4.
Ex. 295
84242 (Kirtan)
dam
Katadoshkhushi (Kirtan)
go ре - kho - lun syam
Don mue bms o © chat
Both these examples are taken from the Kirtan music of Bengal, the
devotional music of the Vaishnavas. This time of fourteen bears the
name of kafa-dóshkhushi (the small dóshkhushi) and, as the name
leads us to expect, we find also a madhyam (middle) and а bóró (large)
dóshkhushi. Тһе madhyam-dóshkhushi consists of twice a kata-dósh-
khushi and has twenty-eight units in a period. The accents in the
second half are an exact replica of those in the kata-dóshkhushi:
ДОРЕ ONDE оО 2712-13 14,615, 16.17 18, 19 20 21 22, 23 24,
25 26 27 28. The bóródóshkhushi is again the madhyam dóshkhushi
taken twice and consists consequently of fifty-six units. Both derive
the right to be called separate tálas from the fact that their whole
length is occupied by one musical phrase. The conception is the full
period, not the component parts. Bar lines would give an entirely
wrong emphasis.
218 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
Such long periods give an ideal scope for interplay between drum
and solo instrument, each making its own variations on the under-
lying rhythmical scheme and both landing triumphantly together on
the first beat of the next period which is therefore called sam (to-
gether). This contest is followed with breathless attention and sus-
pense by a well-trained audience, who heave a sigh of satisfaction
when the tension is over. This enjoyment presupposes an extraordi-
narily well-developed sense of rhythm and a passion for cross-rhythm
which seem to be inborn. Even quite small children are observed
beating intricate rhythmic patterns when they get hold of an empty
tin or anything that gives sound when beaten. On the other hand,
keeping time as we feel it, progressing from stressed beat to stressed
beat, seems to be difficult for Indians; one often sees boy scouts being
drilled to march in step, but even when marking time they invariably
lose the regular swing very soon.
The classical system of tálas embodies both the regular and the
irregular times. As a matter of fact, the system is based on the binary
principle. The smallest recognized duration in musical time is the
anu-druta. 'Two anu-drutas make a druta. Two drutas make a laghu.
Two /aghus make a guru, but three laghus а pluta. The laghu is taken
as time-unit and is also called mátra or mátrika (measure).
The pluta’ is said to embody the Hindu Trinity with Brahma presid-
ing. Thus the system embodies the ternary as well as the binary prin-
ciple. This fact is further borne out by the inclusion of the viráma
(rest) in the scheme of calculations. The viráma adds half the value
to the note again. The complete list of time-values is thus sevenfold:
the anudruta, the druta, the druta with viráma (three anudrutas), the
laghu, the laghu with viráma (three drutas), the guru and the pluta
(which is equal to the guru with viráma or three laghus).
This system has been preserved almost intact in south India, where
it forms the mathematical basis of the current system of music. From
the exposition given by Professor Sambamoorthy of the University
of Madras,? it appears that the unit is the anudruta and no longer the
laghu. This anudruta equals the time-duration of a hand-clap. The
druta consists of a hand-clap and a sideward movement of the right
hand. The /aghu consists of a hand-clap and two or more finger counts
(i.e. putting the thumb against the different fingers). The /aghu varies
in duration according to whether it consists of a clap and two or more
than two finger-counts, but in one and the same 14а not more than
1 SR, v. 258a. SD, vi. 50b: dipte trayo virincyádyá devatáh munibhih smrtáh.
2 P, Sambamoorthy, The Musical Time Chart (Madras, n.d.).
THE CLASSICAL SYSTEM 219
one species of laghu may occur. Five different kinds of laghu occur,
equalling 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 units, in other words, a clap with two, three,
four, six, or eight finger-counts. It appears that the fifth category is
not in very frequent use.
The terms guru and pluta seem to have fallen out of use. With
the remaining anudruta, druta, and laghu seven principal tálas are
constructed:
. Eka, consisting of one laghu.
. Rüpaka, consisting of a druta and a laghu.
. Jampa, consisting of a laghu, an anudruta, and a druta.
. Matya, consisting of a laghu, a druta, and a laghu.
. Triputa, consisting of a laghu and two drutas.
. Аја, consisting of two laghus and two drutas.
. Dhruva, consisting of a laghu, a druta, and two laghus.
-] ON tA 4» шо [о —
Owing to the five different values which a laghu can have, these seven
basic tálas immediately grow to a set of thirty-five principal tálas.
The basic tála, called Eka, consisting of one laghu only, can thus
represent the times of three, four, five, seven, and nine units to a bar.
The first variety of the basic tála called Dhruva, consisting of a laghu,
a druta, and two laghus, gives a total of eleven units to the bar,
3--2--3--3. The second variety of the same basic Dhruva gives four-
teen units, 4-J-24-4--4, a general scheme not very different from the
above quoted katadóshkhushi of Bengal.
The time of ten of Ex. 293 would be defined as the second variety
of Matya. As a matter of fact, the north and south Indian system of
tálas again differ not in kind but in degree, the southern system having
drawn the logical consequences of the underlying principles in a much
more consistent fashion.
It is clear that this system of musical time has its roots in prosody.
None of the irregular times could have sprung up independently of
the recitation of poetical metres. Seen in this connexion they present
no difficulty. An instance is provided by the Buddhist metre Buddha-
priya of nineteen syllables, in which, contrary to the strict classical
Sanskrit rules for metres of this class, one long may be dissolved
occasionally into two short syllables, and even one short syllable into
two ultra shorts:
-u-vuu[-v-uv[|[uovu-uv—-vu-[
—-ve-uv[vvu-uv[-vo-vvo-vuc-[
If this metre is recited with a short note to a short, and a long note
to a long syllable, with a lengthening of the last syllable of the line
220 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
in accordance with the generàl custom, we see that the time of seven
emerges naturally.
Ex. 296
man - ju- Sri - kri-ta - ram - ya- par - ba- ta
sa - tya-san - jnà- ka yu- ga- va - re kha - lu
pad) т а раг гг ве Sgn "луй EN cpa Лий.
Considering the intimate connexion of the classical theory with the
system of Vedic chanting, and the prevalent custom of never reciting
but always chanting poetry, the influence of the metres on the forma-
tion of musical times is hardly surprising.
There is little doubt, however, that influences from popular cus-
toms, for instance ordinary dances and working songs which demand
a strong and regular beat, have also contributed to the actual develop-
ment of tálas. Sometimes perhaps the musical tradition of invaders
has made its contribution as well. Fox Strangways attributes the inci-
dence of the lilting 6/8 time, called dádra, in the north of India, to
Muslim influences.!
In any case it would be surprising, in a country like India where
drumming is so ancient and has reached such an astonishing degree
of perfection, if there had not been a strong contribution from the
purely instrumental side to the system of musical times, quite inde-
pendently of, and side by side with, the pronounced vocal and literary
bias expressed in the official formulation of the system in the classical
texts.
CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTS
That instrumental music as a whole retains its character of a
secondary art—at least in theory—in spite of the flowering of a very
distinct and elaborate solo instrumental style, is proved by the defini-
1 Fox Strangways, op. cit., p. 300,
CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTS 221
tion given as late as the seventeenth century in Samgítadarpana :
‘lending charm to both vocal music and dance.’ At that time instru-
mental technique was actually at its zenith, and already for centuries
before that the voice must have been striving to imitate the intricacy
and speed of ornaments devised for solo instruments like the vind. The
treatment of the voice in modern days is first and foremost a purely
instrumental one. In several of the most applauded styles the agelong
connexion between word and melody has been greatly weakened and
replaced by a show of instrumental agility in which words have no
importance, or hardly any, but which for perfection of speed, neat-
ness, and precision of intonation has perhaps no equal anywhere in the
world.
The Indian texts divide the instruments into four classes: ghana,
avanaddha, susira, and tata.
Idiophones (Ghana)
Under the first heading fall the percussion instruments which we
call idiophones: vibrating pieces of metal, like cymbals, which are
beaten together to produce sound. Ghana means body, according to
the texts,? but it also can mean iron and pewter and anything com-
pact. Its mental association with the root han (to strike) probably
plays its part in the denomination of this class, but it is not mentioned
by way of explanation.
These instruments must have existed in a variety of shapes and
forms at a very early date. Even nowadays they have a strong con-
nexion with religion, being employed at religious ceremonies and
during processions on account of their spiritually purifying proper-
ties. Purely musically, they have no great value although they can
have a very important rhythmical function in supporting and accen-
tuating the development of figurations on the drum, whether played
solo or as an accompanying instrument. In Kathiawar the playing of
cymbals has developed into a separate art requiring great technical
skill.
Drums (Avanaddha)
The drums are grouped together under the heading avanaddha:
instruments which have their openings covered with stretched hides.?
This class is also very old and comprises a very great number of
> 1 SD, у. 1: vádyam nirüpyate gîtanrtayor anurañjakam.
2 SD, v. 4b: ghano mártih.
3 SD, v. 3a, 4b: carmávanaddhamvadanam vádyate patahádikam
avanaddham ca tat proktam.
222 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
different forms. Anything in India may on occasion serve as a drum,
from an earthenware pitcher to a carefully tuned pair of drums like
the tabla, used for court-performances, or the large metal battle-
drums placed on the back of an elephant or a camel to lead troops
in battle or to head processions. The last mentioned kind is beaten
with sticks, but drums in India are generally played with the fingers
and parts of the palms of the hand with such delicacy and skill that it isa
joy to listen to a solo performance. In all its refinement the technique
takes years of strenuous practice to master. The different strokes of
the right and left hand are defined and named, and the combinations
and variations of the right- and left-hand strokes, together and separ-
ately, give an almost unlimited scope to the artist, especially within
the long phrases which the more intricate tá/as present.
Prominent in our days are the pakhawaj and the tabla. The former
is a descendant of the classical mrdanga, still its present south Indian
name, and has a clay body of irregular cylindrical shape, tapering
slightly towards the left hand, with a large surface of parchment tuned
to the note chosen as a drone for the performance. It tapers much
more markedly towards the right hand, with a smaller stretch of parch-
ment, tuned to the fourth or fifth above the drone. The tuning is very
accurate and is effected by tightening or loosening the leather straps
which hold the parchment in place.
Even more prominent perhaps is the tab/a, a pair of drums, really
the pakhawaj divided into two. The drum played by the left hand is
made of metal (brass) and is semi-spherical. The drum for the right
hand is made of wood and is cylindrical, only the top being open and
covered with parchment. The tuning, regulated by blocks between
the leather straps that keep the parchment in place, is the same as that
of the pakhawaj and carefully and painstakingly adhered to. In this
way the drums provide not only the rhythmical backbone of the per-
formance, but also a firm basis on which the singer can rely for his
pitch, and against which he can build his contrasts.
Considering the variety of indigenous drums, one would not sup-
pose that there was any need for importation; nevertheless names like
naqqárah and even tabla point in that direction, as they are of Arabic
origin.
Wind Instruments (Susira)
Among the susira (wind instruments), too, we find autochthonous
as well as foreign species. The different kinds of bamboo flutes cer-
tainly belong to India from time immemorial and also the snake-
CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTS 223
charmers' pipes, based on the principle of the bagpipes and, most
probably, some kinds of real bagpipes such as are found in Kashmir.
The conch also, which plays an important part in the majority of
religious ceremonies and on all auspicious occasions as well, very
likely belongs to the country and travelled from there into Buddhist
lands such as Tibet, where it serves the same important religious ends.
Among the imported wind-instruments we may count the different
varieties of the oboe class, such as the shannai (surnahi) which spread
from the Near East across continents and to the far islands of the
Indonesian archipelago. In this class only the flute—apart from the
conch—Aas definite religious associations, being the beloved instru-
ment of Krishna. There are numerous varieties of metal horns and
trumpets, such as the sringa (horn) and sarpa (snake).
In modern times the clarinet has been introduced and is played
happily in Indian style, to which it lends itself extremely well.
Stringed Instruments (Tata)
The fourth class, tata (stringed instruments) from the root tan (to
stretch), again provides a great variety of indigenous and imported
species. The most revered of all is the víná, a fretted plucked instru-
ment. In its most primitive form the vind consists of a hollow bamboo
stave with a gourd attached to the underside at both ends. The strings
run parallel to the body on the upper side, passing across very high
frets fixed to the body with wax. They are attached to the tuning
pegs at one end and to a fixed tailpiece at the other. It is played either
resting on the ground on its gourds, or held upright against the body,
the upper gourd resting on the left shoulder. In another form of
vind, popular in south India, the lower gourd has coalesced with the
bamboo stave, which now rises out of it; the second gourd is loosely
attached to the top near the tuning pegs. The frets are fixed in this
form, too. The playing is usually done with a triangular plectrum of
silver or steel wire slipped over the nail of the index finger of the right
hand. The melody is played on the four chief strings. Three more
strings run along the right side, tuned to the drone, the fifth (or
fourth) and the octave respectively, and are struck intermittently with
the other fingers of the right hand to provide the accompaniment.
This instrument is capable of giving a wide variety of tone-colour,
but its quality is extremely delicate and intimate, so that it is best
enjoyed in a small room in which the finely spun ornamentation does
not get lost in space. One way of creating these ornaments is to pull
the string sideways with the fingers of the left hand after it has been
224 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
vigorously struck, and thus to vary the tension, producing various
Srutis as long as the vibration lasts.
The vind is one of the constant-attributes of the Goddess of Learn-
ing, Sarasvati, and in olden times it was one of the indispensable
objects in a decent home for the welcome of a guest. In the course
of history the vind has had many forms, and it is not at all certain
that the vind of the centuries B.c. looked like the vind of our days. It
seems probable that vind was originally a generic name for stringed
instruments; from ancient sculptures it is certain that a form existed
with a boat-shaped body from which an arched neck stuck out, look-
ing very much like the Egyptian harp. That form has now completely
disappeared, but kindred forms had until recently survived in Burma.
In the texts we find mention of vínás with one, two, three, seven, nine,
and twenty-one strings. (See pl. 7 (a).)
The kinnarí has three gourds, one in the middle, fixed sideways.
The tambura has only one gourd, incorporated in the body, and has
four strings but no frets. It is always played with open strings as an
accompaniment, either by the singer himself or by one or two assis-
tants immediately behind him. The tuning is the drone, the fifth
(or fourth) and twice the octave, and the strings are sounded
uninterruptedly to create an unchanging background for the chosen
rága.
Another favourite plucked instrument is the setar, of Persian
origin. It has movable frets which can be adjusted to the varying
arrangements of notes within the octave according to thdr. It has a
layer of sympathetic strings tuned to the notes of the octave, vibrating
in consonance with the notes struck on the main strings, which gives
a pleasant diffuse echo-effect. The technique of the setar has great
affinity with that of the vind.
The sarod, played with a plectrum held between the fingers, has no
frets. It has a balalaika-like tone-quality and a greater carrying power
than most Indian instruments.
A bowed instrument is the sarangi, an instrument with a most pleas-
ing tone-quality and good carrying power, but not in great social
favour on account of its association with dancing-girls, in our days
not a socially acceptable class. A peculiar legato quality is achieved
on this instrument by pressing the nails of the left hand against the
1 Mahábhárata Udyogyaparvan, 40, 10-11:
ajokgá candanam vind adar§o madhusarpist
visam audumbaram $ankhah svarnanabho gorocaná (10)
grhe sthápayitavyáni dhanyáni manur abravit
devabréhmanapijartham atithinám ca Bhárata. (11)
CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTS 225
melody string—not the tip of the finger on it—and sliding them along
the string to the next note. The dilruba and the esraj—almost
identical in appearance and technique—are two more bowed in-
struments, each with a layer of sympathetic strings. Both are socially
acceptable, and both are of Persian origin.
In the villages there is a kind of very primitive small violin, made
of half a coconut-shell with a bamboo neck attached to it, and played
with a very arched bow. Skilled players extract a plaintive, but not
at all unpleasant, sound from this toy. The European violin has been
adopted with enthusiasm and serves its new masters very well, since
it has a much more powerful tone than any of the indigenous instru-
ments and is capable of producing all the refined shades of intonation
essential to proper Indian music. It is so much at home in India now
that it is counted as their own by many Indian musicians, especially
in the south.
Unfortunately the Hawaiian guitar has also made its appearance
and makes a powerful appeal, probably through its excessive slurring
power, a continuous tone always being sought after in Indian music.
Unmitigated harm has been done to Indian music by the introduc-
tion, probably through missionaries, of a miniature form of portable
harmonium which, by its fixed keyboard and haphazard tuning—
earnest but not altogether successful attempts at the European tem-
pered scale—plays havoc with the delicate tonal differences essential
to the system of rágas and ráginís and with the accurate aural percep-
tion of the Indian musician. The cheapness and the ease with which
one can master its technique—up to a point—have added to its
dissemination. It can be found in the most isolated and otherwise
unspoiled villages. It is mass-produced in India itself, and it seems
unlikely now that the evil can ever be eradicated.
MODERN DEVELOPMENTS
Indian music is passing through a critical period. The impact of the
West has shaken its foundations more drastically than foreign in-
fluences have ever done before. Mistaken attempts to foist the finished
Western system of harmony on to the perfect modal system of Indian
monophony have been made for the last hundred years, not only by
missionaries but also by enthusiastic Indian admirers of European
culture. In this process the delicate structure of Indian music is
crushed out of existence. Lately the music of the films, and jazz
with its coarse appeal, have not beckoned in vain.
1 А specimen of sarangi music is recorded in The History of Music in Sound, i,
side 12.
226 THE MUSIC OF INDIA
In this unfortunate development the radio plays an important part,
but it also gives the champions of the severe classical style an oppor-
tunity to reach the ears of a great many more people than would have
had the opportunity to hear this music in olden days. The medieval
attitude of a master teaching only a few chosen pupils and not divulg-
ing his best to the uninitiated is still strong. Music for the masses is
a very recent trend, and musie teaching now tends to move away from
the intimate teacher-pupil connexion towards class-teaching in schools
and colleges. A certain amount of standardization has been unavoid-
able in the course of this development. Eminent men such as the late
Pandit Bhatkhande—a Mahratta by birth but with enormous in-
fluence over the whole of north India, and founder of the Marris
College of Music of the University of Lucknow—have striven to find
a common denominator of the different current traditions of rágas
and ráginís and fix them by means of notation, which had not been
done systematically in the past. Yet the basis of the present system of
notation is very ancient. It is a tonic sol-fa system in which the names
of the notes, sa and so on, are used to indicate the melodic line with
its time divisions.
This is a very strongly supported movement strengthened also by
the growth of nationalistic feeling. But new developments, breaking
away from the traditional system, are not lacking. The very perfection
of that system precluded further development, and adventurous
spirits have had to look for new avenues for their creative impulses.
They have but rarely understood that the new developments must
have their roots in Indian music itself to be viable, yet there are indica-
tions that that understanding is dawning. After a period of Western
influence, Rabindranath Tagore turned to the folk-melodies of Bengal
for inspiration, and all over India isolated poets and musicians are
drawing their strength from the music of the people, often with very
felicitous results. For Indian folk-music, which ranges from the
primitive two-note sing-song of the Chencus of the jungles of
Hyderabad to the stirring war-ballads of the bards of Rajputana
and the mystical longing of the princess-saint Mirabai, is an expres-
sion of the whole life of the people, with their joys and sorrows.
It is the depository of their traditional wisdom and their religious
yearnings as well as of the pleasures and pastimes of everyday life.!
Side by side with this hopeful trend of a group of poet-musicians
to get their inspiration from folk-music, classical musicians are
1 Six examples of Indian folk-music are recorded in The History of Music in Sound,
i, sides 10 and 11.
FOLK-MUSIC 221
feeling their way to a widening of tonal expression along polyphonic
lines, but starting from Indian premises. There is nothing in the
Indian system which would prevent a natural development in that
direction, provided that the impulses spring not from intellectual
curiosity, but from inner necessity.
V
THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
By HENRY GEORGE FARMER
INTRODUCTION
So far as our present knowledge goes, the earliest civilization was that
of Mesopotamia, where an amazingly advanced stage of society existed
in the fourth millennium B.c. at the very latest. The centre of this cul-
tural elevation was in southern Mesopotamia, a land often called
Babylonia, between 30? and 34? north latitude. In the upper part of
this land, later called Akkad, was a linguistically Semitic group, while
in the lower part there may have been other Semites. Before 4000 в.с.
the latter were supplanted by a people called Sumerians, who spoke
a non-Semitic tongue so strange that we cannot even say from whence
they came. Their land was known as Sumer. The culture of the new-
comers is generally considered to have been far in advance of that of
the land of their adoption, so much so that it soon influenced both
Akkad in the north and contiguous territories. In spite of this, it
seems unwise to refer to the people of either Sumer or Akkad, per se,
as the creators or stabilizers of this culture, since we know little or
nothing of the earlier history of either.
If we view the movement of history in the light of the conditions
which increase men's knowledge, it seems that the most potent results
are to be found where the greatest number of culture-contacts meet.
For this reason, it is of Mesopotamian civilization that we speak,
rather than of Sumerian or Akkadian. Thus we are compelled to look
beyond strictly geographical limits in our survey of Mesopotamian
music of the distant past, for indeed all peoples on what Breasted
calls *the fertile crescent? and its periphery must come within this
purview, because it was by reason of admixture of stock, contrasts in
habits, diversities in religion, and even friction of interests, that cross-
fertilizations of ideas were produced, which made the supreme great-
ness and vitality of Mesopotamian civilization possible.
Nowadays, when scarcely a month passes without some fresh
archaeological discovery, or a new philological deduction being regis-
tered, it is difficult to speak with any chronological certainty. That
being so, many of the early dates that will be posited in what follows
INTRODUCTION 229
must be considered simply as helpful stepping-stones, placed tem-
porarily to accommodate the eye and mind in their stride across the
stream of history, until a more durable bridge has been erected. The
readjustments so ably determined and summarized by Albright! have
persuaded us, with some latitude, to draw up the following table
which enables the reader to appreciate why certain dates do not
synchronize with those of Dr. Curt Sachs and the late Canon F. W.
Galpin who have contributed so much to our knowledge of the music
of the peoples of the Mesopotamian past.
FiFTH MILLENNIUM B.C.
The Sumerians in Babylonia
FOURTH MILLENNIUM B.C.
Al-‘Ubaid, Warka, and Jamdat Nasr periods
THIRD MILLENNIUM B.C.
Early Dynasty I . : - : . Twenty-eighth century
Royal Tombs of Ur. : Е 1 . Twenty-fifth century
Akkad Dynasty : 4 : А . с. 2360-2180
Guti Dynasty . ; Р ; я . с. 2190-2065
Ur Dynasty Ш : Р 4 5 . c. 2070-1960
SECOND MILLENNIUM B.C.
Babylonian Dynasty I c. 1830
Babylonian Dynasty II (Sea mes c. 1675
Babylonian Dynasty III (Kassites) c. 1600
Assyrian Hegemony (Shalmaneser I) . c. 1270-606
FIRST MILLENNIUM В.С.
Chaldaean Dynasty . : с , в 626
Achaemenid Dynasty Р А : : 538-331
Seleucid Dynasty. : : : , 312-65
THE PRIMITIVE ELEMENT IN MUSIC
What first presents itself in early Mesopotamia is a well-established
culture already far advanced, the more glittering features of which
have the appearance of an origin elsewhere. Although the older
literature of Sumer, such as the Gilgamesh Epic, offers vague hints
* Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, nos. 77, 78 (1940), 88 (1942).
230 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
of what an earlier culture may have been, we are not able to experi-
ence so interesting a panorama as the gradual passage from that
community of reed huts at Ur-to the civitas. There is, however,
abundant evidence of the survival of primitive culture in Meso-
potamian civilization, not merely at the dawn of history in this land
at the turn of the fifth millennium B.c., but even down to the Chris-
tian era. А
When we observe that Assyrian bells аге embossed with symbols
of Ea, the divine Patron of Music, it may be assumed that it is a relic
of the animistic past.! The skin head of the Babylonian drum (balag)
was made from the hide of a bull, and as late as the Seleucid era
(312 в.с.) the Temple of Ea (Lumha) was the place of an elaborate
ritual at the fixing of the skin head on this sacred instrument.? The
image of a bull was also a prominent feature on the sound-chest of
the grand kithara (? algar), so that its resonance would be amplified
in mind if not in ears. Like those animals who play instruments in
Mesopotamian art remains, and those gods, kings, priests, and
mummers, dressed in animal or fish-like garb, they recall earlier
totemistic conceits.5 Yet we must not interpret these semeio-linea-
ments wholly by this cause, since there must have existed a purely
naturalistic raison d'étre sometimes. There are two or three well-
known art remains which show animals listening to, or in the presence
of, music, in what might readily be considered bucolic scenes.5 The
Mesopotamian psalms and lamentations continually voice complaint
against the gods for searing and flooding the land, for the thoughts
of the people were ever with their herds and harvests,’ and they
considered the bull in the animal world and the reed in the vegetable
world as antithetical. Their psalms tell of strength in the ‘gigantic
steer’ and weakness in the ‘crouching reed’. This symbolism of puis-
sance and docility, force and persuasion, was reflected in the deafen-
ing roar of the drum (i.e. the bull) and in the plaintive sigh of the pipe
(i.e. the reed), for they were the ‘outward visible sign’ of an ‘inward
spiritual grace’. Being a highly imaginative people they resorted to
symbolism in many ways, but none is more intriguing than their use
! M. Jastrow, Bildermappe zur Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens (Giessen, 1912),
fig. 70.
2 Revue d’Assyriologie, xvi (1919), pp. 145 ff.
з F. W. Galpin, The Music of the Sumerians and their immediate successors the
Babylonians and Assyrians (Cambridge, 1937), pl. vii.
+ Ibid., pls. iv, v, vii, viii.
5 C. J. Gadd, History and Monuments of Ur (London, 1929), pp. 36 ff.
* Galpin, op. cit., pls. ii, 2; iv, 1; viii, 6, 7.
7 S. Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies (Paris, 1913), pp. 1 ff.
THE PRIMITIVE ELEMENT IN MUSIC 231
of sound for this purpose, as Heuzey,! King,? and Thureau-Dangin?
have observed.
A close connexion between gods and music in Mesopotamia is
significant. One of the most ancient of the gods, Ea, the ruler of the
deep, had his name written with a sign which stood for drum (balag),*
the dread sound of which was the personification of his essence. Then
there was Ramman, who commanded the thunder and the winds. He
was conceived as the ‘spirit of sonorous voice',* which was in keeping
with the ancestor of Thor, although it was probably because of its
wind-like tone that the reed-pipe (falhallatu) was likened to his
breath.® One of the names of the goddess Ishtar, the virgin mother,
was ‘the soft reed-pipe', and her partner, Tammuz, was the ‘god of
the tender voice’,’ while the name ‘singer’ (zamméru) was given to
another of the immortals.® It is such fantasies, ‘nothing but vain’
perhaps, in which sound, as the anima of all phenomena, was used
to adjure and conjure benevolent and malevolent nature, that were
the foundation upon which the later elaborate temple services of
Mesopotamia were built.
THE MUSIC OF THE TEMPLES
All the cities of the Mesopotamian plains had their temples in the
fourth millennium B.C. Within their sacred precincts were worshipped
the many gods of their pantheons. Here, priests and liturgists, mathe-
maticians and astrologers, passed their lives in quiet seclusion,? for
the temple was the centre of the intellectual and cultural life of the
day.!? First among the liturgists was the precentor, known in Sumerian
as the gala (Akkadian Кай). Unlike the priest, he was not a con-
secrated functionary, although it was his duty to intone the liturgic
cantillation.!! There seem to have been three classes of precentor in
the Sumerian period, the higher, intermediate, and lower, the last
being counted in a menial grade. That many a kali was only а part-
time official is borne out by several contracts, but the existence of the
1 Revue d' Assyriologie, ix (1912), pp. 85 ff.
? A History of Sumer and Akkad (London, 1910), pp. 74 ff.
3 Sumerische und Akkadische Kénigsinschriften (1907), pp. 118 ff.
* Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ix (Edinburgh, 1917), p. 14.
5 Langdon, Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms (Paris, 1909), pp. 26 ff.
* C. Virolleaud, Astrologie chaldéenne (Paris, 1908), Adad. xi.
7 Langdon, op. cit., p. 301.
C. Virolleaud et F. Pélagaud, in Lavignac and La Laurencie, Encyclopédie de la
musique, 11€ partie, i (Paris, 1913), p. 45.
* Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar (Oxford, 1914), p. 184.
10 M. Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria (New
МОКУО) р. 273
Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, pp. x ff.
8
232 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
Sumerian galamah (Akkadian kalamahhu) or chief precentor, who
held the highest position in the city, reveals the sacred significance
of his office.
These precentors were — into guilds and they were housed,
seemingly, in the temple соПере,! just as were vicars-choral in Chris-
tian Europe.? Here they were taught the mysteries of their sacred
office, including а precise.knowledge of the cantillation (kalütu)
which, like the prae-cantus of the Christian Church, was an art
requiring a long training. The Sumerian language, like the Latin in
the Roman Church, was the language of the liturgies although, later,
an interlinear Akkadian version existed. As in Christian lands, these
precentors of Mesopotamia were well versed in the sciences, and we
have an astrological report signed by a precentor. Yet their most
important work in this respect was as copyists and editors of the
temple liturgies, so many of which have been preserved together with
the names of the copyists.
The ordinary temple musician was called in Sumerian the nar
(Akkadian nàru), the Semitic word being also used, probably, for
‘musician’ in the generic sense.? We cannot be sure of the паги’з
actual duties, but he was possibly a chorister who, with others, made
the responses in the liturgies. That ihe ‘chorister’ also played upon
an instrument is well attested. Langdon says that his frequent con-
nexion with private penitential services, especially those connected
with magic, led to his ultimate dissociation from public services. At
burial services it was the nàru and not the kali who contributed to
the penitential psalming and wailing.‘ It is certain that the naru was
later seen quite frequently in the secular sphere. Equally important
was the Sumerian i/ukaka (Akkadian, гаттёги), whose specific func-
tion is not easy to determine since the term often equates with nàru.
Virolleaud and Pélagaud opine that while nàru signifies the generic
term for ‘musician’, zamméru stands for 'instrumentalist'.? Yet he
was definitely a singer also, and took part in the liturgies. Even
Langdon does not help us except to say that the zamméru sang to an
instrument and that he was distinct from the naru.®
1 Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, p. xii.
? H. G. Farmer, A History of Music in Scotland (London, 1947), p. 55.
3 Langdon looks upon the лаги as one who ‘leads the congregation’ in public wor-
ship, just as the Presbyterian ‘uptaker of psalms’ did in the Scottish kirk; the same
authority identifies *the familiar figure on seals, who leads a penitent to his god' as the
náru. See Langdon, Babylonian Penitential Psalms (Paris, 1927), p. v.
* Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, pp. xxvii ff.
5 Op cit., p. 44.
* Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, p. xxvi.
THE MUSIC OF THE TEMPLES 233
The place in the temple and the duties in general of all these temple
and extra-mural musical functionaries are nowhere definitely de-
scribed. One imagines that the precentor specialized in the cantillation
(kalütu) and sometimes, if not generally, accompanied himself on ап
instrument. It is prescribed in some texts when ‘he shall sing’ (izamur)
and when ‘he [the patient] shall recite’ (imannü). The chorister's
business, whether he was a ndru or zamméru, was the chant called in
Sumerian sir (Akkadian sirku). Deimel (4475), however, cites the
Akkadian séru as ‘a section of a song’, a word cognate with the
Hebrew Sir. Then there was the penitential psalm (Akkadian zamáru),
which has a derived name in the Hebrew mizmor, and it is possible
that the Akkadian zamar tusgi (УЯей) and the zamar seri can be
matched in the Hebrew mizmór Siggaion and the mizmor Sir (Psalms,
vii, lxvii, Ixviii).? Lamentation proper in Akkadian was inhu, and its
character is preserved in the nehi of Micah (ii, 4) and the nauh of the
Arabs. The cult wail may have been known as alálu, although Deimel
says ‘shouts of joy’. If correct it may have given rise to the name of
the sixth month (ell), which was the time of wailing for Tammuz,’
still kept by the Jews.
Of the actual music of the Mesopotamian temples or elsewhere we
know but little, although the vehicle by which it was expressed has
come down to us in vast treasures by way of liturgies, breviaries,
psalms, and songs, edited by Langdon, Reisner, Ebeling, and others.
Indeed Langdon has said that a full index of this musical material
‘would rival that of the Roman or Anglican books of devotion '.*
These public services date back to Sumerian days, at which date they
consisted of but a single psalm о: uymn, generally a lamentation,
termed in Sumerian an ersemma, which strictly meant a psalm or
hymn set to a reed-pipe. Yet other instruments were also used to
accompany the psalm—the flute (tig), drum (balag), kettledrum (lilis),
and tambourine (adapa)—and in the course of time the music came
to be known by the name of the complementary instrument.® This
one-psalm service passed away before the time of the first Babylonian
dynasty (1830 B.c.), when the ersemma was supplanted by a complete
liturgical service called a kisub. These new services had been com-
piled by the schools of liturgists who had combined several of the
1 Akkadisch-Sumerisches Glossar (Rome, 1937).
2 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, (1921), pp. 175 ff. Cf. Revue d' Assyriologie,
xviii (1921), p. 41. Deimel (4795) gives tesqu and teski.
> Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ix (Edinburgh, 1917), p. 14. A.
Deimel, op. cit., p. 13. Cf. the Greek dAaAd.
4 Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, p. x.
5 Ibid., p. ix.
234 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
erSemma type of psalms or hymns which had a common appeal.
‘Here’, to quote Langdon, ‘we have extremely long services com-
posed of a succession of melodies characterized by changing refrains
and musical motifs.’
Each liturgy was now called a ‘series’ (iškāru), and it is found with
as few as five psalms or hymns and as many as twenty-seven. Ata later
period the term erSemma was revived as an intercessional hymn at the
end of a kisub.1 According to Langdon, our foremost authority on
the subject, when the public services began to develop in this way, the
music, which had hitherto been confined to a single instrument, now
became based on what seems to be a wider instrumental conception.?
We read for example, in an addendum to the series called Exalted
Heaven:3
The precentors a chant to the drum (balaggu) shall sing.
To the sacred kettledrums (uppu and Jilissu) shall sing.
To the reed-pipe (halhallatu) and tambourine (manzz) shall sing.
Liturgies now came to be known by their first lines,* and so perhaps
their melodies also. Many of the latter are frequently mentioned, and
Langdon says ‘that a certain tune was associated with all passages
characterized by this refrain'.? One might be reading an early English
psalter when we see a rubric which says: ‘А song to the tune “Thou
wilt not cast me down”’.’ That the kisub was attended by processional
movements on the part of the choir is also stressed by Langdon, who
suggests that a ‘choral march’—‘a real recessional’—came at the end
of the litany.® Interludes аге also found in lengthy litanies, and one
may perhaps see in these an explanation of the much discussed selah
of the Old Testament.
That the antiphon (gisgigal) was fairly common seems to be ac-
cepted by Langdon,’ Cumming,® and Galpin,’ and it may be men-
tioned that in later days the Akkadian word епй meant ‘answer’,
‘repeat’. It may have been derived from the Sumerian en (Akkadian
Siptu).!° There is a Babylonian antiphonal lamentation in Akkadian
1 Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, p. xli. Cf. his statement in Babylonian Penitential
Psalms, p. v. 2 Ibid., p. xlii.
3 Langdon, Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, pp. 70-71; Babylonian Liturgies,
pp. viii ff.
4 Langdon, Sumerian Liturgies and Psalms (Philadelphia, 1919), p. 325.
è Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, p. xxxv.
€ Ibid., p. xlviii.
7 Babylonian Liturgies (Paris, 1913), p. 1.
8 The Assyrian and Hebrew Hymns of Praise (New York, 1934) pp. 72 ff.
® Op. cit., p. 62.
1? Langdon, Babylonian Penitential Psalms, pp. vii, 48-52.
THE MUSIC OF THE TEMPLES 235
of a late period.! which is a copy of a Sumerian original of the
time of Naràm-Sin (c. 2280 B.c.). In this the women of various towns
participated. Sidney Smith suggests that they were divided into two
groups and that ‘each half-chorus sang alternately’ the lines which
were appropriate to themselves in the destruction of their lands by
the Guti.? Perhaps a more moving example of an antiphon is the
Liturgy and Prayer to the Moon God, which dates from the time of
Dungi (twenty-first century B.C.). It is an appeal to the god Sin to
care for flocks and harvests, with twin recurring refrains, seemingly
responsory.?
In addition to the instruments mentioned as being used in the
kisub services, the harp (zagsal) also had a recognized place.* Further,
those epical productions known as the zagsal compositions may very
well have been accompanied by this һагр.° Galpin says that it was
used during the oracles of the high-priest.* Before closing this section
it may be advisable to mention that while Langdon generally refers
to the kisub as being a ‘choral ѕегуісе’,? and frequently speaks of
*melodies',5 we must always understand that these terms merely re-
late to what was set to music, since not a solitary note has come down
to us save what may be divined from the so-called *notation' which
will be dealt with later. In any case, Mesopotamian temple music was
cantus in its primitive significance, for the simple reason that the
liturgy demanded a fixed and immutable chant, any variation from
which by precentor or chorister would be unthinkable, since its whole
efficacy depended on a rigid interpretation. That a particular chant
had a certain ethos in a theurgic sense is frequently mentioned in
Mesopotamian documents, and we read of the kala and naru who
‘know the melodies’ and are ‘masters of the musical movements’,
meaning the appropriate liturgic and ethoidal chants. This was an
absolute desideratum, since the gods were equally skilled, as we know
from the epithet of the goddess Ishtar, the patroness of litanies, as the
one ‘who understands the measures’ of the psalming.? As for the
verbal form and content of the Mesopotamian liturgy Langdon has
! Cf. Gaipin, op. cit., p. 62. Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, xix; Sumerian and Baby-
lonian Psalms, p. 176
? Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, (1932), pp. 303 ff.
* Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, р. 1. The refrain was quite common (pp. 70-71).
* F. Martin, Textes religieux assyriens et babyloniens (Paris, 1903), p. 196.
5 Langdon, Sumerian Liturgies and Psalms, p. 233. Cf. his Sumerian Liturgical
Texts (Philadelphia, 1917), pp. 130 ff.
$C Opiicit., р. 53.
* Sumerian Liturgies and Psalms, p. 245.
8 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, (1921), p. 170.
® Langdon, Sumerian Liturgies and Psalms, p. 237.
236 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
rightly praised it as ‘the greatest system of musical ritual in any
ancient religion’.+
SECULAR MUSIC
Words alone are sometimes graciously eloquent of purpose, and at
the very threshold stands the generic Akkadian word for ‘music’,
nigütu or ningütu, which also has the connotation of ‘joy’, ‘merry-
making’. Alalu, which also meant ‘singing’, had a similar import.
This is admirably illustrated on an archaic seal in the Louvre which
displays a bucolic scene, seemingly of a peasant playing a flute to one
of his flock or herd.? Such scenes are not uncommon in the art re-
mains, and whilst they may be mere cameos, we can descry in them
the part played by music in the lives of the people. Indeed in some
instances it was considered as part of education.? It has been said
that ‘the old danced whilst the young made music’.* One imagines
that there were toil songs among the ancient Semites, as we know in
the* well song' of Numbers xxi. 17. Singers and drummers, in a picture
of Assyrians felling palm-trees, certainly appear to be facilitating
labour. Indeed an Assyrian annalist gives a picture of the Arabs who,
as prisoners of war, were working as slaves at Nineveh, where they
sang their native songs to relieve their sorrows. Their exotic music
fascinated the idle Assyrians who begged for more.?
One of the oldest Sumerian art remains, the Standard of Ur
(twenty-fifth century B.C.), depicts a singer and a performer on the
grand kithara (? algar) at a royal banquet, which was planned to
‘dispel gloom'.$ Several seals from the same period also suggest that
the instruments shown accompany festive scenes, even with dancing.’
Here, not only the grand kithara, but the harp (zagsal), sistrum, and
clappers, play their part. Then there are the many representations of
animals, or mummers dressed as such, playing instruments of music—
kitharas, harps, pandores, tambourines, drums, and the like—which
scarcely represent religious ѕсепеѕ. All these bear testimony that from
early Sumerian to late Assyrian days, music was part and parcel of
social life in Mesopotamia.?
1 Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, p. xxxiv.
2 Е. Lajard, Introduction à l'étude du culte public et des mystères de Mithra (Paris,
1847), pl. xxix, 7.
з В. Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, ii (Heidelberg, 1925), pp. 320, 328.
* Tbid. ii, p. 331.
5 E. Schrader, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ii (Berlin, 1889 et seq.), p. 234.
* Antiquaries Journal, viii (1928), pl. lix.
* Galpin, op. cit., pl. ii. 8 Ibid., pls. v, viii.
? P, Dhorme, Textes religieux assyro-babyloniens (Paris, 1903), р. 375.
SECULAR MUSIC 237
Assyria, from quite an early period, was certainly very fond of
secular as well as religious music. In the martial moments of Tiglath-
pileser I (c. 1113 B.C.) we read of a grand personage in the royal
palace named the rab zammére (‘chief musician’), and we are in-
formed that the royal musicians gave public performances ‘to gladden
the hearts of the people of Ashur'.! It is worth noting that when the
victorious Assyrian generals put a city to the sword, they generally
spared the musicians, who were sent to Nineveh with the valuable
booty. To the very last days, music played a wholesome part in
Assyrian social life, even though most of our testimony comes from
regal sources.
From the time of Ashur-nasir-pal II (c. 883—859 B.c.) we get
ample lithographic material of music and musical instruments. First
we have the sculptured slabs in the British Museum showing two
players on the lower-chested harp (zagsal) (pl. 8 (а)). Sargon (c. 722-
705 B.c.) also employed the joyous art in the celebrations consequent
on his widely trumpeted victories.? A probable sidelight on alien in-
fluence on Assyrian music is furnished about the year 701 B.c. when
Sennacherib invaded Syria, sending one of his generals to lay siege
to Jerusalem. To soften the wrath of the conqueror, the king of Judah
sent ‘his wives and his daughters, his musicians both male and
female' as a gift, hoping that he himself might be spared.? From this
period dates a fine bas-relief in the British Museum showing playe
on the upper-chested harp and the diagonal kithara. It was the two
court functionaries facing them with batons of office in their hands
which led Rawlinson to suppose that they were time-beaters.*
In the year of the ascent of Esar-haddon (680-669 n.c.) to the
throne, we read that when he re-entered Nineveh it was *with musi-
cians playing the lower-chested harp (zagsal)'.* The British Museum
bas-reliefs also illustrate the artistic interests of Ashur-bàni-pal (668-
626 в.с.). When Teumman, the Elamite king, invaded Assyrian terri-
tory, Ashur-bàni-pal sought the goddess Ishtar for counsel. She
quietened his fears and bade him turn to music and feasting.® He
obeyed, and in the midst of these pleasures came the news of the
defeat and death of Teumman. The joyous scenes of the victory
celebrations, with which music went hand in hand, have been recorded
! Schrader, op. cit. i, p. 46.
? Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ix, p. 14.
3 Schrader, op. cit. ii, pp. 96-97.
* G. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, ii (London, 1854), pp. 167 f; Kinsky,
Op. cit., p. 3.
5 Schrader, op. cit. ii, pp. 126-7.
* lbid. ii, р. 252.
238 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
in stone.! The great orchestra and choir of the vanquished king are
delineated on another British Museum sculpture (pl. 8 (c)). The former
consists of seven performers on the upper-chested harp, one on the
lower-chested harp, two on the double reed-pipe, and one on a drum.
The choir was made up of six women and nine children,? and one
of the former indulges in the favourite Eastern vocal practice of
squeezing the larynx by the hand, to effect the high notes.
The Old Testament story in the book of Daniel (iii), written in the
second century B.c., has an abiding interest, if only because of the
instrumentation of that much-discussed orchestra of the Chaldaean
king Nebuchadnezzar (604-562 B.c.). It comprised the ‘garnd (horn),
masróqithà (pipe), githros (kithara), sabbeka (? trigonal lower-chested
harp), and psantrin siimfonyah (upper-chested ‘concord Багр”).3
Although these were for the dedication of ‘an image of gold’, they
were, no doubt, for secular purposes also, if not primarily. Another
musical scene of Nebuchadnezzar’s time, although not Mesopo-
tamian, is pictured in Judith (iii. 8-10). It represents the Assyrian
general Holophernes in his murderous descent upon Syria, where the
petty kings and their people, to appease the invader, receive him
with ‘crowns, illuminations, and dancing to drums (tympana) and
reed-pipes (tibiae)’.
Mesopotamian court minstrelsy, even in later Achaemenid days,
was usually conceived on a grandiose scale. With the Assyrians the
position of the court minstrel was a high one, as his apparel and
situation often denote. His place was among the seniores priores,
taking precedence of the savants, coming immediately after gods and
kings.* It may be recalled that it was a court minstrel who warned the
Median king Astyages (d. 550 в.с.) of the aims of Cyrus (d. 528 в.с.).5
Crowds of singing-girls usually graced the palaces at this period, as
Xenophon testifies. Yet ‘ Darius the Мейе’ (с. 521-485), when he had
cast Daniel into the den of lions, was sore distressed and passed the
night badly, ‘neither were instruments of musick brought before him’
(Daniel, vi. 18). The singing-girls were the later Arabian qaindt, a
term used to denote both female musicians and attendants, and the
cognate Akkadian word, kindti (female attendants), had probably the
other meaning also. The Greek historian Ctesias, who was physician
1 М. Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria (New
York, 1911), pl. 13.
? Kinsky, op. cit., p. 3. ? See infra, pp. 245-6.
* Schrader, op. cit. vi, pp. 72-73, 386.
5 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, xiv. 633.
5 Cyropaedia, iv. 6, 11; v. i, 1; v. 5, 2, and 39.
SECULAR MUSIC 239
to Artaxerxes II (404—358 B.c.), tells us that one of the Babylonian
king's lieutenants had 150 of these female singers at his їаЫе, and
we know that when Parmenio, the Greek general, reduced Damascus,
he took 329 of these singing-girls from the court of Darius III
(d. 330 B.c.).? Quintus Curtius (v. 1) has described the triumphal entry
of Alexander the Great into Babylon, where he was met by a pro-
cession of priests (magi) chanting hymns, followed by Chaldaean
diviners and astrologers, and musicians with string instruments,
“whose office it was to sing to their king’.
What secular music sounded like in Mesopotamia in those days we
know no more than we do of the actual music of the temples. As with
the latter, we only know of the media. Langdon has given some re-
markable lists of song titles of purely secular import, although some
may have been used in the temples.? Among these are workers’ and
shepherds' songs, youth songs and love ballads, the initial words of
which reveal lofty thoughts and passages deeply moving.
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC
Of the instruments of music in ancient Mesopotamia we possess a
fair store of knowledge through the existence of actual specimens and
a multitude of delineations, although much perplexity lies in their
names, of which both the Sumerian and Akkadian languages offer
quite an assemblage. Among idiophones we possess actual specimens
of clappers from Ur (twenty-fifth century B.c.).4 These consist of a
pair of copper blades. Other specimens were found at Kish.? We also
have them depicted in the art remains, although we do not know
their names. Sistra were also discovered at Ur, but all that remains
are the jingling plates." Yet we know the complete form from art
sources.? At a late period (c. 600 в.с.) we have a bell from Assyria,’
and sonnettes from the same place and period.!? Cymbals occur in two
kinds: the plate type, pictured on a Babylonian plaque (? с. 1100 B.c.),!t
and a cup type of late Assyrian times (eighth-seventh centuries B.C.).!?
! Athenaeus, xii. 530. ? bid. xiii. 608.
2 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1921), pp. 169 ff.
* Leonard Woolley, Ur Excavations, ii (London, 1934), pp. 126 ff.
* Langdon, Excavations at Kish (London, 1925), pls. vi, xxxviii.
5 Woolley, op. cit., figs. 21 ff.
7 Ibid., рр. 260 ff.
5 W. H. Ward, Seal Cylinders of Western Asia, v (Washington, 1910), p. 5.
® Jastrow, Bildermappe zur Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens (Gießen, 1912), fig. 70.
10 A-H. Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (London, 1853),
р. 177; G. Loud and С. B. Altman, Khorsabad, ii (Chicago, 1938), pl. 60.
Galpin, op. cit., pl. iii, fig. 2.
1% C, Engel, The Music of the Most Ancient Nations (London, 1870), p. 73.
240 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
During the Greek, i.e. the Seleucid, period, we also find cymbalists
in figurines.! Their name has not been revealed, but the Akkadian
verb sanáqu (to push, press together) reminds us of the Arabic sanj,
pl. sunüj (cymbals).?
Both the texts and the art remains furnish names and delineations
of membranophones. The Sumerian lilis (Akkadian lilissu) was defi-
nitely a kettledrum, and we have a precious description of its composite
parts.? Evidence of a smaller type is quite positive in the Sumerian ub
(Akkadian uppu) which equates with 1115.4 What one may picture
from the ideogram to be an hour-glass shaped drum was the Sumerian
balag (Akkadian balaggu).* The temple instrument must have been
reasonably large, but there were smaller types as such names as
balag-tur (small balag) may indicate. Such an instrument exists in
Susian агї. A grand-daughter of Naràm-Sin (с. 2280 в.с.) played on
а balag-di,’ which equates in Akkadian with timbütu and corresponds
with fabàlu.5 The former possibly survives in the Persian dunbaq, and
the latter, certainly, in the Arabic /ab/; whilst balaggu was handed
down in the Aramaic palgah and the Syriac pelagga. Two unidentified
drums, held vertically and played at the waist, occur in late Assyrian
art (eighth-seventh centuries B.C.).?
Frame drums, ordinarily called tambourines, existed in many sizes.
A monster frame drum is delineated on the stele of Ur-Nammu
(с. 2070 в.с.), now at Philadelphia.!? Slightly smaller examples exist
in the art remains. One of the time of Gudea (c. 2200 B.c.) is at Paris,
whilst another, a Carchemish relief (c. 1050 в.с.), is in the British
Museum.!? It is believed to be the Sumerian alal (Akkadian ali).
A portable tambourine figures in a relief from Tell Halaf (third
millennium B.c.),!¢ and in other examples.!? This may have been the
! Statuette: British Museum (no. 91794).
? H. G. Farmer, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1939), p. 626. Langdon's
unidentified sigaru (ibid. 1921, р. 180) may bea rattle (= Arabic, shaqshaq). Cf. Egyptian
Seq = to strike.
3 Galpin, op. cit., pl. iii, fig. 5, p. 65; Revue d’Assyriologie, xvi (1919), p. 145.
* Beiträge zur Assyriologie, v (1906), p. 582; Revue d'Assyriologie, xxi (1924), p. 80;
Farmer, Oriental Studies (London, 1953), p. 18.
5 Beiträge zur Assyriologie, v (1906), p. 581; Revue 4’ Assyriologie, xxv (1928), p. 155.
6 Revue d' Assyriologie, xvii (1920), p. 49.
7 Е. Thureau-Dangin, Les Inscriptions de Sumer et d'Akkad (Paris, 1905), p. 237.
8 F. Thureau-Dangin, . . . La Huitième Campagne de Sargon (Paris, 1912), р. 26,
line 159. Galpin suggests that the rimbūtu may have been a friction drum. s
* C. Engel, op. cit., pp. 63 ff. 10 Galpin, op. cit., pl. iii, fig. 6.
п Kinsky, op. cit., p. 1, fig. 1.
12 Galpin, op. cit., pl. iii, fig. 1.
1з та. р. 6. Langdon (Babylonian Liturgies, p. xxii) says ' Kettledrum?'
N M. Е. von Oppenheim, Tell Halaf (London, 1933), pl. xxxviii.
15 Galpin, op. cit., pl. iii, figs. 3, 5.
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC 241
Sumerian mesi (Akkadian тай, manzii),! a term linked by Langdon
with the Sumerian adapa (Akkadian? аѓари)? which Galpin considers
to have been a rectangular instrument? having in mind, probably, the
Hebrew toph and the Arabic duff.
Woodwind instruments were the most important of the aero-
phones in Mesopotamia. In the Sumerian tig, tigi (Akkadian tigi)
we have the vertical flute, the longer instrument being the gigid*
(Akkadian malilu). We also read of the Akkadian kanzabu,? a name
phonetically reminiscent of the Arabic дазаба. A flute of archaic
times is featured on a Sumerian seal at the Louvre, Paris,’ whilst
there is also a bone instrument, a small whistle, from Tepe Gawra.?
There once existed a bone whistle from Nimrod which gave three
notes, but it has disappeared.?
Among reed-pipes and oboes!? there existed the Sumerian Sem
(Akkadian halhallatu)'! which may have been an ordinary reed-pipe.
How far it differed from the malilu!* which, on one special occasion,
was made of lapis lazuli, we do not know, although this latter equates
with the Akkadian imbubu, a word common to all Semitic tongues.
Perhaps the instrument is figured in the conical-tubed oboe in Engel.!?
A double cylindrical reed-pipe in metal is preserved at Philadelphia
from the Ur tombs (c. 2500 B.c.),!* but only one of the pipes is play-
able, giving four notes of the diatonic scale. The art remains also dis-
play examples of the double reed-pipe.!5 We are without evidence of
its name but the sinnitu!$ may refer to such an instrument, if it alludes
to an accompanying drone-pipe (Arabic jann, fanin). A Susian
figurine (c. 750 в.с.) seems to show a crooked double reed-pipe,!? and
! Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, p. xxxii.
? Neither in Deimel nor in Muss-Arnolt is afapu given as a musical instrument. '
3 Op. cit., p. 8. See also Journal asiatique, Jan.-Fév., 1909, р. 85.
* Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, p. xxxiii.
5 Е. Martin, Textes religieux (Paris, 1903), р. 196.
® Farmer, A History of Arabian Music (London, 1929), р. 47.
7 Е. Lajard, Introduction à l'étude du culte public et des mystéres de Mithra (Paris,
1847), pl. xli, 5.
* Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, lxiv (1936), p. 8.
* C. Engel, op. cit., p. 76; Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1921), p. 180.
10 Galpin, op. cit., p. 16.
Ibid., loc. cit. Cf. Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, p. xxxii.
Beiträge zur Assyriologie, v (1906), p. 566.
Op, cit, р. 77.
L. Woolley, Ur Excavations, i, pp. 258 ff.
Kinsky, op. cit., p. 3, figs. 1, 4.
F. Martin, op. cit., p. 196. Another instrument mentioned in this place is the
arká[tu] which is not known.
м Galpin suggests that the sinnitu is a two-stringed lute (= pandore). Op. cit., pp. 35,
54,
18 J. de Morgan, Délégation en Perse (Paris, 1901), i, pl. viii, figs. 10, 14.
242 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
Galpin suggests! that this is the pitu or рий mentioned by Langdon.?
It is doubtful.
So far as horns and trumpets are concerned, we have but few
references and illustrations. An archaic Sumerian tablet found at Ur
(second millennium в.с.) seemingly describes a wooden horn called
in Akkadian pukku (Sumerian ellag).3 The Sumerian karan mentioned
by Galpin is not registered by Deimel who, by the way, says that the
pukkuwas a drum. Yet we know that several instruments of the pukku
and mikkü types were presented (с. 1380 в.с.) by the Mitanni ruler
under Dushratta to Amen-hotep III of Egypt.* We observea very short
trumpet in a religious scene on a Hittite relief from Carchemish
(c. 1050 в.с.).5 The long metal trumpet may possibly be identified
in the hands of the kneeling figure on the stele of Naram-Sin
(c. 2280 в.с.), but a shorter type occurs on a Hittite relief (first
millennium B.c.).’ In late Assyrian days a long type is clearly depicted
in two examples (eighth-seventh centuries B.C.), whilst an actual
fragment of one has been preserved.
The chordophone group of Mesopotamian instruments reveals
types of the highest interest to musicologists. Perhaps the most re-
markable are of the harp and kithara family; the evolutionary stages
of the harp are particularly fascinating. In the lower-chested harp, the
generic name for which Galpin has supposed to be zagsal,® we see
three distinct forms. In the first, found on a slab from Khafaja
(c. 2700 B.c.), now at Chicago, we have an upright portable instru-
ment, with a neck and sound-chest in one graduated piece.!? Similar
examples (c. 2600 and 2500 в.с.) are at Philadelphia.” In all these we
can discern that this harp is of the progeny of the warrior's bow. In
Sumerian the instrument was possibly called the ban or pan (bow),}?
a name associated in this way, maybe, from time immemorial.!? We
do not know its later Semitic name in Mesopotamia, although its last
Op єр 19.
? Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1921), pp. 174, 191.
з Revue d'Assyriologie, xxx (1933), pp. 138, 153. The word endured for millennia in
the Syriac pügá'à (fragor, crepitus).
+ J. A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln (Leipzig, 1908 et seq.), рр. 155 ff.
5 Galpin, op. cit., pl. iii, fig. 1.
* Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Belief (New York, 1911), pl. 8.
* Kinsky, op. cit., p. 1, fig. 4.
* Engel, op. cit., pp. 61 ff.
? Op cit., pp. 26 ff.
19 H, Frankfort, Sculptures of the Third Millennium в.с from Tell Asmar and Khafajah
(Chicago, 1939), pl. 107.
1 Galpin, pls. ii, fig. 4; v, fig. 5. Galpin's name for it is miritu.
12 Ibid., p. 28.
13 J, F. Rowbotham, A History of Music, i (London, 1885-7), p. 154.
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC 243
descendants were the Pahlavi von and the Arabic wann.! The second
form, with a separate bow-shaped neck fixed to a horizontal sound-
chest, was not unlike the Burmese saun. It is delineated on a vase from
Bismaya (c. 3000 n.c.) at Stamboul,? although there is an actual speci-
men from Ur (twenty-fifth century B.C.) at the British Museum
(pl. 8 (5)).? The instrument of the foremost player on the Bismaya vase
has only seven strings whilst the Ur instrument has eleven. The former
may relate to the sibitu (seven [stringed] harp),* but no name has
come down for the latter instrument, although we seem to have
SisSatu (six [stringed]) and esirtu (ten [stringed]) as names of instru-
ments according to Langdon.* The third form, with a separate vertical
neck in the horizontal sound-chest, shows itself on a Nippur plaque
(c. 1800 B.c.), now at Philadelphia.® It is also recognizable in the
hands of one of the Elamite musicians on the Kül-i Fir‘aun sculp-
tures.” In later Assyrian days (eighth-seventh centuries B.C.) we have
several examples in art remains.? Owing to the reconstruction of a
fracture on the British Museum sculpture, where a joint cut through
one of the designs of this instrument, the newly imposed position of
the strings misled some musicographers to imagine a dulcimer? or a
psaltery,?° instead of a harp.
The last-mentioned type of lower-chested harp gave rise to the
upper-chested harp, which was, to all intent, the previously described
instrument turned sideways. It has been identified with the Akkadian
zaggal, a doubtful name which Galpin thought was the parent of the
Persian chang.!! This latter had an acutely angled upper sound-chest
with a distinct hump, and when we first espy it on a bronze vessel
from Nihawand (c. 2000 B.c.) this sound-chest is almost vertical but
with a sudden bend at the peak.!? We notice it also on a figurine from
1 Farmer, Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments, ii (Glasgow, 1939), p. 74.
* Е. J. Banks, Bismaya (New York, 1912), p. 267.
* L. Woolley, Ur Excavations, i, pp. 74 ff., ii, pls. 108-10. The British Museum's
reconstruction of its sound-chest was definitely wrong. Even Galpin, with his encyclo-
paedic knowledge of the morphology of instruments, did not object to this faultily
conceived modelling when he reproduced the design in 1929 (Music and Letters, x,
pp. 108 ff.). In view of this the present writer made his own reconstruction in 1931, to
which Galpin agreed, and in 1933 both Galpin and Curt Sachs made representations to
the British Museum for the necessary alteration. However, Galpin remedied the design
in his monumental work of 1937.
* F. Martin, Textes religieux (Paris, 1903), p. 196.
* Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1921), pp. 180, 183-4. The Hebrew nebel ‘asér
as its name tells us, had ten strings. 8 Galpin, op. cit., pl. vi, fig. 4.
1 J. de Morgan, op. cit. iii, pl. 23. * Engel, op. cit., p. 49.
? Ibid., pp. 44 ff.; Rowbotham, op. cit. i, р. 335.
10 Virolleaud et Pélagaud, op. cit., p. 46. п Op. cit., pp. 29, 56.
? E. Herzfeld, Archaeological History of Iran (London, 1935), p. 7. See also Revue
d'Assyriologie, xxv (1928), pp. 169, 175, fig. 1.
244 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
Sippar (c. 1700 B.c.) now at Philadelphia.! In later Assyrian scenes
the chest has a graduated curve throughout its length.? The same is
to be seen in Elamite designs.?
The kithara family reveals some unique specimens. In late Assyrian
times (eighth-seventh century B.C.), one delineated example is a folk
instrument.‘ It is of asymmetrical construction, an outline which is
maintained in the instruments of professionals. A rectangular type
occurs on the Tell Halaf relief (third millennium n.C.),* and іп As-
syrian art remains (eighth-seventh centuries В.С.).? Its name is not
as yet known to us. The most outstanding instrument of this class was
the grand kithara, seemingly known in Sumerian as algar.* Langdon
said that algar was merely a longer form of the mythical instrument
called al, which is the subject of an Enlil psalm,’ but Galpin insisted
that it is the a/ and the zagsal that are identical. This grand kithara
is depicted on the standard of Ur (twenty-fifth century в.с.), and on
seals of the same period." A slightly larger example is limned on the
Tello relief (с. 2200 B.c.),!* whilst the plaque from Ur (twenty-fifth
century B.C.) is almost the height of a man.?? Even these representa-
tions, expressive though they may be, are not comparable with the
actual instruments from Ur (twenty-fifth century B.C.) which are pre-
served in splendid examples at the British Museum, Baghdad, and
Philadelphia.
Our final section concerns the pandore. The Sumerian word pan or
ban stood for ‘bow’, and later perhaps for ‘harp’ also. If the curved
neck of the lower-chested harp were straightened, quite a different
+ V, Scheil, Une Saison de fouilles à Sippar (Cairo, 1902), p. 90, fig. 2; Galpin, op. cit.,
pl. vi, fig. 6.
? Kinsky, op. cit., p. 3, figs. 1, 3.
3 J, de Morgan, op. cit., iii, pl. 23. The Arabs of the East and the Moors of Spain
appear to have been the last to use this harp (jank, Persian chang). See Farmer, The
Minstrelsy of the Arabian Nights (Bearsden, 1945), pls. 4, 5; J. F. Riafio, Notes on Early
Spanish Music (London, 1887), p. 122.
* Engel, op. cit., p. 39, fig. 7.
5 Kinsky, op. cit., p. 2, fig. 3; p. 3, figs. 2, 3.
$ М. Е. von Oppenheim, op. cit., pl. xxxviii.
* Engel, op. cit., p. 38, fig. 5.
8 Galpin, op. cit., pp. 31 ff. In April 1937 I suggested to the late Dr. Langdon that the
Akkadian дагаги (to strike) or kagáru (to gather together, tie, hence kisru, something tied)
might have produced the name of such an instrument, hence к:бара. In reply he informed
me that the former word was now known to mean only ‘to smoke’, but gave no opinion
about the latter. Cf. kassar and kasrá, the lyre in modern Upper Egypt.
? Sumerian Liturgical Texts (Philadelphia, 1917), p. 187.
10 Galpin, op. cit., frontispiece, p. 31.
п [bid., pl. ii, figs. 1, 3, 5.
12 Heuzey and de Sarzec, Découvertes en Chaldée (Paris, 1884), pl. 23.
13 Woolley, op. cit. ii, pl. 105, 111-14, 118-21.
14 Galpin, op. cit., pl. vii.
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC 245
instrument would be created, as I have shown elsewhere.! This change
would produce the Sumerian pantur (small pan), as both Galpin and
Sachs suggest,? a name which easily could have been the parent of the
Greek pandoura. Julius Pollux said that while the Arabs invented the
one-stringed instrument, the Assyrians were responsible for the pan-
doura of three strings.? We see an early pandore on a plaque from
Nippur (c. 1700 в.с.),* as well as in later designs.? In Assyrian times
(eighth-seventh centuries В.С.) it is also featured. Was this the пере!
which Isaiah wished to silence in his denunciation of Babylon (Isaiah
xiv. 11)?
There is still that list of instruments of the ‘Golden City’ of
Babylon as recorded in Daniel (iii. 5, 7, 10, 15) to be discussed. With
one exception—the last-named—they are Semitic by name and origin.
The Aramaic дагна (horn) needs no comment, since we have seen its
Akkadian parent. The root of the Syriac masroqithàá (pipe), which is
Sdraq, is as old as Judges (v. 16), where it more properly refers to the
sounds of the shepherd's pipe, an instrument called Sargoqithà in
Talmudic times. The Syriac lexicographers tells us that the masruqitho
is the Arabic saffara (recorder), shabbaba (flute), or sir (horn). Of the
qithros (kithara) we have already spoken. The sabbeka (lower-chested
harp) owes its name, in all probability, to the fact that multiplicity
[of strings] was confused with multiflexity, as we see in the root
sübaq (to intertwine, interweave), hence sebàq (lattice-work) and
sebáqà (net-work), whose kindred still thrive in Arabic. The psantrin
siimfonyah (concord harp), reopens an old controversy about the
sümfonyàáh being a separate instrument, to wit, a bagpipe or some
other instrument, in spite of St. Jerome's early rejection of such a
notion’ as pointed out by Pusey.® Since the time of the latter there has
been a change of heart, and several attempts have been made to
solve the problem, notably in the more recent interpretation by
1 Transactions: Glasgow University Oriental Society, v (1930), p. 26.
? Galpin, op. cit., p. 35; Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940),
6 A iv. 60. * Galpin, op. cit., pl. viii, fig. 6.
5 Ibid., pl. viii, fig. 7; Kinsky, op. cit., p. 2, fig. 1; J. Garstang, The Hittite Empire
(London, 1929), pl. xxx. In this last, a Hittite example, we see incurvatures in the waist
of the sound-chest, the parent of the modern guitar.
$ Engel, op. cit., pp. 54 ff., figs. 12, 23. See А. W. Pope, A Survey of Persian Art, iv
(London, 1938) for pandores from Luristan, p. 72, and Susa, p. 74; M. Ebert, Reallexi-
kon der Vorgeschichte (Berlin, 1926), vi, p. 216; Farmer, Oriental Studies: Mainly
Musical (London, 1953,) pp. 61 ff.
7 Thesamfonyáh is also omitted from the list of Daniel iii in the pseudo-graphic Letter
to Dardanus: Patrologiae Latinae, xxx, p. 221.
* The Book of Daniel (London, 1864), pp. 24 ff. In two verses szmfonyáh and sifonya
occur as separate instruments since they are preceded by the conjunctive vav (‘and’),
246 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
Galpin.! In the above, however, a different solution is offered. The
psantrin (— psalterion) was, according to St. Augustine, an upper-
chested harp. Its wide gamut, twenty strings, perhaps, may have led
to it being termed symphonious, in the sense that it could be played
in octaves. Because of that the word sümfonyáh is used as а noun in
apposition to psantrin, just as in пере] ‘sor (decacord harp) in Psalms
(xxxiii, xcii).
Thus we see that for 3,000 years before the Christian era at least,
ancient Mesopotamia had instruments of music, not only of a most
varied character, but of a very high and advanced degree of construc-
tion, as the harps and kitharas of Sumerian days alone eloquently
testify. Yet although we have so many instruments, and even more
names of instruments than we can identify by form or even class, we
must ever be cautious in accepting identification except with the
greatest latitude.
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MUSIC
With the growth of the temple organization, the earlier animistic
beliefs in the potency of music had given way to more scientific ideas.
The marvels of the heavens became a greater source of wonderment,
and this led to the deification of the planets as man's protectors.
Astrology induced mathematics, and since we find that the very gods
were subjected to the exact sciences, we can be fairly certain that
music also fell under their dominion. Of the attainments of the
Mesopotamian peoples in astronomy and mathematics we have ample
knowledge from indigenous sources. Of the theory of music, however,
nothing on the subject has been unearthed, save what we know from
Greek writers. From the latter we learn that the fame of Babylon for
mathematical and occult accomplishments had spread to the western
world, an esteem which was the means of attracting scholars to the
Mesopotamian centres of learning. According to Iamblichus? and
Diogenes Laertius? one of those so allured was Pythagoras. From
Valerius Maximus‘ we know that he also learned there the motion of
the stars, their intrinsic properties, and their effect and influence on
mankind. These beliefs seem to have had their origin in Mesopotamia.
Quite early we find the peoples of the ‘fertile crescent’ in the
possession of an elaborate cosmic system in which there existed a
1 Op. cit., pp. 67 ff.; Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940), pp.
3 ff.
2 De vita Pythagorae, iv, p. 3.
* Lives of Eminent Philosophers, viii (London, 1925), p. 3.
4 Facta et dicta, vii, p. 7.
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MUSIC 241
spiritual inter-relation between the entire macrocosm and microcosm,
a belief which gave birth to tenets which were known later as the
‘harmony of the spheres’, the ‘doctrine of the ethos’, and the ‘theory
of numbers’, Censorinus says that Pythagoras taught that the universe
was constructed according to musical ratio, and that the seven
planets, revolving in the heavens, emitted sounds so consonant as
to produce the most exquisite music.! One wonders whether the
Mesopotamian kali or precentor petitioned those ‘Lords of the
Heavens’, as they called the planets, through their appropriate musi-
cal ratios.? The teachings of Pythagoras concerning the principles of
the ethos have almost a Mesopotamian flavour, in that music, being
a cosmic ingredient, possessed qualities and sensibilities which could
evoke the like if the appropriate and related kind of music were used.
Thus one species would banish depression, another would assuage
grief, a third would check passion, while yet another would dispel
fear. Although both the above beliefs were connected with the theory
of music in a vague way, trust in the efficacy of the ‘theory of num-
bers’ was an integral part of the theory of music. In Mesopotamia,
number was something more than a mathematical unit; it was be-
lieved that number in itself possessed an active force, having proper-
ties that were sacred attributes.* Philo Judaeus writes that ‘the law
of the Chaldaeans, taken symbolically, is mathematical speculation’ ,*
and he saw that these people, by availing themselves of the principles
of music, had imagined the most perfect harmony existing throughout
the universe.’ In this cosmic scheme some numbers had greater
efficacy than others, and the numbers seven and four were among
these. Nature herself had made both sacrosanct. The potency of
seven could be seen in the planetary system, while its sum was ap-
parent in the quadrangle plus the triangle, both of which were used
in the auguries. Philo Judaeus appreciated that seven had four
boundaries and three interval ratios, i.e. 1:2, 2:3, and 3:4.7 Is it any
wonder that the heptatonic scale was formulated, linked as it was
with the planetary system which interpreted the will of the gods??
On the practical side of music our knowledge is equally sparse.
Both the late Francis W. Galpin and Curt Sachs have provided
! De Dei nat., p. xiii.
E J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (London, 1930), pp. 87 ff. and Chap. IX
P P. Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans (New York,
1912), pp. 29 ff.
* Works, iv (London, 1854), p. 404. 5 Ibid. ii, p. 82.
* L. W. King, A History of Babylon (London, 1915), р. 307.
7 Op. cit. i, p. 30. ? Diodorus Siculus, ii, 30,
248 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
lengthy discussions on the subject, although much of the probing
must necessarily be in the land of conjecture. The great enticement
to all investigators has been the existence of instruments, either actual
or delineated, from ancient days, which have acted as lodestones to
the inquisitive. Yet no matter how sedulously we count the cords of
stringed instruments, the answer to the computation is always a
number, not a gamut. It is true that we possess a real Mesopotamian
wind instrument or two, but they are palpably insufficient for our
purpose.
On the other hand, both Galpin and Sachs have contrived to eluci-
date the Mesopotamian scale by other means. The former, under the
impulsion of Landsberger,! imagined a scale of three octaves, being
urged to these dimensions by an endeavour to embrace a supposed
*ordered arrangement' of the Semitic alphabet of twenty-one letters
into a scale which is said to have been used at the ‘opening centuries
of the second millennium B.c.’.? It must be pointed out that there is
neither an instrument, nor a delineation of an instrument, from this
region and period, which carries so great a number of strings.
Incidentally, in this worthy attempt to solve the so-called musical
notation on certain cuneiform tablets, to be dealt with presently,
Galpin registers his conviction that he could find 'no trace of har-
mony' in this sole exemplar of Mesopotamian music, although such
an opinion is obviously conditioned by his own interpretation of the
cuneiform signs. It may be stated that others have held opposite
views, notably Langdon whose argument was that since there were
female as well as male choristers in the temples they must have
chanted in four parts, a quite unwarranted assumption.?
Curt Sachs has also stated that harmony was used in Mesopo-
tamian music. He bases his deductions on a series of studies which
began in 1923,4 were continued іп 1929,5 and were reaffirmed іп 1933,5
1940,7 and 1943.8 From these he concluded that ‘consonant chords’
were used, i.e. harmony in the accepted sense of the word. Taking the
Elamo-Assyrian harpers depicted on the British Museum bas-reliefs,
and examining their technique in plucking the individual strings, he
1 Festschrift Max von Oppenheim, Archiv für Orientforschung, i (Berlin, 1933).
? Galpin, op. cit., pp. 38 Ё., 99 Я.
3 Babylonian Liturgies, p. xi.
* Sitzungsberichte der preuflischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, xviii (1924), pp.
120-3; Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, vii (1925), p. 1.
5 Festschrift für Johannes Wolf (Berlin, 1929), pp. 168 ff.
5 Zeitschrift für dgyptische Sprache, lxix (1933), pp. 68 ff.
7 The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940), p. 82.
8 The Rise of Music in the Ancient World (New York, 1943), pp. 99-101.
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MUSIC 249
pursued quite an ingenious line of inquiry. From this he believed that
the position of the hands and fingers of the harpers showed that
*chords' were played. To the present writer it seems that any attempt
to determine, from this bas-relief, which strings are plucked, can be
no more than a gratuitous assumption. Sachs supposes that ‘each
harper plucks two strings’ simultaneously. Yet might not one just as
readily assume that each harper is plucking one string with one hand,
and is preparing to pluck another string with the other hand? Sachs
also touches upon scalar theories, and states categorically that there
existed in Mesopotamia ‘almost certainly a pentatonic tuning’, al-
though ‘singing’, he says, ‘at least in the last one thousand years B.C.,
was heptatonic without any trace of pentatonism’. These theses are
palpably dependent upon his own interpretation of the harpers’
technique and on his reading of the cuneiform scale. Eighty years
earlier the musicologist Carl Engel also held to the pentatonic
scale theory,’ and Langdon, admittedly a non-musician, followed
suit.?
NOTATION
Did Mesopotamia possess a musical notation? When texts and
translations of certain cuneiform tablets at Berlin were published by
George Reisner in 1896,3 they were claimed to reveal a musical nota-
tion, a pronouncement which created considerable stir in both the
archaeological and musicological worlds. These finds dated from
about 800 B.c., although others were discovered later from the six-
teenth century B.c. The claims for a notation were based on certain
vocalic characters, as well as ideograms, contained in the texts, and
Theophilus G. Pinches thought that since the former occurred at the
beginning, in the middle (the caesura), and at the end of a line, rather
than over words, they represented ‘tonalities’ rather than ‘notes’, a
judgement which was quite sound.* In 1919, when Erich Ebeling
published such texts,’ fresh interest accrued, and in 1923 Curt Sachs
worked at a musical transcription of the ‘notation’.6 Benno Lands-
berger repudiated Sachs's transcription," and the latter has since ad-
mitted that his initial attempt was a failure.? In 1937 Galpin published
Мр cit, р. 122)
2 Babylonian Liturgies, p. Ш.
* Sumerisch-babylonische Hymnen (Leipzig, 1896).
* Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ix (Edinburgh, 1917), p. 14.
5 Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiósen Inhalts, i (Leipzig, 1919), p. 4.
* Sitzungsberichte der preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, xviii (1924), pp. 120 ff.
* Festschrift für Max von Oppenheim: Archiv für Orientforschung (Berlin, 1933), p. 170.
8 The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, p. 86.
250 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
his noteworthy study of Sumerian music, in which he rebuffed Lands-
berger's pessimism regarding a solution, but he too rejected Sachs's
transcription.! We have already dealt with Galpin's proposed scale
of twenty-one notes.? Sachs, in turn, declined acceptance of Galpin's
scheme, and again set out, but with fresh premises, to solve anew the
cryptic signs. The results were published in an article entitled ‘The
Mystery of the Babylonian Notation’ which appeared in 1941.3
THE HERITAGE
The influence exerted by Mesopotamian culture on the western
world was far reaching.* Unfortunately the glories of the intellectual
and artistic conquests of Greece have dazzled the view of our cultural
debts to others. Not that the Greeks are responsible for this obscurity.
On the contrary, both they and the Romans acknowledged their
indebtedness to the Orient. Strabo says that ‘the cultivators of ancient
music are said to be Thracians’, and that ‘from its melody, rhythm,
and instruments, all Thracian music is supposed to be Asiatic’. The
legend of Orpheus, the ‘Father of Songs’, is pre-eminently a Thracian
one. It is admitted that it was through Asia Minor that Thrace re-
ceived these Oriental refinements. The two semi-mythical originators
of flutes and reed-pipes, Hyagnis and Marsyas, were both Phrygians.®
Terpander, the accredited systematizer of Greek music in the intro-
duction of nomoi for the lyre, and Olympus, the founder of the
Phrygian school of music, who introduced nomoi for the woodwind
(auloi), were also from these parts. What was the nomos? Could it
have been a survival of the old Semitic neum or * [intoned] utterance
of soothsayer and prophet’? Indeed the shades of Babylon, ‘learned
and wise’, may be discerned over the shoulders of many of these
reputed founders of the arts and sciences in Greece, mythical though
they may be. Pseudo-Euclid, i.e. Cleonides, makes Terpander say that
the lyre had four strings until he made them seven,’ which Strabo
seems to confirm.5 Whence did this inspiration come? Could it have
been Babylon? If we can trust pseudo-Plutarch? it would appear
that the Greeks at this time were most conservative in musical
matters. Boéthius says that it was the seven planets which suggested
1 The Music of the Sumerians (Cambridge, 1937), pp. 38 ff.
? See supra, р. 248.
3 The Musical Quarterly, xxvii (1941), pp. 62 ff.
* L. W. King, A History of Sumer and Akkad (London, 1910), pp. 321 ff.; A History
of Babylon (London, 1915), pp. 289 ff.
5 The Geography, x. iii. 17.
в ps.-Plutarch, De musica, v-viii. DT 67. "
8 xr. ii. 4. 9 De musica, ш. xviii.
THE HERITAGE 251
this number of strings to Terpander,! a statement which agrees with a
Mesopotamian origin.
Diodorus Siculus tells us that it was Linus who gave verse and
music to the Greeks? and the Linus myth in Greece, which represents
this god as a musician and the creator of the Linus song, is simply the
older Mesopotamian legend of Tammuz. Euripides judged the cry
atAwos in the mournful Linus songs to be a Phrygian custom, and
indeed we see its fellow in the Hebrew ai /аий, the like of which we
find at the close of some of the psalms. Frazer identifies Linus with
Adonis? as did Pausanias, and the Phoenicians called the latter
Gingras, a name which was actually given to the wailing reed-pipe,
as Xenophon and Aristoxenus relate.» Curiously enough, Adonis was
worshipped in Asia Minor under the name of Abobas,? a word strik-
ingly reminiscent of the Syriac abüba, which was the Akkadian
imbubu.
Instruments of music found their way into Greece from the Orient
in great numbers. Strabo says: ‘And those writers who have conse-
crated the whole of Asia, as far as India," to Dionysus, derive the
greater part of music from there. One writer says: "striking the asias
kithara”; another calls pipes *' Berecyntian" and “Phrygian”, and
some of the instruments have been called by barbarian names, nablas,
sambyke, barbitos, magadis, and several others.'5 Some of these others
are quoted by Athenaeus, and among them the pectis and phenix
(phoinix).? The word kithara may not be Greek.!? That it was some-
times called asias,!! rather than asias kithara, is worthy of notice. It
is more than strange that ‘to play’ upon the kithara is conveyed by
the word «pékw, and practically the same word, karaka, has been used
in Arabic from time immemorial in connexion with playing the lute
(*àd),? a term which, in its pristine form, means ‘to hasten’, as does
the cognate Akkadian arahu.
+ De musica, і. 20. See Bibliothèque archéologique et historique, xxx (1939), pp. 161 ff.
? Bibliotheca Historica, III. 67. See also p. 378.
* The Golden Bough, ii (London, 1900), pp. 224, 253.
4 ix. 29.
5 Athenaeus, op. cit. iv, pp. 174 ff., who said that the gingras was Phoenician.
5 Hesychius, s.v. Strabo, op. cit., x. iii. 17.
8 That the term ‘India’ meant eastern countries much nearer, see the Cosmographia
Ethici (p. 28) with the additions by Julius Honorius (p. 7). Even the ecclesiastical his-
torians call the Arabs ‘Indians’.
gio ERS
19 ps.-Plutarch, op. cit. 6. Euripides, Cyclops, v. 443. The Trojans used the kithara
whereas the Greeks had the phorminx.
11 C. Daremberg et E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines (Paris.
1877 et seq.), p. 1438.
? Transactions: Glasgow University Oriental Society, xi (1946), p. 29.
252 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
The nabla, as its name (Hebrew rebel) indicates, has a distinct
Semitic physiognomy. Indeed it was called the Sidonian nabla, which
particularly identifies it with Phoenicia. It was known quite early in
Greece, since Sophocles (d. c. 406 B.c.) speaks of it, as does Ovid
(d. A.D. с. 17 in Rome). For the trigónon and/or sambyké a Syrian
origin is claimed and in Rome it was the sambuca which was found in
the hands of Syrians in the time of Hadrian (d. А.р. 38). Of course,
we recognize this harp immediately in the Aramaic sabbeká which
we read about in Daniel (iii). The barbitos (cf. the Persian barbat) is
attributed to Terpander, and both Sappho of Lesbos (7th cent. B.c.)
and Ovid in Rome sang its praises. The magadis is acknowledged to be
of Lydian origin, as also the pectis, while Lydian reed-pipes (auloi and
tibiae) were lauded by both Pindar (d. 438 B.c.) and Horace (d. 8 B.c.).
Indeed it is the latter who tells us about Oriental female reed-pipers in
Rome. They were the Syrian ambubaiae mentioned by Papias, and
their name reveals that they played the Akkadian reed-pipe imbubu,
in spite of the Syriac equivalent being abbüba. As early as Terence (d.
c. 159 B.c.) Roman orchestras had players on the tibiae sarranae, i.e.
the Phoenician reed-pipes. One of the Phrygian auloi of the double
reed-pipe group was the e/ymos, the drone-pipe of which was turned
up with a horn ‘bell’, hence, probably, its name. This was the type of
Akkadian pipe which Galpin wanted to identify in the pitu. Yet
whether it was Phoenicia or Syria, Lydia or Phrygia, that were dubbed
the ‘inventors’ of these instruments, the fons et origo was Mesopotamia.
Perhaps the most marked impinging of Mesopotamian musical
culture on Greece is discernible in Pythagorean traditions. Pythagoras
himself is claimed by both Greek! and Persian? writers to have been
a Syrian born, one making Tyre, and the other Sidon his birthplace.
Instructed at first by Sidonian and Phoenician hierophants, he was
initiated into the mysteries of Tyre and Byblos. Later he passed into
Egypt, where he remained twenty-one years. Taken captive by Cam-
byses, he was carried to Babylon where, says Iamblichus, he was
instructed by the priests *in their venerable knowledge, and learned
from them the most perfect worship of the gods. Through their
assistance likewise, he arrived at the summit of arithmetic, [the theory
of] music, and other disciplines.’ After twelve years at Babylon he
settled at Samos, where, because of his learning, he was immediately
dubbed a sophos (Akkadian dsipu).
1 Porphyry, De vita Pythagorae, i.
2 Mir Khawand, Raudat al-Safa’, i. ii (London, 1891-4), p. 268.
3 Tamblichus, De vita Pythagorae, iv.
THE HERITAGE i 253
It was through Pythagoras and his disciples that Greece became
acquainted with such doctrines as the ‘harmony of the spheres’, the
‘principles of the ethos’, and that alluring theory of the ‘efficacy of
numbers', which have already been described. It is true that he has
been credited as the first to determine the consonances of the fourth,
fifth, and octave, but the inherently false accounts of this so-called ‘ dis-
covery’, as preserved by Nicomachus,! Gaudentius? and Boethius?
reveal the improbability of this.* There is no reason why the peoples
of Mesopotamia who made so creditable an advance in arithmetical
and geometrical progressions, and who possessed rules for finding the
areas of squares, rectangles, right triangles, and trapezoids, could not
have had as complete a knowledge of the speculative theory of music
as the earliest of the Greek theorists, Pythagoras.
Plutarch, in his commentary on the Timaeus of Plato, informs us
that the Chaldaeans connected musical intervals with the seasons,
i.e. the fourth (3:4) — Autumn, the fifth (2:3) — Winter, the octave
(1:2) = Summer, whilst the tonic (1:1) = Spring.® This was a corner-
stone in the doctrine of the ethos. Actually, it is the most useful
reference by the Greeks to the Mesopotamian theory of music that
we possess apart from the Pythagorean passages, although we must
not forget the statement of Nicomachus, that Iamblichus had testified
that it was the people of Babylonia who discovered the harmonic
proportion which Pythagoras introduced into Greece. It seems there-
fore not unlikely that Mesopotamia possessed a theory of music
which was actually the starting-point of our present system.
That the peoples of the Mesopotamian plains were the pioneers of
civilization, and that they contributed remarkably to the progress of
music, must be allowed them. The mere comparison between the
advanced structure of Mesopotamian instruments of music, especially
in their harps and citharas, with what the Greeks had accomplished,
at once proclaims the immense superiority of the former. Although
the peoples of Mesopotamia never exerted a permanent hegemony
over the lands of the western Mediterranean, their culture dominated
Syrian, Phoenician, and Hittite lands, from whence it infiltrated into
Greece and Egypt, to become the seed for the intellectual develop-
ment of the West.
1 Meibom, Antiquae musicae auctores septem (Amsterdam, 1652), pp. 10 ff.
? Ibid., р. 13.
* De musica, i. 10.
* Farmer, Historical Facts for the Arabian Musical Influence (London, 1930), р. 292.
5 De animae procr. 31.
в Intro. Arith. xxvi, xxix.
254 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
In the sphere of religion we can dimly recognize the germ of our
own religious practices, not merely in the liturgy, the penitential
psalm, the antiphon, the precentor, the incense, and the rest, but in
the mater dolorosa. ^s Langdon says, one cannot doubt the great
influence of the Mesopotamian temples upon the late Jewish Church
and upon Christianity.! One recalls that the Mesopotamian kali or
temple precentor had to be skilled in an eight-day liturgy,? each day
of which would have had its appropriate ‘trope’ or ‘tone’. Does not
the Hebrew sheminith in the captions of the psalms refer to an eighth
mode, as Isaac ben Abraham ibn Latif (13th cent.) avers? Could that
practice have been the reason for the Syriac ikhadias of the Jacobite
Church, the octoéchos of the Byzantine Church, and the eight
Gregorian tones of the Roman Church? Although the Prophet cries
‘Babylon is fallen, fallen’, the plainchant of the Roman Church today
carries the titles Primus gravis, Secundus tristis, and Tertius mysticus,
which are but ethoidal relics from the ancient Mesopotamian past of
probably 6,000 years ago.
1 Sumerian Liturgies and Psalms, p. 238.
2 Langdon, Journal: American Oriental Society, xlii (1925-6), p. 112.
VI
THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
By HENRY GEORGE FARMER
INTRODUCTION
WHEN we approach the history of ancient Egypt we are confronted
with a highly developed social and cultural melioration which is al-
ready a fait accompli. The previous chapter has described a similar
circumstance in Mesopotamia. Yet, as in that land of the ‘two rivers’,
we do not know why, how, or when this surpassing achievement came
about. Modern research has revealed abundant proof of the impinge-
ment of a *new culture' in Egypt during the early dynasties—that is,
from about the twenty-ninth century B.c.—not unlike that of Meso-
potamia and Iran. How far this affected instruments of music is not
at present as discernible as it is in other spheres, for the cultural
impact must have taken place long before the twenty-fifth century B.C.,
the date of the Royal Tombs of Ur. Indeed the harps of the 4th
dynasty (twenty-sixth century B.C.) delineated at Gizeh reveal a stage
of instrumental construction earlier than that of Sumer and Akkad
in the twenty-fifth century B.C. This seems to show that whatever
initial promptings may have come through Mesopotamian or Iranian
migrations, or subsequent influences from these sources, the cultural
contacts with the East must have ceased meanwhile.
As in Mesopotamia, we are denied precise dates in the earlier
periods; those used in this chapter, like those in the previous one, are
based on the readjustments of Professor №. Е. Albright,! which have
brought us very near to what Sir John G. Wilkinson had guessed
more than a century before.?
FIFTH MILLENNIUM B.C.
Prehistoric period
FOURTH MILLENNIUM B.C.
Predynastic period
+ Bulletin of the American Schools or Oriental Research, nos. 77, 78 (1940), and 88
(1942).
2 J, G. Wilkinson, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, i (London,
1837), pp. 41 ff.
256 THE MUSIC.OF ANCIENT EGYPT
THIRD MILLENNIUM B.C.
Dynasty I . : З : Е . Twenty-ninth century
Dynasty IV . Я 3 : . . Twenty-sixth century
Dynasty УП. . s : 5 . Twenty-second century
SECOND MILLENNIUM B.C.
Dynasty XII . : ; З : s © HE
Dynasty XIII З : 7 . 161776
Dynasty XVIII. ; : : -C 1570
Dynasty XX . c. 1200
FIRST MILLENNIUM B.C.
Dynasty ХХІ (Tanis) . c. 1090
Dynasty XXII (Libyan) . c. 945
Dynasty XXVI (Saite) . c. 664
Dynasty XXVII (Persian ШШЕ c. 525
Greek period Я : Е о t 332
Roman period . Р : А А 30
‘PRIMITIVE MUSICAL SURVIVALS!
It is not improbable that music, or at least sound, stood at the
cradle of all religion. Animism certainly had its origin in sound, for
when primitive man struck a piece of wood, stone, or skin, or blew
into a tube or cavity, and contemplated the resultant sound, he natur-
ally concluded that what he heard was the ‘voice’ of the object struck,
or of that into which he blew. He therefore assumed that by awaken-
ing their ‘voices’ he could propitiate unseen nature of which they
were all a part. We see this in our first glimpse of Egyptian instru-
ments of music.
Man's earliest instruments were idiophones, and we find them in
ancient Egypt. These were clappers, and they are figured in pairs on
predynastic pottery (fourth millennium B.c.).? Clappers also occur on
monuments of the 5th dynasty (twenty-fourth century B.C.) where
they were used for animistic purposes. In one instance we seem to see
the god of the harvest, Min, being conjured by means of clappers to
make fruitful the toil of vintagers.? In another example, harvesters
1 Tn transliterating Egyptian words the conventional system has been adopted with
the following exceptions: з = а’: € = ‘a: | = i. The use of the vowel e between the
consonants is quite arbitrary, and has been introduced, together with the above modifica-
tions, solely for the convenience of the general reader.
2 D. Randall-MaclIver and C. Mace, El Amra and Abydos (London, 1902), pl. xiv.
3 В. Lepsius, Denkmáler: Ergünzungsband (Leipzig, 1913), pl. xxi.
PRIMITIVE MUSICAL SURVIVALS 257
perform a dance of appeasement to Ta'ru the god of the reeds, or to
Nepri the corn spirit, perhaps, to the accompaniment of clashing
sticks.1 The application of like to like in this fashion is patent magic,
rhythmical application still more so, for man saw measured motion
in nature itself. This is precisely what Plutarch detected in the four
jingling meta! bars on the sistrum, presumably linked with the four
elements, which immediately became active forces because, he says,
“all things are subject to motion’.?
Plutarch has also handed down a pretty conceit of Egypt’s archaic
musical past. Before the days of Menes, its first king, Egypt was ruled
by gods, and one of these, Osiris, was responsible for teaching the
world the arts of civilization. What enabled him to accomplish this
was his ‘persuasive discourse, combined with song, and all manner
of music'.? (That gods were ever musically inclined is, of course, a
universal tale.) Osiris was the ‘Lord of the sistrum’, an instrument
specially dedicated to the goddess Hathor, the later Isis. The dwarf
god Bes was supposed to be the ‘god of music and dancing’, and in
art remains he is delineated with either the harp or kithara in hand,*
while ‘singing gods’ and ‘dancing gods’ were innumerable in the
Duat or land of the dead. Indeed there were ‘choirs of angels’ in the
latter abode. Thoth was presumed to be the ‘god of knowledge and
wisdom’, but as Hermes Trismegistus he was the ‘inventor of music'*
and the author of books of chants to the gods. Indeed there is no
end to the legends of the harmonious attributes of Egypt’s deities.
That many of the gods were of totemistic origin is generally con-
ceded.” When we discern birds, animals, and reptiles figured on in-
struments of music, or playing them, let us not attribute the circum-
stance to aesthetic fancy alone; it was due to a much more hallowed
incitement. In the Book of the Dead the animal world, with man, laud
god together, and Maspero has referred to predynastic chants or
songs to animals.’ As in Mesopotamia mummers, probably for secu-
lar as well as sacred purposes, assumed masks or other disguises as
animals in ancient Egypt. Sacred masking, so as to represent deities,
was hinted at by Maspero in 1899, but M. A. Murray developed the
1 Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Ägypten, ii (Berlin, 1859), pl. 56a.
2 Isis and Osiris, 376.
з Ibid. 356.
4 C. Sachs, Die Musikinstrumente des alten Agyptens (Berlin, 1921), figs. 59, 60, 104.
5 Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 352.
* Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, vi. 4.
* The Cambridge Ancient History, i (Cambridge, 1924), pp. 328 ff.
8 Etudes de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes, i (Paris, 1894), p. 153; A. Erman,
Life in Ancient Egypt (London, 1894), pp. 9, 60.
258 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
theme in 1934.! We have several examples of animals performing on
instruments of music,? but equally important is their occurrence as
figures on these instruments. All nature was one by the banks of the
Nile, and this is patent in the sphere of religion. Goddesses were
generally symbolized by the serpent and the latter was connected
with the sistrum down to the Roman period (30 B.c. onward).? Hathor
(Isis) and Nephthys are delineated on sistra,* in which the very jing-
ling bars are fashioned as serpents.5 A similar interpretation may be
placed on the falcon's head and the goose's head on the scrolls of
harps and citharas, since they symbolized the gods Month and Amen
respectively. Then there was the cat on sistra typifying Ba'stt, the
goddess of fire, while the jackal on kitharas was emblematic of
Anubis.’ These features were of far deeper significance than mere
emblems or symbols. They were a constant reminder that the voice
of deity was ever present in their tones; it was not only ears in
tonal appreciation that listened, but rather minds in transcendental
anagogue that understood.
Music therefore had a twofold influence on man in ancient Egypt;
one brought about by a purely physical sensation, and another created
or sustained by a power known as дека’ or hike, which was something
like, and yet different from, what we understand by ‘spell’. It may
be difficult to appreciate this hyperbole, and yet we still say ‘enchant-
ing’ (Vcantus) and ‘charming’ (Усағтеп) in our praise of music today
without ever thinking that we are speaking in precisely the same way
as did the ancient Egyptians, although they meant what they said.
RELIGIOUS MUSIC
All through the history of music in ancient Egypt, modulated sound
itself was an arcanum. The name for sound was herw (lit. * voice’), and
the word had an esoteric import in the cults.? One recalls its omni-
potence in Mesopotamia where Ramman, for instance, was the 'spirit
of sonorous voice'. We read of the Egyptian god Thoth who made
Osiris ‘true of voice’. The amulet which Isis hung about her neck was
interpreted as ‘a true voice’. One of the special parts of the temple
liturgy was ‘the going forth of the voice’, but, as Alan H. Gardiner
has shown, it is not easy to apprehend what was actually performed
1 Mélanges Maspero: Orient ancien, i (Cairo, 1935), pp. 251 ff.
? Erman, op. cit., p. 369; W. Chappell, The History of Music (London, 1874), p. 399;
Sachs, Die Musikinstrumente, pp. 57, 74.
3 Sachs, Die Musikinstrumente, fig. 22. 4 Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 376.
5 Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, p. 323. © Ibid. ii, pp. 275, 280, 287, 291.
1 Ibid. ii, pp. 293, 326. 8 See Plutarch, /sis and Osiris, 355.
RELIGIOUS MUSIC 259
in this symbolic act. Certain it is that ‘such ceremonial utterance had
magical power'.! Here is what Maspero has said of its conjurative
potency in the Egyptian temple :”
The human voice is the instrument par excellence of the priest and en-
chanter. It is the voice that seeks afar the Invisibles summoned, and makes
the necessary objects into reality. Every one of the sounds it emits has a
peculiar power which escapes the notice of the common run of mortals,
but which is known to and made use of by the adepts. . . . But as every
one [of the notes] has its peculiar force, great care must be taken not to
change their order or substitute one for the other.
Herodotus says that there was a college of priests in each temple,? and
although there was an ‘hour priesthood’ of laymen, who may have
been something like the secular priests of the Christian west, the
temple ecclesiastics were few in number, generally about five, includ-
ing a high-priest and a lector-priest or precentor (hery-heb). Like the
Mesopotamian kali (‘precentor’), some of these priests were ‘scribes
of divine books’, and Clement of Alexandria has described, at a very
late period, some of these writings. Speaking of the service he says:
‘First comes the Singer, bearing one of the symbols of music, for they
say that he must learn two of the books of Hermes, the one compris-
ing the hymns of the gods, the second the regulation for the king’s
life.’ There were also ten books devoted to hymns, prayers, proces-
sions, festivals, first fruits, and other constituent parts of temple wor-
ship.* It was a part of the regular duties of the priests to extol the god
in songs in the daily ceremonial as well as at the great festivals, but
Erman remarks that we do not know whether these songs were merely
recited or whether they were sung.? This incertitude is of little import
because, in these early days, whatever was recited was done so in a
chant. Philology often confirms this, and the Arabic equivalent to the
Egyptian Sedi (‘to recite’) is shadd (‘to sing’).
Many of the rituals, liturgies, hymns, and lamentations have been
translated for us, and in these we are able to grasp the abiding signi-
ficance of the solemn temple services. Among the above translations
are two by Raymond О. Faulkner, the ‘Songs of Isis and Nephthys’
in The Papyrus Bremner-Rhind, and the ‘Lamentations of Isis and
Nephthys’ in Mélanges Maspero, which have passing interest because
the first was part of a ritual spread over five days, while the second
was what one might term a breviary for one day, and the two were
1 Proceedings of the Society of Biblical МЕ xviii, p. 108; Egyptian Grammar
(Oxford, 1927), p. 172. $ Etudes de mythologie, i, p. 106.
3 ii. 37. А. Н. Sayce, The Religion of Ancient Egypt (London, 1913), p. 32.
* Op. cit. vi. 4. * Life in Ancient Egypt (London, 1894), p. 47.
260 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
musically distinct. Of the ‘Songs’ Faulkner says: ‘Apart from a hymn
to Osiris sung by the lector-priest in the middle of the ceremony, the
songs consist of alternate duets by the two priestesses and solos on
the part of her who represented Isis.’ In this, Osiris is invoked as ‘the
fair sistrum player’, and the priestesses carry tambourines. In the
‘Lamentations’ we do not find any of these things, and in the place
of tambourines other sacred*tokens are carried.
When the New Kingdom arose (c. 1570 B.c.), the female temple
musician began to make her appearance. She was the sSem‘ayt who
was already a feature in secular life. Many of these were wives and
daughters of the priests, although other classes were also represented.
They were looked upon as inmates of the harem of the god, in which
they held nominally the same position they would have held in real
life. For this reason the highest ladies of the land took these sacred
offices in the cults, being known as the ‘wife of the god’, ‘chief of the
singers of the table of Amen’, or ‘songstress of Amen'.! These came
to be a powerful corporation, and their lady superior, the ‘divine
adorer of Amen’, shared sovereignty with the kings during the Saite
period (c. 664-525 B.c.).? Their instrument of sacerdotal potency and
ecclesiastical authority was the sistrum, or sistra rather, since we more
frequently see one of each kind, the seem and sesSet, being used, one
in each hand.? The word sefem itself meant [‘ divine] power’, but its
metallic ‘voice’, i.e. its jingling apparatus, was made mute since its
form was sufficiently symbolic of its potent sound. Precisely the same
metamorphosis came to the clapper called menyt which, after the rise
of the New Kingdom, is generally found folded in the hands of the
priestesses or divine singers.*
Under the Old and Middle Kingdoms, the court musicians held
high positions, and were considered as ‘near relations’ of the king.
Under the New Kingdom their significance was just as weighty, and
the actual names of several have been preserved who held the position
of ‘chief of the singers of Pharaoh’. He was the nominal head of all
musicians since he is designated ‘chief of the singers of all the gods’.
When we get glimpses of the royal family at worship, sistra predomi-
па{е,5 and these are often in the hands of princesses.* Occasionally
1 Wilkinson, op. cit. i, p. 260; С. Fouchart, Tombes thébaines (Cairo, 1932), p. 35.
2 G. Maspero, Histoire d'orient, iii (Paris, 1896-9), pp. 164, 173, 490.
3 Lepsius, op. cit. vii, pls. 175, 186, 193; viii, pls. 247-50.
5 У. Loret, ‘Egypte’, in Lavignac and La Laurencie, Encyclopédie de la musique,
ire partie, i (Paris, 1913), figs. 20-24.
5 N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna (London, 1903-8), iv pls. xv, xxxi,
xliv; v, pls. iii, xxvi.
8 Ibid. vi, pls. xxviii, XXXVI.
RELIGIOUS MUSIC 261
clappers! and tambourines? found a hallowed place in adoration or
supplication in the temples, possible because, like the sistra, their
* voices" were in monotone, a something nearer to the womb of things.
Yet temple music consisted of much more than chanting, jingling,
rattling, and drumming. From early times quite a variety of other
instruments found acceptance in worship, except perhaps in that
devoted to Osiris at Abydos where, says Strabo, neither singer, piper,
nor kitharist was allowed.? We see a royal family in adoration of deity
[i.e. the sun's disk] with a harpist and three singers,* and in one of the
art remains at Leiden, there are delineated a harpist, pandorist, and
two flautists accompanying the chanting of an incense-sprinkling
priest.? Indeed in every representation of religious life and practice
in ancient Egypt, music and musical instruments play a prominent
part. Even in the funerary proceedings we not only hear the gruesome
lamentation (nehwt = Arabic niyahat) of more primitive animistic
times, but also the joyous sounds of singing, harping, fluting, and
dancing, not merely delineated on the tomb walls but in actual
practice.
Music in the temples continued to be of the utmost importance
even throughout the Greek and Roman periods. Among the numer-
ous art remains revealed in the Greek city of Naukratis is a figure of
Apollo with a harp,$ and at Armant of Roman times, the sistrum still
found a place in the hands of goddess and priestess.’ The flute or
reed-pipe was certainly still attached to the service of Amen, and
Apuleius and Claudian both testify to its presence in the temple.5 Of
course it was the emblem of fertility, and indeed the ‘field of reeds’
was one of the promised scenes in Elyseum.? The common people
were certainly attached to it when they entered into the spirit of open-
air worship. Once a year they ‘joined their priests in a melancholy
procession through the streets, singing a doleful ditty called the
Мапего5’ №6 and Herodotus also affirms that at the festival of Osiris
they had processions, the women carrying images preceded by an
aulos player (reed-piper).!! In his account of the crowd of 700,000 [sic]
1 A. M. Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir (London, 1914), pl. xviii.
? E. Naville, The Festival-Hall of Osorkon II (London, 1892), pp. 14, 24, 26; pls. xi, xvi.
3 Strabo, Geographus, хуп. i. 43.
4 М. de С. Davies, op. cit. i, p. 33; pl. xxxiii.
5 Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, p. 316; G. Steindorff, Die Kunst der Agypter (Leipzig, 1928),
b E M. Flinders Petrie, Naukratis, ii (London, 1888), p. 57; pls. xiv, 14; xvii. 4.
1 В. Mond, Temples of Armant (London, 1940), p. 180; pl. xcii, 16.
8 Metamorphosis, xi. ? A. Erman, op. cit., p. 306.
* S. Sharpe, Egyptian Mythology (London, 1863), p. 10.
ii. 48.
262 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT \
pilgrims who journeyed to the Bubastis festival, we see the flute or
reed-pipe players leading the semi-hysterical multitude. Some of the
women jingled their sistra in frenzied excitement, while others, in
greater abandon, exposed themselves;! as Curt Sachs has shown in
his Geist und Werden der Musikinstrumente, the flute has ever been
considered the sexual instrument par excellence. Strabo tells of similar
scenes among the visitors to.the temple of Serapis at Canobus, where
there was fluting or reed-piping with dancing and ‘extreme licentious-
ness’.? It is no wonder that Aristotle considered that the aulos did not
improve morals.
SECULAR MUSIC
All music, whether in the temple, the palace, or the street, was
called hy, which meant primarily ‘joy’, ‘gladness’. It was sometimes
written with a hieroglyph which represented a fragrant lotus in bloom.
A musician was known by a genuine Semitic word Sem‘a (Hebrew
Sama‘, Arabic sama‘ = ‘ music’), as well as by other names. The word
for ‘praise’ was henw, and it probably meant ‘song’ also (cf. 'aann
‘to sing’), in which case we would have cognates in the Hebrew ‘анай
and the Arabic ghanna (‘to sing’). The Hebrew word (cf. the Egyp-
tian ‘an) came to mean ‘to answer’, and we have seen that the
Akkadian word enū implied this also.? Perhaps henw was only used
when the strophe and antistrophe were employed, and we have seen
that the antiphon existed in the Egyptian temple liturgy. On the in-
strumental side we also find a few provoking technical terms, e.g. teh
or tehen (‘to beat’, ‘to play’), of which the Hebrew гда" and the
Abyssinian take’ may be kindred.
The male musician is a familiar figure in the art remains from the
4th dynasty (twenty-sixth century B.C.).* Here he is to be seen in all
phases of professional activity: singer, instrumentalist, and dancer.
Erman held the view that the singers waved their arms when perform-
ing,? which is also the opinion of Blackman.5 On the other hand, Curt
Sachs avers that the delineations do not merely indicate arm waving.
He thinks the positions of the hands and fingers of the singers reveal
certain manual and digital movements by which definite indications
were communicated to the ассотрапіѕіѕ.? Yet it is not improbable
+ ji. 60. ? Op. cit., хуп. i. 17.
3 Chap. V., р. 234.
* Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, pp. 232, 239, 257, 316, 335-7; Lepsius, op. cit. iii, figs. 35-36,
52-53, 61, 74; iv. 109.
“lOp cit р 25° $ Юр; сё, в: 19:
* The Rise of Music in the Ancient World (New York, 1941), p. 78.
SECULAR MUSIC 263
that the conjunction of the finger and thumb in the so-called *hand-
signs’ may be no more than the physical prelude to the ‘tick-tack’
or finger snap.! It is likely, however, that Sachs rightly interprets the
position of the hand of the singer which is placed at the side of the
head? as the Eastern custom of compressing the larynx so as to force
the high notes,’ as we have seen in Mesopotamia,‘ and the shrill high-
pitched voice (Лу) was much admired in the East.?
In 1949 and 1952 Hans Hickmann developed this chironomic
theory. In his first paper, Sur les survivances de la chironomie égyptienne
dans le chant liturgique copte, he shows that a system of chironomy
exists today in this church, but no evidence is produced of its earlier
usage by this church. In the second paper, La Musique polyphonique
dans l'Égypte ancienne, the author demonstrates the probability of
*accords'—the octave and dominant—on the harp by other means
than those mentioned by Sachs. Further, he shows that the chiro-
nomic conjunction of the thumb and forefinger by the singer con-
veyed to the accompanist on the flute or harp that he was to play
the tonic, whilst the vertical open hand signified the dominant.
Why a singer should have to convey such signs to an accom-
panist to obtain such elementary musical accomplishments is not
explained.
Besides these performers there were the female musicians who
swarmed into social life soon after the rise of the 18th dynasty
(c. 1570 B.c.). The court of the king and the palaces of the nobility
were replete with these newcomers from Syrian and other Semitic
lands; they belonged to the harem. Under the Old Kingdom we read
of the ‘chief of the singers’ who was also ‘chief of the harem’, and
we even know their names, but under the new dispensation their
responsibilities must have been far greater in this control of what was
known as the ‘beautiful pleasures of the Кіпр’? A most intimate
scene is revealed during the 18th dynasty in a bird's-eye view of a
palatial academy of music, with harps, kitharas, and pandores crowd-
ing out the furniture of the apartments. Here we espy these ‘singing-
girls’ being instructed in the vocal and instrumental art. There were
1 L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des alten Reiches, i (Berlin, 1927), pl. 47.
* M. E. Grébaut, Le Musée égyptien (Cairo, 1890-1900), p. 25, pl. xxvi.
3 Sachs, The Rise of Music, p. 78.
* See Chap. V, p. 238.
5 Revue égyptologique, xii, p. 8.
5 Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte, xlix (1949); Bulletin de l'Institut
d' Égypte, xxxiv (1952).
* A. Mariette, Les Mastabas de l'ancien empire (Paris, 1881).
8 М. de С. Davies, op. cit. vi, p. 20; pls. xxviii, xxxvi.
264 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
even independent academies of music, since we are told that the finest
of these was at Memphis.?
What it was that these damsels of the ‘beautiful face’ sang we know
in one respect, for thanks to the labours of Maspero, Max Miller,
and Baillet, we are at least able to scan the lines of the verses, though
not a note of music is vouchsafed to us. If the music were comparable
to the verse, then it was most praiseworthy, since almost every human
chord is touched in these beautiful songs, and with an artistry of
expression that is superb. The ‘Song of the Harper’, first crooned at
the funerary rites of the priest Nefer-hetep millennia ago, is known
the world over. Who can forget the lines :?
Let there be music and singing before thee,
Cast behind thee all cares, and mind thee of joy,
Till there cometh that day,
When we journey to that land that loveth silence.
There were instruments in abundance to accompany singers and
dancers. Every conceivable type known in the ancient world found
its place in ancient Egypt. Kitharas and harps of all shapes and sizes,
with flutes and reed-pipes of equal diversity, and manifold drums,
tambourines, and crotala. When the world was young, under the Old
Kingdom (third millennium в.с.), a harp, a flute, and a reed-pipe,
handled by males, were deemed sufficient with singers,? but with the
bevies of Oriental singing-girls that had been brought into Egypt, the
male performer seems to have been overshadowed. Still, the latter
remained, it would seem, the mainstay of the music of the people, as
the picture of the blind harper and his seven blind singers seems to
prove.* From the time of the Saite period, the male musician prob-
ably regained his prestige.
Herodotus visited Egypt about 440 B.c. The Egyptians, he says,
like the Spartans, followed the trades and professions of their fathers,
so that a musician would naturally be the son of a musician.? An-
other statement concerns a national song called the Manerós which,
he said, had been known to the Egyptians from time immemorial. ‘It
was the first and only song that they used at that early period of their
1 S. Birch, The Anastasi Papyri in the British Museum (London, 1843). For music asa
profession see Н. Hickmann, ‘Le Métier de musicien au temps des Pharaons', in Cahiers
d'histoire égyptienne, sér. iv. (Le Caire, 1952), pp. 79 ff.
2 Erman, op. cit., рр. 385 ff. See also The Cambridge Ancient History, i, рр. 324 ff., and
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, iv, pp. 178-212.
* Lepsius, op. cit. iii, figs. 35-36.
* Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, p. 239; fig. 193.
5 vi, 60.
SECULAR MUSIC 265
history.’ It was identical with the Linus song which he had heard in
Phoenicia, Cyprus, and elsewhere, and he was surprised to find it in
Egypt.! Of supreme importance is the testimony of his later contem-
porary, Plato, who is said to have studied in Egypt. It will be recalled
that the Athenian guest in Plato's Laws, in laying down plans for the
education of youth, pointed out that in Egypt only the highest art and
the best music were permitted, and that such were approved by the
temple. No deviation, it was said, was permitted from the established
forms in art and music, to which principle Plato heartily subscribed.?
The statement reveals that in spite of its political troubles, Egypt still
maintained a musical standard that was marvelled at by others.
However far-fetched the lengthy panegyric of Callixenus of Rhodes
may be, as retailed by Athenaeus at a later period, one cannot forbear
to cite that ‘choral band of six hundred men’, among whom were
300 harpers performing together on gilded harps. That was in the
days of Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-246 в.с.).3 Nor was the flair for
music to be found only in courtly and patrician circles, since one of
the interlocutors in the dialogues of Athenaeus remarks:
I would have you know . . . that there is no record in the history of other
people more musical than the Alexandrians, and I am not speaking merely
of singing to the harp, for even the humblest layman among us... can
immediately detect the mistakes which occur in striking the notes.
He then goes on to dilate on the number of flutes and reed-pipes, four
at least, with which the Alexandrians were familiar.* One of Egypt's
later rulers, Ptolemy Auletes (81—52 B.c.), the reputed father of the
great Cleopatra, was addicted to piping, hence his name? In the
palace concerts he contested with the professional musicians for
ѕиргетасу.®
Diodorus Siculus, writing a few years later, avers that music was
not, in those days, a part of normal education, since it was thought
not only useless but morally injurious, in that it created effeminacy.”
Whether this is strictly true of the classes as a whole is doubtful. Yet
that such a puritanical view existed in Egypt at this time is not im-
probable. Indeed the word Sem‘ (‘to sing’) came to mean something
unrighteous (‘to be perverse’, ‘to corrupt’).8 Such protests, probably
by the few, would have had little sway with the people at large.
1 11. 79. Strabo says (xvu. i. 52) that Herodotus talked ‘much nonsense’. Cf. Plutarch,
Isis and Osiris, 379.
? Laws, 657. 3 Athenaeus, v. 201-2. * Ibid. iv. 176.
5 J. P. Mahaffy, The Empire of the Ptolemies (London, 1895), pp. 429 ff.
8 Strabo, op. cit. уп, i. 11. Тап. Biles
8 Journal asiatique (Mars-Avril, 1908), pp. 263, 266. Cf. the Coptic tchoome.
. 266 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
Whether it was taught or not, music was the heritage of all, and social
life, from the cradle to the grave, called for it. Between those two
events, almost every phase of life demanded music of some sort, and
we still possess the papyrus contract of a musician who was engaged
in Egypt, nearly 2,000 years ago, to play with his fellows for the
delight of those who cried: ‘Let there be music and singing!'!
If we turn to military music, we see the trumpeter and drummer at
their duties, summoning the troops, sounding them past the saluting
point, or inciting them to battle.? If we look at the toilers, we have
the opportunity of reading the words at least of a shepherd's song of
the twenty-fifth century B.C., a thresher's song of the sixteenth cen-
tury B.C.,? as well as the sedan-chair bearer's song,‘ and others.5 We
probably see what sufficed for the crowd on a papyrus in the British
Museum which depicts a ‘march of the animals’ to the droning of
a double reed-pipe,® whilst one of the Tell al-Amarna scenes shows
us what joy emerged in country dancing,’ all of which may be seen
today by the banks of the Nile. Not a note of the actual music that
was played or sung has come down to us.
Under the Old Kingdom, perhaps the days of a more indigenous
art, dances were possessed of a gravity and seriousness that does not
appear in those of the New Kingdom, which had been spiced with
Oriental fashions. One of the most expressive dance scenes in Egyp-
tian art remains is that reproduced by Champollion,® Rosellini,’ and
Wilkinson,'? in which the graceful attitudinizing shows an unmistak-
ably spacious solemn rhythm. How different is the tempo on the
Saqqara bas-relief, now at Cairo. Here the pace of the dancers is fast
and furious." The larger deep-toned tambourine of rectangular shape
has been cast aside, and its place has been taken by a smaller circular
instrument, of which the higher-pitched ‘tap’ is more in accord with
the sharper click of the accompanying clappers.
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC
Idiophones occur in the earliest Egyptian art remains. On archaic
pottery (fourth millennium B.c.) are delineated clappers with curved
1 Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, x (1924), p. 145.
2 Wilkinson, op. cit., pp. 260-9; Champollion, op. cit. iii, pls. сах, ccxviii.
3 Erman, op. cit., pp. 385 ff.
4 М. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebráwi, 2 vols. (London, 1902), i, p. 11.
5 Mélanges Maspero: Orient ancien i (Paris, 1934), pp. 133 ff.
6 Erman, op. cit., p. 369. 7 Lepsius, op. cit., vi, pl. 104.
8 Op. cit. ii, pl. clxxv. 9 1 Monumenti dell’ Egitto (Pisa, 1832-4), pl. xcviii.
10 Op. cit. ii, fig. 236.
п L, Borchardt, Kunstwerke aus dem Agyptischen Museum zu Cairo (Cairo, n.d.),
pl. 28; Erman, op. cit., p. 249.
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC 267
blades,! and these persist as late as the 18th dynasty (c. 1570 в.с.) at
least.2 The wand type of clapper is observed in the Sth dynasty
(twenty-fourth century в.с.).3 What we nowadays call the ‘bones’ are
to be seen under the New Kingdom (c. 1570 B.c.).4 Another kind,
clashing maces, were popular during the 6th dynasty (c. 2300 B.c.)
and later.? These concussive instruments may have been called ihy and
na'tahi, the latter word being possibly cognate with the Hebrew
nasach. In addition to these were artificial hands and feet in bone,
wood, or ivory, which were beaten together in the same way as hand-
clapping, a practice known in Egyptian as ma’h,® a word identical
with the Hebrew màcha. Innumerable specimens of these artificial
hand and feet clappers are to be found in museums.’
Sistra of various kinds were known, and in these particular types
we may have indigenous productions. One kind, the sehem, had а
body of pottery or wood with jingling plates inserted.? We see it in
the 6th dynasty (с. 2300 в.с.).? A more sonorous kind was the ses, ses,
or sesset, which had a metal body with jingling metal bars inserted.!9
Both types are to be seen in museums," and in art remains,!* down to
Roman times. Cymbals of the plate type were of late intrusion, al-
though the cup type is probably to be recognized on a figurine of the
Greek period (332-30 в.с.).13 Clapper cymbals also occur in actual
specimens of the Graeco-Roman period.'* Bells of all kinds are
plentiful.
Membranophones are well represented in actual specimens and art
remains. Cylindrical,'® as well as squat and elongated barrel-shaped
1 D, Randall-Maclver and C. Mace, El Amra and Abydos (London, 1902), pl. xiv.
2 7. J. Tylor and Е. L. Griffith, The Tomb of Paheri at El Kab (London, 1894).
* Lepsius, op. cit. ii, pl. 56a.
4 Borchardt, op. cit., pl. 28.
5 W. M. Flinders Petrie, Dedasheh (London, 1898), p. 8; pl. xii; N. de G. Davies, The
Tomb of Antefoker (London, 1920), p. xxiii.
6 J. de Morgan, Fouilles à Dachour en 1894-95 (Vienna, 1903), pl. xxv.
* Loret, op. cit., p. 5, figs. 10-12.; Sachs, Die Musikinstrumente, pl. i.
8 E. A. W. Budge, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary (London, 1920), pp. 616, 754.
Cf. Sachs, Die Musikinstrumente, pp. 28 ff., and History of Musical Instruments (New
York, 1940), pp. 89 ff. Cf. Hickmann, Catalogue, pp. 76—77, for classification.
? Flinders Petrie, Dendereh (London, 1900), pl. x.
10 Champollion, op. cit. iii, pl. cclxxxi.
H Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, pp. 325 ff.; Sachs, Die Musikinstrumente, pls. 3-5.
12 Lepsius, op. cit. vii, pls. 175, 186, 193; viii, pl. 247.
13 C. Engel, Music of the Most Ancient Nations (London, 1870), р. 227.
14 Loret, op. cit., p. 7; Sachs, Die Musikinstrumente, pl. i.
15 Sachs, Die Musikinstrumente, pp. 23 ff., pl. i. Cf. Hickmann, Catalogue général des
instruments de musique du Musée du Caire (Cairo, 1949), pp. 1-103 for all idiophones.
This author has also made a separate study of bells in an article entitled *Zur Geschichte
der altágyptischen Glocken' in Musik und Kirche (Kassel, 1951), Heft 2.
16 J, Garstang, Burial Customs of Egypt (London, 1907), fig. 155.
268 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
drums,! are preserved at Cairo and Paris, the former dating from the
12th dynasty (c. 1989 B.c.). The elongated form persisted up to the
Saite period (c. 664—525 в.с.), if not later.? There was also a hand
kettledrum, so well known from Champollion’s design,? which dates
from the 18th dynasty, as well as the vase-shaped darabukka type,
and the cylindrical body form, often found in the hands of the god
Bes, which was probably the drum called gemqem.* The generic name
for the drum was teben (Akkad. fabdlu). Budge thought that a'seh
stood for the squat barrel-shaped drum. The tambourine or frame
drum was known as the ser or Ser, a large example of which, not
unlike the supposed alal of Mesopotamia, was used in Egypt at
the Temple of the Sun at Abusir (twenty-sixth century B.C.). Even
later, at the time of Osorkon II (c. 800 B.c.), we see a tambourine
over 2 feet in diameter being used," although Borchardt, who devoted
an article to the tambourine, suggested—wrongly—that this was a
gong.® A more portable instrument of the 18th dynasty is shown by
Champollion in the picture just mentioned, while an even smaller
specimen found favour during the Greek period." Under the New
Kingdom (с. 1570 в.с.) a large rectangular tambourine, with concave
sides, appeared.? It is also seen in a bronze figure of the time of Amen-
hetep IV (c. 1377 B.c.).? Specimens are conserved in museums.
Among the woodwind, the earliest example of the upright, end-
blown flute is figured on a predynastic (fourth millennium В.С.)
palette.!? In spite of opinions to the contrary, the flute may have been
known as the seba’ or seby, in which case we recognize its progeny in
the Coptic sébe and sébi.! Normally seb or seba' means ‘to play [a
flute or reed-pipe]’. This instrument is often found during the Old
1 Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, pp. 264-70; figs. 202-4.
? G. Maspero, Le Musée égyptien (Cairo, 1907), pls. xl, xli.
* Champollion, op. cit. ii, pl. clxxxvi.
t See Hickmann, ‘La Daraboukkah’, in the Bulletin de l'Institut d' Égypte, xxxiii
(Cairo, 1952), pp. 229 ff., for this and similar drums.
5 Е. Naville, The Festival-Hall of Osorkon II (London, 1892), рр. 14, 24, 26; pls. xi,
xiv, xvi.
5 Borchardt, Mélanges Maspero, Orient ancien, i (Cairo, 1934), pp. 1-6.
7 W. Weber, Mitteilungen aus der ägyptischen Abteilung der Kónigl. Museen zu Berlin
(Berlin, 1914), pl. 24.
8 Champollion, op. cit. ii, pl. clxxxvi; Kinsky, Geschichte der Musik in Bildern
(Leipzig, 1929), p. 5.
? А. Weigall, Ancient Egyptian Works of Art (London, 1924), p. 152. The instrument
has been fully described by Hans Hickmann in ‘Miscellanea Musicologica’, x, ‘Le
Tambourin rectangulaire du Nouvel Empire’ (Annales du Service des Antiquités de
l’ Égypte, li (Cairo, 1951), pp. 317 ff.).
10 J, E, Quibell and Е. W. Green, Hierakonpolis, ii (London, 1903), pl. 28.
11 See Loret, op. cit., pp. 14 ff. and Journal asiatique (juil.-aoüt, 1889), рр. 121-33,
but cf. Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments, p. 90.
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC 269
and Middle Kingdoms (third-second millennia B.c.).1 Some of these
flutes were from 4 to 5 feet in length. Two other types of flutes,
doubtless of Semitic origin,? were the wa’yr and the wa'di, mentioned
in connexion with Ptolemy Auletes (81—52 B.c.).3 The wa’yr, wa'ra',
or wa'r, is possibly cognate with the Arabic yara‘, which was a re-
сог4ег.* The wa'di, wa'd'ai, or wa'deni is likely to have been the
instrument called by the Greeks the photinx.®
The reed-pipe seems to have been known аз Ше та’ (Old Kingdom),
met or ma', although the term was applied to any woodwind instru-
ment.5 This reed-pipe may be discerned as early as the 4th dynasty
(twenty-sixth century B.C.).' The double reed-pipe is shown in both
the parallel and the angular forms. Loret once hinted,° that this instru-
ment may have been the is or isit (lit. Áreed"), but he later abandoned
this identification.? E. Brunner-Traut has now given the name a’a’t to
this type. Under the New Kingdom the parallel form was superseded
by the angular, most likely under Oriental prompting.!? It frequently
appears in the art remains," and on a wall painting in the British
Museum one can plainly distinguish the embouchure reeds.!? Actual
specimens are fairly plentiful in museums, and their scales have been
made the subject of special studies by several musicologists.!? Statuettes
demonstrate the popularity of the instrument down to the Christian
en
"The animal horn was the ‘ab, ‘abw, and deb, but there is no evidence
of its use under these names as a wind-instrument, although we have
seen wooden horns or trumpets being presented to Amen-hetep III
by the Mitanni ruler Dushratta (c. 1380 в.с.).15 On the other hand,
1 Lepsius, op. cit. ii, pls. 36, 52, 61, 74; A. M. Blackman, The Royal Tombs of Meir
(London, 1915), p. 12; pl. xxi, 2. See pl. 9 (a).
* Erman, op. cit., p. 516.
* S. Birch, The Anatasi Papyri in the British Museum, iv (London, 1843), pl. xii. See
also A. H. Gardiner, Egyptian Hieratic Texts (Leipzig, 1909).
* H. G. Farmer, Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments (London, 1931), i, p. 64;
A. Chottin, Tableau de la musique marocaine (Paris, 1939), pl. xvi. Lira = al-yard'.
5 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistes, iv. 175, 182; Journal asiatique (juil.-aoüt, 1889), р. 133;
К. Sethe, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, xlv (1908), р. 85.
* Cf. A. H. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar (Oxford, 1927), p. 525; E. Brunner-Traut,
Der Tanz im alten Agypten (Gluckstadt, 1938), p. 17.
7 Lepsius, op. cit. iii, pl. 36.
8 Journal asiatique (juil.-aoüt, 1889), p. 133.
* Encyclopédie de la musique, 1*¢ partie, i, p. 15.
10 [bid., р. 16.
11 Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, pp. 232, 234-5, 312. See pl. 9 (b).
12 Erman, op. cit., facing p. 250. 13 See Bibliography.
14 Sachs, Die Musikinstr umente, p. 80. See Hickmann, ‘Classement et classification des
flûtes, clarinettes et hautbois de l'Égypte ancienne’ in La Chronique d'Égypte, xxvi?
année (Bruxelles, 1951), pp. 17 ff.
1 J. A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln (Leipzig, 1908), pp. 155 ff.
270 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
the straight metal trumpet is well represented in military and pro-
cessional scenes during the New Kingdom and earlier.! It was also
used in the cults; Eustathius (Ad Iliadem) attributes its invention to
Osiris, and it was used in his worship as late as the third century A.D.?
We cannot be sure of its Egyptian name but Eustathius says that the
Greek chnoue was sounded to gather the congregation for the sacri-
fice, and this may well be the Greek pronunciation of the Egyptian
3neb. It has been assumed that the Egyptians * were not very success-
ful' in making trumpets, the apparent authority being Plutarch;? yet
the author of De Iside et Osiride merely states that the inhabitants of
Busiris and Lycopolis did not permit the use of the trumpet because
its sound resembled the braying of an ass.* This veto had nothing to
do with any supposed Egyptian imperfection in the trumpet as such;
it was because the evil god Typhon was considered to have all the
attributes of the ass. Cairo possesses among its museum treasures a
silver and a copper trumpet, both with gold mountings, from the
tomb of Tut-anb-amen,? which have been played in modern times and
sound quite brilliant.®
The Aydraulus, the so-called water organ, was invented by Ctesibius
of Alexandria ( Л. 246—221 B.C.),? the son of a barber who lived in the
quarter of the Aspendia. Clément Loret's researches on the Aydraulus
are summarized in his son's study of the musical instruments of
ancient Egypt in Lavignac's Encyclopédie de la musique, but the
instrument is usually allocated to colonial Greece, which also claims
another Egyptian writer on the hydraulus, Hero of Alexandria
(fl. A.D. 150).°
The chordophones of ancient Egypt are even more interesting than
those of ancient Mesopotamia, because their morphological develop-
ment can be discerned with greater clarity over several millennia. The
upright lower-chested harp goes back iconographically to the 4th
dynasty (twenty-sixth century B.C.) at the very least. At Gizeh we
1
2 Sachs, Die Musikinstrumente, p. 89.
3 Reese, Music in the Middle Ages (New York, 1940), p. 7.
4 Isis and Osiris, 362.
5 H. Carter, The Tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen, ii (London, 1927), pp. 19, 30; pl. 2.
* See Hickmann, La Trompette dans l’ Égypte ancienne (Supplément du Service des
Antiquités de Г Ёвуріе, Cairo, 1946). Cf. P. K. Kirby, ‘Ancient Egyptian Trumpets’ in
Music Book, vii (London, 1952), pp. 250 ff.
7 Paul Tannery in Revue des études grecques, ix (1896), рр. 23 ff., xxi (1908),
pp. 326 ff.
8 ге partie, i, pp. 30-34.
® For the most complete description, see H. G. Farmer’s The Organ of the Ancient
(London, 1931).
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC 271
espy the identical bow-harp predicated in Mesopotamia as the ban
or pan, but in a form much nearer its days of puberty. At this early
date, when it was known in Egypt as the ben, bent, or bin, bint (cf.
Coptic boini, oyoini), it had a narrow and perfectly cylindrical cres-
cent-shaped body with six strings (but seemingly seven рерѕ).! By the
5th dynastv, the lower end of this narrow cylindrical body had
developed a definite hemispherical sound-chest.? From the 6th dynasty
(c. 2300 B.c.) onwards, these forms seem to continue with but slight
deviation, until we perceive the gradual widening of the body and
sound-chest, from top to bottom, which became the recognized struc-
ture about the 12th dynasty (c. 1989 в.с.),3 although earlier forms still
appear from time to time even until the seventh century.* With the
rise of the 18th dynasty a melioration and refinement of structure and
purpose are clearly revealed, until by the time of Rameses III
(с. 1200 B.c.), we have the superb so-called Bruce's harps.? In these
two instruments, which stood over 6 feet high, furnished with ten
(? eleven) and twelve (? thirteen) strings respectively, handsomely
ornamented, we reach the apogee of harp construction in ancient
Egypt,$ although even taller instruments (7 feet high) had existed
earlier.’
Meanwhile (c. 1989 B.c.), the ordinary smaller harps had changed
their outline from the crescent to the semicircular,’ a contour which
lasted until the Christian era.? All the foregoing were played in the
conventional way, i.e. standing on the ground, although in a few
instances we find stands being used to raise the sound-chest from the
floor." The portable shoulder harp appeared very much later,!!
although its seemingly novel raised sound-chest dated back to early
days.!?
! Lepsius, op. cit. iii, pl. 36. In the art remains, strings and pegs often disagree.
* Flinders Petrie, Dedasheh, р. 8: pl. xii; Kinsky, Geschichte der Musik in Bildern,
e Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, pp. 234 ff. See pl. 9 (a) and (6).
* М. de С. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el-Gebrdwi, i, p. 15; pl. viii.
^ J. Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, і (London, 1790), p. 127. He
fancifully depicts them with thirteen and eighteen strings.
* Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, frontispiece. Cf. Rosellini, op. cit. ii, pl. хсуй, and Cham-
pollion, op. cit. iii, pl. cclxi, for the number of strings. Cf. Hickmann, ‘Les harpes de la
tombe de Ramsès 11 in Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’ Égypte, | (Cairo, 1950),
"T tee Op. cit. iv, pl. сссах.
T Wilkinson, Op. cit., pp. 238-9; P. E. Newberry, Beni Hasan (London, 1893),
5 » Suits. Die Musikinstrumente des alten Agyptens, p. 66; figs. 95a, 96.
10 Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, figs. 185-6; Rosellini, ii, pl. Ixxix.
' Wilkinson. op. cit. ii, figs. 209, 215; Champollion, op. cit., ii, pl. cxlii.
? Champollion, op. cit. iv, pl. ссссі.
272 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
Among other Oriental borrowings under the 18th dynasty was the
upper-chested harp.! This, as we have seen in Mesopotamia, was
simply the horizontal lower-chested harp turned sideways and with
the angle made semi-acute.? We cannot be sure of its name, but it
may have been the instrument called the da'da't, with a possible vari-
ant da'da'newt? Delineations also date from this period, * and it
continued to enjoy popularity right through the Greek period
(332-30 в.с.).5 Like the lower-chested harp, the face of the hollow
sound-chest was covered with leather or parchment, a feature which
may be noted in actual specimens or reproductions at Paris, Cairo,
and New York, on the first of which are twenty-two strings,’ while
a small wooden figurine in the British Museum carries but six strings
on the instrument. By the time of Euergetes II (second century в.с.)
the sound-chest had become an acute angle.®
Older still was the kithara, which was also of exotic origin. We
first discern it in the 12th dynasty about the year 1890 B.c., in the
famous Beni Hasan pictures. These represent Bedouin called the
'Aa'mu (Arabic ‘атт = ‘men of a tribe’) who, under their shaikh,
Аба, i.e. Abū Shahi, go to Egypt to pay tribute to a certain Prince
Henem-hetep.!? Among the shaikh's retainers is a kitharist, and per-
haps the shaikh himself was called Abt Shahi (‘Father of Pleasantry’)
because of his esteem for music, since the Arabs give this nickname
to the lute itself.!! This scene shows a plain, rectangular folk kithara
which is played with a plectrum.!? It is held with the strings lying
horizontally, a custom which continued for centuries, even when an
! Erman, op. cit., p. 253.
? See Chap. V, p. 243.
3 A. Н. Gardiner, The Admonition of an Egyptian Sage (Leipzig, 1909), pp. 7, 13;
H. Brugsch, Thesaurus Inscriptionum Aegyptiacarum (Leipzig, 1881-91), p. 524. Cf.
East-African ze-ze, and Hickmann, Bulletin de I’ Institut d’ Égypte, xxxv, pp. 361 ff.
* N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna (London, 1903-8), vi, pls.
6, 28.
5 С, M. Kaufmann, Graeco-dgyptische Koroplastik (Leipzig, 1915), pls. 5, 58.
* Loret, op. cit., p. 29; Catalogue of the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instru-
ments, iii (New York, 1906), p. 3.
* Wilkinson, Engel, and Chappell show the instrument with twenty-one strings, but
with twenty-two tassel string ends.
* Champollion, op. cit. i, pl. li. Wilkinson's picture of this harp is given upside down,
obviously the way in which it was displayed at Paris (cf. the tassels). This was copied by
musicologists, including Engel and Chappell, for three-quarters of a century. Further
currency was given to the blunder when Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema represented it thus
in his well-known painting ‘Pastime in Ancient Egypt’.
® Erman, op. cit., p. 253.
1° The derivation of ‘Aa’mu is not settled.
11 Ibn Ma'rüf, Kanz al-lugha, s.v. shahi.
1? Lepsius, op. cit. iv, pl. 133; Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, pl. xiv; Rosellini, op. cit. i,
p. xxviii.
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC 273
asymmetrically shaped kithara had been adopted in the 18th dynasty
(c. 1570 B.c.).1 After a while, larger and more imposing instruments
came into use, some with as many as fifteen strings, as in the satirical
Turin papyrus (20th dynasty)? and other delineations.? Some were
standing types as large as those of Mesopotamia.* A few portable
specimens exist in museums at Leiden, Cairo, and Berlin.’ Being а
harp-like instrument, it was probably counted generically as a ben or
bent, yet about 1200 B.c. it seems to have been given a distinctive
name in kena’na’wr, a word strongly suggestive of the Hebrew kinnor
and the Arabic kinnara, which possibly survived in the Coptic qinéra.
There is no evidence of lyres, as distinct from kitharas, being adopted
during the Greek period.®
Lastly comes the pandore or long-necked lute, whose Egyptian
name has been the subject of so much pother (see pl. 9 (b)). Tempted
by the ideogram nefer (good), which resembled the form of the
pandore, and by the fact that ‘f’ and ‘b’, and ‘r’ and ‘I’ were inter-
changeable, some authorities considered the Egyptian nefer and the
term пере] (instrument) of the Old Testament to be identical; ergo,
the nefer was the pandore.” Although much has still to be said for the
claim of identity, the theory has been abandoned.? The pandore may
be of Oriental origin, since it does not occur prior to the New King-
dom (с. 1570 в.с.). The sound-chests show the short oviform,?? the
long oviform," and the periform,!? with a belly of skin or parchment
perforated with one large and several smaller sound-holes. The strings
were not attached to pegs as in the harps, but to tasselled tuning
thongs. The pandore continued to be favoured until the Graeco-
Roman periods, and the old Egyptian types are still popular in North
! Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, pp. 235, 291; Kinsky, op. cit., p. 5.
2 Chappell, The History of Music (London, 1874), p. 399.
3 Sachs, Die Musikinstrumente, figs. 53, 63.
* J. G. Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, p. 281; N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna,
ii, pls. v, xxxiii; vi, pls. xxviii, xxxvi.
5 Revue musicale (1907), p. 337; Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, p. 293; Sachs, Die Musik-
instrumente, pls. 6-8. Hickmann, Catalogue, pls. xciii, ff.
* Cf. Reese, op. cit., p. 7, and the terminology of Hickmann, Catalogue, p. 153.
7 This was Burney's premise, which was accepted everywhere after Champollion
(Dictionnaire égyptien, 1841) had laid it down that nefer was ‘une sorte de Théorbe’.
8 Scepticism began with Petrie (Medum, 1892, р. 29); he was followed by Е. 11.
Griffith, N. de G. Davies, and Loret, until Petrie (The Wisdom of the Egyptians, London,
1940, pp. 59 ff.) himself gave the coup de gráce.
* Cf. C. Sachs, History of Musical Instruments, p. 102.
? Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, pl. xii; figs. 187-8, 191, 205, 222-3.
11 Wilkinson, ii, figs. 221, 229; М. E. Scott, ‘The Lute of the Singer Har-Mosé’ in
Bulletin: Metropolitan Museum of Art, ii (New York, 1944), pp. 159-63).
? Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, p. 303; J. Capart, Documents pour servir à l'étude de l'art
égyptien, ii (Paris, 1927-31), pl. 91.
274 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
Africa today under the name ganábir (sing. gunbri),! with two or three
strings? as in ancient Egypt.?
Looking back over nearly three millennia of iconographic material,
in which instruments of music have been delineated so profusely with
such great care, one cannot help being amazed by the diverse struc-
tures, the neatness of design, the clearness of detail, and the almost
methodical portrayal of instrumental technique in ancient Egypt. In
the wider use of these instruments, Egypt surpassed Mesopotamia a
hundredfold and it is no wonder that Greece sang its praises.
THE PRACTICE AND THEORY OF MUSIC
As we saw at the outset, what was envisaged by the Egyptians
when they listened to music was affected by, or was subject to, the
influence of heka’ or hike (‘spell’). Like the safi of medieval Islam,
or the Maulawiyya dervish fraternity at Cairo today, the Egyptians
of old did not hear ‘music’, but only ‘sounds’, and the latter were
but a symbol of something else. One imagines that this interpretation
obtained generally, even under purely festive conditions. Music, as
we understand it, was simply one of the concomitant joys of life in-
separable from floriage, feasting, and fragrance. A sidelight on this
collateral appreciation is thrown by the sound-chest of the harp,
which is sometimes fashioned to represent a lotus in bloom. Thus,
before a note was struck, the instrument spelt ‘joy’. Yet in spite of
these esoteric doctrines, the practice and technique of music seems
to have been quite exoteric, seemingly very little different from our
conceptions.
A few instrumental features deserve notice. The large plectrum for
the cithara in use by the baddwi ‘Aa’mu must be compared with the
delicate implement between the finger and thumb of the graceful
pandorist on a tomb picture,* or the even smaller one, no larger than
that of the modern mandoline, at another tomb.* These plectra are
attached to a cord lest they be lost. Observe also the seeming affecta-
tion of the pandorists who occasionally strike the strings above the
1 [bn Battüta, Tuhfat al-nuzzár, iv (Paris, 1853-9), p. 406. See also Farmer,
"Tunbür' in the Encyclopaedia of Islam and paper in the Transactions: Glasgow
University Oriental Society, v (1930), pp. 26 ff.
? Farmer, Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments, i (London, 1931), pp. 39-49.
з The Egyptians used up to four strings. See Champollion, op. cit. ii, pl. clix, and
Wilkinson, op. cit. ii, pl. xii. For the ‘accordage’ of Egyptian stringed instruments see
Hickmann, ‘Miscellanea musicologica’ in Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte,
xlviii (Cairo, 1947), pp. 646 ff.
4 Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 214. 7
$ М. de С. Davies, The Tomb of Nakht at Thebes (New York, 1917), frontispiece and
pp. 57 ff.
THF PRACTICE AND THEORY OF MUSIC 275
sound-chest instead of at the bridge, in order to obtain a subdued
effect, a custom still practised in the Occident. Tricks or dexterities
were also indulged in, and a wall-painting in the British Museum
shows a female reed-piper fingering the dextra pipe with the left hand
and the sinistra pipe with the right.
The gradual development of the sound-chest in the harp shows
early recognition of the principle that loudness equates with ampli-
tude. The adoption of a taut skin, later parchment, as the belly of the
sound-chest of the harp and pandore, reveals the taste of the Egyp-
tians for what we should term a ‘banjo timbre’. The strings of differ-
ent lengths on their harps were the natural outcome of the adoption
in primitive times of the bow-harp, which we know existed in Mesopo-
tamia and Egypt in the third millennium B.c. Obviously these people
must have recognized that the length of a string, other things being
equal, determined the pitch of the sound, a principle which Pythagoras
is said to have introduced into Greece. Yet Helmholtz once remarked
that ‘if, as is possible, his [Pythagoras's] knowledge was partly derived
from Egyptian priests, it is impossible to conjecture in what remote
antiquity this law was first known'.! We have seen, however, from
the above dates, that this principle was recognized by both Mesopo-
tamia and Egypt at least two millennia before the dawn of Greek
civilization, and it was in these lands that Pythagoras had studied
both mathematics and musical theory.?
How much of this knowledge of the theory of sound, and its ap-
plication to vibrating string lengths and a column of air in tube
lengths was indigenous? Carl Engel once said: * There can scarcely be
any doubt that the Egyptians, like the Greeks, possessed written
dissertations on the theory of music.’ In the absence of documents
this attitude is quite inadmissible. Yet it is pardonable for several
reasons. That there existed a Greek or Syriac version of a treatise on
the theory of music attributed to Hermes, which was known in an
Arabic translation during the Middle Ages, is hinted by Arabic and
Persian authorities;* and while * Hermetic' works were not necessarily
from the hand of Hermes, or the person to whom this name was
given—the label was attached to any anonymous Pythagorean, Neo-
Platonic, or similar writing—still, Hermes was a name with which to
conjure in the realm of music, since he was claimed as the ‘inventor
! Sensations of Tone (London, 1895), p. 1.
? Tamblichus, De vita Pythagorae, iv.
3 Op cit., р. 237.
* Farmer, The Sources of Arabian Music (Bearsden, 1940), p. 29 (— Records of the
Glasgow Bibliographical Society (1939), vi.)
276 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
of music”! and the ‘first to observe the orderly arrangement of the
stars and the harmony of musical sounds and their natures’,? which
was the very pivot of the religious conceptions of the ancient Egyp-
tians. However, no such books on the theory of music have come
down to us from ancient Egypt. Whether those ‘Egyptian books’
which were among the original Alexandrian libraries of Ptolemy
Philadelphus (309-246 в.с.) and Ptolemy Euergetes I (246-221 в.с.)
contained treatises on music, we have no knowledge. However, it is
clear enough that Egyptians had such knowledge of musical theory,
as we shall see presently.
Just as in ancient Mesopotamia apparently, music was thought to
belong to things that were anterior to experience. As a result of this
belief, each note of music not only had a particular cosmic value,’
but a magic potency, a circumstance which almost implies the
existence of modal formulas. It will be recalled that Plato's Athenian
guest said when commenting on the educational system of the
Egyptians:?
What they ordained about music is right; and it deserves consideration
that they were able to make laws about things of this kind, firmly establish-
ing such melody as was fitted to rectify the perverseness of nature.
From the whole passage one may readily conclude that a modal
system was in vogue in Egypt which was approved by the temples and
So became a fixed and immutable law. We know that certain modes
or modal motives of a fixed character called nomoi (lit. ‘laws’) were
current in Greece, the strict use and interpretation of which were
rigorously enforced. By Plato’s time, the ‘pleasure-seeking’ crowd
were setting these at naught, and that was why Plato praised the
Egyptian practice of strict adherence to what was ‘lawful’ in music.
Jt must be admitted, however, that the tenets of Plato and the Egyp-
tians were prejudicial to the progress of art but, as the former says,
they were beneficial to the State, since where there was licence in
music there was likely to be laxity in morality.
What these modalities or modal motives were in ancient Egypt
there is no record, no more than there is of the nomoi of Greece. One
is inclined to believe that if music was regularized by the priests there
must have been a norm, since no canonical standard could have
1 Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 352.
? Diodorus Siculus, i. 16.
* Maspero, Études de mythologie, i, p. 106.
* Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans (New York, 1912),
p. 30.
5 Laws, 657.
THE PRACTICE AND THEORY OF MUSIC 271
existed without rule. Yet rules can be observed without being written.
On the other hand, the rather late testimony of Clement of Alexandria
(second century A.D.) may not come amiss, for his authorities may
have been early.! He says that among the innumerable books of the
‘thrice greatest Hermes’ were two for the ‘Chanter’ in the Egyptian
temple which dealt with hymns of the gods and the regulation of the
king’s life.2 These may have contained modal directions, seeing that
such were obvious desiderata in temple chanting, and some of the art
remains show the lector-priest (‘precentor’) with such a book in his
hand.?
In recalling the view of Maspero that each note of music possessed
an inherent character,* one is reminded of the assertion of pseudo-
Demetrius Phalerius (first century A.D.) which almost confirms the
above. He says: ‘In Egypt, the priests hymn the gods through the
seven sounds [lit. *vowels"] in direct succession.’ The perpetual
iconographical incidence in the early period of seven-stringed harps,
and the occasional occurrence of seven harpists and seven flautists
may have significance as cosmic affinity.9 Indeed the earliest hint of
music theory per se in ancient Egypt, which occurs in Dio Cassius
(c. A.D. 150-235), most certainly has an astrological bearing. He tells
us, in his usual credulous way, that it was the tetrachord which gave
birth to the names of the days of the week. A series of fourths, he
says, were taken from Saturn thus: Е [Saturn] to A gave the Sun;
A to d gave the Moon; d to g gave Mars; g to c' gave Mercury;
c' to f’ gave Jupiter; f’ to b" gave Venus; and thus it was that the
names of the days of the week, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and so
on, came to us. This recital, of what Dio Cassius calls the * musical
connection with the arrangements of the heavens', would be hardly
worth the telling did he not state that the idea originated in Egypt,
*but is now found among all mankind, though its adoption has been
comparatively recent; at any rate the ancient Greeks never under-
stood it, so far as I am aware’.’ In any case, this proceeding is just
what one would expect from the Egyptian priests who, as Diodorus
Siculus affirms, were the first to make a scientific observation of the
stars. Indeed, if the origin of the mathematical arts,? especially
geometry,” is to be allowed to Egypt, and if a high skill in arithmetic!
! Much of his other material can be traced to older sources.
? Stromateis, vi. 4.
з Erman, op. cit., pl. between pp. 320-1; Rosellini, op. cit., pl. cxxxii.
* Op. cit. i, p. 106. 5 De Elocutione, 7.
8 Loret, Encyclopédie, 1. i, p. 25. 7 xxxvii. 18. 2218507
® Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981.
10 Proclus, Commentary on Euclid, bk. i. п Plato, Laws, 819.
278 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
is also to be counted to her credit, it would certainly be passing strange
that the fourth group of the quadrivium should not have thriven as
vigorously there also, as one is tempted to believe from the remarks
of Philo Judaeus.!
From Dio Cassius it is clear that Egypt was conversant with the
so-called Pythagorean system in the second century A.D., and there
is no reason why it should not be assumed that it was practised there
before the time of Pythagoras who was in statu pupillari possibly
when he studied in this land с. 547-525 в.с. That Josephus says that
the Egyptian temple harpists were using а trigónon enarmonion in his
day (first century A.D.) is no argument against this assumption.?
Musicologists have tried to decide this question by appeal to the
actual instruments that have come down to us, and much patient
research has been made in this territory. Victor Loret investigated
the string lengths on harps, though these by themselves (as he recog-
nized) are insufficient data;? on the other hand, his contribution to
the study of the digit holes on the woodwind is useful,* as are the
researches of his confrères in this field.? Yet so far as one can see, the
results lead us only into generalizations. Out of thirty-six instruments
examined, dating from the 12th to the 22nd dynasty, only one could
be classified as a ‘many-toned’ flute or reed-pipe, which the Onomas-
ticon tells us the Egyptians possessed. Erich von Hornbostel took
pains to measure the frets on a pandore which had been delineated
with such, but again the results were practically negative.’
Though we cannot solve the problem of the theory of music in
ancient Egypt, we may still be able to answer the vexed question:
*Did harmony exist in ancient Egypt?' Many writers have answered
in the affirmative. James Baikie says that ‘it seems out of question
to suppose that these aggregates of instruments were designed only
to multiply the melody', and so concludes that the existence of har-
mony is proved.? To this one can only reply that we see the same
*aggregates of instruments’ which are ‘multiplying the melody’ in
every Arabic-speaking land from the Pillars of Hercules to the Tigris
without a vestige of harmony, as we understand the term, discernible.
1 Moses, і. 23.
? Cf. Nicomachus, in Meibom, ii, pp. 36, 38.
3 Loret, Encyclopédie, 1. i, p. 24.
* Ibid., pp. 17-20.
5 Hickmann, *Fabrikationsmarken an altügyptischen Blasinstrumenten', Die Musik-
forschung, iii, pp. 241 ff.
в Pollux, Onomasticon, iv, 10.
7 Handbuch der Physik, viii (Berlin, 1927), p. 435.
8 Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ix (Edinburgh, 1917), pp. 33-34.
THE PRACTICE AND THEORY OF MUSIC 279
To more purpose are the studies made by Curt Sachs who, in further-
ance of his thesis of the pentatonic tuning of Mesopotamian harps,
has adopted similar criteria in his study of the technique of Egyptian
harpists. Taking seventeen representations of these harpists, he found
that ‘seven are striking a fourth chord, five a fifth chord, and five an
octave chord; that is, taking for granted that the accordatura was
pentatonic'.! From this it is argued that ‘simultaneous consonances’
and a ‘pentatonic accordance’ are indicated.
It has already been demonstrated :? (1) that simultaneity cannot
be accepted as a criterion from the mere position of the digits on the
strings; and (2) that arguments for a pentatonic tuning based on the
assumptions of (1) are invalid. It is true that in many delineations of
Egyptian harpists we are confronted with hands stretched far apart
over the strings, a circumstance which prompts one to conclude that
the notes played, whether simultaneously or otherwise, must be far
apart in the intervallic sense. But what inferences are we to draw
from those pictures in which the hands are shown to be close to-
gether, with digits on adjacent strings? To draw positive conclusions
from either of these facts, especially when based on preconceived
notions of tuning, is extremely hazardous if not fallacious.
In conclusion it may be said that, while harpists in Egypt may have
sounded fourths, fifths, or octaves in playing, the practice was prob-
ably merely a heterophonic device, just as it is today in Islamic lands
where it has been practised since the time of Al-Kindi (d. c. A.D. 874)
if not earlier; but heterophony does not constitute harmony in the
accepted connotation of the term.? The pentatonic system was pre-
Pythagorean. That the former persisted after the latter had been
established in Greece is quite understandable, but the heptatonic
principle must have prevailed in Egypt long before it was accepted
in Greece; at least that is what the Greeks themselves would lead us
to believe. In any case, in historic (post-Pythagorean) times there is
not the slightest indication in literature that there was any dissimi-
larity in this respect between the music of Egypt, Syria, and Greece.
THE LEGACY
Egyptians had a wide reputation as educators. Menecles, the his-
torian of Barca (third century B.c.), recorded that ‘the Alexandrians
were the teachers of all the Greeks and barbarians at a time when the
1 The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940), pp. 82, 94.
? See Chap. V, pp. 248-9, and Galpin, op. cit., p. 96.
3 Farmer, Historical Facts for the Arabian Musical Influence (London, 1930), pp.
327-32; The Legacy of Islam (Oxford, 1931), p. 374.
280 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
entire system of education had broken down by reason of the con-
tinually recurring disturbances which took place in the period of
Alexander's successors [post 323 в.с.].! Herodotus (ca. 484—425 В.с.)
states that ‘the Egyptians were the first to introduce solemn assem-
blies, processions, and litanies to the gods, all of which the Greeks
were taught by them’.? Indeed, Diodorus Siculus would have us be-
lieve in even greater borrowings when he says that ‘in general, . . . the
Greeks appropriated to themselves the most renowned of both Egyp-
tian heroes and gods'.? By the third century в.с. the spread of the
cults of Isis and Serapis in Greece was vast.* The craze was extended
to Rome where Tibullus the poet (f. 54-19 в.с.) questioned the
efficacy of the ‘brazen sistra’. Yet Isis worship found votaries by the
Rhine, the Danube, and the Seine, while even the Anglo-Saxons
recognized the ‘Egyptian days’. With these Egyptian cults went the
liturgy, hymns, chanting, and above all the ‘grief-compelling’ sistra
of which Lucan writes,® and it is from the western use of the latter
that so many specimens have been preserved. Indeed the Isis temples
in Europe continued a liturgy which was justas elaborate as in Egypt,
since both sistra and tibiae were still in use, although Clement of
Alexandria adds harps (psalteria), cymbals, and drums.’
When the Greeks borrowed the Egyptian sesSet they called it the
seistron which, in turn, became the Latin sistrum. Among the wood-
wind of Egypt, one or two found acceptance in Greece. Julius Pollux
says that the Greek gig/aros was an Egyptian kind of аи/05.8 Athenaeus
tells us much about Egyptian flutes and pipes and says, on the author-
ity of Juba, that ‘the Egyptians call the monaulos an invention of
Osiris, just as they do the p/agiaulos which is named the photinx . . .
which is peculiar to our country' [it is an Alexandrian who is speak-
ing].? Later we are told that the ‘lotus pipes’ are what the Alexan-
drians call ‘photinxes’; ‘they are made of lotus, as it is called, which
is a wood that grows in Libya'.!? Yet Euripides, several centuries
earlier, reveals that the ‘sweet-sounding lotus [flute]’ was a sacred
instrument even in those days.
There is also a slight suspicion that the ‘foreign’ harp used by the
Greeks under the name of phoinix may have been the Greek vocaliza-
1 Athenaeus, iv. 184. RSS. 1351925.
* W. H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und rómischen Mythologie
(Leipzig, 1884-1901), s.v.
5 Pharsal. viii. 832.
* Erman, А Handbook of Egyptian Religion (London, 1907), pp. 239-55.
T Stromateis, ii. 4.
8 Onomasticon, iv. 10. 21У 075:
0 Ты. 182. п Bacchae, line 160.
THE LEGACY 281
tion of the Egyptian bainit (= bint), rather than the accepted meaning
of Phoenician [harp].1 In Athenaeus, after the mention of several
‘foreign’ stringed instruments catalogued by Aristoxenus, the inter-
locutor referred to above boasts that ‘the Alexandrians are well
acquainted with all these instruments’, and says that a fellow citizen
of his, Alexander of Alexandria, ‘gave a public recital with the in-
strument called the trigon, and sent all Rome into such a state of
music-madness that most Romans can repeat his tunes’.? That Egyp-
tian musicians, like the Syrian, were to be found in both Greece and
Rome, is well evidenced. In later years this was partly due to the
persecution of the Alexandrians by Ptolemy VII, when ‘not a few’
of them were sent into exile: philosophers, mathematicians, musicians,
and other men of skill in their professions, who 'instructed many
distinguished men’ in the lands of their refuge, where they were the
means of bringing about a rejuvenation of culture which had fallen
to a low ebb.?
Indeed we must not forget that some of the greatest names in the
history of ancient music belong to Alexandrians and other Egyptians:
Ctesibius of Alexandria( fl. 246-221 B.C.) the presumed inventor of the
hydraulus, Claudius Ptolemy of Canopus ( fl. A.D. 127-51) the famous
mathematician and musical theorist who wrote the weighty Harmonica,
Hero of Alexandria (Й. A.D. 150) who presented a iater account of the
hydraulus in his Pneumatica, and Athenaeus of Naucratis ( fl. A.D. 180-
230) whose chatty Deipnosophistes tells so much about instruments of
music and other neglected musical lore.
All this may be but a scant indication of the musical heritage of
Egypt to the rest of the world, and it may come from even compara-
tively late sources; for when history strides over millennia, the earlier
footprints are not easily discernible. So, ultimately, one is compelled,
in the earlier period, to fall back on the general cultural impingement
of Egypt on Aegean civilization. As Breasted has shown, the Aegean
world was influenced by the Orient from two directions.4 Just as Asia
Minor was the cultural bridge connecting Greece with Mesopotamia,
So Crete, the centre of the Aegean, was the half-way house which
passed on Egyptian civilization to the Hellenic mainland. Of the
reality of the latter inducement we have ample evidence, and in the
sphere of music there is that archaic Cretan stoneware vase which
shows a harvest thanksgiving procession headed by a head-shaven
1 Victor Loret, Journal asiatique (juil.-aoüt, 1889), р. 133.
? Athenaeus, iv. 184.
3 Tbid., loc. cit.
* J. H. Breasted, Ancient Times (New York, 1935), p. 287.
282 THE MUSIC OF ANCIENT EGYPT
priest with sistrum in hand;! the motive and craftsmanship tell their
own story. Alan J. B. Wace has said that it was from this impulse to
Cretan culture that sprang the Minoan and Mycenaean civilization,
*from the ashes of which there rose Phoenix-like in the first millen-
nium B.C. the brilliance of Hellas, which was in its turn the forerunner
of European culture’.?
1 Breasted, Ancient Times, p. 285.
? The Cambridge Ancient History, i (Cambridge, 1924), p. 591.
VII
MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
By CARL Н. KRAELING and LUCETTA Mowry
AMONG the world's books few can lay claim to greater importance for
the history of music than the Bible. Its religious lyrics have not ceased
to be sung in divine worship throughout the many centuries since they
were written. The words of some of these lyrics, like many of the
stories of the Bible, have been a source of inspiration for generations
of composers, particularly in western Europe, down to modern times,
and have found an echo also in the folk-songs of many lands. In the
more recent past the book and its lyrics have come to be recognized
by scholars as a treasure-house of information about the history of
music in antiquity. Through the Old Testament it provides a partial
record of the music of the Hebrew nation during the many centuries
of its existence. Through the New Testament it gives at least a rudi-
mentary acquaintance with the music of a nascent religious com-
munity, the early Christian Church, in the crucial forinative years of
its life.
LIMITATIONS OF BIBLICAL INFORMATION
As a source for the history of Hebrew music the Bible has certain
limitations and presents certain problems. Being a sacred book, it
provides only incidental witness to the range and character of Hebrew
secular music. Being a collection of ancient literary documents, it
gives the words of many ancient Hebrew religious lyrics—together
with scattered references to the occasions on which they were per-
formed, the instruments employed in accompaniment and even the
names of some of the tunes used—but not the actual melodies to
which the songs were sung. Since the Bible draws its materials from
the entire range of Hebrew religious literature, and since in any such
literature the use of the lyric form is by no means limited to the song
proper, it is sometimes impossible to say whether a given composition
was or was not intended to be sung. Lastly, since the documents are
arranged according to categories—Law, Prophets, and Writings—
and, what is more troublesome, are often either pseudonymous or
composite or both, it is not always immediately evident to what
284 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
particular period of Hebrew history the songs contained in them and
the historical information conveyed by them actually belong. Of the
limitations mentioned, some are today being surmounted with the
help of a growing body of information about the music of the ancient
Orient generally, while others are yielding to a fuller understanding
of the music of the later Synagogue. What is known about the music
of ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Persia—their lyrics, their instruments,
and even their melodies—has already been summarized (Chaps. V and
VI). The music of the Synagogue is discussed in the next chapter. As
to the problems mentioned, these may be said to have been brought
nearer to solution, at least in broadest outline, by the literary criticism
which in the last century has applied itself successively to the histori-
cal, the prophetic, and the lyric elements of the Biblical record, clari-
fying the stratification of the materials and determining the basic
forms and categories of Hebrew poetry. The most immediately per-
tinent of the critical works produced in the course of these labours,
together with those treating the music of the Bible directly, are listed
in the Bibliography (pp. 493-4).
THE NOMADIC PERIOD
Reconstructed with the help of literary criticism and comparative
materials, the history of Hebrew music develops in several stages,
beginning with the earliest days of Hebrew tribal life and extending
through the periods of the occupation of Palestine, the monarchy, the
exile, and the post-exilic community respectively. Throughout the
many centuries embraced in this development, music, and especially
song, played an important part both in the secular and in the religious
life of the Hebrew people, testifying to the high order of the nation's
intellectual gifts and to its emotional and aesthetic sensitivity. In the
earliest known phase of their history the Hebrews were apparently
nomads. To interpret correctly the nature and range of their music
in this period recourse must be had to the information supplied by
our knowledge of primitive migratory groups. What European travel-
lers in the Near East have reported about the music of the Bedouins
and what early Islamic authors tell us about the music of the Arabs
in the ‘period of ignorance’, is particularly helpful in this connexion.!
The chants which the nomadic Hebrews, like their successors, un-
doubtedly sang to while away the monotony of the long desert
1 See R. F. Burton, Pilgrimage to el-Medina and Meccah (London, 1856), especially iii;
А. Musil, Kusejr Amra (Vienna, 1907); H. St. John B. Philby, The Empty Quarter (London,
1933); Bertram Thomas, Arabia Felix (New York, 1932); H. G. Farmer, A History of
Arabian Music (London, 1929), pp. 1-9.
THE NOMADIC PERIOD 285
marches, the songs they once had for special occasions in the life of
the individual and his family, were not remembered in the days of the
Biblical writers. But of the songs that are associated with the life of
the tribes and reflect the nomad's bitter struggle against the forces of
nature and the claims of rival groups a few snatches have been pre-
served. One of these, connected with the desert travellers’ eternal
quest for the means of survival, is the Song of the Well:
Spring up, O well;
Sing ye unto it:
The princes digged the well,
The nobles of the people digged it,
By the direction of the lawgiver,
With their staves. (Num. xxi. 17-18.)
Probably sung in response to the invitation of the precentor by the
members of the clan as they approach a tribal watering-place, the
theme and refrain of the song has its counterpart in the repertory of
the Bedouins even today.
Characteristic of the group movements of desert tribes are the shouts
associated with the Hebrew banner (‘The hand upon the throne [read :
the banner] of the Lord', &c., Exod. xvii. 16), with the Ark (' Rise
up, О Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered. . . . Num. x. 35-36),
and in a later period with individual leaders (‘For the Lord and for
Gideon!’, Jud. vii. 20). Such shouts are still used by Bedouin groups,
their set tonal forms making it possible to identify the tribe to which
the group belongs.? More distinctly lyric in character are the songs of
vengeance and triumph preserved in the early historical books of the
Bible. It is the thirst for blood revenge that echoes in the Song of
Lamech:
Hear my voice,
Ye wives of Lamech;
Hearken unto my speech:
For I have slain a man to my wounding
And a young man to my hurt
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
'Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold. (Gen. iv. 23-24.)
It is deliverance from the hand of the enemy that comes to expression
in the tumultuous refrain and invitation of the song of triumph that
! Musil, op. cit., p. 9, quotes three examples, of which the simplest is the brief
couplet: Spring, O water,
к Flow in plenty.
* See Musil, Arabia Petraea iii (Vienna, 1908), pp. 386 ff.
286 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
Miriam sang and the women of the Hebrew camp repeated at the
shore of the Red Sea:
Sing ye to the Lord,
For he hath triumphed gloriously;
The horse and his rider
Hath he thrown into the sea. (Exod. xv. 21.)
Other lyrics of this type from the same period of Hebrew history were
contained in the lost ‘Book of the Wars of the Lord’ mentioned in
Num. xxi. 14, where a few lines are quoted. With Bedouin music in
its simplest forms these remains of early Hebrew song share certain
formal traits. They are marked by conciseness and simplicity and by
strong accentual rhythm, implying that the tonal patterns in which
they were rendered were brief and that the rendering was strident and
staccato. At least in the case of Miriam’s song of triumph we hear
that the singing was accompanied by the beating of percussion instru-
ments (timbrels) and by rhythmic motions of the body.
EARLY PALESTINIAN PERIOD
When in the course of the second millennium B.c. the Hebrew tribes
made their way into Palestine, this was in all probability a matter of
great consequence for the nature and development of their music.
Here they began a new sedentary phase of their national history,
entered upon a new agricultural form of life, and came into close con-
tact with peoples of different racial stocks and varied social and cul-
tural antecedents. Their first effort was naturally to make a place for
themselves in the new land by conquest. In the circumstances they
naturally perpetuated some of the musical forms belonging to their
earlier repertory, especially the war songs. A particularly brilliant song
of triumph from the period of the conquest of Canaan is the Song of
Deborah (Judges v) containing the familiar lines:
The kings came and fought,
Then fought the kings of Canaan
In Taanach by the waters of Megiddo;
They took no gain of money.
They fought from heaven;
The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.
The river Kishon swept them away,
That ancient river, the river Kishon.
O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength.
(Judges v. 19-21.)
1 For the poetic material in the Pentateuch see J. A. Bewer, The Literature of the Old
Testament (2nd ed., New York, 1933), pp. 1-20, and R. H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the
Old Testament (New York, 1941), pp. 271-81.
2 For Bedouin analogies see Bertram Thomas, op. cit., pp. 381-4.
EARLY PALESTINIAN PERIOD 287
Its length and scope reveal an advance in the powers of sustained
composition, while the statement with which the prose writer intro-
duces the song suggests that different sections of it may have been
sung by singers of opposite sex (historically Deborah and Barak:
Judges v. 1), no doubt with the use of a large variety of tonal patterns.
Two verses quoted from the ‘Book of Yashar' is all that remains of
an analogous song about the battle at Gibeon in the prose narrative
that has replaced it (Joshua x. 12-13).1
Echoes of the shorter, simpler lyrics celebrating the deeds of indi-
vidual heroes appear in the texts dealing with the period of the Judges
and the early monarchy—for instance, in the familiar couplet cele-
brating Samson's victory over the Philistines:
With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps,
With the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.
(Judges xv. 16.)
and in the song with which Saul was welcomed at his homecoming in
1 Sam. xviii. 7:
Saul hath slain his thousands
And David his ten thousands.
It will be noted in the last passage that the song welcoming the
triumphant hero was sung by the women with the accompaniment of
the dance and the use of various instruments.?
To the songs of war belong also those mourning the death of the
fallen hero, the dirges. As a literary form the dirge appears in many
parts of the Old Testament, but the first examples are from the period
of the early monarchy. The earliest, quoted from the ‘Book of Yashar’
(perhaps to be translated, ‘Book of Songs’), is the lament of David
for Saul and Jonathan, beginning with the words:
The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places
and containing the familiar refrain:
How are the mighty fallen. (2 Sam. i. 19-27).
The second is the brief lament of David over Abner found in
2 Sam. ш. 33-34. The typical dirge, particularly in its later form, is
marked by a peculiar ‘limping rhythm’, which must have been re-
flected also in the melodic phrases to which such songs were sung.?
Originally the singers were probably the battle companions of the
1 For a related taunt song, perhaps from the period of the early monarchy, see
Num. xxi. 27-30.
2 Cf. Exod. xv. 20 and Judges xi. 34, where only percussion instruments are mentioned.
3 See infra, p. 295.
288 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
deceased, the women accompanying the singing by sounds of wailing
and weeping (2 Sam. i. 24), but 2 Chron. xxxv. 25 suggests that in later
times lyrics lamenting the death of kings were performed publicly by
male and female singers.
With their entry into Canaan the Hebrews undoubtedly added to
their musical repertory the songs normally associated with the labours
and joys of agricultural life. How large was the variety of such songs
in the ancient Orient we learn from a cuneiform text giving an inven-
tory of the titles (or first lines) of songs, listing them under various
headings, including the songs of the workman, of the shepherd, songs
of love, of youth, &c., and specifying the instrument to which they
were sung, in the manner of the Biblical Psalter. Presumably the
Babylonian lyrics were not fundamentally different from the songs of
the shepherd and of the thresher, the texts of which are recorded in
ancient Egyptian inscriptions. Those that the Hebrews sang once they
had settled in Palestine were probably analogous to both. The joyous
celebration of the harvest in field and vineyard was proverbial for the
later writers of Hebrew religious literature (Isa. ix. 3; Jer. xxv. 30;
Ps. iv. 7, cxxvi. 6), and of sufficient importance for Isaiah in one of
his oracles against Moab to say:
And gladness is taken away,
And joy out of the plentiful field;
And in the vineyards there shall be no singing,
Neither shall there be shouting:
The treaders shall tread out no wine in their presses;
I have made their vintage shouting to cease. (Isa. xvi. 10.)
But the songs of the Hebrew vintner and of those treading the grapes
have long since disappeared, unless Isaiah has quoted or parodied a
harvest song in the familiar parable beginning with the words:
Now will I sing to my well-beloved
A song of my beloved touching his vineyard.
My well-beloved hath a vineyard
In a very fruitful hill. (Isa. v. 1.)
The ‘shouts’ of those who trod the grapes (Jer. xxv. 30) may well have
been single words repeated ad infinitum with the use of a simple
melodic phrase, like the hddandelli hàdandól still used by the Arabs
of Palestine.?
1 E, Ebeling, Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiösen Inhalts, i (Leipzig, 1919), no. 158,
pp. 267-276; cf. S. Langdon, ‘Babylonian and Hebrew Musical Terms’, Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society, | (1921), pp. 169-91; and Chap. V, p. 239.
2 С. Dalman, Paldstinischer Diwan (Leipzig, 1901), p. 28.
EARLY PALESTINIAN PERIOD 289
In Palestine the Hebrew tribes found also well-established shrines
sacred to diverse Canaanite and Egyptian deities. How extensive was
the use of music and particularly of song in such temples and how
varied the repertory we learn from the hymns inscribed on the walls
of Egyptian sanctuaries and from the lyric prayers, the liturgies,
litanies, processionals, offertories, hymns, and penitential psalms pre-
served in the cuneiform texts of Babylonia. Very shortly after their
entry into the land the Hebrews also created for themselves local
shrines—for instance, at Shechem and Shiloh. It had long seemed
probable that the practices of contemporary oriental cults gave a
strong impetus to the development and use of the religious lyric
among the Hebrews in Palestine. The suggestion was verified by
the discovery at Ras Shamra in Syria of a body of epic texts
reflecting a form of religious belief and observance allied to the
Canaanite worship of Baal.! The poems, including at least one hymn,
are closely related to the Psalms of the Old Testament in vocabulary,
phrases and even thought patterns, a relationship illustrated by the
analogy between the Ugaritic
Behold thy enemies, O Baal;
Behold thy enemies thou shalt smite,
Behold thou shalt destroy thy foes.
and Psalm xcii. 9:
For, lo, thine enemies, O Lord,
For, lo, thine enemies shall perish;
All the workers of iniquity shall be scattered.?
The fact that such analogies appear in lyrics of quite different periods—
the earliest of the extant Hebrew Psalms being a good deal later in
date—makes the inference confirmed by them the more significant.
Upon their entry into Palestine the Hebrew tribes probably came
to know and use also a larger variety of musical instruments, their
types being essentially those portrayed in the art of Egypt and Baby-
lonia. The passage in Gen. iv. 21 speaking of Jubal as the father of
those who ‘handle the harp (Kkinnór) and the pipe ('ügabh)', is among
the earliest to mention such instruments and, what is more important,
suggests the appearance of families or guilds of professional musicians
among the Hebrews at this time.’
1 See in general J. Obermann, Ugaritic Mythology (New Haven, 1948).
* For the Ugaritic text see Syria, xvi (Paris, 1935), p. 32; the translation is that of
J. H. Patton, in Canaanite Parallels in the Book of Psalms (Baltimore, 1944), p. 29,
where a detailed comparison of the two bodies of material is made.
* H. Gunkel, Genesis (3rd ed. Góttingen, 1910) ad loc., and others associate the
passage with the nomadic phase of early Hebrew history.
290 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
MONARCHIC PERIOD
With the period of the monarchy, that is, from the beginning of the
first millennium B.C., the Hebrew nation takes its place among the
established peoples of the ancient Near East, the general pattern of
its life for upward of three centuries being approximately that of the
many lesser states lying between the great empires of Egypt and
Assyria. As the foci of its national life the court, the Temple, and the
large urban communities of the land are henceforth of outstanding
importance. Trade, the crafts, and the fine arts thrive, historical litera-
ture begins and music can scarcely have lagged far behind, though our
knowledge of its development remains very defective.
At the court, music played a well-defined and familiar role. Already
in the days of Saul we find the young David serving as musician to the
king, playing ‘with his hand’ and soothing the ruler's violent temper
(1 Sam. xix. 9).! Tradition has it that he not only performed and com-
posed music—the entire Psalter being subsequently credited to him—
but that he also invented musical instruments (Amos vi. 5). What we
read in the Bible about instrumental music at the Hebrew court, and
what we learn incidentally about the vocal music performed there by
male and female singers (cf. 1 Kings x. 12; Amos viii. 3, reading
*songstresses' for ‘songs’, and for the later period Sirach ix. 4), serves
only to reflect the palace usage of the Orient as a whole. That this
usage should have spread from the court to the houses of the wealthy,
so that Amos (vi. 1—5) could speak of those ‘that are at ease in Zion’
singing ‘idle songs to the sound of the viol’ (перле/, ‘instrument’,
probably a harp) is but natural.
Special events in the life of the court required and produced special
music. The accession of a new monarch was celebrated with cere-
monies involving the blowing of trumpets and the shouting offormulas
of acclamation (1 Kings i. 34). The analogy of the enthronement ritual
found in Babylonian texts suggests that songs were sung by the rejoic-
ing populace and by choirs of professional singers at the occasion.?
The Biblical Psalter contains a whole category of lyrics, the ‘royal
psalms’ so-called, that scholars have associated directly or indirectly
with events in the life of the court, with the enthronement of the king
1 On music in the life of oriental monarchy generally see B. Meissner, Babylonien
und Assyrien, i (Heidelberg, 1920), p. 331 and H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods
(Chicago, 1948), pp. 79-88. On the magical and curative power of music in the Biblical
sphere see H. Gressmann, Musik und Musikinstrumente im Alten Testament religions-
geschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten ii, 1 (Giesen, 1903), pp. 5-19.
2 Conveniently accessible in Н. Gressmann, Altorientalische Texte und Bilder zum
alten Testament (2nd ed., Berlin, 1926), pp. 295-303.
MONARCHIC PERIOD 291
or the anniversary of this event (Ps. xxi, lxxii, cx), with the marriage
of the king (Ps. xlv), with his departure for and victorious return
from war (Ps. xviii, xx, cliv. 1-11), and with his consecration (Ps. ci).
So noteworthy were the singers of the Hebrew court that Sennacherib
specifically mentions their removal to Nineveh in recording the booty
taken from King Hezekiah.*
MUSIC IN THE TEMPLE
Alongside the court, the Temple was all-important in the mon-
archic period as a centre of Hebrew music. Familiar in this connexion
are the stories of how David brought the Ark to Jerusalem with
dancing, with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet (2 Sam.
vi. 14-15), and how Solomon dedicated the sanctuary in which it was
housed (1 Kings viii and 2 Chron. v. 11-14). The music of the Temple
ceremonial was undoubtedly not as elaborate in Solomonic times as
the Chronicler later imagined, but it probably followed the general
lines he develops, and was associated with both the regular morning
and evening sacrifice and with the important festivals of the religious
year. Apart from the blowing of trumpets (Num. x. 1-10, cf. Ps.
xcviii. 6) it consisted largely of the singing of religious lyrics and the
accompaniment of them with stringed instruments (cf. the protest of
Amos v. 23). As in the later period the musical part of the service
probably followed the performance of the sacrifices.?
Literary criticism having shown that most of the Psalter belongs to
a later period, individual psalms can no longer be used with absolute
confidence as sources for the knowledge of temple music in the
monarchic period. But types of lyrics tend to perpetuate themselves,
and recent typological studies of the Psalms make it possible at least
to say what kinds of lyrics were sung in the Solomonic Temple, and
with what occasions they can legitimately be associated.?
Biblical psalms connected with public rather than private devotions
give evidence of the continuous existence in later times of three im-
portant types, namely, songs of praise (e.g. Ps. cxlv, cxlvii, cxlviii, cl),
songs of petition (e.g. Ps. xliv, Ixxiv, Ixxix, Ixxx, Ixxxiii) and songs of
thanksgiving (e.g. Ps. xxx, lxvi, cxvi, cxviii, cxxxviii). These types the
music of the Solomonic sanctuary can scarcely have lacked. Those
of the first type are properly hymns celebrating the majesty of the
deity, for instance, as the Lord of creation, have at least partial
1 Cf. D. D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (Chicago, 1924), p. 34.
2 Cf. in general W. О. E. Oesterley, Sacrifices in Ancient Israel (New York, 1937),
pp. 193-4, and I. Benzinger, Hebrdische Archüologie (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1927), pp. 245-52.
* See especially H. Gunkel, Einleitung in die Psalmen (Géttingen, 1933).
292 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
analogies in the temple lyrics of the ancient Orient generally, and
associate themselves naturally with the performance of the regular
cult acts.! The penitential psalms of petition, to which there are
counterparts at present only in Babylonia, seem particularly adapted
to the ritual of stated or especially instituted fast days of national
calamity and repentance. The songs of thanksgiving have been con-
nected with the performance of the thankoffering (cf. Jer. xxxiii. 11)
and thus with the annual observance of one of the great Hebrew
festivals, the Feast of Tabernacles, at which such offerings were
commonly made.
Still other classes of the Biblical psalms give indications of their
one-time use. The royal psalms, sung at occasions when special hon-
our was done to the king, have already been mentioned. To these
may be added a well-defined category of processional psalms (e.g.
Ps. xxiv, xlviii, Ixxxvii, xcv, c), also connected no doubt with festival
usage. Still other songs (especially Ps. xlvii, xciii, xcvi-xcix) are be-
lieved to be associated with a festival supposed to have been cele-
brated annually at Jerusalem in the period of the First Temple,
namely, that of the enthronement of the Lord upon his holy hill.?
In the period under discussion here the lyrics used in the Temple
were probably sung largely by the priests themselves. Some may have
had instrumental interludes, if that is what the enigmatic ‘Selah’
frequently found in the text of the Biblical psalms (cf., for example,
Ps. iii. 2, 4, 8) really means, as the Greek translation diapsalma sug-
gests. In others the congregation may have participated, but this was
probably limited at first to the singing of a simple Amen or a Halle-
lujah, there being a goodly number of psalms beginning or ending
with the latter formula (Ps. civ-cvi, cxi-cxillj cxv-cxvil, CXXV,
cxlvi-cl). Songs connected with religious pilgrimage (e.g. Ps. Ixxxiv,
cxxii) were naturally sung by the pilgrim bands, but at least one pro-
cessional psalm (Ps. xxiv) seems to have been rendered antiphonally.
The ritual enacted with the use of this lyric involves the presence of
a choir outside the Temple seeking entrance to the sacred precincts
and being required by another to identify the object of its faith before
being admitted. Twice repeated, the familiar exchange between the
two groups runs as follows:
I Choir: Lift up your heads O ye gates;
Even lift them up, ye everlasting doors;
And the King of glory shall come in.
i See S. Langdon, Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms (New York, 1909), and Н.
Zimmern, Babylonische Hymnen und Gebete (Leipzig, 1905).
* See particularly S. Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien И (Christiania, 1922).
MUSIC IN THE TEMPLE 293
II Choir: Who is this King of glory?
I Choir: The Lord of Hosts,
He is the King of glory. (Ps. xxiv. 9-10.)
So well established is the relation of Temple worship and music
that the psalmists naturally associate the act of coming into the
divine presence with that of *making a joyful noise to him [the Lord]
with psalms’ (Ps. xcv. 2) and of singing ‘praises unto Him with the
timbrel (tdph) and harp (kinnér)’ (Ps. cxlix. 3).
THE PROPHETS AND MUSIC
Prophecy and the prophetic movement throw interesting sidelights
on the association of religion and music in the period of the early
Hebrew monarchy. Originally, it would seem, instrumental music was
used to further prophetic inspiration and ecstasy. The prophets of
whom Samuel spoke to David when telling him where to find his
father's asses are described as having ‘a psaltery (nebhel) and a
tabret (toph), and a pipe (ра), and a harp (kinnór), before them’
(1 Sam. x. 5). Similarly Elisha, on being required to give an oracle to
Jehoshaphat, demands of the king a minstrel, and we hear that when
the minstrel played ‘the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha and he
prophesied' (2 Kings iii. 15). In the later period the relation between
prophecy and music changes. Of the prophets whose oracles are re-
corded in the Bible none is known to have used instrumental music
for inspirational purposes, and some like Amos reacted violently
against even the use of song in the Temple (Amos v. 23). Yet many
of the greatest among them used lyric forms in their pronouncements.
This was not because the words were to be sung but because the forms
were congenial to the thought to be conveyed.
Prophetic poems that can only be regarded as psalms and are some-
times explicitly described as such are to be found, for example, in
Isa. xii. 1-3, 4-6; xxv. 1-5; xxvi. 1-6; xxvii. 2-11; xlviii. 20-21; lii.
7-10; Mic. vii. 8-10, 14-17, 18-20; Nah. i. 2-10 (acrostic). Hymns
in praise of the deity appear, e.g. in Isa. xlii. 10-13; xliv. 23; one and
the same pilgrimage lyric can be read in both Isa. ii. 2-4 and Mic. iv.
1-3, and a penitential psalm in Jer. xiv. 19—22. For those who in later
times collected and codified the prophetic writings, the association of
prophecy and the religious lyric was apparently so close that they
incorporated in the prophetic books still other, later psalms, for
example, those found in Hab. iii; Jonah ii. 3-10, and Isa. ixiii. 7-14.
Another type of lyric that appears frequently in prophetic writings
is the dirge or lamentation. Examples are to be found everywhere,
294 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
for instance, in Amos v. 2-3; Isa. xiv. 4-21; Mic. i. 8-16; Jer. viii.
18-ix. 3; and of the later period in Isa. lvii. 1-6; Ezek. xix. 1-14. Of
the Book of Lamentations in the Biblical canon at least chapters two
and four are dirges belonging to the period under discussion. The
lyric form has in these instances undergone a literary development,
for the verses are so arranged as to form an alphabetic acrostic. For
our knowledge of the contemporary religious lyric of the Hebrews the
study of its echo in prophecy is of the utmost importance, providing
a check on the inferences drawn from the Psalter.
SECULAR MUSIC
What we know about the secular music of the urban and rural
communities of Palestine at this time is pitifully meagre. No doubt
it was analogous in type to that in use elsewhere and continued the
patterns of the previous period though on a richer scale. Amos's
allusion to the association of feasts and song has already been men-
tioned (Amos viii. 10). Isaiah says of the inhabitants of Jerusalem
that ‘the harp (kinnór) and the lute (nebhel) and the tabaret (toph)
and the pipe (Ла) and wine are in their feasts, but they regard not
the work of the Lord’ (Isa. v. 11-12). He counsels Tyre to follow the
example of the harlot, and to ‘take an harp (Kinnór), go about the
city, ... make sweet melody, sing many songs’ (Isa. xxiii. 16). Songs of
the bridegroom and the bride are mentioned repeatedly, for instance
in Jer. vii. 34. Funerals had their own proper type of music. As in
the Orient generally, professional mourners, particularly women, ex-
pressed in wailing and in songs of lament the emotions of the bereaved
(e.g. Amos v. 16 and Jer. ix. 17-18, the latter apparently parodying
a song of lamentation). For all else, evidence is wanting save where
it can be conjectured that the prophets have on occasion parodied
secular songs, as in Isa. xxi. 11-12 and xxii. 13.
LYRICAL METRES
From the character and form of the lyric material preserved in the
Hebrew Bible as a whole it is possible to draw limited inferences about
the nature of the music used to accompany it. Hebrew poetry through-
out its earliest history is accentual. Its form is determined not by the
number of the syllables or the quantity of the vowels in a given
structural unit, but by the number of accented words the unit con-
tains. As for the basic structural unit, this may be regarded either as a
couplet of two lines or as a single poetic line divided into two halves
by a weak or a strong caesura. The number of accents to the half-
LYRICAL METRES 295
couplet or half-line varies from two to four, with three the most
common. Normally the number of accents or beats is the same in
both halves of a couplet or line, the exception being the so-called
gináh ‘metre’ used in dirges, where a combination of three and two
beats is commonly used, giving the structural unit its typical ‘limping’
or elegiac character. Halves of structural units commonly correspond
to each other also in sense, exhibiting what is known as ‘parallelism
of members', a parallelism that may be synonymous, antithetical or
progressive (step-parallelism). The accentual pattern (3:3) of a single
structural unit whose halves exhibit synonymous parallelism may be
illustrated by the passage:
O cóme, let us síng unto the Lórd:
Let us make a joyful noíse to the róck of our salvation
(Ps. xev. 1.)
Most lyrics are made up of an unspecified number of such units, but
whether groups of these units may be said to form strophes is not
clear save in the case of the more stylized acrostic compositions.!
Using the information collected by those who have studied Oriental
and particularly Oriental Jewish music in its later phases, it is possible
to conjecture how lyrics constructed in this fashion were actually per-
formed. The basic elements were apparently not the single note and
the melodic phrase but a number of short patterns or motives each
developing a musical interval. More than one pattern was required
to sing a single line or couplet of a song, and all patterns must have
been subject to variation to allow for the changing number of un-
stressed syllables in each structural unit. In successive lines or couplets
the patterns could be repeated or changed, depending upon estab-
lished usage, changes in the subject matter of the lyric, and the extent
of the singer's repertory.?
INSTRUMENTS
At least in Biblical times Hebrew song was normally accompanied
by instrumental music (1 Kings x. 12; 1 Chron. xvi. 42 et al.). Of the
instruments themselves not a single example has as yet come to light,
and from the pre-Hellenistic period no native representation of a
Palestinian instrument survives.? For our knowledge of the types used
we are therefore thrown back largely upon the names applied to them
1 For the structure of Hebrew poetry see, for example, S. R. Driver, An Introduction
to the Literature of the Old Testament (2nd ed., New York, 1913), pp. 366-7.
2 Cf.-on this subject Curt Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World (New York,
1943), esp. pp. 71-102.
3 Asiatics bearing instruments of the type probably in use in Palestine are portrayed
in the art of the ancient Orient. See, for example, Meissner, op. cit., p. 332.
296 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
in the Bible, upon the rendering of these names in the ancient versions
of the Biblical text,and upon probable analogies in the literature and
on the monuments of contemporary Oriental cultures. That there
should be a measure of uncertainty about the identity of some of
them is quite intelligible under the circumstances. In general it can
be said that the three basic types of instruments, string, wind, and
percussion, were each represented by one or more examples. Among
the stringed instruments the kinnér, а lyre of the kind known to the
Greeks as the kithara, and the nebhel, probably a harp with as many
as ten strings, were the oldest and most important. (The fact that the
latter was commonly rendered ‘psaltery’ in the ancient versions has
led to the confusing translation of the Hebrew nebhel and kinnór by
*psaltery and harp' in the King James Version, for example, in
Ps. cl. 3). Except for the shóphar, a ram's or goat's horn, and the
рагдгегай, a metal trumpet, both of which were blown rather than
played and that apparently only on special occasions, the important
wind instrument is the /2/7, probably a double oboe. Less frequently
mentioned is the ‘ugabh, apparently a vertical flute or pipe used mainly
in connexion with secular music. Percussion instruments include the
tóph, a tambourine or hand-drum, the zelzélim ог méziltayim, that is
р (12)
cymbals, and the ména'án'ím, probably a sistrum.!
AFTER THE CAPTIVITY
The destruction of the Temple and downfall of the Jewish state in
the sixth century B.C. marks a significant break in certain aspects at
least of the life of the Hebrew people. We cannot follow the exiles
themselves into Mesopotamia or reconstruct with any measure of
assurance that part of their life that would be of importance in the
present context. A gifted singer of the later period has described the
effect of the exile upon the musical life of the people in the immortal
words:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,
Yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;
And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
(Ps. cxxxvii. 1-4.)
1 See in general Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940),
pp. 105-27; S. B. Finesinger, ‘Musical Instruments in the Old Testament’, Hebrew
Union College Annual, iii (Cincinnati, 1926), pp. 21-76; Max Wegner, Die Musik-
instrumente des alten Orients (Münster, 1950), pp. 38-44.
AFTER THE CAPTIVITY 297
With the return of some of the exiles to Palestine in the Persian
period, the corporate life of the Jewish community was resumed,
albeit on a greatly reduced scale. The royal court, once the centre of
so much of the nation's cultural life, was no more. Jerusalem, in-
habited by but a small handful of folk, no longer boasted its urban
luxury. Economic and political difficulties beset the community on
every hand. Yet in Jerusalem a modest successor to the Temple of
Solomon was erected, and with the High Priest assuming administra-
tive responsibility for the direction of the community the Temple and
the Law became the foci of Jewish religion and corporate life. It is
natural, therefore, that the worship at the Temple and the effort of
the individual to live in accordance with the demands of the Law
serve as the occasion for the best known of the later developments in
the history of Biblical and Jewish music. For the knowledge of these
developments the work of the Chronicler and the Psalter are the
outstanding sources.
Using the Chronicler's historical narrative as a source of informa-
tion for conditions in his own day, it would appear that in the fourth
century music played an even greater part in the worship at the
Temple than in the earlier period. The vocal and the instrumental
music at the shrine was now performed by families or guilds of pro-
fessional musicians who associated themselves by descent with Heman,
Asaph, and Jeduthun (and Korah), and thus ultimately with Levi, and
claimed that they had been commissioned by none other than David
(1 Chron. vi. 16-32; ху. 16-24; xvi. 41-42; 2 Chron. хх. 19). One of
the Chronicler’s sources gives their number as 4,000 (1 Chron. xxiii. 5),
while another divides them into twelve courses of twenty-four persons
each (1 Chron. xxv), the courses presumably taking turns at the ser-
vices.! That they were under the direction of a ‘chief musician’, as
the traditional translation of the titles of certain Psalms (e.g. Ps. iv;
see also the LXX of 1 Chron. xv. 22) would suggest, is extremely
doubtful? About the 'psalteries (nébhdlim), harps (kinnéréth) and
cymbals (méziltdyim)’ that are commonly mentioned in Chronicles
as the instruments accompanying their songs (e.g. 1 Chron. xv. 16),
it is recalled in Mishnaic times that they were used in large numbers,
but they can scarcely be said to have formed an ‘orchestra’.?
Undoubtedly vocal and instrumental music had by this time been
given a fixed place in the order of worship, but the descriptions of
1 For the point of view and the sources of the Chronicler's work cf. especially A. C.
Welch, The Work of the Chronicler, Schweich Lectures for 1938 (London, 1939).
* Cf. W. O. E. Oesterley, A Fresh Approach to the Psalms (New York, 1937), pp. 76-78.
* Cf. Mishnah, 'Arakhin ii. 3, 5; Sukkah v. 4.
298 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
services to be found in 2 Chron. xxix. 20-30 and Sirach i. 11-21
indicate only that the musical part followed the sacrificial, a fact
which the fuller Mishnaic description bears out (Tamid v. 6).! Once
the place of music in the order of worship had been established, the
development of musical propria for the daily and the festival services
was inevitable. The Psalter itself reflects the beginning of this develop-
ment, the titles of Ps. xcii and xxx indicating that they were used on
the Sabbath and at the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple respec-
tively. Titles in the Greek Psalter associate still other Psalms each
with a day of the week.? Mishnaic and Talmudic traditions embody-
ing the recollections of men who had participated in the worship at
the Second Temple and inferences drawn from the study of the liturgy
of the Synagogue suggest a much fuller development of lyric propria
than these scattered references demonstrate.? That other prose ele-
ments of Scripture found a place even in the worship of the Temple
and that eventually they were rendered in musical form, seems en-
tirely likely.* As for the psalms, the congregation probably partici-
pated by joining in refrains such as ‘For his mercy endureth for ever’
(Jer. xxxiii. 11; 2 Chron. vii. 3; Ps. cxviii, cxxxvi), and in doxologies
such as those now appended to the several ‘books’ of the Psalter
(Ps. xli. 13, Ixxii. 18-19, Ixxxix. 52, смі. 48; see 1 Chron. xvi. 36).5
The establishment of the musicians' guilds was of great importance
not only for the rendering but also for the composition of Jewish
music, the post-exilic period being that in which the largest propor-
tion of the lyrics contained in the Biblical Psalter was produced.
Various collections of psalms seem to have sprung up at this time,
each representing the repertoire of a different guild. These were
eventually merged to produce the Biblical Psalter, leaving only the
! See further A. Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music (New York, 1929), pp. 18-19.
? [n the order of their Hebrew numbering Ps. xxxviii and xcii are assigned in the LXX
to the Sabbath, and Ps. xxiv, xlviii, xciii and xciv to the first, second, fourth and
sixth days of the week. The full list for the entire week beginning with the first day is
given in the Mishnah (Tamid vii. 4) as follows: Ps. xxiv, xlviii, Ixxxii, xciv, lxxxi, xciii,
xcii.
* See, for example, the various Mishnaic tractates of the Seder Mo'ed, the extra-
canonical tractate Sopherim of the Babylonian Talmud, and for the regular and festival
usage of the Synagogue I. Elbogen, Der jüdische Gottesdienst in seiner geschichtlichen
Entwicklung (Leipzig, 1913). Among the lyrics associated with festival usage, the Hallel
(Ps. cxiii-cxviii) was perhaps the first to be used regularly. Cf. the allusion to its use in
the home at Passover in Mark xiv. 26. The evidence is conveniently summarized by
Oesterley, op. cit., pp. 133-45. в
* See particularly Н. St. J. Thackeray, The Septuagint and Jewish Worship, Schweich
Lectures of 1920 (2nd ed., London, 1923) and F. L. Cohen in the Jewish Encyclopedia s.v.
Cantillation.
5 For differences of usage in the responsive rendering of the Hallel (Ps. cxiii-cxviii) see
Mishnah, Sotah v. 4.
AFTER THE CAPTIVITY 299
divisions of the book and the titles ‘A Psalm of David’, ‘A Psalm of
Korah', &c., to testify to their existence.!
The titles of the Biblical Psalms yield yet further information about
the music of the post-exilic Temple, though many of the expressions
used in them are still quite obscure. Some of the titles appear to
indicate what the song was used for: namely, for pilgrimage (e.g.
Ps. cxx ff., A.V.: ‘Song of Degrees’), for instruction (?) (e.g. Ps. xxxii,
A.V. *Maschil?), for atonement (?) (e.g. Ps. xvi, A.V.: ‘Michtam’)
and for sickness (?) (e.g. Ps. v, A.V.: ‘upon Nehiloth’). Others sug-
gest that the lyric was to be accompanied by one or more stringed
instruments, so the expression binégínóth (e.g. Ps. iv, A.V.: *on
Neginoth’) and the word mizmór (e.g. Ps. iii, which, being translated
psalmos in the Septuagint, has given rise to the name ‘Psalm’ applied
to the lyrics of the Psalter generally). Still others give the names of the
‘tunes’ to which the lyrics were sung, as, for instance, ‘The Hind of
the Morning’ (Ps. xxii, A.V.: Aijeleth Shahar), ‘Lilies’ (Ps. xlv,
A.V.: ‘Shoshannim’), ‘The Dove of the Distant Terebinths (?)'
(Ps. lvi, A.V.: *Jonath-elem-rechokim"), and ‘Destroy not’ (Ps. lvii,
A.V.: ‘Al-taschith’).?
Among the lyrics produced in the post-exilic period and included
in the Biblical Psalter are many that answer to the religious needs of
the individual rather than the congregation (e.g. Ps. xvi, xxiii, xxiv,
xli-xliii, cxvi). Appealing to God for succour from affliction and
from the malice of the wicked ‘enemy’, these psalms express the
individual’s abiding faith in God and in the moral order and indicate
how deeply the prophetic spirit and the zeal for the Law had entered
into the religious life of the common people. In the present context
they are important because they show the religious lyric in transition
from the sacrificial cult and its personnel to the private devotions of
individuals and smaller groups, paving the way for important later
developments.
What we know about the secular music of the Jewish community
in the post-exilic period is at once more limited and more precise than
in the preceding period. It is said that the returning exiles brought
back household singers with them, both male and female (Ezra ii. 65;
Neh. vii. 67), and of the services of such persons at festive occasions
evidence is naturally not wanting in the later period (Sirach xxxii. 4-6;
xlix. 1). Allusions to the songs of workers, such as the ploughman
! On this see, for example, Oesterley, op. cit., pp. 58-67.
2 See, in general and on the obscure expressions not treated here, Oesterley, op. cit.,
pp. 75-115.
300 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
(Sirach xxxviii. 25, $ mg.) and the builder (Job xxxviii. 6-7), appear on
occasion, but suggestions about the nature of any of these songs are
lacking, in large measure because later prophecy and the apocalyptic
that followed it abandoned increasingly the use of genre-forms taken
from contemporary folk-song. At the same time the Bible supplies
us with one whole book that is nothing more or less than a collection
of secular lyrics, namely, the Song of Songs. Admitted to the canon
on the strength of an allegorical interpretation of its material, it is
in fact a compilation of love lyrics of the third century B.c., compar-
able in their passionate character and their flowery language to the
love songs of ancient Egypt and contemporary Arabia.!
GRAECO-ROMAN PERIOD
In the Greek period, after the conquest of Alexander, new influences
made themselves felt in Palestine. The Jews become familiar for the
first time with the music of the Greek world and with the instruments
in use in that area. Instructive in this connexion are the lists of instru-
ments associated by Daniel with the performance of pagan acts of
worship (iii. 5, 7, 10, 15). They not only provide new names for in-
struments of Oriental origin but list in addition at least three that
are Greek, the githarés (Greek kitharis, a lyre), the pésantérin (Greek
psaltérion, a harp [?]), and the 5йтрбпуай (Greek symphonia: possibly
a bagpipe). Josephus reports that Herod the Great, in instituting
quinquennial games in honour of Augustus, caused Greek choral
singers (Thymelici) to enter the competition (Antiquities xv. 8,
1 = § 270), following the example of the Hellenized monarchs and
cities of the Orient generally.”
Yet the impact of these foreign instruments and modes upon Jewish
music was anything but profound, at least in Palestine. Josephus him-
self describes the hostility with which Herod’s innovations were re-
ceived, and Talmud and Midrash echo the opposition to Greek song,
which intensified itself after the destruction of the Second Temple,
when all instrumental music even for religious purposes was pro-
hibited by the sages as a sign of national mourning.’ More important
in this connexion is the reverence in which the writers of the Biblical
lyrics were held (Sirach xliv. 5) and the fact that during the Greek and
1 On the Song of Songs see, for example, M. Jastrow, The Song of Songs (Phila-
delphia, 1921), and such general compends as that of R. H. Pfeiffer, op. cit., pp. 708-16.
? Representations of Jewish instruments of the Roman period appear on Jewish coins.
See, for example, G. F. Hill, British Museum: Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Palestine
(London, 1914), pls. 33-38. Josephus’ remarks on Jewish musical instruments are given
full consideration in the article by Finesinger cited on p. 296, n. 1.
3 See Idelsohn, op. cit., pp. 92-93; but cf. Chap. VIII, p. 315.
GRAECO-ROMAN PERIOD 301
the Roman periods of Jewish history the production of religious lyrics
continued, the vein being largely that of the older compositions.
Examples of these later lyrics are to be found scattered about in the
prophetic books of the Biblical canon, into which they were intro-
ducted by zealous editors, and in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,
e.g. Sirach 51, Judith 16, Tobit 13, The Song of the Three Children
in the supplements to the Greek Daniel, and the Prayer of Manasses,
written by a Greek Jew and preserved among the Canticles that were
added to the Greek Psalter in later times.! More important than any
of these is the collection of Psalms produced in the middle of the
first century B.C. and known as the Psalms of Solomon. In them
the fervour of the post-exilic psalmists lives on, applying itself to the
comfort and inspiration of pious folk who saw in the more secularized
and pro-Roman elements of the community a threat to Jewish reli-
gious ideals and traditions.? Recent manuscript discoveries in caves
by the Dead Sea have provided elements of further collections of
Psalms—Psalms of Thanksgiving—and other liturgical materials.
They imitate the poetic writings of the Old Testament but represent
part of the religious literature of a separate Jewish (Essene?) sect of
the first century A.b.? From them we should eventually learn more
about the music and liturgy of Jewish groups looking toward the
fulfilment of the eschatological hope.
SERVICES OF THE SYNAGOGUE
For the later history of Jewish music no one institution was of
greater importance than the Synagogue. Whenever and wherever it
began, it was already a regular feature of the scene both in Palestine
and in the Dispersion in the first century of our era. By this time, too,
the basic elements of its regular services of worship, comprising
particularly the confessional s/iéma', the scripture lessons, and the
Prayer (téphillah), had undoubtedly been fixed.* How music came to
play a part in these communal services of worship is not entirely
clear, though the natural presumption is that it was carried over
1 See Pfeiffer, op. cit., р. 632; on the apocryphal Baruch and its liturgical use, sec the
interesting suggestions of Thackeray, op. cit., pp. 80-111.
3 For the texts of the extra-canonical documents see В. Н. Charles, Apocrypha and
Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1913).
8 See particularly E. L. Sukenik, Megillóth Genázóth, i (Jerusalem, 1948) in Hebrew;
A. Dupont-Sommer, The Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford, 1952), pp. 69-78, and Н, L. Gins-
berg, ‘The Hebrew University Scrolls from the Sectarian Cache’, in Bulletin of the
American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 112 (Dec. 1948), pp. 19-23. Much of the
material is as yet unpublished.
* See in general Elbogen, op. cit., and W. O. E. Oesterley and G. H. Box, The Religion
and Worship of the Synagogue (2nd ed. London, 1911).
302 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
directly or indirectly from the worship of the Temple. Tradition has
it that Levites going in groups from the Temple services to those of
the Synagogue were the link between the music of the two institutions
(Babylonian Talmud, ' Arakhin 115). Scholars have suggested that the
custom of groups of laymen in the several parts of Palestine to gather
for local worship synchronously with the performance of Temple
sacrifice may have contributed to the development.| Of some im-
portance, it would seem, is the further fact that in the post-exilic
period the singing of psalms had become a part of the natural self-
expression of the devout people, whose institution the Synagogue
was. Paul singing hymns to God at midnight in Philippi (Acts xvi. 25),
and the Jews of Alexandria spending the night after the arrest of their
enemy Flaccus in the singing of hymns and songs of triumph (Philo,
In Flaccum 14, §§ 121-2), is a part of this larger picture. Precisely at
what points and in what form music entered into the worship of the
early Synagogue is quite uncertain. The religious individualism of
which the Synagogue was an expression undoubtedly led to the
development of varieties of usage in this matter, particularly in
the earliest period. Within the framework of the regular service it is the
doxological elements and the benedictions that would have lent them-
selves most readily to musical rendering, perhaps with melismatic
embellishments.” To the essential nucleus of this type of service there
may often have been added the singing of stated or desired psalms,
festival usage being known to have involved such practice, above all
in the responsive singing of the Hallel (Ps. cxiii-cxviii). How the
Jewish communities of the Dispersion that used the Greek version of
the Scriptures sang their ‘hymns and songs’, whether according to the
old ‘tunes’, supposing that they could be adapted to a translated text,
or with the use of Greek modes, is, unfortunately, not known.‘ Both
at home and abroad, the music of the early Synagogue was exclusively
vocal, whether because of opposition to pagan custom or as a sign
of mourning for the destruction of the Temple.
1 See, for example, Elbogen, op. cit., pp. 237-9. The reference is to the institution
known as that of the ma‘dmadhéth, described in the Mishnah, Ta‘anith iv. 2.
2 On the doxologies of Synagogue and Church cf. the article of E. Werner, ‘The
Doxology in Synagogue and Church, a liturgico-musical Study’, Hebrew Union College
Annual, xix (1945-6), pp. 276-351.
? See in the Babylonian Talmud ‘Arakhin 10a and Ta'anith 285, where the dif-
ference between the number of times the Hallel is used each year in Palestine and
Babylonia is reported. The differences and the extent of the usage suggest ancient
practice.
3 In a familiar statement Clement of Alexandria compares the chanting of Hebrew
psalms as he had heard them to that of the Greek drinking song called Skolion (Paeda-
gogos ii. 4). Cf. on this see Werner, op. cit., pp. 333-5.
(303)
MUSIC IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
As a source for our knowledge of the music of the early Christian
Church the New Testament has its own limitations and problems.
Far smaller in compass than the Old and lacking anything compar-
able to the Psalter, its documents are so closely associated with the
practical purposes of the Christian missionary enterprise and so
sharply delimited in their historical interest that they contain but
little material bearing directly upon the question at issue here. Yet
critical scholarship, applying itself to the study of the incidental in-
formation that does emerge, and keeping in mind both the background
out of which Christianity came and the development of hymnody and
liturgy in the later Church, has been able to reconstruct tentatively
at least certain of the broader outlines of the use of music in the
crucial formative years of the Christian movement. So far as we can
tell the music of the early Church was almost entirely vocal, Christian
usage following in this particular the practice of the Synagogue, in
part for the same reasons.!
Like that of John the Baptist who preceded him and those of others
who followed, the movement initiated by Jesus was rooted in the
traditional piety of the Jewish people, bringing the search for indi-
vidual acceptability before God to renewed expression within the
framework of the conviction that the religious hopes of the Prophets,
so intensely meaningful to the people of his day, were about to come
to fulfilment. From the outset, therefore, both movements were
pitched at that high level of spiritual exaltation for which the use of
lyric material and form was both natural and traditional. Jesus's
predecessor John, being of priestly descent, came of circles well
acquainted with the music of the Temple. Jesus reflected more nearly
the piety and worship of the Synagogue, and addressed himself com-
monly to the circles whose prayers for personal deliverance had been
embodied in so many of the latest of the Biblical psalms, and who
in the Psalter as in the New Testament are called ‘the poor’ (cf.
Ps. Ixxxvi. 1 and Matt. v. 3). It is not strange, in the circumstances,
that echoes of the psalms appear in the sayings ascribed to him.
Both movements tended to create circles of faithful adherents in
whose religious life certain of the elements of Jewish observance and
the hope of an imminent deliverance were kept continually alive. To
! On the Christian opposition to instrumental music and the exceptions to its disuse
see J. Quasten, ‘Musik und Gesang in den Kulten der heidnischen Antike und der
christlichen Frühzeit’, Liturgiegeschichtliche Quellen und Forschungen 25 (Münster,
1930), pp. 81-83, 103-10.
304 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
what extent vocal music, particularly psalmody, played a part in this
during the lifetime of the two founders is quite unknown, save for the
incidental mention of the use of the Hallel (Ps. cxiii-cxviii) by Jesus
and His disciples at Passover (Mark xiv. 26). From the period after
the death of John the Baptist we possess a hymn of praise probably
sung at one time by his disciples and later placed in the mouth of
John's father Zacharias in the Baptist nativity story. The hymn
is the canticle familiar to all as the Benedictus (Luke i. 68—79),
beginning with the words so familiar also from the language of the
Psalter:
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel;
For he hath visited and redeemed his people.!
Among the groups of disciples who in ever-increasing numbers
perpetuated and proclaimed the faith in Jesus, the use of psalmody
was from the outset of no small importance. The background for this
is provided by what we hear in Acts of their constant participation
in the worship of the Temple (e.g. Acts ii. 46; v. 12, 42) and of their
attendance upon the services of the Synagogue (e.g. Acts vi. 9;
ix. 2; xiii. 5, 14). When the Christian believers established themselves
as independent groups, they frequently organized themselves after
the Synagogue pattern (see e.g. Acts xiv. 23), and, judging by the
structure of the later services of worship (see Justin Martyr, Apology,
i, 65-67) that eventually produced the proanaphora of the Mass, they
commonly followed the outline of Synagogue observance in at least
one part of their worship.? That psalmody played a part in Synagogue
observance we have already seen. How important it was in the wor-
ship of the Christian communities throughout the ancient world can
be judged from the statement of Paul, addressed to the Corinthians,
*when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm' (1 Cor. xiv.
26). In large part the psalms used in the churches must have been the
lyrics of the Biblical Psalter, for among the books of the Old Testa-
ment quoted in the New none occurs more frequently than the
Psalter itself.? Yet there is good reason to believe that the exaltation
associated with the belief in the coming deliverance, the imminent
1 See Н. Gunkel, ‘Die Lieder in der Kindheitsgeschichte Jesus bei Lukas’, Festgabe von
Fachgenossen und Freunden A. von Harnack zum 70. Geburtstag dargebracht (Tübingen,
1921), esp. pp. 56-59. The assumption is that the hymn was composed in Aramaic.
? See in general L. Duchesne, Christian Worship: its Origin and Evolution (5th ed.,
London, 1923), W. O. E. Oesterley, The Jewish Background of the Christian Liturgy
(Oxford, 1925), and more recently C. W. Dugmore, The Influence of the Synagogue upon
the Divine Office (London, 1944), pp. 71-89.
* See H. B. Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (2nd ed., Cambridge,
1914), pp. 383-4.
MUSIC IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 305
return of Christ and the gift of the Spirit, produced from the outset
new Christian lyrics analogous to those of the Biblical Psalter and the
Psalms of Solomon and rendered no doubt in the same fashion. Two
early examples translated out of the original Aramaic are sometimes
said to be preserved in the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis of the
Nativity story of Luke (i. 46—55; ii. 29-32), where they are placed in
the mouth of the Virgin Mary and the aged Simeon respectively.*
Both express in traditional language the confident assurance that
salvation has come to the distressed. The same confidence is reflected
in the *song' of thanksgiving that the writer of the Book of Revela-
tion has apparently translated and put into the mouth of those who
have overcome ‘the beast’.
Great and marvellous are thy works,
Lord God Almighty;
Just and true are thy ways,
Thou King of Saints.
Who shall not fear thee, (O Lord) and glorify thy name?
For thou only art holy:
For all nations shall come
And worship before thee;
For thy judgments are made manifest. (Rev. xv. 3-4.?
A peculiar feature of Gospel record may be of importance in this
connexion. It is the fact that many of the sayings of Jesus reported
in the Synoptic Gospels, when turned back into the Aramaic in which
they were spoken, give indication of possessing the accentual rhythm
typical of Hebrew poetry.? Some of them, particularly those of a
Sapiential character, may have been uttered in poetic form, others,
however, may have received their rhythmic form in the period before
the existence of written Gospels, when they were recited in Christian
assemblies whether as *oracles' or as parts of a new Law.
It is important even in this context to realize that the earliest places
of specifically Christian worship were the ‘house-churches’ (Phile-
mon 2) as the earlier synagogues were *house-synagogues '.* In this
1 See the article of Gunkel in the Festgabe . . . A. von Harnack previously cited.
Harnack himself has suggested that the Magnificat was originally assigned to Elisabeth,
which might imply that it was a Baptist rather than a Christian lyric. See his article * Das
Magnificat der Elisabet nebst einigen Bemerkungen zu Lk. 1. u. 2’, Sitzungsberichte der
kgl. preuB. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1910 (Berlin, 1910), pp. 538-56.
? On this and other ‘songs’ of Revelation see C. C. Torrey, Documents of the Primitive
Church (New York, 1941), pp. 210-12.
* See C. F. Burney, The Poetry of Our Lord (Oxford, 1925).
* See the Christian Chapel and the earlier of the two synagogues at Dura-Europos
(The Excavations at Dura-Europos, ed. M. Y. Rostovtzef et al. Preliminary Report V
(New Haven, 1934), pp. 238-85, and Preliminary Report VI (New Haven, 1936),
pp. 332-7 and pl. ix).
306 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
type of setting there were brought into close connexion not only the
devotional practices of the family and the local religious com-
munity but also the observances which the Church shared with
the Synagogue and those which it had in excess of the Synagogue,
particularly Baptism and the Eucharist. That psalmody had come to
play a part in the private life of the pious Jews of the post-exilic period
has already been indicated; and this together with the use of prayers
and blessings in the home was not without meaning for the develop-
ment both of Christian usage and of Christian music.' That it played
a part also in the baptismal and eucharistic rites at very early times
can be seen from the collection of Paul’s letters, particularly in the
familiar passages Col. iii. 16 and Eph. v. 19, where the Apostle en-
courages the faithful in the use of ‘ psalms, hymns and spiritual songs’.
The immediate context of each of these passages is full of sacramental
allusions, the one to Baptism, the other to the Eucharist.
Of the part that music played in the baptismal practise of the early
Palestinian Church we have no further evidence in the New Testa-
ment, For the Eucharist there may be information in Rev. v. 8-14 and
xix. 1-7, where the Seer is describing acts of adoration in Heaven and
seems to be paraphrasing and adapting forms actually in use in Chris-
tian circles? The worship in Rev. xix. 1-7 turns about the use of
Alleluia hymns in which God is praised by the assembly of the saints
and to which there are responses of ‘ Alleluia’ and ‘Amen’. The first
begins with the words:
Alleluia!
Salvation and glory and honour and power unto the Lord our God:
For true and righteous are his judgments. (Rev. xix. 1.)
The second celebrates the imminent marriage of the Lamb:
Alleluia!
For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
Let us be glad and rejoice,
And give honour to him.
For the marriage of the Lamb is come,
And his wife hath made herself ready. (Rev. xix. 6-7.)
1 Cf. on this Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogos 2, 4, and Tertullian, ad uxorem ii. 9,
and Quasten, op. cit., pp. 158-79.
2 The categories ‘psalms, hymns and spiritual songs (literally, odes)’ are not to be
distinguished too sharply from each other. ‘Spiritual’ as applied to odes may mean
‘religious’ in contra-distinction to ‘secular’, though it is the opinion of Paul that all
the lyrics mentioned are ‘inspired’. See, however, Vol JI, Chap. I, p. 2.
з See W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos (2nd ed., Göttingen, 1921), p. 235, Е. J. Dólger, Sol
Salutis 2nd ed. (Münster, 1925), p. 127, and G. B. Gray, Sacrifice in the Old Testament
(Oxford, 1925), pp. 164-78. On liturgy in Rev. see Lucetta Mowry, ‘Revelation 4-5 and
Early Christian Liturgical Usage’ in Journal of Biblical Literature, lxxi (1952), pp. 75-84.
MUSIC IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 307
What seems to be parodied or quoted here is a Christian Hallel sung
in responsive form, as Ps. cxiii-cxviii were sung in Jewish usage. The
hymn follows the traditional pattern, praising God for his deliver-
ance, but substitutes for the association with the Passover meal that
with the marriage supper of the Lamb, thus adapting it to a eucharis-
tic context. With the type of eucharistic observance reflected in these
hymns we should perhaps connect also the Trisagion (Rev. iv. 8) and
the invocations ‘Hosannah to the God of David’ and ‘ Maranatha’
that are reported in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (x. 6) and
1 Cor. xvi. 22, assuming that the exclamations were rendered melis-
matically.
The order of worship in Rev. v. 8-14 begins and ends with acts of
prostration by the Elders, and includes ‘songs’ sung by the Elders
and by the angelic host respectively, a doxology said by the multitude
of created beings, and a concluding Amen by the four beasts. The
general analogy to the order described in Sirach i. 16-21 is evident,
but the songs are of a new type, echoing the praise of the Lamb as in
the words:
Worthy art thou to take the book
And to open the seals thereof;
For thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God
By thy blood
Out of every kindred and tongue
And people and nation
And hast made us unto our God
Kings and priests,
And we shall reign on the earth. (Rev. v. 9-10.)
The form of the song, a declarative statement introduced by the word
“Worthy’ (Greek: axios; Latin: dignus), is that of the acclamations
that formed part of the ceremonial of oriental courts and pagan
temples.!
THE CHURCH OUTSIDE PALESTINE
Except for the last item, the material discussed up to this point
illustrates the use of music by the Jewish-Christian churches that
existed in the earliest period of Church history, particularly in Pales-
tine. In these congregations we must assume there were in use not
only lyrics of the type familiar from the Old Testament and the post-
canonical literature of Judaism, but also the modes of performance
traditional in the Oriental, and particularly in the Jewish, environment.
1 See E. Peterson, ‘EIS ӨЕОЎ (Göttingen, 1926), pp. 176-80.
308 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
Perhaps the only departure from Jewish standards in these circles was
added importance given to the inherited melismatic forms in which
the Alleluias and other liturgical exclamations may have been sung.
The spiritual exaltation characterizing the beginnings of the Christian
movement makes such departures entirely intelligible. Once the
Church had expanded beyond the Palestinian scene and particularly
when it struck new roots in'the Greek world, it inevitably developed
musical forms of expression in keeping with other musical traditions.
Precisely when this happened it is no longer possible to say. At pre-
sent the earliest example of a Christian hymn using the quantitative
metrical form of the Greeks is the hymn to Christ attached to the end
of the Paedagogos of Clement of Alexandria, and the earliest known
to have been sung according to the Greek tonal system is the Oxy-
rhynchos hymn, recorded in a script of the third century a.D.! Such
hymns may have existed even in earlier days, but in the New Testa-
ment no trace of them exists and in general the development of
Christian hymnody and liturgy follows other lines than those of
specifically Greek music.
More important for the interpretation of early Christian music as
reflected in the Bible are the mixed forms that developed from the
fusion of oriental and Hellenistic elements. Of such fusions the hymns
from Rev. v that use the acclamation form are one example. Since
they can be translated without difficulty into Aramaic, they may have
originated in Jewish-Christian communities of the Near East and
have been rendered in the traditional way in spite of the slight depar-
ture from Jewish tradition that their form implies. An analogous
departure in another direction is to be seen in the fragment of a
confessional hymn preserved in ] Tim. iii. 16:
[Who] was manifest in the flesh,
Justified in the Spirit,
Seen of angels,
Preached unto the Gentiles,
Believed on in the world,
Received up into glory.
Here the structure is still oriental, and the music to it must have been
oriental, but the parallelism is that of Hellenistic rhetorical construc-
tion.?
1 Oxyrhynchus Papyri, ed. B. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, xv (London, 1922), no. 1786.
See Vol. II, p. 4.
? On the passage cf. the commentary of M. Dibelius on 1 Timothy in H. Lietzmann,
Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, ed. 2 (Tübingen, 1931), and E. Norden, Agnostos Theos
(Berlin, 1923), pp. 254-63.
THE CHURCH OUTSIDE PALESTINE 309
Another type of departure is to be found in the hymn quoted by
Paul in Phil. ii. 6-11. As read in the original Greek the lyric celebrat-
ing him who ‘emptied himself? and took upon himself ‘the form of a
servant' has a regularity of construction hardly to be imitated in
translation, and consists apparently of five stanzas of three lines
each. The absence of parallelism, the brevity and equality of the
lines and the stanza-form shows that we are dealing here with a
composition even more remote from Jewish psalmody. The lyric is
in fact a hymn to Christ as Kyrios or Lord, and hence quite out of
keeping with Jewish tradition. Yet the rhythm is not quantitative but
accentual, with three beats to the line, which suggests that it must
have been sung in oriental fashion and not in one of the Greek modes.
Similar mixed types also arising from the early Christian use of music
in the regular Lord's Day services are perhaps to be found in the
Prologue of the Gospel of John and in a passage in Ignatius of
Antioch. That the Prologue of the Gospel of John particularly
John i. 1-18 embodies a hymn to the divine Logos constructed in the
same way as Phil. ii. 6-11, has long been evident. Less familiar,
perhaps, is the hymn that seems to be quoted by Ignatius in his
Epistle to the Ephesians vii. 2:
One is the Physician,
Both flesh and spirit,
Born yet not born,
God in man,
True life in death,
Both of Mary and of God,
First passible and then impassible,
Jesus Christ our Lord.’
Here again rhetorical parallelism and a hieratic style are to be noted,
but the rhythm continues in the accentual pattern of oriental lyric.
For the antecedents of the song represented by this type of lyric
it is useless to go either to native Greek or to Hebrew musical tradition.
The former could supply only the language and some associations
with the rhetorical structure, the other chiefly the accentual rhythm.
Even what is known about the music of the official state cults and the
1 See the commentary of E. Lohmeyer on Philippians in Meyer’s Kritisch-exegetischer
Kommentar über das Neue Testament (Góttingen, 1928).
* See now the commentary of R. Bultmann on John in Meyer's Kritisch-exegetischer
Kommentar über das Neue Testament (Göttingen, 1937) ad loc. and originally C. Е.
Burney, The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel (Oxford, 1922), pp. 28-48.
3 See in particular W. Bousset, op. cit., pp. 254-5, and in general J. Kroll, ‘Die
christliche Hymnodik bis zu Klemens von Alexandrien', Braunschweiger Vorlesungs-
verzeichnis 1921-1922 (Königsberg, 1921).
310 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
mystery religions of Roman times, their hymns, their use of congrega-
tional responses and acclamations, does not supply complete parallels
at the present time.! Two facts should be noted in this connexion:
first, that the accentual rhythm is not exclusively Hebrew or Jewish
but common in all forms of early Semitic lyric poetry; and second,
that, so far as our evidence goes, the theology of the mixed types of
Christian hymns is to be associated less with Jewish-Christianity than
with that of Churches in the Eastern provinces of the Roman empire.
In all probability the antecedents of these hymns are to be found in
the hellenized pagan cults of the Orient, particularly those of Syria.
The importance of Kyrios, Lord, as the designation of Christ in many
of them suggests the environment of the traditional ruler cults of the
Orient in the form in which they and their liturgy were adapted to the
services of the Hellenistic Diadochoi.? The Ignatian hymn to Christ
as the Physician suggests environment of the cult of Asclepius.?
Which, if any, of the peculiar features of such Oriental cult music
had already come to play a part in the life of the Greek synagogues
of the Dispersion at an earlier date, it is difficult to say, but certainly
the Jews in the world at large must have modified their traditional
music somewhat in order to sing their psalms in Greek, and may even
have used acclamation formulas such as have been noted above in
connexion with Rev. v.* Whatever be true of the origin of these Chris-
tian hymns from the period of the New Testament writings, they
already contain the germs for the development of certain types of
Byzantine hymns, particularly of the kontakion,? where, if Wellesz is
right, tonic rhythm is still normative for the development of the
melody and where groups of short sense lines arranged in strophes
set forth the thought.* In fact what has been said above about the use
and rendering of acclamations and about cantillation suggests that
all three of the major types of melodic formulation known in the
cultural centres of the Orient had already come to expression in the
1 See in general, Quas.en, op. cit., pp. 3-68, and the important article by Werner,
‘The Conflict between Hellenism and Judaism in the Music of the early Christian
Church’, Hebrew Union College Annual, xx (1947), pp. 407-70, where the whole
question is considered in its broadest outlines.
? See above all W. Bousset, op. cit., and its sequel Jesus der Herr (Göttingen, 1916).
3 See E. J. and L. Edelstein, Asclepius, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1945), where the use of
hymns is amply documented.
4 Especially in the ‘doxa’ form cf. Peterson, op. cit., pp. 224-7, and Werner, ‘The
Doxology in Synagogue and Church: a liturgico-musical Study `.
5 But see also Vol. Il, p. 2i.
* See particularly Wellesz, ‘Aufgaben und Probleme auf dem Gebiet der byzan-
tinischen und orientalischen Kirchenmusik', Liturgiegeschichtliche Forschungen, Heft 6
(Münster, 1923), esp. pp. 39-60, and A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography
(Oxford, 1949), p. 154.
THE CHURCH OUTSIDE PALESTINE 311
life of the early Christian communities of the Near East before they can
be documented in the liturgical literature of the established Church.!
EARLY CHRISTIAN ANTIPHONY
Certain aspects of the early Christian use of music can be under-
stood only if brief consideration is given also to the immediately post-
Biblical period in the life of the Church. Relatively unimportant in
this connexion are the statements of Pliny the Younger, that ‘on a
stated day they [the Christians] were accustomed to gather before
daybreak and to utter responsively a song (?) to Christ as to a god'
(Epistulae x. 96: *quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenire
carmenque Christo quasi deo dicere secum invicem’), and that of the
Church historian Socrates (b. about A.D. 380) suggesting that Ignatius,
the bishop of Antioch in Syria, introduced antiphonal singing into
the Church as the result of a vision (Historia Ecclesiastica, vi. 8).?
The former may be less significant than is often imagined because it
must be interpreted in the light of the terminology of a Roman official
and need not say more than that a formula (be it prayer, invocation
or song) was used.? The latter ascribes to a specific person at a late
time a practice so common in both Judaism and in the responses of
pagan cults that no special revelation is needed for its inauguration
in Christian usage.
GNOSTIC HYMNS
Far more important in this connexion is the evidence for the
existence of large collections of lyrics produced in the second and
third centuries of our era by the Christians and Gnostics of Syria
and the Near East. Of these collections two have in recent years
become directly available, namely, the Odes of Solomon and the
Manichean Psalter. Other collections known largely or entirely
from hearsay include those of Valentinus, Bardesanes, and Marcion,
the two last mentioned representing attempts to create a substitute
for the Biblical Psalter.* Individual lyrics by unknown authors are
1 See Wellesz, ‘Aufgaben und Probleme’, p. 15, and Vol. II, pp. 2-3.
2 Cf. Délger, op. cit., pp. 103-36.
3 For the former see В. Harris and A. Mingana, The Odes and Psalms of Solomon,
2 vols. (Manchester, 1920), for the latter C. R. C. Allberry, A Manichean Psalm Book
(Stuttgart, 1938), representing the Psalter of the Coptic Manichean Church. The biblio-
graphical information about the extensive body of Manichean hymns from Turkestan
published largely by the Prussian Academy will be found in C. F. Burkitt, The Religion
of the Manichees (Cambridge, 1925), and in the article of H. J. Polotsky s.v. Manicháismus
in Pauly- Wissowa, Real-Encyclopddie, Supplementband vi (Stuttgart, 1935).
* The sources of information are listed in A. v. Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen
Litteratur bis Eusebius (Leipzig, 1893), esp. pp. 171, 183, 185—6, 197.
312 MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
scattered about in the apocryphal acts (e.g. the Syriac Acts of Thomas)
or quoted in the writings of the anti-heretical Fathers (e.g. Hippo-
lytus).1 The material is important in this connexion for various
reasons. It shows how extensive was the production of Christian
hymns in the early days, particularly in the regions of Syria, Egypt,
and Mesopotamia, and thus shows in proper perspective the
scattered fragments surviving from the period of the New Testament
writings, when the fires of inspiration burned even brighter. It indi-
cates that in addition to the groups producing hymns of the mixed
types already examined, there were those for which the traditional
forms of Hebrew and Jewish psalmody continued to be largely norma-
tive (for instance, the authors of the Odes of Solomon). Finally, it
exhibits for the period before Ephraem and Narsai the use of the
isosyllabic form of verse construction, a form that subsequently be-
came of the utmost importance for Byzantine hymnody.? This form,
in which the traditional accentual rhythm is adapted to the use of
homogeneous melodic patterns by a principle of line construction
that demands an equal number of syllables (seven or eight) in each
line, appears in the extra-Biblical material for the first time in the
poems of Bardesanes (A.D. 222). It should be noted, however, that
this principle of construction is not necessarily a late feature of
oriental poetry, but possibly indigenous in the tradition of Aramaic
literature, as an inscription of the fifth century B.c. has been taken
to imply. Indeed, it has been suggested that the Lord's Prayer, in its
Lukan form, was arranged in accordance with the principle in
question.?
In both its parts, therefore, the Bible is a treasure-house of in-
formation for the knowledge of ancient music. The limitation that
it shares with so much ancient literature, namely, the absence of
specific information about the musical patterns used by singers and
instrumentalists, is offset by the strategic nature of the lyric material
it has preserved. This material in its developing form and character
provides the bridge that connects the music of the ancient Orient with
that of the Middle Ages and thus with that of the western world.
1 For the former see Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, ed. W. Wright, ii (Edinburgh,
1871), pp. 150-1, 238-45 (Hymn of the Soul), 245-51; for the latter see Hippolytus,
Philosophoumena v. 5 (Naasene Hymn).
? See also Vol. II, pp. 19-32.
3 С. C. Torrey, ‘A possible metrical Original of the Lord's Prayer’, Zeitschrift für
Assyriologie xxviii (StraBburg, 1913), pp. 312-17. The Aramaic inscription referred to
is that of the Carpentras Stele, an epitaph of four double lines, each half line containing
seven syllables, after the manner of the later lyrics. For the text cf. G. A. Cooke, A Text-
Book of North-Semitic Inscriptions (Oxford, 1903), pp. 205-6.
VII
THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
By ERIC WERNER
INTRODUCTION
THREE facts have to be taken into account in attempting to give a
survey of the music of post-Biblical Judaism. In the first place the
subject is connected with the religious and political history of a
wandering people whose migrations brought it into contact with all
the nations of Europe and most of the nations of Asia. Secondly, the
liturgical music of Judaism, from the destruction of the Temple
(A.D. 70) onward, had to take a place between genuine folk-lore and
art music, yet—until the nineteenth century—belonged to neither of
these categories. The Jewish centres of the Orient, however, under-
went a decline to a kind of standardized folk-lore, a change from a
genuine flexibility to an almost petrified musical system. In this
respect the Oriental Jews are in no way different from their Christian
and Moslem neighbours since they, too, show no signs of musical
development since the ninth century (Christian) and the fourteenth
century (Moslem) respectively. It remained the particular excellence
of European culture that its churches were always and everywhere
capable of stimulating, assimilating, and integrating new attitudes of
thought, and this is equally true of European Jewry. Since such living
development is completely absent in the Near East, we shall have to
distinguish between the history of Oriental and European Synagogue
music from the tenth century onward. Finally, the growth of Syna-
gogal music is intrinsically connected with the development and
gradual change of Jewish liturgy. Therefore it will be necessary to
refer to the field of liturgy.
We must bear in mind that the natural heritage of the Temple's
levitical psalmody constituted the nucleus around which the new
synagogal chant evolved. Here it is important to decide whether the
original performance of the psalms was metrical. This question,
however, can be answered only if we know for certain that parts of
the Scriptures, e.g. the psalms or certain hymnical passages of the
Pentateuch, were understood or performed metrically. Unfortunately,
we are far from any definite answer to the problem. E. Sievers, D. H.
314 THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
Müller, and many other scholars have most carefully investigated
the possibility of a metrical structure in the Scriptures; but their
results are vague, controversial, and by no means conclusive. Only
two facts stand out as established principles: (1) the parallelism of
Scriptural poetry, sometimes called ‘dichotomical structure’, which
divides almost every poetical sentence into two parts, similar or
antithetic in thought; (2) strophic structure, especially in certain
prophetic ‘songs’, e.g. Isa. v; Jer. xxxii; Ezek. xxxvii, to name
only three of the most famous instances. Nevertheless, quite a few
famous historians such as Josephus, Jerome, and other Church
Fathers insist that certain passages of Scripture were written in
strictly metrical form. Again, since there is no positive evidence for
metrical performance of Scripture, we have to assume that the music
of the Temple was non-metrical, ie. polyrhythmic, and that its
rhythm was entirely dependent upon the accentuation of the text. ·
The principle of parallelism has to be considered the origin of all
dichotomic systems of performance, such as the responsorium, the
strict antiphona and the responsorial psalmody, both in Judaism and
in Christianity. The strophic or refrain structure may have played a
part in the 'Songs of Ascent' (Pss. 120-34), although modern scholars
have replaced the old Christian concept of these psalmi graduum by
either the Talmudic interpretation of ‘Songs of Pilgrimage’ or by a
reference to a rhetorical device of these psalms, the so-called anadi-
plosis (chain-figure).
CONTINUITY OF JEWISH TRADITION
It is of paramount importance to the study of Jewish music to
determine whether its tradition was continuous in general, or inter-
rupted by the frequent disasters and migrations that have been the
lot of the Jewish people. If we search for an answer to this question
in other fields of Jewish civilization—philosophy, theology, litera-
ture—the continuity of its development is assured beyond doubt.
Yet some writers have drawn a sharp line across the musical tradition
of Judaism, separating the culture of ‘the Bible from that of the
Ghetto’. Only if there had been a danger of a radical rupture at any
time after the fall of the Temple, should we have reason to assume
a new untraditional beginning. The historical facts, however, speak
unequivocally. The Temple services were regularly attended by divi-
1 Notably L. Saminsky in The Music of the Bible and of the Ghetto (New York, 1937),
which is a collection of more or less aphoristic and apodictic statements, most of them
without historical foundation. *
CONTINUITY OF JEWISH TRADITION S
sions of 'standing-men' from the various provinces of Palestine.
These men had a synagogue in the Temple area at their disposal—
the so-called ‘Hall of Stones’ (Luc. ii. 46; Acts ш. 11; v. 12)—and
the priests were entitled to conduct the services there, thus link-
ing the rural communities with the tradition of the central sanctuary.
One of the numerous personalities who endeavoured to transmit the
priestly music to the representatives of the synagogue was R. Joshua
ben Hananya who regularly taught the ‘stand-up men’ the institutions
and the customs of the Temple. He was a famous singer and used to
go from the orchestra of the Temple to the ‘ Hall of Stones’ in order
to conduct the daily ѕегуісе.! As a disciple of Johannan ben Zakkai,
he assisted him in saving as much as possible of the Temple ritual
that it might be rendered in the academy of Jamnia.? He and his
contemporaries formed a strong link in the chain of tradition at a
most critical time. Apart from these historical facts there are suffi-
cient data to warrant the integrity of the musical tradition of Judaism.
Comparisons with the music of the early Church will presently con-
firm our conclusions.
Rabbinic sources explain the strict prohibition of any instrumental
music in the Synagogue as an expression of mourning for the loss of
the Temple and land, but the present writer has been able to show
that a certain animosity against all instrumental music existed well
before the fall of the Temple. It seems that this enmity towards in-
strumental music was a defence against the musical and orgiastic
mystery cults in which Syrian and Mesopotamian Jews not infre-
quently participated.? Similar utterances came from Philo and one
of the Judaeo-Christian Sybilles, to name only two chief witnesses.
The primitive Christian community held the same view, as we know
from apostolic and post-apostolic literature: instrumental music was
thought unfit for religious services; the Christian sources are quite
outspoken in their condemnation of instrumental performances. Ori-
ginally, only song was considered worthy of direct approach to the
Divinity.*
In the two centres of Jewry, Palestine and Babylonia, the liturgy
of the Synagogue was gradually developed, and—with it—its music.
1 Talmud, 'Arakhin 11b.
2 Talmud, Succa 53a.
* Cf. Eric Werner, ‘The Conflict between Hellenism and Judaism in the Music of the
Early Church’, in Hebrew Union College Annual (1947), pp. 416-20.
* Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus ii. 4; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes in Corp.
Script. Eccl. Lat. 4, 270; also Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 5, 25, in Patrologia Graeca
xxxv, col. 708/9. i
316 THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
If we compare the constituents of early Synagogue and early Church
music, we arrive at the following parallelisms:
Synagogue Church
Cantillation of Scriptures Cantillation of Scriptures
Psalmody Psalmody
Post-Biblical Prayers Christian Prayers (chanted)
Melismatic Songs i Hymns
Melismatic Songs
These elements, however, which at first seem to be identical,
diverged considerably as regards musical performance as early as the
late second or early third century. Not only did the hymn attain a
predominant position in the Church, especially in Eastern Chris-
tianity, contrary to the rite of the Synagogue where the hymn-forms
were not introduced until the sixth century, but even the Christian
performance of psalmody differed to a certain degree from the
Jewish.
Whereas in the Synagogue the precentor was the sole musical func-
tionary until the sixth or seventh century the churches early developed
choral singing, especially with the development of monasticism. On
the other hand, a good deal of the musical tradition of the Synagogue
was taken over and preserved by the Church.
CANTILLATION OF SCRIPTURE
The attitude of the early Synagogue is clearly expressed in the
Talmudic statement: ‘Whosoever reads Scripture without chant...
to him the Scriptural word is applicable **I gave them laws and they
heeded them not". The term 'cantillation of Scripture’ is very com-
plex, however, inasmuch as there is more than one system of Scrip-
tural chant in existence. Not only do the various parts of the Bible
employ different cantillation, according to their liturgical function,
but considerable divergences of regional traditions play a certain
part. Thus, the Yemenite Jews, whose tradition is by far the oldest,
use a cantillation much at variance with thecentral and west European
Jews (Ashkenazim), and these again differ from the former Spanish
Israelites (Sephardim).?
Notwithstanding these variants, a common source is clearly dis-
cernible, the more so since the cantillation was to a certain extent
regulated by three successive systems of Jewish ecphonetic notation.
! Megilla 32a.
? Cf. A. Z. Idelsohn, Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies, i (Leipzig, 1914),
preface; also R. Lachmann, The Cantillation of the Jews of Djerba (Jerusalem, 1940).
CANTILLATION OF SCRIPTURE 317
The first system (Proto-Palestinian) arose in the fifth century A.D. in
Palestine; it was closely akin to the ancient Syrian system of notation
consisting only of dots and a few strokes.! The second system emerged
in Babylon during the late seventh and eighth centuries and used an
intricate method of indicating the respective accents by the first letters
of their names. The third, which finally proved best, was the system
of the Tiberian Masorites which came into being during the ninth and
tenth centuries; it shows a remarkable similarity to that of the early
Byzantine ecphonetic signs.? A few illustrations may be cited:
Byzantine signs Hebrew signs
* Bareia * Legarmeh
~ Kathiste — Zarqa
A Kremaste v Shofar munach
Е Hypokrisis 3 Shalshelet
Since the rabbinic sources of the early fifth century already show
familiarity with the existence of primitive accents, we may assume
that the ecphonetic systems arose in a country equally accessible to
Byzantines, Palestinians, and Syrians: possibly north-west Syria. It
should be noted in passing that the primary purpose of these accents
was not the fixation of Scriptural cantillation but the minutely perfect
punctuation and syntactic division of the Biblical text. Then the
newly created accents were adjusted to the older cantillation. That
such a cantillation existed in the early Christian liturgies of Jeru-
salem and Antioch, we know from various sources, chiefly from
the Western Church Fathers. Thus we can explain why certain
phrases of the Roman tonus lectionis, which is based upon Western
neums, bear a remarkable resemblance to Jewish motives of cantil-
lation such as:
Ex297
The Half Close
Jewish versions
Е
Levante Italy Yemenites
Roman versions
Climacus resupinus Benedi - - cti- o - пе per- petua.
1 See Vol. II, pp. 10, 11.
* See my ‘Preliminary Notes on Catholic and Jewish Musical Punctuation’ in
Hebrew Union College Annual, xv (1940), also Idelsohn, Jewish Music in its Historical
Development (New York, 1929), pp. 35-71.
318 THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
The Full Stop
Jewish versions
Central European Yemenites Syrian
Roman versions
Punctus versus Tonus antiquus Close of First Psalm Tone
PSALM TONES
The same resemblance exists between the psalm tones; yet here a
distinction must be made. Formerly, some scholars thought the
Jewish and Gregorian psalm tones to be remnants of the Temple
liturgy. This cannot be so, since, hardly 150 years after the fall of
the Temple, the Rabbis disagreed concerning the Temple’s singing
of the Hallel (Ps. 113-18), the most solemn and revered collection of
psalms. All possible forms of responsorial and antiphonal perform-
ance are mentioned in those passages of the Talmud where the Hallel
is discussed. The close kinship between Oriental Jewish psalmody, on
the one hand, and Gregorian, Armenian, and Syrian psalm tones,
on the other, impels us to assume that it was not the Temple, but the
early Synagogue which served as acommon source. The strict parallel-
ism, the fundamental principle of Hebrew poetry, was carefully pre-
served in all the translations of the Bible. This dichotomic structure
led to the establishment of such typically psalmodic practices as
responses, antiphons, refrain-psalms, &c., all of which were taken
over by the Churches. The claims of the Church Fathers that Basilius,
or Flavian and Diodorus invented antiphonal singing, must be under-
stood to mean that these men introduced such forms in the Gentile
Church,? for in Judaism they were well known for centuries before
the rise of Christianity. It is instructive to compare a few psalm tones
of the Roman Church with Jewish psalmody* (Ex. 298).
AUTONOMOUS MELODY
While in Scriptural cantillation and psalmody the melismata are
restricted to the function of musical punctuation, marking the caesura
1 Talmud, Sota 30b.
? See also Chap. VII, p. 311, and Vol. II, Chap. I, p. 6.
* Cf. Tosefta, ed. Zuckermandel (Halberstadt, 1881), pp. 303 f. ; also Mekhilta, ed. Weiss
(Vienna, 1865), pp. 42 ff.
* For the ancient version of Tonus IV see P. Wagner, Gregorianische Formenlehre
(1921), p. 90; for the example from the Lamentations, see ibid., p. 239. See also The
History of Music in Sound (Н.М.У.), i, side 14.
Ex. 298
Psalm-Tones
Roman version
Jewish version
IV, Tonus (ancient version
VI. Tonus
VIII. Tonus
Tonus Peregrinus
Рѕ.114 in Easter-time
entations
Yemenite
Tonus solemnis lectionis (Conclusio)
Solemn Chant of Scripture on High Holy days
320 THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
in the middle, and the punctus at the end of the verse, in another
form the melisma assumes full domination. As distinct from cantilla-
tion and psalmody, where syntactic and tonic accents determine the
flow, the melody is autonomous іп the ecstatic * Alleluias' and inde-
pendent of the word. Even Isidore of Seville knew of the synagogal
origin of the Alleluia songs when he said ‘Laudes, hoc est Alleluia
canere canticum est Hebraeorum".! (‘The praises, that is to say the
singing of Alleluia, is a song of the Hebrews.") It is in the Alleluias
that the principle of the formula plays the most important part.
These formulas were ancient melodic patterns which were linked
together and, through constant repetition, often assumed the func-
tion and character of leading-motives. They represent the first in-
stances of absolute or ‘autonomous’ music. A few examples will
illustrate this point (Ex. 299). Г
Neither the Synagogue nor the early Church had professional
choirs. In the first three centuries the sheliach tsibbur (messenger of
the congregation), an honorary precentor, performed all parts of the
liturgy, supported by the worshippers’ responses. The early Church
used the terms psalmista, lector, anagnostes, or cantor for the same
office. Only when monasticism attained its influence in the Church
did trained monastic choruses become the rule in larger Christian
communities. In Judaism this development took place about two
centuries later—650-700—when the students of the talmudic aca-
demies of Babylon formed standing choruses.? It was perhaps
an imitation of the successful Christian practice, although the
Babylonian Jews were not in direct contact with any Christian
Church.
THE MODES OF SYNAGOGUE MUSIC
No use of chordal or harmonic construction is made by the peoples
of the Near East. Unison melody is prevalent, occasionally em-
bellished by instrumental accompaniment parallel to the chief melodic
line with improvised ornaments (heterophony). The melodic lines of
all Near Eastern music are based upon modes. Judaism, too, uses
certain stereotyped melodic patterns which, by repetition and associa-
tion, crystallized in the course of centuries into a system of modes.
1 Isidorus Hisp. De offic. 1. 13, in Patrologia Latina 83, col. 750. See also Vol. П, p. 5,
and Werner, ‘The Attitude of the Church Fathers to Hebrew Psalmody', in Review of
Religion (1943), pp. 339-52.
2 Cf. Nathan ha-Babli in Neubauer, Medieval Jewish Chroniclers, ii (Oxford, 1887-95),
pp. 83-88; also my study *The Doxology in Synagogue and Church', Hebrew Union
College Annual, xix (1946), p. 307, where a full translation is given.
Ex. 299
T
“L.
(a) Priestly blessing of Yemenite Jews
(&) Hosianna (Idelsohn 1., p. 81)
(c) Babylonian Jews (Thrice Holy; Idelsohn П. 101) (2) Tractus, Vinea enim (P. Wagner, Ш. 360)
Do-mus Is-ra -
II.
(а) Yemenite Jews
A- do-nai, efc.
В >
уіѕ - га - el,
She-ma’
(à Central European Jews, daily Prayer-mode
(c) Te Deum (Antiphonale Ambros)
322 THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
Why eight modes seem to have constituted the generally accepted
number is not quite clear; indeed, this question is so obscure that it
will be useful to explore the origin of modality as much or as little
as the scope of this chapter will permit.
The eight modes, which we know from Christian theorists (Okto-
echos), in spite of their octave-like arrangement, have nothing to do
with the system of a scale reaching through the interval of an octave.
The earliest accessible sources demonstrate that the conception of
eight modes originated with the calendar. Hittite and Babylonian
documents allude to this! but the connexion becomes quite clear
when we bear in mind that the Syro-Byzantine Oktoechos was origin-
ally a group of hymns to be sung on the eight Sundays following
Pentecost. This reminds one strongly of the ancient Pentacontade
calendar of the Near East in which eight holidays were inserted into
a period of fifty days (seven weeks plus one day). This calendar
system is still, to a certain extent, linked to the Oktoechos of the
Nestorian and Armenian Churches.
In Judaism the musical modes have undergone numerous develop-
ments. First, as we see from the superscriptions and structures of
some psalms, they were an esoteric secret of the priestly cast. Thus
Psalm vi bears the inscription ‘‘al ha-sheminit' ; the usual interpreta-
tion of sheminit, meaning ‘the eighth’, has led to translations such as
‘tunes in the octave’ or ‘upon an instrument with eight strings’.
Neither of these explanations is satisfactory when compared with an
old rabbinic interpretation quoted by Saadya Gaon, the great Jewish
philosopher of the ninth and tenth centuries. He writes:
This is a hymn . . . in which the regular singers of the Temple were
ordered to praise God in the eighth lahan [Arabic for ‘mode’ or ‘melodic
pattern’]. The expression ‘‘а/ ha-sheminit’ demonstrates that the Levites
used eight modes, so that each time one of their regular groups executed
one mode.?
In the Middle Ages, the Jewish modes were understood as herme- '
neutic devices to attune the human soul to the various emotions
* Cf. my study on ‘The oldest sources of Octave and Octoechos’, Acta Musicologica,
xx (1948), p. 1, where all pertinent documents are quoted.
? Saadya Gaon's psalm-translation, ed. S. H. Margulies (Breslau, 1884), pp. 11, 13,
30 (Arabic and German); also H. Ewald, Über die Arabisch geschriebenen Werke
jüdischer Sprachgelehrten (Stuttgart, 1844), pp. 14 ff. The entire question is com-
prehensively treated by H. G. Farmer in Saadya Gaon and Music (London, 1943),
pp. 78 ff, and by E. Werner and I. Sonne, ‘Philosophy and Theory of Music in Judaeo-
Arabic Literature', Hebrew Union College Annual, xvi (1941 and 1943), pp. 295 ff. and
E. Werner, ‘The Origin of the 8 Modes’, ibid. (1948), pp. 220 ff.
THE MODES OF SYNAGOGUE MUSIC 323
expressed in the Scriptural and post-Biblical poetry of Judaism. Then
they deteriorated to musical habits, especially when they became imita-
tions of Arab modes or melodies (/ahanim). In the eighteenth century
they were all but forgotten, but in the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury they were rediscovered and reconsidered. In these circumstances
their tradition is by no means free from corruption, and authenticity
can be claimed for only a few. Owing to constant repetition and asso-
ciation with certain liturgical types, the Jewish modes have today a
strong hermeneutic function, linking special prayer-types with special
modes. This practice is, of course, one of the numerous instances
of the ‘ethos doctrine’ of music, common to all ancient nations.
Ex. 300
Structure of Jewish Prayer- Modes
(а) Skeleton ‘Magen Aboth’- mode (MA)
2
(€) AR subtonal.
SSS а
(a) Phrygian Plagal. A
b
> чу
(e) Modified Lydian mode /Daniel-mode of Spanish-Arab Jews)
Idelsohn, Thes. IV. 323
(f) ‘Adonai Molokh'-mode (A M), mixolydian, supratonal
@) AM subtonal (Ha-El Psalm-tone)
These modes are not of the scale character that was imposed upon
the modes of the Church by medieval theorists; they are rather models
of melodic types. In addition to these chief modes, we find, especially
324 THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
among the Oriental Jews, a number of other patterns that do not
easily submit to systematization.!
One of these modes, the main strain of Hellenistic psalmody,
was especially singled out by the Church Father Clement of Alex-
andria in the beginning of the third century. Clement praises the
majestic psalmody of the Alexandrian Jews, which was chanted in
the Tropos Spondeiakos.? We have exact descriptions of this ancient
mode by Plutarch and other writers; and it can still be traced in
the oldest strata of Jewish, Byzantine, and Roman Catholic chant.?
THE INFLUENCE OF POETRY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF
SYNAGOGUE MUSIC
So long as Biblical diction, and its more or less conscious imitation,
dominated the language of the Jewish liturgy, the musical forms and
expressions remained unchanged—even in the first bitter centuries of
exile and of conflict with conquering Christianity. But gradually a
momentous change took place in both the substance and the execu-
tion of the liturgy. A new poetic style came into being in which metre
and rhyme played important roles. The beginnings of this develop-
ment reach back to the fifth century. It was caused by external as well
as by internal circumstances. Since Justinian's novella 146 prohibited
the Deuterosis (Bible exegesis, Midrashic homily) in the Jewish ser-
vice, Jewry tried to circumvent this law by introducing didactic
homiletic poetry as substitutes for exegesis within the liturgy. That
this was no more than an apparent cause is demonstrated by the fact
that after the Arab conquest of Palestine and Babylonia (636-50) the
Jews, liberated from Byzantine oppression, retained and even greatly
expanded the new poetic insertions of the liturgy. We are bound to
assume that Jewry simply followed the trend of the times, for the
contemporary Syrian and Byzantine poems, too, are chiefly based
upon homilies and are often nothing more than versified sermons or
exegeses. Metrically, the early piyyutim (liturgical poems) show a
variety of systems ; sometimes accents are counted (homotony), some-
times syllables, as in Syriac poetry, sometimes even words. After the
tenth century the Arab system of metre was generally adopted. More
difficult is the problem of rhyme, for neither the Byzantines nor the
1 Cf, especially the motives cited in Lachmann, op. cit., pp. 98 ff.; also R. Lach's
remarks in *Die vergleichende Musikwissenschaft', Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der
Wissenschaften (Vienna, c. 1924), pp. 35 ff., 89.
2 Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, ii, ch. iv (P.G. 8, col. 445).
* Cf. my study ‘The Attitude of the Church Fathers to Hebrew Psalmody’, Review
of Religion (1943), esp. pp. 349-52.
INFLUENCE OF POETRY ON SYNAGOGUE MUSIC 325
Syrians ever cultivated it very much except for some forms of rhymed
prose; perhaps Jewry adopted pre-Islamic or even Mandaic patterns
of rhyme, although they were rather primitive.
The introduction of metre and rhyme brought with it a new type
of music, not necessarily a periodic symmetrical one like the occi-
dental music of the eighteenth century, but a kind of chant which
could no longer disregard the principles of metre and strophic struc-
ture. The first pioneer to take cognizance of these changes seems to
have been Rabbi Jehudai Gaon (c. 720), of whom it is said that ‘the
early Hazanim (cantors) learned musical tradition from him as he had
learned it from his teachers for many generations'.! He championed
the cause of new poetry and even ruled that a blind cantor might be
appointed if his other qualifications recommended him. He also
advocated the ternary form a-b-a in liturgical rubrics where the
prayer opens and closes with a eulogy. They should be chanted to the
same tune, *but the middle should be sung differently, yet not too
differently’. Jehudai Gaon, therefore, must be considered as the father
of Jewish musical tradition. Shortly before his time, the great Pales-
tinian poets Jannai and Jose ben Jose show, both in form and con-
tent, remarkable resemblance to contemporary Byzantine hymnody,
especially to the form of the kontakion.?
After the Arab conquest of Babylonia, Palestine, and Spain (711),
the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula established themselves in a close
symbiosis with the ruling Arab class. The centuries between 800 and
1400 witnessed the rise of a magnificent Jewish culture in Spain which
furthered religion, philosophy, literature, and music. The famous
poet and philosopher of the Spanish epoch, Jehudah Halevi (1085—
1141), discusses unfavourably the aspects of metrical music in his
philosophical work The Kuzari, still preferring the old psalmodic
improvising chant. Others, however, felt differently. A number of
Spanish-Jewish writers, mostly writing in Arabic, showed consider-
ably more understanding of the musical demands of metrical poetry;
they even stressed the value of musical theory and championed its
study. Their attitude represented a mixture of Arabic, Biblical, and
Greek ideas.? Few musical documents, however, have been preserved.
т Cf. my study on Doxology in Hebrew Union College Annual, xix (1946), pp. 303 ff.
? The greatest Byzantine melodos, Romanus, was of Jewish parentage, and his famous
hymn upon the reappearance of Christ and the Day of Judgement is based upon various
rabbinic homilies. Cf. Vol. II, p. 21, and E. Wellesz, ‘Melito’s Homily’ in Journal of
Theological Studies, Oxford (1943), pp. 46 ff.
* Cf. Werner and Sonne *Philosophy and Theory of Music in Judaeo-Arabic litera-
ture', Hebrew Union College Annual, xvi (1941 and 1943), pp. 262 ff; also Curt Sachs,
The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, pp. 277 ff.
326 THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
In contrast with the conservative Arab-inspired philosophy of the
writers are the sources which have come down to us either by oral
tradition or through documents. From the fourteenth century on,
Judaeo-Spanish folk-songs, as well as artistic accomplishments, show
a distinct inclination to follow Western and not Arab leadership, all
efforts of the music department of the Baghdad Bait-hikma (Academy)
notwithstanding. .
The oldest known manuscript of Hebrew music! is a ‘Eulogy on
the Death of Moses', written in Lombardic neums on a four-line
stave. Its text, and probably also its music, was composed by an other-
wise unknown Amr ibn Sah’l who lived in the eleventh century; it is
very much akin to the more elaborate types of Gregorian chant.!
Ex. 301
It seems to have originated at Ravenna, or thereabouts, although it
was found in Cairo; the neums are Italian in type, while the Hebrew
script shows Byzantine influence. Shortly after the thirteenth century
the Italian Jews became the recognized leaders in poetry and music;
their position was strengthened by the catastrophe that befell Spanish
Jewry at the end of the fifteenth century.
THE MUSIC OF ITALIAN JEWRY
Generally speaking, the chant of the Synagogue had remained on
1 The manuscript is in possession of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York;
(E. Adler Collection No. 4096). Cf. my paper, ‘The Oldest Sources of Synagogal Chant’,
Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, xvi (1947), pp. 225-32.
THE MUSIC OF ITALIAN JEWRY 327
the level of stylized folk-song for many centuries. The transition from
this position to the sphere of genuine art music began with the early
Renaissance and was nowhere so well developed as in Italy. There we
find composers of Jewish extraction as early as the end of the fifteenth
century. The papal court of Leo X (1513-21) employed two Jewish
musicians, Jacobo Sansecondo, probably the model of Raphael's
* Apollo on Mount Parnassus', and Giovanni Maria, who, in honour
of the Pope, surnamed himself * De Medicis'.! The sixteenth century
produced a score of outstanding Jewish musicians in Italy, of whom
we need mention only those who were employed at the court of the
Dukes of Mantua, the very liberal Gonzagas: Abramo dall' Arpa
Ebreo, Isacchino Massarano, David da Civita and Allegro Porto.
Something must be said here about the institution of the ghetto and
its influence upon the music of the Jews within its boundaries. The
Fourth Lateran Council, under Pope Innocent III (1215), decided to
segregate the Jews as radically as possible from their Christian fellow-
citizens, placing them in ghetti that were closed at nightfall; social or
professional intercourse with the Christian community was virtually
made impossible. It took about two generations before these decrees
were fully implemented, but from about 1270 until the end of the
fifteenth century these stern rules were faithfully carried out, and the
Franciscan and Dominican monks did everything in their power to
excite the Christians against Jewry.? Under these circumstances, while
every tradition was loyally preserved in the ghetti, there was no
opportunity for development. The ghetto did not kill Judaism and its
institutions, but it condemned them to stagnation and gradual
deterioration. No wonder, then, that we hear practically nothing of
music from Jewish sources. Italian archives, however, especially those
of Venice, Leghorn, and Ferrara contain a number of decrees against
Jewish music-teachers.?
At the end of the sixteenth century two remarkable persons ap-
peared who at one stroke raised synagogal music to the high standard
of contemporary music in general. They were Rabbi Leon da Modena
and his protégé Solomone de' Rossi il Ebreo. The initiative came from
the Rabbi, one of the most colourful personalities of Jewish history.
Brilliant and profound scholar, anonymous pamphleteer against him-
self, composer and conductor, prolific writer, gambler, alchemist: in
short, a jack of twenty-six trades (which he carefully enumerated), he
1 Cf. E. Birnbaum, Jüdische Musiker am Hof von Mantua (Vienna, 1893).
? Cf. Cecil Roth, The History of the Jews in Italy (Philadelphia, 1946), pp. 177 ff.
* A. Е. Rio, Les Quatre martyrs (Paris, 1856), p. 34.
328 THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
founded a musical society in the ghetto of Venice. One of his (con-
verted) disciples Giulio Morosini has given us a good description of
Modena’s Accademia musicale. The practice of having double choirs,
then popular in Venice, was introduced to the ghetto by Rabbi da
Modena, and he himself composed a series of such choral pieces in the
style of the Gabrielis.? But his chief merit is that he induced Solomone
de' Rossi to compose a book of synagogal music. This work, The Songs
of Solomon, published by Bragadin (Venice, 1620), contains thirty-odd
choral pieces ranging from three to eight parts. The style of his music
resembles that of Monteverdi, with whom Rossi collaborated in the
composition of the sacred drama Maddalena (Sacra rappresentazione
di Giov. Batt. Andreini Fiorentino) in 1617. Rossi's synagogue com-
positions contain few, if any, traces of Jewish tradition. While they
are of enchanting beauty and religious spirit, they remained alien to
the customary vein of synagogue song, which was the main reason
why they fell rapidly into oblivion after Modena's death.?
The merit of having preserved portions of old Jewish music belongs
not to a Jew but to the Christian Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739), a
Venetian noble. He collected twelve traditional chants of Venetian
Jewry and used them as canti fermi in his composition of the first
fifty Psalms, the famous Estro poetico-armonico, published in 1724-7.
This attempt to revive ancient psalm tunes must be considered a late
aftermath of former humanistic efforts to explore scientifically the
fields of Scripture, Hebrew history, and literature. It has been shown
independently by Idelsohn and myself that a number of Marcello's
Jewish tunes originate in the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries both in
Spain and in central Europe. Here only three of the most interesting ex-
amples will be quoted, showing Arabicas well as Gregorian influences.*
Ex. 302
Intonazione degli Ebrei spagnuoli sopra Odtha ki anithani
E РЖ Им
a ES ae
И Боне ae 2 бзана) 122 s] Sa eS
пу Ces | ee dS m ES ac
A translation is given in my study ‘Manuscripts of the Birnbaum Collection’,
Hebrew Union College Annual, xvii (1944), pp. 414-16.
з Тыа. The manuscripts аге in the Library of the Hebrew Union College.
3 A selected edition of Salomone Rossi’s vocal compositions has been edited by
Samuel Naumbourg and Vincent d'Indy, 2 vols. (Paris, 1876).
4 Marcello’s Hebrew tunes are published and analysed in my study ' Die hebräischen
Intonationen B. Marcellos', Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des
THE MUSIC OF ITALIAN JEWRY 329
Iftonazione degli Ebrei tedeschi sopra Maos Zur
вв A 4 Sara
—pp———- DULL SRS mu ERI EL uL LLL HELL SS SS ee
RD а ЕЕ elu ee ратат) Bee ee ee SS ERR
SS RUSSE MEN: RSS |
THE MUSIC OF CENTRAL EUROPEAN JEWRY
The music of Central European Jewry is of particular interest
to the musicologist because of its amazing capacity for develop-
ment and for active assimilation of foreign elements without loss of
identity.
The finest musical monument erected by Central European Jewry
is a group of solemn chants for the festivals and High Holidays which
in the fifteenth century were already known as 'Missinai tunes’
(melodies from Mt. Sinai). They represent the highest musical ac-
complishment of German Jewry up to the nineteenth century and
reflect, in every phrase of music and text, the eschatological and
mystical longings of a persecuted people. While quite a few motives
of the ‘ Missinai tunes’ originated in the Burgundian art music of the
out-going thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and show certain
resemblances to pieces by Guillaume de Machaut, these borrowed ele-
ments are bynomeansclearly discernible; theyarecompletely integrated
into the traditional style of European Synagogue music. This style
was replete with ‘wandering motives’ which soon became associated
with certain Hebrew phrases or ideas, and thus in course of time
became veritable leitmotives. Two examples will illustrate this point
(Ex. 303).
Judentums (Breslau, 1937), pp. 393-416. Cf. also Idelsohn’s ‘The Traditional Songs of
the German Jews in Italy’, Hebrew Union College Annual, xiii (1938), pp. 569-91.
330 THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
Ex. 303
(a) From Kol Nidre
'5 compositions
rom Machaut
From roe (Chief prayer)
The region in which this assimilation with Burgundian music took
place was that which surrounded the old Jewish communities of the
Rhineland, especially the cities of Worms, Mainz, Speyer, Treves, and
Strasbourg. There we encounter a surprisingly strong familiarity with
western German and eastern French folk-songs, many of which were
integrated and adjusted to the older style of Jewish chants. Songs like
“Wenn ich des Morgen's früh aufsteh’, ‘Der Lindenschmied’, ‘Der
Bruder-Veit’s Ton’, &c., became—with altered rhythm and tonality
(changed from the original second and eighth to modified first and
fifth mode)—part and parcel of Central European Synagogue music.
This kind of adaptation of German folk-music came to an end about
1600 when the constant persecutions, peasant and other wars had all
but annihilated the Jewish communities so that many were forced to
emigrate either to Poland and Russia or to Italy. With the end of the
sixteenth century began the rapid deterioration of West and Central
European Synagogue music.
As distinct from Jewry in the Arab orbit, European Jewry showed
very little interest in musical theory. One interesting exception should
be noted, however; in the year 1342 Leo Hebraeus (Rabbi Levi ben
Gerson, also known as Gersonides) was requested by Philippe de Vitry
to ‘demonstrate a certain presupposition in musical science’. In
THE MUSIC OF CENTRAL EUROPEAN JEWRY 331
fulfilling this request, Leo Hebraeus wrote his treatise De Numeris
Harmonicis in which he placed Philip's principle of prolationes upon
a secure mathematical basis which proved to be most appropriate for
the further development of the notation of the ars nova and sub-
sequent systems.!
THE MUSIC OF EAST-EUROPEAN JEWRY
The Jews who emigrated to Poland and Russia from the fourteenth
century onward to 1600 found already established Jewish communi-
ties in their new homeland, chiefly in the south-eastern portions. Most
of these earlier settlers had at one time or another escaped the turmoil
in Persia, the Caucasus, or the persecution of the Byzantine govern-
ment. They spoke Old-Slavonic or Tatar. It was only when the
German immigrants came, with their superior Jewish culture and
education, that these languages yielded to the Judaeo-German of the
newcomers which in later centuries developed into a new language,
the Yiddish idiom of all Eastern European Jewry. Together with their
Middle-German language, the native Jews also learned their tradi-
tional songs. After a period of uncritical acceptance, a certain aversion
to the German-Jewish songs set in and this led to a reshaping of the
Synagogue chant of the eastern European Jews about the year 1620.
During this revision the cantor (Hazan) attained a position of para-
mount importance. Keen to hear new music as the Eastern European
Jews always were, but restricted to the synagogue as their main
institution of learning and art, they naturally urged the cantor to
satisfy this longing. He was forever called upon to provide new tunes
for the weekly service on Friday evening and the Sabbath and to
interpret and arrange them in a manner that would satisfy the artistic
longings of the congregations. Says Idelsohn: * The Jew demanded
that the Hazan, through his music, make him forget his actual life and
elevate him upon the wings of his tunes into a fantastic paradisiacal
world, affording him a foretaste of Messianic times in the heavenly
Тегиза]ет.’? The requirements of a good Hazan were: he had to
possess a sweet voice, in the Oriental sense, meaning a lyric tenor of
nasal quality (called by the Byzantians eviédwvov); he had to be well
trained in brilliant coloratura-singing, since the Eastern European
1 Neither Coussemaker, Script. Med. Aevi, iii. 10, nor Riemann, Geschichte der
Musiktheorie (Berlin, 2nd ed., 1920), pp. 235 ff. understood the real intent of Leo
Hebraeus’s treatise, which I demonstrated in * Theory and Philosophy of Music in Judaeo-
Arabic Literature', Hebrew Union College Annual, xvii (1943), appendix ii, pp. 564-72.
? Cf. Idelsohn's study *The Features of the Jewish Sacred Folk Song in Eastern
Europe’, Acta musicologica, iv (1932), pp. 19-21.
332 THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
style is replete with virtuoso passages of dazzling fantasy and finesse;
he had to be a versatile and original improviser upon certain tradi-
tional modes, exactly as the Arabic or Turkish recital singers im-
provise upon certain maqàámát. East European Jewry called these
modes Gust (from the Italian gusto) or Steiger. The improvisations
were strictly modal and polyrhythmic, rarely influenced by the West-
European systems of beat ór metre. The favourite modes were:
1. The Ahaba Rabba mode (Great Love): E-F-G#-A-B-C-D-E, with
a tendency to build the tune around the tenor D or A. The Greek Orthodox
Church knows this mode, too, as its Echos ii and iv.? As in Jewish practice,
it is used there mainly for supplicatory texts. It seems probable that the
eastern Jews borrowed this mode from the Byzantine Church since it was
unknown to Central European Jewry. Other elements of Greco-Slavonic
church music have penetrated into eastern Jewish chant, as a comparison
between the Russian Synodal hymn books and the Jewish folk-songs clearly
shows. Cf. Ex. 300 (5), (c).
2. The Tefilla mode (Prayer): the melodic pattern strongly resembles the
fifth Gregorian psalm-tone; its scale is mixolydian. Cf. Ex. 300 (f).
3. The Magen Aboth mode (Shield of the Fathers): this corresponds to
a Dorian scale with a minor sixth and is characterized by its melodic
pattern. It moves towards the fifth, leaps to the octave, and then rapidly
descends to the finalis. Cf. Ex. 300 (a).
The emphasis on the vocal soloist, who at the same time had to
perform a priestly function, led inevitably to the idolization of certain
outstanding singers, improvisation led to anarchy, brilliance to empty
showmanship; profound religiosity became, in the course of this
development, a matter of routine or habit for the cantor. Still, by
virtue of his experience, he was able to stir his audience to the depth
of religious emotion. But by the end of the eighteenth century this
style had lost its genuineness.
DISINTEGRATION OF SYNAGOGUE MUSIC BEFORE THE ERA
OF EMANCIPATION
The beginning of the disintegration of Central and East European
Svnagogue music was arrested for almost a full century by a new
movement whose roots lay deep in the realm of mysticism. Hasidism,
which—in some respects—may be compared to the pietism of the
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, came into being in eastern
Europe. It was originally a reaction against rigid rabbinism, but in
1 See pp. 449-50.
2 J, B. Rebours, Traité de Psaltique (Paris, 1906), pp. 47, 90, 111. It seems that the
mode is of Turko-Tatar origin, since neither classic Jewish nor Arab musicians up to the
fourteenth century make any mention of it.
DISINTEGRATION OF SYNAGOGUE MUSIC 333
the course of time it developed an independent philosophy of its own.
One of its main goals was the attainment of supreme bliss through a
mystic approach to God. Music became a chief device of this esoteric
philosophy. It was agreed by all adherents of Hasidism that song
(without words) was capable of transforming the soul of the singing
worshipper to such an extent that definite stages of a mystic approach
to God could be reached, stages which otherwise were most difficult
to attain.! The ideas that song is the soul of the universe, that the
realm of heaven sings, and similar notions are amazingly like those
of the early Christian mystics; even Augustine's description of the
wordless Jubili is born out of the same feeling that mystical music
reaches a realm near to God. (It would be a worthy task to compare
the ideas of early Christianity concerning music with those of
Hasidism; striking parallels would certainly emerge.) Since the Rabbi
of the Hasidic community was always the guiding spirit in mystic lore,
it became a common practice for the Rabbi to compose his own ‘God-
hymns'. Many of them have come down to us in full notation. They
invariably start slowly and majestically, but increase in intensity and
speed until they reach a fast dance-like rhythm that leads into either
an ecstatic jubilation or a lament. These pieces were called niggunim
(plural of niggun, tune). In the development of Hasidism they became
something like musical symbols of the various schools and ideologies
which the respective Rabbi-composers had conceived.
When the economic and political situation of eastern European
Jewry became less and less tolerable, large waves of emigrants flooded
central and then western Europe. A large number of the emigrants
were singers and cantors; their route was usually via Silesia or
Moravia to Bavaria. These eastern singers carried the traditions of
Hasidic music with them; thus we frequently encounter Hasidic tunes
in central Europe from about 1750 on. The central European cantors,
fascinated by the beauty of Austrian and German art music as well
as of Hasidic tunes, frequently tried to reconcile these two strange
worlds of music. This was occasionally attempted by simple juxta-
position, often producing deplorable results, sometimes by a more
refined technique, whereby occasionally fine pieces emerged. One of
this latter category, a duet for soprano and alto, by Abraham di
Caceres of Amsterdam (1740) is given here. The general style resem-
bles that of Handel's or Jommelli's chamber duets, but the melodic
! Rabbi Shneor Zalman said: ' For the song of the souls—at the time they are swaying
in the high regions to drink from the well of the Almighty King—consists of tones only,
free and dismantled of burdensome words.’
334 THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
line is strongly influenced by eastern Jewish chant (Г 1 marks such
passages).!
Ex. 304
A .
(=
(oe (Soe S Ss pa = Е Se
Through the influx of heterogeneous elements such as Slav and
German folk-songs, Russian church music, Hasidic tunes, and, above
all, art music of central Europe, the Jews who had lost much of their
positive assimilating power since 1600 were faced with a task far
beyond their ability. They were no longer capable of integrating the
various elements into the body of their traditional music; they could
no longer even preserve that treasure. Ignorant cantors, being ex-
ploited singers, urged by the cravings of the congregations for ever-new
music, made a theatre or music-hall out of the Synagogue. Its songs
were secularized : contaminated with poor imitations of Italian bravura
arias, miserable vocal arrangements of Gluck’s or Haydn’s instru-
mental pieces. This development was all but inevitable since the ghetti
could no longer completely segregate the Jews from their cultural
environments. They hungered for new music but were, under the
! MS. in the Library of the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati.
DISINTEGRATION OF SYNAGOGUE MUSIC 335
rabbinical and secular laws, permitted to hear music solely in the
Synagogue where it was performed vocally, and usually by untrained
singers. Small wonder, then, that the emancipation caught the Jews
in a condition where they cared very little for traditional music; it was
their primary desire to absorb the fascinating trends of contemporary
European music. Typical of this is the enthusiasm with which certain
Jewish laymen—and women—followed the course of two famous
sons of Johann Sebastian Bach. Sara Levy, daughter of the Berlin
*Hofjude' Daniel Itzig, the financier of Frederick the Great, and her
circle, were among the favourite disciples of Wilhelm Friedemann
Bach and she was highly praised as a fine harpsichordist by C. P. E.
Bach. She performed many of their works at the early performances of
the Berlin Singakademie.! Only when a certain point of saturation was
reached did they remind themselves of their abandoned treasure. By
then, about 1840, a good deal of that tradition had been lost or irrevo-
cably forgotten. Under the auspices of modern Liberal Judaism and
the science of Judaism a rejuvenation of Synagogue music has taken
place. But this ars nova had originally only a loose connexion with
the ancient tradition; it took almost a century for the new style to
become so firmly linked with tradition that it could be considered an
integral part of Jewish musical history. This development will be dis-
cussed elsewhere (Vol. X). Let it suffice to say here that despite all
changes, both internal and external, Judaism has succeeded in estab-
lishing, expanding, and preserving its own musical style and tradition.
Notwithstanding many foreign elements absorbed in Jewish chant,
and certain distinct similarities with the music of the Near East,
Byzantium, and Eastern Europe, it can be said that the Jews have
created a musical style sui generis, which satisfies all the criteria of an
autonomous cultural entity.
* Cf. С. Schünemann, ‘Die Bachpfiege der Berliner Singakademie,' Bach-Jahrbuch,
1928, р. 144; also Ernst Е. Schmid, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach und seine Kammermusik
(Kassel, 1931), pp. 14 ff, and Jahrbuch der Sammlung Kippenberg viii, pp. 167-9. Madame
Levy was the great-aunt of Felix Mendelssohn, and conveyed the Bach tradition to his
family.
IX
ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
By ISOBEL HENDERSON
THE MUSICAL TRADITION IN ANTIQUITY!
IN the nineteenth century it seemed not incredible that the music of
the medieval churches might derive from some trickle of Hellenic
tradition. Medieval studies have now dispelled such conjectures: even
in antiquity we cannot assume the continuous evolution of one
species of * Greek music'. The main instrumental types and the main
theoretical terms persist. But instruments are inadequate clues to
a music predominantly vocal; and the terms of theory seldom referred
to musical facts. With the notable exception of Aristoxenus, the
purpose of Greek theorists was not to analyse the art of music but to
expound the independent science of harmonics; and ultimately the
transmission of this harmonic science had no more to do with the
history of musical art than the transmission of Greek astronomy or
medicine.?
History must start from the great and obvious divergence between
the fates of language and of music among Greeks who could quote
their Homer for two millennia, but who ceased, after a certain point,
to know their musical past except as they knew names of dead
athletes. Since the point of divergence vitally affects our interpreta-
tion of the ancient sources, it will be convenient to begin with a
rough provisional summary of the stages in this history.
(1) Archaic and classical music was transmitted orally with its
words. We shall find, flourishing in Athens of the fifth century B.C.,
a genuine classical tradition—that is, the perpetual competition of
new music with recollected models and standards. The supreme
document of this tradition is The Frogs of Aristophanes, produced
in 405 p.c. Next year Athens fell in defeat and revolution. During the
fourth century the reservoirs of musical knowledge in school and
theatre were breached. Plato—who had been educated in the classic
style brought to its early maturity by Pindar, and had conversed with
1 In all citations of Greek authors, the figures refer to the numbered sections given
in the margin of standard editions.
2 Cf. Marrou, Histoire de l'éducation dans l'antiquité? (Paris, 1950), p. 190; Saint
Augustin et la fin de la culture antique? (Paris, 1949), pp. 197 ff.
THE MUSICAL TRADITION IN ANTIQUITY 337
Aristophanes—was the profound and sensitive critic of new develop-
ments in the music of his times. By about 320 B.c., as the great teacher
Aristoxenus noted, memory of the classic styles was almost obliter-
ated. (2) Meanwhile a modernistic movement, starting from the later
fifth century, had produced ‘popular classics’, which were upheld
above a flood of transient stuff by the Hellenistic creation of repertory
until, after the Roman conquest, they petered out in the backwoods
of Arcadia. The music of the innovators, Philoxenus and Timotheus,
was virtually dead by the later second century B.c., when two
paeans from the derelict metropolis of Delphi sustain the literary
façade, at least, of an obsolescent style. (3) Later antiquity retails a
music of entertainment and artifice. Except under a brief spell of
Grecian intoxication at Hadrian's court, which bestowed high
patronage on Mesomedes, the composer never again aspires to classic
rank. The musician is now an executant, staging his own impersona-
tions of set literary themes or, more humbly, purveying background
noises for social and ceremonial occasions. A favourite ballet or
mime has its vogue and passes. Writers no longer discussed present
music, for there was no renaissance; nor, as in other arts, could they
study the past, for there was no conservatory. The situation can be /
seen in the state of our musical documents, and explained by the
history of education.
(a) The documents. Out of the vast manufacture of music in anti-
quity we have less than twenty written pieces, mostly stray finds of
papyrus and stone. Music was not transmitted in the great ancient
editions from which the main body of Greek literature descends, and
the insatiable scholarship of Alexandria shows no awareness of
musical palaeography. Greek writers constantly quote literary texts,
but in all their extant works there is only one specific reference to a
musical text. This reference has some intrinsic interest. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, in Augustan times, observes that in the Orestes of
Euripides the music did not rise and fall with the speech-accents,
and further adds that in two paired verses, strophe and antistrophe,
the melody must be identical.! Now we have a papyrus written about
250-150 в.с., containing some lines with music from an antistrophe
of this very play. It has a variant of a textual error also present
in the Alexandrian edition—but in different order—by which a
line of verse is displaced. Such a displacement, if it had occurred after
the extant music was composed, must almost certainly have broken
the melodic correspondence with the strophe, noted by Dionysius
! De compositione verborum, 11 and 19. See also below, p. 374.
338 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
himself. Therefore this music was presumably composed after the
textual corruption began to set in. Dionysius was in no position to
know whether a later text had the music of the original production
of 408 B.C., if he had seen a copy at all.
From other considerations, too, it seems unlikely that a written
record of classical music would be preserved unless by a freak. Some
archaic letter-forms in Greek notation may indeed indicate that pro-
fessional musicians used their ciphers from an early date. But since,
down to the fourth century B.C., no considerable work was composed
for more than one public performance, there was no reason to pre-
serve these memoranda. We have no evidence that written music was
circulated before the times of the Hellenistic repertory.! Nor is it
likely that many citizens could read music. In the later fourth
century notation was taught for harmonic theory, but this habit
seems to have been short-lived.? Practical training in music, which
was an independent discipline, was oral both in school and in the
citizen chorus. Musical settings were certainly not incorporated in
texts made for reading—which meant recitation, as opposed to acting
with gesture and song. Except, possibly, from the fourth to the second
century B.C., musical literacy was rare among educated men. The
spread of books may even be thought to have pushed music out of
education, for the mutual aide-mémoire of verse and melody was no
longer indispensable when the words were easily available in written
copies.
(b) Musical education. Plato, attempting in the fourth century B.C.
to save something of the classical education, gives the following
advice to teachers:?
... The lyre should be used together with the voices, for the clearness of
its strings, the player and the pupil producing note for note in unison.
Heterophony and embroidery by the lyre—the strings throwing out melodic
lines different to the melodia which the poet composed; crowded notes
where his are sparse, quick time to his slow, high pitch to his low, whether
in concert or antiphony, and similarly all sorts of rhythmic complications
of the lyre against the voices—none of this should be imposed upon pupils
who have to snatch out a working knowledge of music rapidly in three
years.
1 The first extant piece is a papyrus of c. 250 в.с. The early papyrus of Timotheus"
musically famous Persae gives the words only. Players are never portrayed reading music.
On a vase of c. 425 в.с. (Fitzwilliam G73) a singer reads from a scroll, but there is no
evidence that it contained notation besides words. Nor can it be seriously argued that
Alexandrian performances of ‘kitharisms’ from Euripides reproduced the original
settings.
2 Aristoxenus, Harmonics, 39-40; but see Marrou, 'MEAOTPAQOIA' in L'antiquité
classique, xv (1946), pp. 289 ff. 3 Laws, 8124. See pl. 10 (а) and (b).
THE MUSICAL TRADITION IN ANTIQUITY 339
Such accompaniments were heterophonic, not polyphonic or
contrapuntal. Plato, speaking of elementary education, is not denying
that classical accompaniments could be heterophonic, though they
were almost certainly simpler or less obtrusive. What he does make
clear is that the composer's legacy was simply the sung poem: the
instrumental part is conceived as a free accompaniment at the
executant's pleasure (too complex, Plato thinks, for elementary
lessons). An archaic crusis (accompaniment) might occasionally be
transmitted in set form; but the orchestration of a classical work—
from the single aulos supporting a tragic chorus to the strings, wind,
and dancers producing a Pindaric ode—was part of a unique spectacle
which perished. Some fifth-century Athenians did learn to play not
only the domestic lyre but the kithara (a big concert-lyre) and the
aulos (a sort of oboe), but in public performance these instruments
were normally left to professionals. The citizen's part on the stage
was the choric voice; and the classics, repeated by the citizen's voice
and his lyre in school and on domestic or social occasions, consisted
in a body of song. Early in the fifth century the classical music had
reasserted the leadership of the vocal part over the instrumental;
from its close, the classicists complain that this priority is being
reversed. The nature of the musical change will be more fully dis-
cussed below. But from Plato's advice we can already see how, in a
music made to show off the professional instrumentalist, the decora-
tive and ephemeral part might overbear the durable melodic structure,
which alone passed into the store of remembered classics. When the
classical language and its literature began to grow unintelligible,
they were saved by the labour of ancient scholars. No such labour
was undertaken for music; and the classical melopoeia in fact perished
from ear and understanding. Its ethos or character was distorted, as
Aristoxenus says—explaining more precisely that when modern
musicians attempted the best classical styles at all, they hit wrong
notes.!
For the history of music the decisive event was the fall of Athens in
404 в.с., and the revolt against the ideals of her former intellectual
élite. In most other matters the post-war education was strongly con-
servative. But musical incompetence, once the mark of the cad,
became a plume of the new snobbery. It was asked whether the citizen
should practise music at all, or merely listen—as in Sparta and Mace-
don, the victorious powers of the fourth century. As Aristotle put it:?
Could music, like cookery, be judged by the consumer, or was
! Harmonics 23 (cited below, pp. 387 ff.). ? Politics 1339a-1342b.
340 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
practical knowledge needed? He argued that practice was desirable,
and need not be pernicious or vulgarizing unless the citizen, indulging
in the pre-war excesses of Athenian spiritual pride, learned the * pro-
fessional instruments'. Here began a divorce between the citizen and
the professional, between theory and practice, from which Europe
still suffers. The three years to which Plato, reluctantly, had reduced
musical education were soon cut down to two; and in Hellenistic
times we hear of schools founded with only one music-master or
with none.? Choral singing was still taught to boys, but the adult
citizen's musicianship so declined that professionals were already
being imported into the fourth-century chorus; and the professional,
on his side, was no longer a cultivated man. Genuine musical
criticism ceases. The classic Athenian comedy had been made for a
society which talked music as it talked politics or war. But in Aristo-
phanes' post-war plays, a shrunken chorus gives us only a last flash
or two of his musical parody ; and his successors substituted entr'actes
by variety artists. The Alexandrian era still has excellent stage gossip
on performers, but a first-hand judgement on the style or quality of
music is hardly to be found after the fourth century. Aristotle already
prefers received opinions. His master Plato and his pupil Aristoxenus
are the last who speak to us with the authority of musical under-
standing. Yet their overwhelming influence on later writers was due
less to their understanding than to the authority which they carried
into two subjects still respected in higher education: philosophy and
harmonics. While practical music lost the intellectual prestige which
it had enjoyed since Homer, these two independent sciences reigned
on, using the language of music for their own ends, and finally
usurping its name.? Mousiké, or musica, which had once included both
music and words, is not always to be translated as ‘music’ in post-
classical authors. Consequently, the evidence of any Greek theorist
must be interpreted with due regard to his date and place in the
history of Greek ideas: musical, mathematical, or metaphysical.
TRADITIONS OF HARMONIC SCIENCE
Harmonics meant tuning, or acoustic theory. Greek postulates
were melodic and heterophonic, and ignored 'harmony' in our
sense. The central problem of harmonic theory was the proper
1 Marrou, Histoire de l'éducation dans l'antiquité (Paris, 1950), pp. 197 ff.
2 лєрї povorkis is cited as the title of a work by Heraclides Ponticus (fourth century
B.C.) on harmonic theory and psychology, which are regularly called џоро:ктў in late
antiquity.
з The term ‘consonant’ (cvuduvos) refers to melodic progressions. Music had nothing
TRADITIONS OF HARMONIC SCIENCE 341
division of musical space. Music, though practically ruled by the
voice, was theoretically analysed in terms of the stretched string,
which yields the words syntonos (taut) for high pitch and aneimenos
(slack) for low, the nomenclature of notes from the plucking fingers,
and some basic features of the notations. The static tuning of the
strings was irreconcilably pitted against the free-wheel of the voice
plotting its own consonances along its undivided continuum; and
this musical antinomy audibly illustrated the Greek theory of num-
bers as delimiting points on an infinitely divisible ground (apeiron).
The earliest harmonic theory used an academic monochord for
mathematical or physical demonstration by the concept of measur-
able sound. Academic controversy later divided theorists under
various labels; but the true distinctions are between the high mathe-
matical method, the empirical, and the inductive.
(a) The term ‘Pythagorean’ is loosely used to cover a long
tradition of mixed doctrine. Pythagoras of Samos, in the sixth cen-
tury B.C., is said to have bequeathed to his disciples the principle of
expressing divisions of the monochord by ratios, which founded the
original and typical tradition of harmonics. It must be taken at its
own valuation, as a self-propelled science, inspired not by a special
interest in the musical art but by a general interest in the nature of the
universe, seen under the strongly mathematical bias of Greek thought.
Its aim was to reach a theoretically satisfying scale, which was con-
ceived as a structural element of the cosmos. The astronomical firma-
ment was pictured in the Music of the Spheres, from whose revolutions
was emitted a scale of tetrachords, each divided by two 9:8 tones
with the /eimma, or ‘remnant’, of the perfect fourth.! The Pytha-
gorean ditone was really used in classical music,? but long after it was
obsolete the austere scale of the Spheres played on—not to the sen-
sual ear, but in manuals which recorded it by sheer force of theoretical
tradition. Astronomy remained a regular branch of harmonics. The
attempt to express the universe in numbers admitting of an irrational
element was not absurd in itself, though it lacked experimental
method and finally descended into morasses of Neopythagorean
mysticism. It served as a hypothesis to stimulate much first-class
nearer to ‘harmony’ than choirs doubling at the octave (uayaBifovres), which are
attested from the fourth century B.c.
1 Plato, Timaeus 35b (cf. A. E. Taylor’s Commentary, pp. 136 ff.); T. Reinach, ‘La
Musique des sphères’, in Revue des études grecques, xiii (1900), pp. 432 ff, and ‘L’ Harmonie
des sphéres’, Congrés international d'histoire de la musique (Paris, 1900), pp. 60 ff.
* Aristoxenus, Harmonics, 23; R. P. Winnington-Ingram, ‘Aristoxenus and the in-
tervals of Greek music’, Classical Quarterly, xxvi (1932), pp. 195 ff.
342 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
mathematical work, which was carried on not only by so-called
*Pythagoreans', but also by such scientists as Ptolemy.
(b) ‘Harmonists’ means simply ‘harmonic theorists’, but the term
was applied by Aristoxenus to his immediate predecessors. The
9:8 tone is not equally divisible by ratios, and other mathematical
difficulties were soon noticed. Lasos of Hermione, in the sixth cen-
tury, had smothered such dilemmas with the crude if sensible sug-
gestion that notes had breadth, but the less robust fourth-century
minds were shocked by the discovery that musical space was irrational.
They attempted an empirical solution by splitting up the musical
continuum into the smallest intervals audible, represented in diagrams
of what they called pycnomata (the meaning is of microtones crowd-
ing along a melodic register). There was no question of realizing
equal temperament on physical instruments. The intention was to
reduce all intervals to common numerical terms on a theoretical
gamut of atomic microtones. Plato glanced ironically at the con-
temporary professors, with their ears to the kithara, each fancying
he heard a still smaller tonal unit.1 Aristoxenus had to explain to his
raw students that the pycnomata (besides being logically absurd)
were practically inept, since nobody could sing more than two con-
secutive microtones.?
The ‘Harmonist’ theory persisted in the form of a linear measure-
ment of units, which have been compared with modern cents. The
comparison is superficial. When ancient theorists measured intervals
—whether by ratios or by units—they did so for no practical purpose,
but because numerical formulation was expected of an exact science.
Textbooks were infested with tables of all possible scales, which never
coexisted in musical history ; and while some of the measured intervals
might coincide with some current tunings, they were not direct descrip-
tions of music.? The unitary measurement of intervals, by a historical
irony, was later attributed to Aristoxenus himself, who had exploded
it. Harmonic doctrines known to Ptolemy in the second century A.D.
as ‘Aristoxenian’ were largely derived from a school of empiricists and
hack teachers of theory. There was no authorized canon of Aristox-
enus’ works, and of the 453 books ascribed to him, not all were from
his pen.* On technical subjects ancient manuals were often issued—
1 Republic 531a-c. 2 Harmonics 28.
3 The opinion that the equations represent intervals really heard in music, and that
Aristoxenus heard less exactly, lacks concrete evidence: the nature of these works is
not aesthetic but theoretical.
а See Düring, Porphyrios und Ptolemaios (Göteborg, 1934), p. 183. Е. Wehrli’s edition
TRADITIONS OF HARMONIC SCIENCE 343
whether for piety or fraud—under the pseudonym of an appropriate
authority (e.g. ‘Galen’ for a medical treatise); and the Aristotelian
school, to which Aristoxenus belongs, was much overlaid with such
fakes. The so-called *Aristoxenians' used the authentic and the
spurious without discrimination. Their reversion to 'Harmonist'
principles of measurement is incompatible with all that we know of
Aristoxenus’ authentic theory.
(c) Whereas Plato had embodied the musical civilization of a
past Athenian nobility, Aristoxenus was the son of a professional
musician from the western colony of Tarentum, where old fashions
lingered. At Athens he learned the new inductive logic from Aristotle;
and under the impulse of this scientific method—later to collapse
into a mere terminology—he attempted a true descriptive anatomy
of music from his unique knowledge of fourth-century practice and
of the earlier classics. Besides excerpts of varying authenticity, we
possess an important but incomplete text arranged in three books,
but actually compiled from at least four sources, overlapping in
subject-matter, and presumably put together from pupils' notes of
his lectures in Athens soon after 322 B.c.1 In substance it has no
parallel among extant Greek theorists. Whereas mathematical har-
monics (including the empiricist school) necessarily postulated a
series of notes as fixed points on a hypothetical gamut—or, in effect,
a diagram—an inductive theory of music had to start from the
voice in action. As Aristoxenus recognized, real melody presupposed
not a fixed scale or tuning, but a line on which the voice's potentially
infinite stations could be determined only by ear and understanding
(ако) kai дона). Given a good ear to hear intervals, the mind must
define them by their melodic functions. The only sane division of
musical space was by ‘consonances’ (i.e. the melodic progressions
to the fourth, fifth, and octave): these the ear could judge exactly,
or within a hair's breadth, whereas it found other intervals ‘dis-
sonant' and variable in size. For melodic purposes, any basic note-
series must be so conceived that each note lay a perfect fourth from
the fourth in succession or a perfect fifth from the fifth. That this
principle excluded numerical expressions of intervals was obvious
to any educated Greek. It was substituted for the numerical method
as a practical assumption of the ear in a music which did not pose the
(Basle, 1945) undertakes no historical criticism of the excerpts, and brackets the
anachronism of frag. 124 without comment.
1 Harmonics 30; Düring, op. cit., p. 183.
344 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
acoustic problems of modern instrumental harmony over large regis-
ters. The less precisely heard variations of intervals were then defined,
so far as the ear demanded, not by equations but by recognized
shades (y póa:).!
To the real meaning of ordinary musical terms in his day, Aris-
toxenus will be our clearest guide.
GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX
(a) The Notes. The basic figure of analysis was the tetrachord. It
was coupled with another tetrachord, either disjunct or conjunct
(diezeugmenon or synemmenon: genitive plurals with long 6). The
skeleton is here represented in our natural key:
Ex. 305
(i) Disjunct (1) Conjunct
(a) Diezeugmenon (8) Synemmenon
This is the elementary grammar of fourths and fifths pivoting on
the *fixed notes' from which the melody takes its bearings. The fixed
notes are called, in descending order: (i) nete, paramese, mese,
hypate or (ii) nete, mese, hypate.
Each tetrachordal skeleton is filled in by two ‘movable notes’.
The possible ranges of their motion were classified in three genera,
roughly represented as follows:
Ex. 306
(a) Enharmonic (B) Chromatic (c) Diatonic
In each case, the higher of the two movable points is called Zicha-
nos, the lower parypate—or, in the upper of two tetrachords, the
higher point is paranete, the lower trite. In the enharmonic and
chromatic genera, the segment /ichanos-hypate is collectively called
the pyknon, and must be less than the interval mese-lichanos.
The names of the notes do not refer to pitch, for they may be differ-
ently placed in different genera, and nete varies with the conjunct
1 e.g. Aristoxenus recognizes two ‘shades’ of each of the three ‘generic’ positions of
lichanos (see Ex. 306 above).
GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX 345
and disjunct systems. They are mostly adjectives of the implied noun
chorde—a string or, simply, a note. They are probably not names of
actual strings, for some notes may have been played by stopping one
string. They refer primarily to the action of the hand playing: e.g.
lichanos means ‘forefinger’; hypate means ‘highest’ to the hand on
the tilted kithara; nete ‘lowest’ to the hand—although in pitch hypate
is the lowest note and nete the top.!
The double tetrachord, thus filled with movable notes, is still only a
melodic skeleton. It give the typical minimum of notes: our written
pieces show that others could be inserted besides. Greek music must
never be conceived in terms of any continuous scale—least of all the
harmonic series of our ‘just intonation’. Its essential character lies in
the logical priority of the fixed notes, which hold the melody between
the iron girders of consonant progressions, over the contrasting flex-
ible effects of the mobile notes, which bound various and irregular
intervals, some hair-split, some widely gapped (and are no less
mutable in the more evenly spread diatonic genus). Only the fixed
notes can be exactly translated on our schematic staff. The concept
of uniform octave-scales is especially inept, since a pair of tetra-
chords could be of different genera. The unit of the later solmiza-
tion, as of the earliest analysis, is still not the octave but the
tetrachord.?
(b) The Systems. It was for purposes of nomenclature only that
theorists, during the fourth century B.C., worked out an extended
note-system. The ‘Perfect System’ was compiled of two pairs of
conjunct tetrachords separated by a tone of disjunction (diazeuxis)—
the double octave being completed by a bottom note, whose name
proslambanomenos (implying the masculine noun tonos) indicates
an ‘addition’ from theory, not from music. The ‘Lesser Perfect
System', by omitting paramese, drops the disjunctive tone, substi-
tuting a conjoined tetrachord (synemmenon) for the purpose of illus-
trating the transitory effect of a modulation to the fourth. The two
Systems (which Ptolemy combined in one diagram) are given over-
leaf separately. Positions of movable notes will of course vary with
the genus.
Each note was called by its name with that of its tetrachord: e.g.
in (i) the note marked e is ‘nete of the tetrachord diezeugmenon’,
E is ‘hypate meson’, &c.
! Greeks did лог, as Curt Sachs conjectures, call high pitch ‘low’ and vice versa: cf.
Plutarch, Quaestiones Platonicae 1x. 2. i; ps.-Aristotle, Problems, xix. 3.
? Greek solmization (known only from late theory) rendered a tetrachord of the form
la sol fa mi by ta té to té.
346 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
(i) Greater Perfect System
Hyperbolaion Diezeugmenon Meson Hypaton
oT on E TCO Oe on OOOO oO
a! e b а E B
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о o o o о o o о uo o o A o o an
ч - c= + + e= N ue © — - e bard — ©
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S ы c LE oC om =)
[s] d кт 2 c T о g jen) ©
3 e
de)
Е
ed
72
о
bi
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(1) Lesser Perfect System
Synemmenon Meson Hypaton
M M E
р
tm
w
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о Ff Oo o A о
Piirciilii
B. ae Pica E
a 2 ss © S S X
[Y M A ‚ Ё
Proslambanomenos
The pitch of these Systems is relative or, rather, abstract. They are
themselves abstractions. Certainly a salient feature of the fourth-
century musical revolution was the use of metabolae or modulations
of various types. It raised—as does all modulation on instruments
with fixed tuning—the problem of establishing a basic note-series
sufficiently regular to minimize false melodic relations when two
tunings are exchanged. But the working out of this problem in real
music must be clearly separated from its elaboration in theory. The
player modulating did not hitch on a spare tetrachord synemmenon.
Though the hypothesis of a fixed pentatonic tuning is not proven,
it remains most probable that he tuned his kithara not to a continuous
scale, but by a gapped accordatura suiting the requirements of his
music, and supplemented or adapted it by stopping his strings. (The
aulos could be similarly adapted by devices of fingering and blowing.)!
1 During, ‘Studies in Musical Terminology in Fifth-century Literature’, in Eranos,
xliii (1945), pp. 176 ff. Only so can the attested complexity of much Greek instrumental-
ism be explained. Against the pentatonic hypothesis first proposed by Sachs in Zeitschrift
fiir Musikwissenschaft, vi (1924), pp. 289 ff., and further developed by himself and Otto
GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX 347
The continuous scale was a purely academic apparatus. Its name—
systema—is a term not of music but of harmonic theory; and the
dual System was intended only to exemplify on the blackboard (as it
were) the mechanism of a simple modulation.
Greek musical history is still bedevilled by confusions, ancient and
modern, of the terms systema, harmonia, tonos, eidos (— species),
genos (— genus), tropos (— modus). They can be clarified only by
chronological and critical distinction between the Greek sources.
To anticipate conclusions, we shall find that harmonia, in the classical
composers and in musically intelligent prose-writers, means a musical
idiom together with the tuning which it postulates—whereas in
musically ignorant theorists it is confused with an eidos or species
of the octave, which, like systema, is a term of theory, not of music.
Again, to Aristoxenus the terms genos and tropos connote both a
tuning and a musical style—whereas to inferior theorists both are
mere scales. Above all, it is necessary to reach a true definition of
tonos. It means, literally, ‘a stretching’. It first occurs in harmonic
theory in the fourth century B.c. From Homeric times the verb
‘to stretch’ was used of the preliminary stringing and tuning of
the instrument; but the noun fonos is never used by a composer,
never connotes a melodic style or operation.1 In Greek theorists
tonoi are continuous double-octave scales, in all three genera, set
up on successive degrees of a basic note-series or System, with a
superficial likeness to the scales of pitch-keys on a pianoforte. These
tonoi were originally suggested by the musical fact of modulation in
the fourth century; and the prevalent opinion of modern writers is
that they represent real pitch-keys used in music. The view here set
forth will be found to differ. It is, briefly, that the tonoi were theoreti-
cal concepts employed to define and name the relative Joci of the
topography of harmonic space. For nineteenth-century scholars, pre-
occupied with the search for continuity between ancient and modern,
it was particularly hard to get away from the underlying notion of
the octave with one supreme tonic; and efforts were made to ascribe
such a tonic function to the Greek mese.2 But, on the contrary, the
Gombosi, convincing arguments are marshalled by R. P. Winnington-Ingram in an
article in Classical Quarterly, new series, vi (1956).
1 Except by mere confusion with harmonia. évreivw (-oua«) does not, as a scholiast
on Aristophanes Clouds 968 says, mean to pitch high: see Rogers's editorial note.
In compounds -rovos means a tone or tension of the voice, with no pitch-connotation
(e.g. 9méprovos = loud). In late theory tonoi are miscalled tropoi.
2 The one reference to musical usage is in ps.-Aristotle, Problems, xix. 20 (undated),
saying that good tunes recur often to тебе, like good prose to the word *and'—a remark
notable only for its stupidity.
348 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
Aristoxenian analysis shows us a music of tetrachords oscillating on
plural pivot-notes between the disjunct scheme, which covers an
octave, and the conjunct, in which nete comes down to the seventh
from hypate (or the fourth from mese). These scholars persistently,
if unconsciously, tended to treat the Greek Perfect System as though
it corresponded to the tuning of a musical instrument, upon which
key-scales could have some real meaning. It seemed to them in-
credible that Greek theorists played with harmonic concepts for their
own sake and for no musical purpose. Here Aristoxenus was the
exception. But he has left us no direct treatment of the tonoi, and we
depend on other theorists, for whom harmonic science was superior
to musical art precisely because it had no practical use.! A historical
account of the tonoi, while recognizing their initial derivation from
musical experience, must remember the unbounded capacity of fourth-
century thought (outside the Aristotelian school) for generating
abstract entities from words without facts.
THE TONOI
Pitch
The assumption that absolute pitch-values were recognized in
Greek music is not warranted by any decisive ancient evidence.
It rests on modern equations of harmoniae or tonoi with pitch-keys.
(i) In its original form, Monro's theory that the classical harmoniae
were pitch-keys no longer needs refuting; and recent modifications of
this theory—to the effect that the harmoniae had specific pitches as
well as individual tunings—are no better founded.? Plato, indeed,
tells us that some harmoniae, used for men's drinking-songs, were
‘low’, and others, used for women's keening-songs, ‘high’. But since
he adds that the latter are morally unfit for either sex, it is clear that
they might be sung in a male register too. Their pitch-connotations are
purely relative and general, meaning no more than what Greek
authors call them—viz. ‘high’, ‘low’, or ‘middle’.*
In the fourth century В.С. the new fonoi were at first described
vaguely as harmoniae, and the Academician known as Heraclides
Ponticus rightly protested that a harmonia was not defined by its
1 In late antiquity it was compared for speculative purity to the science of generation of
birds, which (unlike the best harmonic science) was pure nonsense (Berthelot-Ruelle,
Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, v. 15, 52, 436, lines 7-11).
2 Gombosi's ingenious Tonarten und Stimmungen der antiken Musik (Copenhagen,
1939) does not refute major arguments brought against D. B. Monro, Modes of Ancient
Greek Music (Oxford, 1894), nor adequately criticize sources of uneven value.
3 Plato, Republic 398e (cf. Denniston in Classical Quarterly, vii (1913), p. 99).
THE TONOI 349
pitch.! His own definition, however, only serves to show the confusion
of these terms in a period of change, when the old harmoniae were for-
gotten and the old education disrupted. A harmonia, he declares,
must have ‘a peculiar eidos of ethos and pathos’. Eidos technically
meant a species or segment of the octave; ethos and pathos (musical
character and feeling) he can only connote with irrelevant nonsense
about the racial psychology of Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, whose
names had been attached to some of the old harmoniae. These names
suggest to his witless fancy that there are three harmoniae, because
there are three Greek races. Other speculators of the time were busy
reducing all harmoniae to two—and all winds to north and south.?
Late antiquity believed that Lamprocles and Damon, in the fifth
century B.C., had already analysed harmoniae as octave-species—
whereas the species had barely been enumerated before Aristoxenus.?
The late Neoplatonist Aristides Quintilianus actually produced six
irregular species of the enharmonic scale purporting to be the har-
moniae named in Plato's Republic, but he cites no authority.*
Against such confusions of idioms with scales we must appeal to
Aristoxenus. He briefly dismisses the preoccupation of his predeces-
sors with ‘the seven octachords which they called harmoniae'.* To
avoid this misnomer he refers to the old Phrygian Harmonia as ‘the
Phrygian melos' (canto)—with the significant remark that one would
not understand it merely by transcribing it. Few musicians of his
day, he tells us, still knew the classical idioms (tropoi).* Few theorists
of his day had been educated in music at all. The confusion was
merely verbal. When the old harmoniae were obsolescent, some
of their names had been applied or adapted to the new tonoi with
their attendant species. But species and tonoi together, as we shall
see, formed a coherent theoretical structure postulating a basic scale
which was drawn up in the fourth century. They can have borne no
relation, except in name, to the harmoniae of the earlier music.
(1) The оно? certainly had ‘pitch’ in the sense of relative position.
But Aristoxenus, c. 320 B.c., finds them still in the chaos of novelty,
1 Cited by Athenaeus, 324e-325c. ‘The man from Heraclea Pontica’, writing c. 365-
310 B.c., was given to miscellaneous speculation without experience (cf. Cicero, Ad
Quintum fratrem, m. 5, 1).
2 Criticized by Aristotle, Politics 1290a.
* By Eratocles only (Aristoxenus, Harmonics 6). On Lamprocles and Damon, ps.-
Plutarch, De musica 16. In Plato, Philebus 17 c-d, note systema (not eidos).
* Mountford, ‘The musical scales of Plato's Republic’, in Classical Quarterly, xlvii
(1923), accepts Aristides’ authority, but see Monro, op. cit., pp. 94-100. Aristides’
Source was presumably some commentary on Plato.
* Harmonics 36 (Westphal's reading).
€ Ibid. 39 and 23.
350 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
without agreement as to their relative position or the order of their
names. He gives two lists from contemporary theory, in ascending
relative order, as follows :1 К
I Hypophrygian ? II Fynepbnggitg gene
Hypodorian | ote Hypodorian | sigue
Mixolydian Dorian
| j tone | 1 tone
Dorian Phrygian
| 1 tone | 2 tone
Phrygian Lydian
(dian } 1 tone Moyan Ја tone
The second school took their three-quarter-tone intervals from the
borings of auloi. In rebuking their illogicality, Aristoxenus emphasizes
the inaccuracy of manufacture and intonation for which the aulos was
notorious, but says nothing of any absolute pitch. Manufacturers of
auloi did preserve some pitch-standard by general reference to other
auloi; but this very fact shows that the Greek idea of pitch was rela-
tive. Absolute pitch, on the contrary, would have determined the
manufacture of instruments. Some passages from late theory, assign-
ing different tonoi to different instruments or ranges of the voice,
have been taken to imply real pitch-keys: yet the same theorists
postulate a pure relativity of pitch, in which the limits of musical
sound are definable only by the limits of instruments or hearing.?
These vague and contradictory assumptions are outweighed by clearer
inferences. The anomalies of the two lists of tonoi cited above are
incompatible with any idea of absolute pitch. Absolute pitch is
nothing if not a practical convention, and it cannot exist in con-
vention or in practice without some consistent terms of reference
to the notes or keys indicated by such a pitch-standard. But Greek
writers never had consistent terms of reference to pitch. Both the
nomenclature and the number of tonoi were in endless fluctuation
and dispute. Seven голої represented the diatonic degrees of the
octave—or the Seven Spheres (a book On the Seven Tonoi was
written by Thrasyllus, astrologer to the emperor Tiberius). In imperial
Roman times a baker's dozen—one on each semitone and a super-
fluous thirteenth at the octave—was imputed (incredibly) to Aristox-
! Ibid. 37. In List I no interval is given for the Hypophrygian, which was sometimes
omitted.
? Bellermann's Anonymus 28 (but cf. 13); Aristides 16 3 (but cf. 15 7). Note Gauden-
tius 20-21 and Aristoxenus, Harmonics 13-15.
THE TONOI 351
enus.! A set of fifteen was begotten by a passion for verbal triads
(e.g. Hypodorian—Dorian—Hyperdorian)? The various sets co-
existed, with alternative and often anomalous names: no need for
practical agreement was felt.
(iii) None of these nomenclatures agrees with the names given to
kitharists’ tunings in Ptolemy's day. Theorists used an academic
fifteen-stringed apparatus, of no fixed register, to represent the
Perfect System; and Ptolemy, after tabulating his own scientific
results, shows which sections of his gamut will also yield tunings in
current use. But these tunings, whatever they may signify, are
variously tempered sequences of intervals, not pitch-keys; and their
names show no relation between the practical and the theoretical uses
of terminology.? Once, in Aristoxenus, the name of a tonos is associ-
ated with a low aulos; but the same passage proves that the attempt
to define tonal relations by auloi was an ignorant mistake.*
(iv) In late antiquity tonos-scales are sometimes transcribed with
musical notation. Since the notation may be merely an alterna-
tive means of expressing their relative positions, these tonoi are
not thereby proved to be pitch-keys for practical reference. But
if Greek notation were applicable at any pitch required, we should,
a priori, expect to find all musical pieces transcribed in the same
central nucleus of notational signs, with the least possible use of
‘sharps’. Now this expectation is not falsified by the Delphic
paeans of the second century B.c.—our earliest fragments of sufficient
length to provide a valid test. But of the later pieces, one (the
‘Ajax’ fragment) is written with the dashes which, in the tonoi,
raise a note by an octave; and, while the rest fall within a central
nucleus spanning a twelfth, they do not all use the same basic
notational sequence of ‘naturals’ and ‘sharps’. The use of variant
sequences is generally taken to denote differences of real pitch;
and it must be clearly stated that this hypothesis has not been
disproved. Yet other explanations, though unconfirmed, are con-
ceivable. In late antiquity at least, variant notational sequences
might have indicated different temperaments of intervals (as on
the several sections of Ptolemy’s abstract gamut), or different loci
! *Cleonides', Isagoge 12. Both the number and the names are too illogical for
Aristotle's pupil. The work on tonoi ascribed to him, if genuine, may have been about
*tones' (so Düring).
r^ Cf. Winnington-Ingram, Mode in Ancient Greek Music (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 15-
è See further below, p. 357.
А Aristoxenus, Harmonics 37-43, if the text is sound. In Athenaeus 634 f., citing
Aristoxenus, names of aulos-registers are not related to tonoi.
B52 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
upon a standard tuning of instruments or theoretical apparatus, or
different conventions of musical transcription. Those who prefer
the hypothesis of fixed pitch-keys have to explain the absence, in
Greek writers, of reference to absolute standards of pitch, and,
in Greek music, of the conditions which would plausibly account
for the development of such standards. They freely admit that, on
this hypothesis, a radical distinction must be drawn between the
tonoi on consecutive semitones, as indicating pitch, and the
Ptolemaic system of seven tonoi, which is pitchless: yet Ptolemy's
polemics against the former would be inept if the distinction
existed. In sum, difficulties arise on either view. In the present
writer’s provisional judgement, the arguments for attributing fixed
pitch-values to some tonoi (but not to all) are outweighed by the
improbabilities.1
It is agreed that Ptolemy’s tonoi have no real pitch. Here at least,
tonoi and species were together devised for a purpose independent
of musical practice: to name points, both fixed and movable, upon
an ideal diagrammatic structure of no real pitch-value, but of un-
questioned importance for ancient scientific thought.
Nomenclature by Tonoi and Species
The tonoi transpose the scale-form of the Perfect System to other
degrees of the System’s own tonal series.”
Ex. 307
Here the Perfect System (cf. p. 340 above), filled out in the dia-
tonic genus and in a handy key, is set up on the staff vertically,
while а tonos-scale in transverse descent transposes the same tonal
1 See, however, Winnington-Ingram’s careful discussion, op. cit., pp. 49-53. ;
* No real pitch is here implied. Logically, sol-fa should be used (as by Düring.
ор .cit.), but the modern notation gives a clearer picture.
РАВНА»
VOTE ITE ii
f ИШ
ПИЛДИН
ШАЙ
Нун
li
EGYPTIAN INSTRUMENTS
(a) Lower-chested harp and flute (18th Dynasty, 1570-1310 B.c.)
(b) Harp, lute, and double reed-pipe (c. 1475 B.c.)
PLATE X
(b)
GREEK INSTRUMENTS
(a) A kithara player singing (c. 480 B.C.)
(b) A Greek music school showing lyres and double au/oi (early Sth century в.с.)
THE TONOI 353
sequence one degree higher.! The double tetrachord which is the
scale-form's central соге (= mimi) is marked in black notes, and
its ‘natural’ Jocus on the System's register is set between bars. The
System is here treated as a static register around which the typical
scale-form is borne by the revolving tonoi. As this scale-form moves
one degree higher, one top note of the tonos is cut off and one bottom
note is added within the System's register.
The System's nomenclature was used in a double sense: (1) as a
term of reference to notes by their serial order of position (thesis)
on the basic System; and (2) like a sol-fa, to describe notes by their
function (dynamis) in the melodic scale-form (= mi'—-mi) without
regard to its position. In Ex. 307, M remains mese by thesis on the
System; m becomes mese by dynamis in the scale-form (here trans-
posed by the tonos).
Our staff, with its assumptions of equal temperament and real
pitch, might tempt us to identify the dynamic m with the thetic
paramese as the same pitch-note (here written as middle B).
But Greek theory could neither refer to external pitch-standards,
nor ignore the fact that the scale-form's fixed and movable notes
must shift their positions in different tonoi. Nete diezeugmenon,
dynamically defined as a fixed fifth from mese, cannot be precisely
described by thesis; and this is doubly evident in the present example,
where dynamic nd takes a sharpened position with no place nor name
on the diatonic System. It can only be described as 'nete diezeug-
menon in this tonos’. Therefore the tonoi themselves had to be named
and fixed in a relative order of intervals one from the other. Our
keys are serially numbered A, B, C, &c., by the sequence of their
tonics in a note-series established by musical usage. But, although C
always stands at the same interval above or below A, it is not true
that the key of C is higher or lower than the key of A, since two melo-
dies in A and C may use the same register. Greek theory logically
defined tonoi by reference not to any single note like our tonic in an
arbitrarily chosen series, but to the whole central register of the
System where the tonoi meet and are comparable—viz. the octave
set between bars. Within this octave each of the seven tonos-scales
casts a different segment or species of the octave. In Ex. 307 the seg-
ment of the tonos between the bars has the sequence of tones and semi-
tones T S T T T S T. This sequence was named the Phrygian octave-
species, and the tonos was accordingly called the Phrygian. The names
1 Tonos-scales were read downwards at first, later upwards. The change confused the
notation, but is otherwise irrelevant. A uniform method is here adopted.
354 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
were given artificially, and the sole purpose of the species was to
locate each tonos by its position relatively to the other six tonoi,
without using arbitrary or practical criteria. The whole set may for
provisional purposes be presented as follows :1
e Mixolydian Lydian Phrygian Dorian Hypolydian Hypodorian
= Нурорћгуріап
Mesae: D Сё B A Gi Fi E
5 m T 8 T T
= Natural Series: F E D C B A
The typical scale-form mi'-mi—always in black notes—is carried
down the System's register by each tonos successively; the white
notes at either end represent the space through which this scale-
form moves. The System's central octave-register (here — e-E,
marked not between bars but in square brackets on each tonos) is
successively filled by seven different species of the revolving scale.
These species have no melodic meaning: they exist only as thetic
terms of reference to the relative positions of the tonoi. It will be
noted that the System's central octave-register is the only octave
whose terminals all the tonoi have in common. If, like the feebler
Greek theorists, we insert extra tonoi at the inter-diatonic semitones,
these tonoi will fail by a semitone to touch the two terminals of the
central octave where the species meet. Since there are only seven
species of the octave, the logical number of tonoi is seven. These
must be projected on the System at a relative pitch-position one-
and-a-half degrees below their ‘natural’ sequence (ie. the mesae
D C£ B A СЁ F} E correspond to a sequence F E D C B A С).
It is, however, only for the limited purpose of showing the relative
locations of the tonoi that they are projected on the System. For this
purpose the unequal temperament of the dynamic scale is ignored,
and all the thetic degrees of the System are treated as equal tones or
1 This figure, serving only to correlate ronoi by thesis, appears to hypostatize the System
as a keyboard; but see below, pp. 355 ff.
THE TONOI 355
semitones. But both /олоі and species are purely thetic concepts—
the thesis of a tonos being expressed by its species. Greek harmonic
thought could also compass the abstract idea of modulation as a
purely dynamic act. Ptolemy, after discussing the modulation ex-
pressed by the Conjunct System (cf. p. 340), proceeds to explain
the general idea of modulatory dynamics, as follows:1
The construction of tonos-modulation does not occur for the purpose of
adapting a melody to higher or lower voices: for a change of that kind it
is enough to tune the whole instrument up or down, since no variation is
produced within a melody when it is sung right through as a whole, the
same by higher voices as by lower. Modulation occurs in order that the
identical melody, in the same voice, starting now from the higher registers,
now from the lower, should produce a certain alteration of ethos (mood),
through the fact that the two extremes of the melody, as it modulates, no
longer coincide with the two extremes of the voice, but at the one end the
voice's limit always terminates before the melody's, and at the other end
the melody's before the voice's. Thus a melody originally fitted to the
compass of the voice, by falling short at the one end and gaining ground at
the other as it modulates, gives to the ear the impression of an altered ethos.
Ptolemy's point will be easily seen in diagrammatic form.
Central octave-register
N РМ M
| 2 s А 5310 7 8
(а) тї! re do si || la sol fa mi
PAST SS eee "TU ES (— Dorian)
uL Se
M
p Dees) 14 2 © 8
(b imi' re do|si | la sol fa mi re do si
Uem m!
JENSEITS (— Mixolydian)
i ET —
М M
(c) re do sip la sol fa ті
о Тт 5
The melodic scale-form is unchanged by modulation: i.e. there is
no change of ‘mode’. Ptolemy conceives the central octave-register
as the vocal space, always and completely filled by the melody,
which is symbolized by the constant scale-form mi-mi. This melodic
! Harmonics ii. 7.
356 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
scale may lie within the vocal register in its continuous form T T S
T T T S (numbered 123456 7 8 in (a), above). If a modula-
tion to the fourth occurs (b) we may imagine the continuous scale
bodily shifted up a fourth; but then its upper notes would fall out-
side the register's top limit. They can, however, be picked up again
an octave below, in the empty space left at the bottom of the register.
As Ptolemy puts it, the melody falls off the register at one end and
gains ground at the other. The register is still completely filled with
the same melodic scale-form mi'-mi, but in a differently distributed
sequence (numbered 4 5 6 7 8 [= 1] 23 4). So, in our music, modula-
tion may shift the tonic without changing the tessitura.
Viewed as a continuous scale, the note-series within the register
has changed from T T S T T T S (the Dorian species) to T TTS
T T S (the Mixolydian). But this has nothing to do with the melodic
movement, in which the scale-form does not change. The species
merely indicates the tonos or thetic degree of the modulation, which
does not here concern Ptolemy. He is conceiving the register not as a
basic scale (as in Ex. 308) but as an empty space which the voice can
fill as it chooses: there is no question of specifying the sharps or
flats required to illustrate any particular modulation in practice.
Elsewhere Ptolemy insists that a melodic modulation is not a change
of tonos (i.e., as he here says, of repetition at another pitch-degree),
but a change of systema. The systema does not, like a species, consist
in a particular sequence of individual notes, but in the relations of
disjunction or conjunction between tetrachords.! Modulation to the
fourth (he explains) is effected by eliminating the disjunctive tone:
thus in (c) above the functional paramese of (a) drops out, and nete
comes down to the fourth above mese, making a total heptachord of
two conjunct tetrachords instead of the disjunct tetrachords of (a).
Here our own sol-fa becomes inept: the octave was not a rigid unit,
and it does not matter whether we express the tetrachord T T S as
la sol fa mi, mi re do si, or re do sib la. It is this change of system that
Ptolemy supposes to have the aesthetic effect of an altered ethos: the
ear is left in doubt whether mese has moved up a fourth, as expressed
in (b), or whether paramese has dropped out, as expressed in (c).?
The change between disjunction and conjunction is the only type
of modulation that Ptolemy will call melodic, although any permuta-
tion of tonoi or genera could be admitted theoretically and on paper.
1 Harmonics іі. 6. This is the only significant distinction between systemata, though
some theorists enumerate them by size, genus, &c., as any ordered note-series. Р
2 Ptolemy is, however, hazy and abstract on the aesthetic effect: it may be merely his
own intellectual inference.
THE TONOI 357
In theory, also, the idea of other tetrachordal forms besides T T S
was entertained; but only T T S was used in regular harmonic struc-
tures—with its corresponding enharmonic and chromatic genera,
which are attested in real musical use from the fourth to second
centuries в.с. Whether, or when, other forms were realized in
musical practice we have not sufficient evidence to say. Ptolemy, after
his theoretical demonstrations of his own temperament of intervals,
turns to the empirical data of kitharistic tunings in current use, to
find them at various segments of his academic gamut. These tunings
consist of tetrachords and octachords, both diatonic and chromatic,
in several forms or shades of tonal sequence, which are named
sterea and malaka on the lyre, tritae, hypertropae, parypatae, tropoi,
iasti-aeolia, and lydia on the kithara. This nomenclature is a pot-pourri
of technical jargon, and cannot be connoted with Ptolemy's tonos-
names. If, as some maintain,! the tunings are melodic scales of variant
modal idioms, they are remoter than ever from Ptolemy's concept ofa
uniform melodic scale. But Ptolemy's words do not imply so much ;?
and since the terms differ from the lyre to the kithara, they would
seem to refer to some more mechanical aspect—e.g. to professional
operations of preliminary tuning of the instruments, like the conven-
tional tuner's chords in testing a pianoforte. This would fit the context.
Ptolemy adduces these tunings as phenomena independent of his own
harmonic system, to show that his academic calculations of tuning
are not incompatible with common acoustic experience. With this con-
firmation, he can proceed to his purpose—the harmonics of astronomy.
Whatever these tunings may represent, their names show how far
musical practice had diverged from harmonic theory. To imagine
that Ptolemy of Alexandria did, or could, reflect contemporary forms
of music in his main doctrine is to mistake his position and aims. He
lived nearly five centuries away from the inductive method by which
Aristoxenus had analysed music as he knew it *by ear and under-
standing'. In all his many works, his great achievement was to re-
capture the high Alexandrian tradition of mathematical sciences after
an age of collapse and decline. He did not change the terms of the
problems: it was hard enough to recover them—and, on occasion,
to improve their expression. In the harmonic field (a small part of his
activity) the decline can be seen from his own criticisms of recent pre-
tenders to the names of ‘Pythagorean’ or *Aristoxenian'.? He was
! Düring, op. cit., pp. 201-15: the first serious analysis of Ptolemy, Harmonics i. 16,
ii. 1 and 16, but the solutions are inevitably speculative.
? та pedwSovpeva (ii. 16, chapter-heading) does not in theoretical contexts refer
only to melopoeic use. з Cf. Düring, op. cit., p. 83.
358 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
perhaps the one man alive who had the logical insight and the
experience of astronomical diagrams to assimilate the harmonic
system of early Alexandrian thought; and in harmonics, as elsewhere,
it is early Alexandrian thought that he interprets to us.
Some account of Greek harmonic theory has been necessary
for a negative purpose: to prevent unprofitable searching for musical
significance in mathematical concepts. There is also a positive reason.
Greek notation, though also used for transcribing musical composi-
tions, was developed largely by theorists for their own purposes,
and cannot be properly understood without reference to the theoreti-
cal tonoi. Not that the better minds—Aristoxenus or Ptolemy—had
recourse to notation. It could neither define the functions of notes,
like the verbal nomenclature, nor measure the exact size of intervals,
like the arithmetical cipher. It was used among a lower class of har-
monic professors, known only from late antiquity. Since they too
claimed to be 'theoretical', prestige obliged them to include the
Perfect System in their doctrine; but their heads were too weak to
relate it correctly to the tonoi—nor, indeed, could it be correctly
related to their irrational sets of thirteen or fifteen tonoi on con-
secutive semitones. Some merely gave lists of tonos-names with rela-
tive intervals. Others set out their tonoi with notational signs; and the
anomalies of Greek notation, as we know it, may owe something to
their hands.
THE NOTATIONS
The Greek notations are explained to us only by a few minor
theorists of the third or fourth centuries A.D.—in particular, one
Alypius, who gives а set of tonos-scales with reproductions and verbal
descriptions of the corresponding signs in two notations. A central
nucleus of the signs of both occurs in extant musical fragments going
back to c. 250 B.c. The final series of the Alypian signs is here given in
continuous sequence with the relative diatonic note-series in our staff
(no absolute pitch):
Ex. 309
DUI AAN аре
21 ШУ
8. ede tn
THE NOTATIONS 359
The second notation, which is the earlier, shows a nucleus of fifteen
signs—some alphabetic, but in no regular alphabetic order—evi-
dently put together to fit the Perfect System а'-А in the fourth cen-
tury B.c. This is extended upwards, by signs repeated with a dash,
to the top g'. Below A two extra bottom notes G, and F, have been
added, with signs later borrowed from the first notation. Each sign of
row no. 1 (which is the diatonic note-series) is triplicated with its own
HUE я
sharp and double-sharp: for example, in the triad El horizontal ш
is the sharp and reversed 3 the double-sharp of E erect. The triads
doubtless originated in the enharmonic and chromatic dieses; but
only theorists distinguish the chromatic (by a cross-stroke) from the
enharmonic; and the same signs are also used for other sharps. It is
possible that a triad could be played on one string, but the hypothesis
that the notations were tablatures will not bear examination.!
The first notation, avoiding archaic signs, makes a central octave
of the Ionic alphabet A В Г, &c., in continuous descent, A being the
double-sharp and B the sharp of I' (so that row no. 1 is the diatonic
note-series). Alypius calls the first notation ‘vocal’, the second
‘instrumental’; but, although these names are too well established
in modern usage to be abandoned now, the distinction is pointless
and was adopted only in late antiquity.? The 'vocal notation' is
obviously a translation of the ‘instrumental’, with its obsolete cipher,
into the familiar and consecutive series of the Ionic alphabet, which
was gradually spreading into common use from the end of the fifth
century B.C.
The nucleus of the ‘instrumental’ signs stands logically enough on
the System's series a'-A, which is just as we should have expected,
and we may hope that the alphabetic disorder of the other signs
dates back without change to the fourth century. The ‘ vocal’ notation,
however, has been much reshuffled.? Its most important segment is
the erect Ionic alphabet, with the two or three triads adjacent, which
together supply all signs found in our ‘vocal’ texts. Its serial order is
certainly correct, but the question is whether the group has been
bodily shifted from its original segment on the diatonic note-series.
The erect nuclear alphabet is irrationally set on the meaningless
1 See above, рр. 346 f., n. 1.
? e.g., in the Berlin papyrus (after д.р. 156): not in the Delphic Hymns (second
century B.C.).
3 In ex. 309 above, the nucleus of the System's note-series is marked by continuous
bars, additions or displacements by dotted bars. Bits of five alphabetic sequences have
been patched together where three would have sufficed.
360 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
octave f'-f; and where we should expect a translation of the *instru-
mental' nucleus a'-A, we find displaced signs at either end of this
note-series. On a! and в! are two signs torn from their proper sequence
(in the lower register), like a rubble filling between а! and f!. At G
and F, below A, that sequence is prolonged by two additional
letter-forms (which also appear as additions to the ‘instrumental’
notation). On its top g'' the notation abruptly decants a solitary
omega. From these and other anomalies we are bound to suspect
that the erect central alphabet, with its neighbours, may have suffered
a shift of tonal sequence—that it was not originally set on the f'-f
octave. On the assumption that past music was commonly written
and read, such a shift might seem impossible. But notation was
known to few, as the laborious verbal descriptions of Alypius show;
and it was used by theorists as a mere numerical cipher for tonoi of
no real pitch-value. Certain theoretical aberrations of late authors
do, in fact, strengthen the suspicion of a shift of the erect alphabet
to f'-f:
(1) Alypius and his kind do not present tonoi as scales revolving
about the System (as in Ex. 308), but simply as continuous double-
octave scales at semitonal intervals. We may imagine them on the
pianoforte, if we exclude all idea of real pitch. The Alypian note-
series extends over fifteen of such tonoi. As Ptolemy argues, tonoi
set at or beyond the octave are logically superfluous. Of the three
extra tonoi of Alypius, one was added to round off the octave, and
the other two merely to complete a set of tonos-names in triplicate
(with the prefixes hypo- and Ayper-). The logical note-series would
run from top g' to bottom A. The extra bottom notes G and F
can only be the additions to that note-series which were made to
accommodate the three superfluous fonoi. Since the tonoi were
mere names and the signs mere ciphers, it did not matter at which
end either were added. In fact, the new tonos-names were put at
the top of the list and the new signs at the bottom. Consequently
the old tonos-names, in their conventional order, were shunted two
diatonic degrees down the notational series: i.e. the bottom tonos
called Hypodorian, to make room for the new fonoi at the top, was
pushed from the old terminal A down to the new terminal F.?
(2) Since the tonoi are A-scales, the tonos that begins from A of the
notational series, whatever its name, will be the ‘natural’ tonos (i.e.
1 Alypius’ Hyperlydian, Hyperaeolian, Hyperphrygian. The fourth so accommodated
(Hyperionian, mese = g#') was placed top of twelve semitonal голо? (from A), but the
notation has no corresponding top g#!: it was extended at the bottom instead.
? See Ex. 310 below.
THE NOTATIONS 361
that in which the signs keep their unsharpened forms). In the shifted
Alypian tonos-list, the tonos that falls on the A is called * Hypolydian'.
Now in both the Alypian notations, the Hypolydian tonos has the
*natural' signs. It has been supposed that there was a real and musical
change from a ‘Dorian’ to a ‘Hypolydian’ tuning. But this view
is based on the modern assumption of absolute pitch. If it is not
accepted the change can be simply interpreted as a diagrammatic
shift of tonos-names; and this is perhaps confirmed by a reference
in late antiquity to ‘the tonos now called Hypolydian' 3
(3) But this was not all. Ptolemy, in arguing against the habit of
interposing fonoi on the semitones between the diatonic series,
pointed out that there was a risk of transposing the whole System—
since the central octave of the System does not coincide with the
terminals of any octave of these interposed fonoi. In the correct pro-
jection of Ex. 308 the ‘natural’ tonos was the Dorian, which shared
the System's own central register at the thetic mi!—mi. But if we take
the seven primary fonoi, to which the names of the species belong,
and reproduce them with the sharps and flats assigned to them by
Alypius, they appear as follows:
Ex. 310
o
) yo 9 hs
fo. р ө Po р ©
ls ! 3 =
(]
Ofepegedesogo
3$
D AS
a-4
= ® eG OY
Tad
м!
1-3
Te
ye
^u -
: ро © р р e Pe ^e
>) Hyperdorian [dian o Сө
© Phrygian Dorian o o bo
eM te Ee
Hypolydian o
Hypophrygian
Hypodorian
Mesae: Eb D С Bb A G F
: S T A S T T
=Natural Series: F E D. C B A G
These tonoi, while preserving the same natural sequence (=
FEDCBAG) are projected at EyDCBpAGF instead of the correct
DC#BAG#F#E of Ex. 308 above. In other words, these theorists
1 ps.-Plutarch, De musica 39, 1.
362 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
have not contained their tonoi within the System's basic scale a'—A.!
They have simply started their bottom Hypodorian tomos on an
extra-Systematic bottom F, and proceeded accordingly. If they were
to extend the basic scale at all, they should have started their Hypo-
dorian on a low D. As it was, the Lydian was pushed up from its old
C£ to the old Mixolydian position of higher d. In the confusion the
Mixolydian name drops out of the later list, and the Lydian is often
treated as ‘the first of the tonoi".? From the false projection it follows
inevitably that the Hypolydian tonos, from its place in the list, falls
on the System's thetic a'-A previously occupied by the Dorian.
So far, it might be more accurate to say that they were not relating
their tonoi to the System at all, but merely ignoring it. But when they
had to find the species known as synonymous with these primary
tonoi, they got into trouble with their central octave. On their pro-
jection the one octave common to these tonoi—the octave in which the
species lie—is not, as before, the central mi'—mi, but fa'—fa. This isa
real error of construction. The scale-form of the Alypian tonoi is still
the /a!—mi'—mi-la of the System's proper scale, which corresponds to
the Dorian species mi'—mi, and should fall on the central octave
ті'-ті. But Alypius’ primary seven tonoi are placed to fall on the
central octave fa'—fa, which corresponds to the Hypolydian species
and conflicts with the scale-form of the tonoi themselves. It is not to
be regarded as a reflection of musical practice, but only as a gross
theoretical misunderstanding from the period of the Greek mathe-
matical decadence.
Now it is hard to escape the conclusion that these theorists, having
landed themselves with a ‘natural’ Hypolydian tonos and a ‘natural’
central octave fa'-fa, thought it necessary to place the ‘natural’ erect
alphabet of the ‘vocal’ notation upon the corresponding octave of
the Hypolydian species—f'-f of the note-series. The ‘instrumental’
notation, being alphabetically unintelligible, may have escaped inter-
ference; but the Ionic letters, which were also used as numerical
notation, were peculiarly subject to such treatment. Their position in
Alypius reflects the theoretical error.
Once the Alypian notation was established in theory, it will also
have been used for transcribing real music. But it is not so certain
1 They actually read scales upwards, and counted them from the bottom terminals.
In Ex. 308 above, one fonos (Hypolydian) is inevitably extra-systematic at its terminals,
but there fonoi are properly counted from the Mesae, and the common central octave
is the logically important feature.
2 Among others, Alypius 3: dv egri пр@тоз б Аудіо. Some echo of controversy as
to whether the Mixolydian should be on high or low D may be preserved in the scholium
on Aristophanes, Clouds 967-8.
THE NOTATIONS 363
to apply to our earliest documents in ‘vocal’ notation. The mistake
postulates the addition of the bottom С and F for new tonoi, and the
set of fifteen was believed to be comparatively late. The notation
known to Aristoxenus cannot have been consistently related to the
embryonic and divergent fonos-lists that he describes; and we
have no means of knowing when it was adapted, as we find it in late
antiquity, to the purpose of writing out tonos-scales. What is evident
is that, apart from the modern hypothesis of absolute pitch-keys, the
extended Alypian series in its two notations absurdly exceeds any
conceivable requirements of musical practice. All that was needed
to transcribe a melody was a convenient nucleus of signs (with their
triadic sharps) in a sequence which could be used at any desired
register. There is a strong a priori probability that, as in the 'instru-
mental’ notation, so in the ‘vocal’ version of it, the fourth-century
nucleus was the fifteen-note System a'-A. This would require a
reversed alphabet above the erect alphabet. But otherwise we can
only try to pick out fixed notes, in Greek musical documents, by
reference not to theoretical tonoi but to indications (if any) of melodic
structure and function. A suggestion, here to be put forward with all
reservations, must be taken only as a lead towards further study.
THE EXTANT MUSICAL DOCUMENTS
(1) The ‘First Delphic Hymn’ or paean to Apollo (our most
extensive piece) was composed almost certainly in the later second
century B.C., and written in the ‘vocal’ notation on stone at Delphi,
where it must have won a prize in the Pythian festival. From the
ceremony of its occasion and from the clichés of its literary style, it
seems to be highly academic and archaistic stuff; and where academic
rules were observed at all, they were unlikely to have changed much
since Aristoxenus. On this assumption, Aristoxenian principles may
be applied, first, to the schematic note-series of the Hymn (below,
I is the transcription according to the Alypian signs, II a hypo-
thetical new version) :1
Ех. 311
! The notational sharps are here set above the ‘natural’ signs, and are transcribed by
black notes.
364 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
There are two pykna on ху and M, which, therefore, are fixed notes,
and, being a fifth apart, should be paramese and hypate (i.e. in the
mere abstract schema, for in melody modulation could vary their
functions). Mese would then be Г, which must lie a whole tone below
paramese U. In Aristoxenus’ extant treatment the tonal location for
such a schema would equate hypate with our mi; and this brings the
first alphabetic triad A В Г to our /a, where the nucleus of signs a'-A
also starts in the ‘instrumental’ notation. Against the usual trans-
cription (I) it may be pointed out that (i) the key-signature of Ep,
not here reproduced, but commonly inserted from modernized tonos-
scales, is spurious, for in this version of the score itself the B is always
natural; and (ii) by this transcription the composer is twice made to
break an Aristoxenian rule of melodic grammar which forbids a
progression from a pyknon to an interval less than a tone (Ex. 312
below, $8 45-48, 60-61). The new transcription (II) avoids this
error. As to the pykna, the sharp-sign X here implies no choice
between enharmonic dieses and chromatic; but at this date the
chromatic genus is to be presumed. If so, the /ichanos will be nearer
fat than fa, but in any case a movable note cannot be transcribed
exactly.! The continuous parts of the paean are here transcribed
both in the Alypian reading (I) and in the version here sug-
gested (ID)?
Ех 312
6 I Е е
1 M X M o | M
. “Edtxdva Ba - Өй - dev - бро» ai Aa(xere Atos épi)pó - povov
1 м Y M o o 1 M [
00 - ya - трех «да - Aevov иб - Атє ow -o - pat - pov -va
»*
c
п u——— —.— e ЕЕ:
Zs
1 Aristoxenus, Harmonics 23: the ‘shades’ of lichanos could not have been indicated
by notation.
2 Restorations are omitted. The repeated notes and time-values of the usual transcrip-
tions may be plausible, but are inferential. Reinach’s transcription of the Alypian
notation is recorded in The History of Music in Sound (H.M.V.), i, side 15.
THE EXTANT MUSICAL DOCUMENTS 365
15 ТЕ
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ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
PM м y gr о том A MUS
8é vw A -pap a - тиб; ёс "OA-vp - пои dv-a -xi - буа-та,
Y o M A M A КОЛАМИ т о M
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THE EXTANT MUSICAL DOCUMENTS 367
Whatever be the true reading of the signs, our schematic staff is
singularly ill adapted to this music. Greek notation was also sche-
matic; but contemporary Greeks had the advantage of understanding
the music. For us it would be better rendered on a differently con-
structed staff, reserving black lines for the fixed notes, giving dotted
(hypothetical) lines to the chief movable notes, and leaving the rest
indeterminate in the spaces—as in the following sample from the
Hymn (notation II), admittedly a conjectural version:!
Ex. 313
го А U KAM о кл K
34ff. . (qv) кАьта peya - ào - mos Abbis виха(ею)ь de - po - пАою vat -ov - ва
b e
cL ee ЕЕ ннн рЫ. ЖЕ Эш р. „Ж „ды
MUA U or M ОВ A KIE OTM Г КМ
Tpitw-w-v - 8о$ Ba(zeB)ov a-Üpavarov. ау--о бе Bw-por-o-aw А - $a- aros
A K A М A M о KOA MPa от Qn
Gt- et - де veov unpa та - оу - pov, ороо - ov бе иу A- pa a - tpos es
К Here, and in examples below, speech-accents are omitted, as their application to
different dialects and periods is very uncertain. See, however, the new and careful dis-
cussion by R. P. Winnington-Ingram in Symbolae Osloenses, xxxi (1955), pp. 64-73.
368 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
O Y OM A MO Y 0 М “А MAKAM M Y
OAvp-mov ау -а - к:-8у (а) rai. № - yv бе Awroos Ppe-pwy a.- eto-Aoi-ois. (ue) Ae-aw
Os M AM ГАКГ м кА Оо" Үү ом EN ENEO
wi-Saav крєкєї ypu-cea $ a-Bv-Üpovus (ки)ба -pis v-pvor-ow a-va- pe) - пе - rat.
9 о=- ча
e AO ӨК О e M Y Y M Y M ft ӨӨ
. 05 ava &- i - ру» - Ba Паруасс‹-бо$ єдрау ap’ aya-kAv-raweis Ae - eà - du ~ oe = w
күш A Ge One AO ө г A
Йй
M
Ka - ота - № - 605 «ov - v - роо уарат’ emacerar Дефо» ava mpwwva
МӨ м Ф
ро - ау - те - є - оу єфєтшү тауоу.
Фох {сч
Do we learn anything of Greek music from this piece, admittedly а
last breath from the dissolution of a silver age? Modulations—of which
much has been written—we must not pretend to understand. The use
of progressions is visible rather than intelligible to us. Yet we can see
the rapid decorative effects of the pykna at KAM ог XAU, and the
tremolo or variation of notes on one syllable—once parodied by Aris-
tophanes as a new trick of Euripides and the modern dithyrambists,
THE EXTANT MUSICAL DOCUMENTS 369
but now become a cliché. In the fourth century, ' programme music’ had
been popularized by Timotheus, whose lyric nome The Persae featured
sound-effects of the battle of Salamis. In this Hymn, at $8 45 and 55, the
words аѓє:дє: and alevdAouors are set to imitate the flickering of flames and
the tremolo of an aulos. We may reasonably believe that the style pre-
served some echo of the tradition of Timotheus, which was just dying.
(2) The ‘Second Delphic Hymn’—a long but battered inscription
in the ‘instrumental’ notation—was composed by an unknown
Limenius of Athens in 128-127 в.с. Although the setting seems even
sparser, this paean is to us, at least, stylistically indistinguishable
from the other; and their likeness encourages the belief that the
notations are not hopelessly corrupt. The second Hymn shows no signs
of any such shift of tonal sequence as must be suspected in the ‘vocal’
notation of the first. It will be sufficiently illustrated by two extracts:
Apollo's advent at Delphi, and a final prayer for the Roman empire:
Ex. 314
O сы < Еее fe? < K x t “CE иш
. то-тє Мтшу Kvw-bi-av vaacov . . . трштокар-тоу krav Arb’ e - пи
Е u = (5 Ic ти = У v
yaa-Mo$ex) . . . Tpitrwwrdos’ pedimvoov бє A-fls avday ешь . . . (a)Sececav
C C C 5) У <a) Мел "С Cine Sy 07 fe
oma petyvu - pevos aret - олов . . . ара O'a-xeg петро-ка - TOL - k)- TOS ayw . . .
. . poA-ere mpoamolowi, rav те бор: - . . . Pwpat-wy apxav
v F v с = „ с
av - fer’ аупра-тии ÜaMAovaav) . . . и - xav.
Е ЕЕ
(3) Our only other engraved musical document is the ‘Epitaph of
Seikilos'7—an inscription beginning with an elegiac couplet, оп a
tombstone found at Aidin in Turkey, near Tralles.! The Greek
script might date from the second century B.C., but is probably
much later. The convention of musicography differs sharply from
that of the Delphic pieces, and approximates to that of papyri of
the first, second, or later centuries A.D., in which every syllable is
E At the moment of going to press it is reported that the stone, which had been
lost since 1923, has reappeared. This transcription may, therefore, be subject to re-
vision in detail.
370 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
set and rhythmic signs are introduced. It is possible, therefore, that
the song was transcribed according to the Alypian values of the
notation, although its diatonic banality in this transcription is dis-
concerting. It has commonly been assigned to the ‘Ionian tonos’,
whose note-series in Alypian theory overlaps its own:
Ex. 315
But in the song (Ex. 316 below), the opening fifth CZ, if it is intelli-
gible at all, must surely be a main progression between fixed notes—
whereas in the fonos C and Z are movable notes. There is no musical
relation between the two. The usual solution is to postulate a ‘ Phry-
gian mode' for the song, and thus to combine the hypothesis of
absolute pitch-value with the hypothesis that the octave-species of
harmonic theory represented a multimodality of music. But even if
the transcription is correct, enough has been said to suggest that the
interpretation of Greek music in terms of theoretical octave-struc-
tures may be unhistorical. A particular range of signs may have been
chosen to indicate, not an absolute pitch, but a special temperament
of intervals, or by force of musicographical habit.
Ex. 316
c cl EN]
[d 1 7 K t 2 1
о - cov бус gar - - - vov.
: ON A
К т d.k o © D
М МУ
рт - Sev о - А ov № - mov
сок Ani KE KERO ф
—
mpos o - № -yo є - ат to бт»
Ох VU. И. OK сас с х=
—
TO T€ - los о xpo - vos am - at - Tet.
Zexidos Еитер(пти)
1 Recorded in The History of Music in Sound, i, side 15.
THE EXTANT MUSICAL DOCUMENTS 371
In our uncertainty about the notation, the chief interest of the
piece must lie in its rhythmography. Of the rhythmic signs the dot or
stigme (marking the strong beat of the metric foot) and the bracket
(linking groups of notes) have no time-value. The unit of time
(protos chronos) is left unmarked; the diseme — is equivalent to two
time-units, and the triseme „ы to three. Now, whereas the four lines
of the verse have respectively 9, 11, 11, and 11 metric units (in
5, 7, 8, and 9 syllables), each line of the music has twelve rhythmic
units.! In ordinary Greek melopoeia, although a long metric syllable
sometimes counted for more than two short ones, the length of
musical lines was determined simply by the words of the verse, and
a piece was commonly written out like prose, not in lines. In the
Seikilos song, on the contrary, a uniform time-scheme is imposed
on irregular verses by the music. It is a warning that breeds of music
alien to the orthodox tradition might exist among the mixed popula-
tions of a superficially Hellenized world—and nobody can guess
what sort of music a well-to-do Asiatic Greek might have chosen for
the grave-stone of a female relative.
Although we have no other examples of verses prolonged and
determined by the musical line, we know from a scholium (probably
of late antiquity) that *the verse is not completed by the metric line
alone: it puts a full stop to its movement only when the lyre stops
sounding’.? We also have what sounds like a description of Seikilos’
metric scheme—but strangely misapplied to an incompatible verse-
form—in the Byzantine annotation to some musical setting of a
Greek poem on a sundial known from the thirteenth-century
Ottoboni Codex 59:3 ‘The tropos is the Lydian; the rhythm is of
twelve beats (Swdexdonpos). . . . Taking the line as a whole, the rhythm
is of twelve beats, for the verse has eleven syllables, but (since the line
is for twelve syllables, and there is one beat missing) the last syllable
of each verse counts for three time-beats.' A rhythmic time-scheme of
twelve-beat lines with three beats on the final syllables corresponds
to Seikilos' song, and might possibly be taken from some ancient
treatise on rhythm; but the Byzantine annotator, who scanned verse
by syllables not quantities, has attempted to relate it to a regular
hendecasyllabic poem which will not fit it, and has counted wrong.
(4) This Byzantine annotation, whatever it means, is directly
! For a recent transcription and analysis see E. Martin, Trois documents de musique
grecque (Paris, 1953). He divides each line into four sections of three beats.
? Scholium to Dionysius Thrax (Bekker, Anecdota Graeca, ii, p. 751).
$ See Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Griechische Verskunst (Leipzig, 1921), pp. 595 ff. ;
599-600 (no. 4).
372 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
connected with the problem of the famous musical documents first
published by Vincenzo Galilei in 1581: the Hymns to the Muse (two
poems run together), to the Sun, and to Nemesis. They were trans-
mitted among ancient and Byzantine treatises of musical theory: so,
too, were the metrically similar poems which are copied in the
Ottoboni Codex without the music itself, but with Byzantine annota-
tions on musical settings of the poems to Nature, to Isis, and on a
Sundial. The two groups therefore had a common source. As to the
words, modern scholars accept the Byzantine attribution of the
poems on Nemesis and on the Sun, at least, to Hadrian's celebrated
court musician Mesomedes (second century A.D.).! But the music is
another question. It certainly existed by the thirteenth century: the
question whether it was ancient in origin or a Byzantine recon-
struction, undertaken as an exercise in ancient notation, may be
stated as follows:
(i) Mesomedes—as Byzantine scholars knew—published a collec-
tion of his ‘kitharoedic nomes’.? But since these poems are choral
hymns, not nomes, the hypothesis that they were transmitted from
that collection is unfounded.
(ii) The Galilei pieces are preceded in both our two archetypal
codices by a tenth-century theoretical treatise addressed to Constan-
tine Porphyrogenitus by one Dionysius, who was editing or emulating .
the ancient treatise of Bacchius—a work containing Greek notation.?
(iii) The extreme rarity of rhythmic signs in these pieces is in
striking contrast with all known pieces so late as Mesomedes.
(iv) The Byzantine annotation cited above from the Ottoboni
Codex certainly cannot refer to an ancient setting of the poem to
which it is attached. Firstly, it is metrically impossible. Secondly,
whereas the other poems might well have been written for singing,
this is an epigrammatic conceit upon a sundial, of a literary genre
quite alien to music. The idea that it could have been intended as a
song is absurd. Therefore (unless the annotation has been somehow
displaced) in this case at least the music was a subsequent and
artificial addition. In the other cases, taken singly, an ancient origin
cannot be disproved; but since the six pieces were evidently trans-
mitted together, it Is doubtful.
(v) Mesomedes was a famous figure in Byzantine minds, and
Byzantine theorists understood the Alypian notation. In four cases
1 С, Martellotti, Mesomede (Rome, 1929). ,
2 Dio Cassius LXXV! 12 (transmitted by the Byzantine excerptor Xiphilinus).
* For the date of Dionysius’ iambics see P. Maas in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, xii (1903).
p. 273.
THE EXTANT MUSICAL DOCUMENTS 373
the annotator has interpreted the tropos of the settings as Lydian or
Hypolydian by reference to the notational signs of late Greek
theoretical tonoi (called by Alypius fropoi) Therefore Dionysius
or his successors had the knowledge to attempt such settings in
ancient notation for poems attributed to Mesomedes. A subsidiary
point is that red ink is used, as it was for Byzantine notation.
(vi) The correspondence of speech-accents with melodic rise and
fall is hardly consistent enough to prove an ancient origin.
The probability, then, perhaps seems to favour an erudite Byzantine
reconstruction. On the most cautious estimate, we must refrain from
basing any idea of the composer Mesomedes of Crete upon these
curious emissions. We can be sure only that he was a kitharoede of
extraordinary virtuosity. In that period of sentimental Hellenic re-
vivals he got a public salary; he was docked of it by Hadrian's suc-
cessor, on the ground that a musician was a useless member of society ;
but the amateur strummer Caracalla afterwards built him a mauso-
leum. His immortality may have been fraudulently perpetuated by
the Galilei pieces: yet, since these pieces (whatever their origin) have
excited the interest of European scholars for centuries, a sample from
the Hymn to Nemesis is here given in the usual transcription.
Ех. 317
I MM мом | M M | ср M
Мр - є - с, ттє-рб-ео- ca Bi-ov fo-nd,
фе ют SZ Тут "Ест o 1 M
ку - a-v- m e-a 00 - ya - тер Дік - as,
M o0 о uy U Foz EL ANE NU
å коб - фа фри-а - ура-та Ova - r&v
о i M О Ду Z Ew M M
ёп - é - yeas а - 84 - pav - т. ҳа- № - và,
м M M M M M M MC M ©
€ - xÜov - aa $ 0 - Bow 6 - № - àv Bpo - ràv
p
р с de «Pee 2
pé - а - va $06 - vov ёктд< &avvas.
(5) Of papyrus fragments in Greek notation, the most considerable
so far published is a Christian hymn from Oxyrhynchus, transcribed
374 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
in the third century A.D.; but since its melody is now recognized to
belong to the oriental tradition of the Early Church, it lies beyond
the scope of this chapter.!
From other papyri we have the following fragments:? (i) a Zenon
papyrus (Cairo), c. 250 B.c.: a few words (? from a tragedy); (ii) a
Rainer papyrus (Vienna), 250-150 B.c.: lines 339-45 from Euripides’
Orestes; (iii) a papyrus (Berlin) inscribed after А.р. 156 with parts
of (a) twelve lines of a paean, (5) a brief example without words,
(c) four lines of verse (? tragic) addressing Ajax, (d) a brief example
without words, (e) half a lyric line. These are cited only as fragments,
and are best explained as examples composed to illustrate musical
declamation, rhythm, &c., from some theoretical treatise, (iv) P.
Osloensis 1413. It contains two separate pieces in nineteen lines of
text (all incomplete, some very fragmentary) with ‘vocal’ notation
and profuse rhythmical signs. The script may be of the late first or
early second century A.D. Published by Amundsen and Winnington-
Ingram in Symbolae Osloenses, 1955.
(6) Two considerable fragments await publication:
(i) P. Michiganensis Inv. 2958. The papyrus, of the second
century A.D., contains twenty-five fragmentary lines, of
which 1-8 and 10-25 consist of Greek text with notation
above, while line 9 is of notation without words.*
(1) An Oxyrhynchus papyrus from Oxford.’
The papyri hitherto published are problems of palaeography rather
than objects of musical history. All are too brief or too broken for
assured analysis; and not all their rhythmic signs are fully understood.
What is more certain is that music in Roman imperial times was
distinguished from Alexandrian music by explicit rhythmical mark-
ing, which in all but our earliest pieces (the Zenon papyrus and the
Delphic stones) replaces unaided interpretation of rhythm by the
verse-metre.* In the first century B.c., as Dionysius of Halicarnassus
1 Egon Wellesz, "The earliest example of Christian hymnody’, in Classical Quarterly
xxxix (1945), pp. 34—45 ff. See vol. ii, p. 4.
? Jan, Musici Scriptores Graeci, supplement (Leipzig, 1899); Reinach, La Musique
grecque (Paris, 1926), appendix; Mountford, ‘Greek Music in the Papyri and Inscrip-
tions', in Powell and Barber, New Chapters in Greek Literature, ii (Oxford, 1933), and
‘A New Fragment of Greek Music in Cairo' in Journal of Hellenic Studies, li (1931).
pp. 91 ff. E. G. Turner has re-dated the Orestes papyrus.
* Mountford, however, regards the papyrus as part of an anthology.
* Information courteously supplied by Prof. Youtie and Dr. Pearl of Michigan.
* Information courteously supplied by Mr. Winnington-Ingram.
* On Greek metric (too complex a subject for discussion here) see works cited in
Bibliography, II. (i).
THE EXTANT MUSICAL DOCUMENTS 375
implies, music normally followed the rise and fall of speech. This was
impossible in the classical music, where a strophe was melodically
repeated by an antistrophe. How far it occurred in late antiquity we
can seldom be sure, since the accent of words is too imperfectly re-
presented by the Alexandrian signs which we use, and the pitch-accent
was in any case being replaced by stress. But we know that in the
second century A.D., when crowds would flock to hear a sophist
speak Greek correctly and beautifully, these rhetorical performances
were accompanied by academic study of rhythm.! So passionate an
interest in declamation must have influenced music generally, and
may account for the attention paid to rhythm in late antiquity. A
school of rhythmic theorists grew up beside the classical metricists,
working on other principles. In a philosophical treatise—strangely
compounded of neoplatonic speculation, notational lore, and garbled
musical antiquarianism—the otherwise unknown writer Aristides
Quintilianus speaks of rhythmical matters with some realism, which
may reflect the art of his own age, and at some length, which certainly
reflects the contemporary interest.?
Such writers, however, cannot help us towards an understanding of
contemporary music, as Aristoxenus does for an earlier epoch. In
their textbooks nothing is more depressing than the fossilization of
the doctrine of melopoeia—musical composition—as a mere branch of
theoretical terminology. The writer dubiously named ‘Cleonides’,
professing the doctrine then claimed as * Aristoxenian', first defines
metabole as change from one tonos or systema or genus to another;
then he adds that ‘in melopoeia’, metabole is something different—a
change from an expansive mood (ethos) to a mood of contraction or
of calm, &c.? But his second definition has no more to do with real
music than his first. It is only ‘ethical’ speculation overlaid with the
academic terms of the professional rhetoricians. He illustrates it with
a list of examples of the ‘calm ethos’: hymns, paeans, encomia, and
symbulae. Now the symbule or deliberation was not a musical form at
all, but a regular exercise of the rhetorical schools. It has crept into a
purely conventional list of musical forms under influence of the habit
of applying musical terms to oratory, which may, indeed, have been
the most serious use of music for an educated mind in this age. These
later sources preserve little more from the musical past than a few
1 Plutarch (Ti. Gracchus 2) reflects academic rhetorical practice of his own day in the
absurd legend that C. Gracchus' speeches were accompanied by a wind-instrument.
* For a fresh estimate of Aristides we await the edition of R. P. Winnington-
Ingram, now in preparation.
* Isagoge 13-14.
376 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
technical terms which have lost such meaning as they may ever have
had. ' Cleonides' produces agoge for conjunct motion, ploke for dis-
junct, tone for a sustained note, petteia for a note struck repeatedly.
Petteia was apparently a metaphor from the repeated click-click of
pieces on a draughts-board. But Aristides Quintilianus, who also
knows the word, misinterprets the metaphor as a reference to the
draughts-player's strategy, and defines petteia as the choice of notes
in composition.! It has no musical context for either writer: the one
repeats what he has read, the other makes a wrong etymological guess.
None of these theorists think of describing current principles by
which we might analyse our later musical documents.
For the most part, however, written documents of music had never
existed. It is not from fragments nor from harmonic theorists that we
can hope to gain an idea of its historical character. The best sources
are the earliest—poets who were also composers and critics who were
also musicians. They cannot reveal what Greek music might have
meant to us, but on the question what it meant to the Greeks their
evidence is the clearest that we have.
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC
(1) Music in Homer's Greece. By the end of the eighth century В.С.
Greece was a land where ' beggar bears spite to beggar, and bard to
bard'.? Such jealous professionals sang epics like the Iliad to their
own lyre—phorminx or kitharis—freely adapting a conventional reci-
tative style, with an initial appeal to the divine muse who possessed
them to sing.? They came, as Homer shows, of a society whose twin-
born music and poetry were already mature, consciously removed
from the primitive, barbaric, or rustic. Not all Greek music was skilled
art, but we know nothing of a period before a skilled art existed.
Music was early practised as an ingredient of magical medicine; its
festival occasions and its formal conventions were often religious;
but the line between the religious and the secular was differently drawn
in antiquity. In the Iliad music already has the status of an art over
and above a mere ritual; and the Greek tradition remained human-
istic, anti-liturgical, swiftly sensitive to social or mental change.
Gods as well as men daily demanded new music. The old was remem-
bered in the classical period as a model and as a possession for ever,
but not as a rite to be reiterated. There is no adequate foundation for
1 1. 17J. Some scholars, however, prefer Aristides’ definition.
? Hesiod, Works and Days, 25-26.
3 Cf. the pose of Phemius (Od. xxii. 345 f.): ‘Iam self-taught and God has planted in
me all kinds of song.’
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 377
recent interpretations of Greek musical ‘modes’ as groups of melodic
formulae, on Indian, Jewish, or Byzantine analogies: Byzantine
composers could never have been personally parodied as Athenian
composers were. In competitive individualism, at least, classical
Greek music was nearer to modern Europe. It was an accomplish-
ment open to all talents. The gods of Agamemnon's army not only
receive music from mortals but make it at their own banquets, to
Apollo's phorminx; and on earth, not only the paid professional but
the lord Achilles sings epics of the renowns of warriors to his own
phorminx for his pleasure.! This ideal of a music respected among an
aristocracy by practice, as well as by patronage, reached its fullest
expression in fifth-century Athens. There were, however, higher and
lower classes of music. On a sleepless night Agamemnon, looking
across from his tent to Troy, heard the skirling of oboes and pipes in
the besieged Phrygian city.? The aulos and the syrinx, though com-
mon to Greece, were later thought to be Asiatic imports beside the
pure Hellenic lyra, kithara or phorminx; and two rival musics were
symbolized in the legend of the Greek Apollo flaying the Phrygian
satyr-aulete Marsyas. But in the Iliad the wind-instruments are rustic
and popular rather than alien. Paris, being a prince of Troy, plays
the aristocratic kitharis.? Common folk may also use the aulos, and
shepherds the syrinx—the pipes of the satyr Pan. Dionysus, to whom
the aulos later became what the lyre was to Apollo, is not yet among
the Olympian é/ite of Homer's gods; and Homer's heroes sing the
Apolline paeans, not the Dionysian dithyrambs.
It is in the Odyssey that we find the apotheosis of the professional
kitharoedic bard. Semi-divine beings like the Sirens, the nightingale,
or Circe are allowed to sing; but music is otherwise monopolized by
the resident minstrel. He has become a self-conscious ornament of
noble households, and claims, although a servant, that recognition
of genius which Pindar could still demand of a later aristocracy.
The bard in the story—Phemius in Odysseus’ manor or Demodocus
in Alcinous' palace—is deliberately dramatized as a secondary hero,
and incidentally used to introduce compliments to the musical pro-
fession as an indispensable asset of good dining.* He sings epics of
warriors or love-stories of gods; he advertises his forthcoming works;
he also performs for dancers in athletic contests. In Homeric and
classical times music included not only poetry but often dancing as
1 Jl. i. 472 and 601 ff.; xxii. 391; ix. 186 ff. 2 fob xe Л
? И. iii. 54. The precise difference between kitharis and phorminx at this date is un-
known. The terms kithara and lyra are later.
* Cf. Od. viii. 73 and 261 ff.; i. 337 ff. ; xxiv. 197; &c.
378 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
well. As the sung word expressed the intonation, so the beat of the
dancing foot (sometimes marked by castanets) expressed the rhythm.!
The bard advances into a dancing-ground (chorus or orchestra) and
the youths dance time to his song. If a dance is performed without
song—as was the famous Phaeacian ball-throwing dance—there is
no music either: the rhythm is conducted by the hand-claps of the
spectators, or by the arms of Nausicaa dancing among her maids.?
For the music of the archaic community as a whole we must return
to the earlier, less self-assertive Homer of the Iliad. He describes, for
instance, the form of the dirge sung over Hector's body. Professional
bards begin the lamentation, after which a chorus of women keens;
then Hectors widow Andromache, his mother Hecuba, and his
sister-in-law Helen take up their laments in turn, with a keening of
women after each.? Improvisations set within a formal sequence may
still have been the structure of the dirges known to Plato. Almost
every social occasion also had its song—often a more or less tradi-
tional elaboration of some simple cry like the Ailinon (‘alas for
Linus!’) in an ancient and celebrated harvesting-shanty, or the Hymen
O Hymenaee of the wedding-hymns.* Some of this music is set into
scenes on the Shield of Achilles. Here girls with garlands and boys
with knives, holding hands, dance in rings or in rows to the song of a
bard with a lyre, while two acrobats turn somersaults at the beginning
of each verse or strain.’ In other scenes, a boy with a lyre sings ће
‘Linus’ at the vintage; two shepherds play the pastoral syrinx to
their flocks; and a wedding-feast is celebrated with the chant Hymen-
aeus and the dancing of boys to auloi and lyres.®
These scenes, though drawn from real experience, are as artfully
idealized as Gongora’s poetic pictures of country life. They give us
the context of the archaic lyrical music which went on beside the
grand style of the epic with its tales of the gods and heroes.
(ii) The Music of the Early Lyrics. Down to the mid-fifth century
B.C., sophisticated poets composed songs of skilled art but of popular
inspiration—songs for such daily doings as dances of young girls or
fighting men, weddings, funerals, processions, wars, drinking-bouts;
love-songs and songs of political or private hate. This lyric move-
1 A metric foot is a term borrowed from dancing. For castanets see Hom. Hymn. iii.
2
2 Od. viii. 261 ff.; ibid. 370 ff.; vi. 100 ff. * Ц. xxiv. 720 ff.
* On the Linus-song (which did not explain who Linus was nor why he was mourned)
see Frazer, Golden Bough, vii. 216. See also above, p. 251.
5 JI, xviii. 590 ff. Acrobats also in Od. iv. 17 ff.
6 JI. xviii. 491 ff., 525 ff., 561 ff.
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 379
ment sprang from Ionian Greece, and found its first great metropolis
in Sparta, whose aristocracy was still Homeric enough to love good
music next to good fighting. Its early stages are extremely hard to
trace. The attribution of extant poems is often in doubt, the dates of
composers in confusion. Musical history was first reconstructed in
the fourth century B.c. by Glaucus of Rhegium, whose work is known
chiefly through an unintelligent source of late antiquity, the pseudo-
Plutarchian De musica.! No subject is more confused by legend and
invention. The main sources were local histories compiled from the
later fifth century onwards; and these records, to judge from the many
ancient doubts and divergences on the dates of archaic poets, must
have been either unreliable or sketchy. The musical victories of early
poets in local or Panhellenic festivals may have been interpolated
into the annals by the competing vanities of Greek cities. It was
claimed that a Pythian festival of music was held at Delphi long
before the official Pythian era (582 B.C.), and a high though hazy
antiquity was also ascribed to musical contests at the Spartan Carnea.
None were included in the indubitably ancient Olympian Games, and
Homer knows no more than musical accompaniments to athletics or
dances. Even if musicians began so early to compete for their own
prizes, no firm chronology was transmitted from these events.
Festival music consisted of epic declamation and poetic forms
dedicated to particular deities. The ‘Pythian Nome’ for Apollo was
a composition or genre on the set theme of Apollo and the Dragon
(or Python), which still recurs in the extant Delphic paeans of the
second century B.C., and which was revived by sixteenth-century
pioneers of Italian opera.? The Delphic contest of auletes originated,
according to Pindar, in an archaic *Many-headed Nome' on the
theme of Perseus slaying the Gorgon. The dithyramb probably began
in the sixth century B.C. as a recital of the Birth of Dionysus, not
acted, but danced and sung to the aulos by a circular chorus of fifty
men or boys. It was brought to maturity, in a strophic form, by the
early classic composers, and broke away from the limits of the set
subject. No special themes were prescribed for tragedy and comedy
as we know them in the fifth century, but they may originally, like
the dithyramb, have had some particular reference to their patron
Dionysus.? Of all these festival genres, however, no clear example
1 Ascribed to Plutarch by Weil and Reinach (ed. 1900), but no longer accepted as
his. See the edition of F. Lasserre (Paris, 1954).
E The opinion of later authors that the original Pythian Nome was an aulos-piece
without words is hardly credible.
3 See further А. W. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy (Oxford,
380 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
has come down to us from the archaic period. Early lyric poets, while
they may also produce hymns to gods, are more concerned with the
musical occasions of ordinary private and social life than with the set
ritual narrative or drama. Even the more formal choric works of
Stesichorus, which do narrate mythological stories, were probably
designed (like Pindar's) for the personal occasions of a patron's court.
Most of the lyric genres are less grandiose. From Alcman, for instance,
we have a piece, possibly composed for two choirs, in which the poet
bandies compliments to pretty girls as they sing and dance, calling
them by their патеѕ.! To Tyrtaeus were attributed the patriotic
marching-songs (embateria) of the Spartans, who had the unusual
habit of keeping step, and took auletes with them into battle.? Archi-
lochus of Paros, the most famous figure of all, composed colloquial
songs—gnomic, satirical, autobiographical, and above all, convivial.
Songs called scolia, often on political subjects, were sung to an aulos
by gentlemen after dinner over their wine, each delivering one line in
turn.? But of Archilochus' music the fifth century seems to remember
only the triple tenella kallinike—three cheers for an Olympic victor.
Pindar thought it crude stuff beside his own regal victory odes.*
What was recorded of these poets' lives was mainly inference or
romance. They were dated to the seventh century (or, in the case of
Stesichorus, variously to c. 600 and c. 485 B.c.). This patch of history
was much confused by the later Greek passion for deriving every
musical form or instrument from a First Inventor, to whom extant
works would then be apportioned.
The founder of auletic music was said to be Olympus, who was a
myth, but was credited with real archaic compositions still known
in the fourth century B.C.: e.g. a ritual libation-song (spondeion) which
used some ascending three-quarter-tone intervals—presumably re-
lated to the irrational borings of the aulos which Aristoxenus noted.5
The early aulos, of which the Argive Sacadas was the first known
virtuoso, was improved in the later fifth century by Pronomus of
Thebes or his school.* Besides common devices for modifying notes,
1927), and The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (Oxford, 1953): the origins of these forms is
Ey Diehl, Anthologia Lyrica Graeca (Leipzig, 1942), ii., p. 7, n. 1. The interpretation
is difficult and uncertain.
? Cf. Thuc. v. 20. Later stories that Tyrtaeus was (a) a general, (6) a music-teacher,
need not be credited.
* Examples in Diehl, op. cit. ii, pp. 181 ff. Singers either repeated known scolia or
composed as they went. 4 Ol. ix. 1 (cf. Pyth. її. 55).
5 See above, р. 350. On tbe ‘spondeion scale’ of ps.-Plut. De musica, see Winnington-
Ingram in Classical Quarterly, xxii (1928), pp. 83 ff. ,
* No full account of Greek instruments can here be attempted. See Reinach, articles
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 381
metal rings were used to close or half-close holes, and the number of
holes (sometimes as few as six) was raised to fifteen. Auloi were made
in five registers covering three octaves between them. They were of
wood, bone, or ivory, with a double (or less probably, a single) reed
in the bulb of the mouthpiece. The player wore a leather halter to
hold in his puffing lips. Often he used a pair of auloi, modifying the
note by drawing them apart or together.! The aulos might accompany
any choral singing, down to drinking-parties after dinner; but a
soloist accompanied himself on strings, and strings were naturally
used by the composers themselves.
Bigger and better stringed instruments may have come in about
Pindar's times. The classical kithara had a body of wood, and a sound-
box made of, or shaped like, a tortoise's shell, with oxhide stretched
over the face and two curved horns rising from it, joined by a cross-
bar carrying the pegs, to which strings of gut were stretched over a
bridge. For plucking, an ivory plectrum was generally used in onehand,
and in the other the fingers alone. From the seventh century onwards,
archaeological evidence shows varying numbers of strings (from four
to eleven or twelve) in concurrent use. This simultaneously attested
variety is enough to suggest that the exact number had less practical
significance than was attached to it in apocryphal anecdotes of the
fourth century B.c. Terpander—a shadowy figure assigned to variant
seventh-century dates and suspiciously coupled with the mythical
Olympus—was inflated into a Founder of kitharistic music, and
was supposed to have increased the strings of the phorminx from
four to the symbolic number of seven, also imputed to Orpheus.?
He was made responsible for poems of uncertain origin and tradi-
tional kitharistic nomes (e.g. the nomos orthios or ‘shrill nome’,
still familiar in the fifth century). According to Pindar, however, his
instrument was not the phorminx but the barbitos, which he invented
in antiphonal answer to the Lydian pectis.? Exactly how these instru-
ments differed from others was disputed. The barbitos, which was
a lyre with long strings, was certainly used by the two great Aeolian
‘Lyra’ and ‘Tibia’ in Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire d'antiquités (Paris, 1877-1919);
Sachs, History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940), and article in Reallexikon
der Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1913); Schlesinger, The Greek Aulos (London, 1938;
inacceptable on musical theory). Illustrations (undated) in Wegner, Musikleben der
Griechen (Berlin, 1949).
1 Aristox. Harm. 42. The left aulos might also answer the right: Varro R R i. 2,
15-16, may also mean that the tibia succentiva (left) was held lower than the incentiva
(right), but certainly implies that its part was a subsequent response (cf. succino in
Hor. Ep. i. 7, 48).
? The poem on the subject ascribed to Terpander is spurious.
* Frag. 125 (ap. Athen. 635d, discussing the instruments).
382 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
composers of the early sixth century, Alcaeus and Sappho. Both were
of Lesbos, which was also the reputed home of Terpander. It is not
necessary to decide whether ‘Terpander’—a title meaning Rejoicer
of Man—was a historical personage or merely a mpôros eúperýs: the
equivalent of a patron saint. In either case his quasi-legendary fame
is best interpreted as a symbol of the musical influence of the Aeolian
school which followed in the sixth century.
(ш) Aeolian Music. Of Sappho's life little but legend is preserved.
Alcaeus, on the other hand, is the first tangible figure in the history
of European music. He was a nobleman of Lesbos with a colourful
record of war, exile, and political opposition to the local Tyrants.
He is said to have sung in exquisite dress, and his own songs were
especially popular in classical Athens at those fashionable drinking-
parties where the aristocracy made music.! Both Alcaeus and Sappho
were brilliant metrical innovators; both wrote in their native Aeolian
dialect. Their art was personal, and their lyric forms usually monodic.
In literary genre there is little to relate them to the first classical
composers at the end of the sixth century. But these composers
have a special predilection for a style which they call ‘Aeolian’,
although they themselves came from Boeotia or the Peloponnese;
and while no influence can be traced from Alcaeus and Sappho in
particular, it is possible that a general influence was exercised by the
school of Lesbos.
At Athens the pioneer of the classical movement was Lasos of
Hermione, the powerful dithyrambist who caught a creature of the
Pisistratid Tyrants forging oracles. Lasos refers to his own music
‘in the deep-sounding Aeolian Aarmonia'; and Pratinas, another
Peloponnesian, not much later exhorts musicians to *follow neither
the high nor the low Ionian muse, but plough the middle course and
Aeolize in your song'.? The verb means‘ to speak the Aeolian (musical)
language'. Harmonia in its melodic sense denotes not only a tuning
but a tropos or idiom. That the Aeolian idiom was ‘deep’ to Lasos
but ‘middle’ to Pratinas only shows that its pitch was a relative
matter: at any rate, it was something opposed to the shrill archaic
styles. Evidently they were proud to practise and advertise this music.
Pindar, though he also has a Lydian manner, more often describes
his tropos as Aeolian. For his Lydian he can employ a phorminx as
1 Aristoph. Thesm. 160; Lys. 1236 f., &c. .
2 Both cited Бу * Heraclides Ponticus’ (ар. Athen. 624e-625f), who ignorantly equates
the Aeolian harmonia with the Hypodorian octave-species.
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 383
well as wind, and for his Aeolian auloi as well as strings, or he can
combine both with dancers in a full-dress epinikian ode: the differ-
ence is not in the instruments, but simply in the styles. A problem,
however, arises when Pindar seems to call the same music both Aeo-
lian and Dorian. For King Hieron's Olympian victory on his horse
Pherenicus, Pindar writes: * Take from its peg my Dorian phorminx.
... Him I must crown with a horseman's strain of Aeolian song."!
Elsewhere he speaks of ‘an Aeolian walking the Dorian road of
hymns,’ and of some new tropos (unnamed) which he is tuning to his
‘Dorian sandal’.? Later scholiasts, noticing the difficulty but knowing
nothing of his music, conjectured that in the former case the rhythm
was Aeolian, in the latter Dorian. But these are not metric terms, and
the idea that a ‘Dorian’ rhythm could simply be clapped on to an
‘Aeolian’ tropos (or vice versa) seems purely academic. Pindar’s
language suggests rather that he was somehow adapting an Aeolian
melopoeia to principles of rhythm and string-tuning which were
called Dorian. That the term Dorian in fact referred to tuning as well
as rhythm is shown by the following passage of Pratinas:?
What is this uproar, what these dancings? What outrage has attacked
the trampled altar of Dionysus? . . . It is the voice that is queen, by order
of the Muse: the au/os must dance behind, being indeed a servant. Only
in the rout and fisticuffs of young mummers banging at the door let him
act the General and be thankful. Beat that bad breath of a coloratura-
mottled toad! Burn that varlet of a low-crooning babbling reed that wastes
spittle and spoils time and tune as he steps along, with his body all gimlet-
holes! Now look at me, O God of the ivied hair, Dionysus triumphant in
dithyrambs: this is the right fling of hand and foot. Hear my own per-
formance—the Dorian!
Here Pratinas, notwithstanding his other manifesto in favour of
the Aeolian style, is calling his own music Dorian. Taken together
with Pindar's evidence, it tends to strengthen the suspicion that in
this early classical period the terms Dorian and Aeolian might be
applied to the same music; and it is notable that in the later fifth
century, although Pindar was by no means obsolete, the Aeolian
name dropped out of musical use, while the Dorian remained. But
we cannot pretend to understand such terms too exactly in a period
of rapid musical development, when the main styles were certainly
losing any real association with the local schools and dialects from
1 OL i. 17 and 101 f.
2 Frag. 19; Ol. iii. 5. Aeolian tropos also in Pyth. ii. 69 fF., Nem. iii. 79.
3 Frag. 1 (ap. Athen. 617e, where the musical point is misunderstood). Text and
meaning are often dubious, but the general sense is clear.
384 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
which they may originally have been named. What emerges clearly is
that to Pratinas the Dorian stands for true rhythm and tuning led by
the voice, as against the rhythmical and tonal errors of an uncon-
trollable aulos. By the end of the century our sources distinguish,
above all, two major types of tuning and idiom: the one clean and
sustained (entonos), typified by the high classical Dorian, the other
chromatic and quivering (aiolos), often assorted with the style then
known as Phrygian and with the aulos or its tonal effects. Other
distinct brands of music still existed, but they were falling away into
the popular background of the more mature fifth-century movement.
To illustrate this point, it will be necessary to clarify the terms in
which Plato surveys the range of harmoniae known during the later
classical period.
(iv) The Harmoniae of Plato's Republic. We know from Aristo-
phanes that fifth-century schoolboys were taught to tune their lyres
to more than one harmonia or accordatura. But these tunings need
not be interpreted as mechanical scale-forms. The stylistic connota-
tions of the word emerge clearly in the classical Greek preference
for an adverbial form, Doristi, Lydisti, Phrygisti—used of speaking
‘in a certain idiom'—rather than an adjectival phrase, ‘Dorian,
Lydian, or Phrygian harmonia’. Plato's own usage can best be studied
in a famous passage, here summarized as follows :1
The harmonia and the rhythm must follow the sense of the words; and in
words (as we were saying) we have no use for dirges and lamentations.
Which, then, are the harmoniae of dirges? That in the Mixolydian, the
High Lydian, and suchlike harmoniae. Then these must surely be abolished,
for they are unprofitable even for decent women, let alone men. Now, in
the men who defend the City drunkenness, softness, and laxity are most
unbecoming. Which are the soft wine-bibber's harmoniae? That in the
Ionian; and some in the Lydian are also called low and lax. These can be
of no good to fighting men. So you seem to be left with two harmoniae, in
the Dorian and in the Phrygian.
The term harmonia here has two connotations. (a) Since there can
be more than one harmonia in the low Lydian, Plato at this point
equates harmonia with a single melodia, or at least a sub-type; and
this usage is confirmed by Euripides, who speaks of the nightingale
‘weaving her fine-spun harmonia in the trees’.? (b) Otherwise Plato
1 Rep. 398d-399a (abbreviated). The word chalaros is punningly used for both *low-
pitched’ and ‘morally Jax’. The reading а? тес is here accepted.
? Frag. 773.
PLATE XI
ажай.
Mes
Hun
s s
ж
BTE
Bude WL ETRE
E
tig
меер"
ome ГА
IT
LÀ
Veo
[4
ы
өг
(b)
ROMAN INSTRUMENTS
(a) A priest of Cybele. Relief showing cymbals
and twin Phrygian
tympanum
See page 405
,
0).
5
cus. Mosaic showing the ruba
and cornu (late Ist century A.D.)
pipes (c. A.D. 1
draulus with
hy
2
(b) Roman musicians at the cir
>
female player.
PLATE XII
A ROMAN CONCERT
Showing twin pipes and kithara. From a fresco at Herculaneum
See page 413
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 385
gives to harmonia the more general sense of a whole melodic idiom
(e.g. what Aristoxenus calls *the Phrygian melos").
Some, though not all, of the harmoniae named are associated with
(relatively) high or low pitches. But their more fundamental associa-
tions are with special forms or occasions of music—for instance, the
hysterical shrieking of dirges or the sensual crooning of wine-songs.
Plato elsewhere tells us that at the end of the classical era these and
other associations broke down, and the various forms and idioms
were confused.! Later Greeks, no longer knowing the old forms of
musical expression, imagined that Plato was attaching abstract
ethical effects to the various harmoniae: a superstition which Aristox-
enus briefly repudiates.? It is true that to classical Greek minds music
was like a second language, capable of expressing almost all that
could be said in words, and of bringing out the moods or passions
latent in them. Such bilingualism-of speech and music is perhaps
unparalleled in Europe: certainly it is the antithesis of the idea of
music as a closed world existing for its own sake in its own terms.
Like all Greek art, music was mimetic or representative—a direct
photography (as it were) of mental objects formed by the ethos and
pathos of the soul. This psychological theory was carried to absurdity
by later Greeks who (as an ancient writer says) fell into ecstasies and
compared tunes with natural objects. But Plato's own meaning is
quite straightforward and sensible. Music in the classical tradition
expressed the words and was indivisible from their substance, which
was not always edifying. Aristophanes has given us a decisive example
of the Ionian style which Plato regards as unfit for boys' education.
It is, in fact, an outrageously indecent duet between two prostitutes.*
The polite Hellenistic society of a later age had forgotten that music
could be barbarous and orgiastic. The famous oriental dirge for
Adonis was civilized into a conventional piece of Alexandrian recita-
tive, which Theocritus could cast into charming verse; but this was
not the real Adoniasm, with its dinning drums, known to fifth-century
Athens. The excruciating ‘ Ai-ai Adonin!’, screamed from the house-
tops by a frenzied female, falling on the ear like an evil omen, had
been almost enough to break off the Assembly’s debate on the in-
vasion of Sicily.’
The ‘high and low harmoniae’ (like the archaic ‘shrill nome’)
1 Laws 700a ff. (cited below, p. 395). 2 Harm. 31.
* Papyr. Hibeh i. 13.
* Eccl. 893 ff. (in 918-19, ‘Ionic tropos’ is used punningly, alluding to the musical
sense in I. 883).
* Theocr. Buc. xv; Aristoph. Lys. 393 ff.
386 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
may represent a lingering ancient stratum of popular music. We cannot
define them precisely. The Mixolydian aroused endless curiosity in
late antiquity owing to the problems of placing a seventh theoretical
tonos of that name, and speculations on its archaic nature were then
quite unhistorical. The archaic Lydian and Ionian date from the
period when Ionia was in the Lydian empire, and the two terms may
have meant much the same: The ‘high Lydian’ and ‘low Lydian and
Ionian’, which Plato banishes from education, can scarcely have
differed very much from the ‘high and low Ionian’ which Pratinas
banished from music. Both were of the primitive or popular stuff
against which the first classical composers were asserting the modern
refinement of their Aeolian or Dorian manner.! In the later fifth
century respectable composers ceased to write in the old popular
genres, which early poets had refined and adorned. These genres fell
back into a musical underworld, which could still inspire the genius
of Euripides, but was generally regarded as vulgar.? The Dorian and
Phrygian were the main styles now practised in serious music. They
represented two indispensable but sharply contrasted modes of ex-
pression. The Lydian name is still occasionally used, but is virtually
identified with the Phrygian. Telestes, at the end of the century,
speaks of ‘that Phrygian king of the holy aulos . . . who first tuned the
quivering (aiolos) Lydian strain, rival of the Dorian muse’.?
Telestes' adjective aiolos exactly reflects that quivering, flexible
melodic line which Aristophanes parodies in the new dithyrambists.
The dithyrambic tropos of the day was the Phrygian, which was
closely associated with the aulos, though the new composers imitated
its effects on strings as well. The aulos (as Pratinas complained)
drowned both rhythm and tuning with its incontinent wobbles unless
it was subordinated to the voice, and a music dominated by its noise
can have had little regard for rational laws of consonance. Its attrac-
tion was emotional excitement. Phrygian music was not always exag-
gerated or intemperate: Plato admits it as a necessity for the softer
moods of persuasion or appeal. But its antithesis to the Dorian
tuning went far deeper than any alleged difference of ‘modal’ species.
Greek writers, in contrasting the Dorian music's measured firmness
with the pliant ecstasy of the Phrygian, are not merely word-painting.
When Philoxenus tried to compose a dithyramb in the Dorian he
found it a stylistic impossibility. The Dorian was entonos, a music
1 Pindar’s Lydian (whether related to archaic Lydian music or not) belongs to a
different musical level. Plato implies that there were several ‘Lydian’ harmoniae.
* Aristoph. Frogs 1301-4.
3 Diehl, op. cit. ii, p. 126; cf. ibid., p. 156. * Aristotle, Pol. 1342b.
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 387
of notes firmly tuned and sustained without quavering or kampai,
incapable of the enthusiasmos demanded by the Dionysiac dithyramb.!
Plato and Aristoxenus are at one in their preference for the high
classical school of the earlier fifth century. But they refer to their ideal
in different terms. For Plato, it is represented by the Dorian harmonia;
for Aristoxenus, by the enharmonic genus. There is some reason to
believe that the Dorian harmonia and the enharmonic genus were
intimately related.
(v) The ‘enharmonic’ music. It is not till the fourth century that
we hear of the classification of the tetrachord into three genera.
Ex. 306 is here set out on a less rigid staff, with continuous lines for
the fixed mese and hypate, a dotted line for the movable /ichanos,
and movable parypate in the space:
Ex. 318
(a) Enharmonic (b) Chromatic (c) Diatonic
Mese A,—9—————— M-e M—9——————
L|----- Ф-----------
Lichanos ------9.-37---- ауса саа Ф wi лак ө
Hypate E ———————e— Не Не
These are still only schematic figures or skeletons of melodic styles.
According to Aristoxenus the diatonic (which dominates post-
Alexandrian music) was the oldest. The chromatic was a novelty in
411 B.C, when Aristophanes parodied its fashionable exponent
Agathon, with the comment: ‘ Ant-crawls—or what's this warbling?'?
Chroma means the minor shades of the movable notes, and the chro-
matic developed as a moist relentment of the sharp enharmonic out-
lines. It connoted a very different style, attuned to the poetic prettiness
of the fourth century.
Analytically, the genera were defined by the tuning of /ichanos.
Aristoxenus contrasts the classical enharmonic with the fourth-
century cult of chromaticism in an illuminating passage:?
That there is a melodic style which demands a ditonal lichanos [i.e. two
whole tones below mese]—and no mean style, but about the finest of all—
is far from evident to most musicians nowadays, although it could be
shown to them by induction from examples. But what I say will be clear
enough to those familiar with the first and second of the old tropoi. Those
used only to the present style of composition will of course reject the
ditonal lichanos, since the great majority nowadays use a higher tuning.
1 See further below, рр. 389, 393 ff. ? Thesm. 100. $ Harm. 23.
388 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
The reason is a hankering for more and more sweetness: that this is their
aim is shown by the fact that they practise chiefly and almost always the
chromatic—or if they ever do touch the enharmonic, they approximate its
tuning to the chromatic, wherewith its stylistic character (ethos) is distorted
to ruin.
The numbering of ‘first and second tropoi’ can only be pedagogic.
It refers, not to the archaic beginnings of music, but to the melopoeic
styles taught in the classical curriculum of schools, beginning from
Simonides and Pindar, or the first period of what was recognized by
the classicists as ‘the finest style of all’.
In this ‘finest style’, Aristoxenus treats the ditonal progression
from mese to lichanos not as a mere option of the ear, but as a
demonstrable necessity of musical syntax. The term induction is taken
from the logic of his master Aristotle.? The exact effects are of course
irrecoverable, but we can imagine how a music built upon the con-
trast between fixed and movable notes, consonant and dissonant
progressions, might be deranged by the introduction of a new quasi-
consonance such as a sweet and perfect 5:4 third from mese down to
a higher tuning of /ichanos. According to the pseudo-Plutarchian De
musica, the enharmonic pyknon was originally undivided, and old-
fashioned auletes could still be heard to keep the semitone whole ‘in
the tetrachord meson as well'.? The implication is that the dieses were
used chiefly or solely in the tetrachord meson, and that, even there,
they were regarded as a later decorative addition. These so-called
*quarter-tones' often strike modern minds as the salient feature of the
enharmonic genus. In fact, they were incidental to it. The enharmonic
style was basically defined by the progressions resulting from the
ditonal Jichanos of the classical period.
The pseudo-Plutarch somewhat unconvincingly derives enharmonic
music from the archaic spondeion of Olympus, but adds that the
irregular three-quarter-tone interval of the spondeion is alien to the
real enharmonic (and to all the genera). This account at least serves
to emphasize the purity of the enharmonic tuning by contrast with
archaic aulos-music. Now it is a striking fact that the term ‘enhar-
monic' is not found till the fourth century, when the three genera
were first classified. The traditional name of the genus—still used by
Plato, and often by Aristoxenus—was simply ‘The Harmonia’: i.e.
‘the tuning’, or music in tune. The opposite term, exharmonic, means
1 When the ‘second tropos’ began is uncertain, but not here relevant.
2 ёт&уєоба‹.
3 De mus. 11, 6. The source of this datum can hardly be later than the fourth
century, when the enharmonic music was dying out.
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 389
*out of tune'. The false notes produced by violent modulation in the
new anti-classical styles are called exharmonic: 1.е. transgressions of
‘The (enharmonic) Tuning'. Before Aristoxenus, no theorist had
ever analysed any genus except the enharmonic;? and Aristoxenus
himself uses it as the typical figure for general demonstration. It is
clear that, until the fourth century, ‘The Harmonia’ was in some sense
unique—the only note-series which was considered to be truly ‘in
tune' and worth logical analysis. Historically, it may be supposed to
represent the principles of rational consonance worked out in music
by the first classical composers, and in mathematics by their contem-
poraries, the first harmonic scientists. This is not to say that the
archaic idioms necessarily lacked all acoustic logic; but the classical
music represented some more conscious achievement of a well-tuned
tonality, which first superseded the archaic styles, then broke down
under the chromaticism of the modernists.
The double enharmonic tetrachord (with the ditonal /ichanos) is to
Aristoxenus the pure theoretical figure of the great classical styles
which he remembered. In fourth-century terms, it corresponds to the
octave-species called Dorian (in the enharmonic genus). Without the
melopoeic progressions, the scale conveys little to us; but it may
reasonably be regarded as an abstract schema of the old classic Dorian
tuning. In other words, ‘The Harmonia’ may probably be identified
as both ‘enharmonic’ and ‘Dorian’. The idea that a composer took
a mode called Dorian and then chose between its three alternative
genera is an unhistorical impression from later analytical textbooks.
In classical melopoeia, harmonia and genus were not so dissociable.
The other fourth-century scale-forms were only artificial segments,
with artificial names, cut out of this rationalized note-series for
theoretical purposes. The old Phrygian harmonia or melos, which
called for the tonal uncertainties of the aulos or emulated them on
the kithara, may have been stylized to some degree, but it cannot be
explained as a sub-type of the same note-series.
Thus far a tentative discussion of this fifth-century terminology
may be justifiable; but it is hampered by our ignorance of contempor-
ary teaching. Of the mysteriously influential Damon, the musical
friend of Pericles and Socrates, we know little for certain, though
much was conjectured by later Platonists.? He is said to have stan-
dardized the nomenclature of some harmoniae. In any case, the
1 *Pherecrates' ap. ps.-Plutarch, De mus. 30, 3.
? Harm. 2.
* All references to extant writings by Damon are suspicious or late. Few will accept
as authentic his alleged speech before the Areopagites.
390 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
poet-composers who were absorbing local dialects into a literary lan-
guage must also have universalized the chief musical idioms. А common
and conscious Hellenism was the tendency, if not the achievement, of
the age. The Greek belief that Dorian music was more ‘Hellenic’
than Phrygian was true only in the sense that the Dorian was a
typical creation of the classical spirit.! For oriental influences in
music of this date there can be no concrete evidence. The names and
natures of harmoniae have evoked both ancient and modern specula-
tion, but it is doubtful whether they could ever define more than the
broader differences of musical character. Between the Lydian of
Pindar and the Lydian or Phrygian of Telestes much had changed.
The classical music did not develop through musically autonomous
forms; it was more aptly classified (as Plato also knew) by the literary
forms which it served.? These forms, too, were in rapid growth and
change. Within them, contemporaries were sharply aware of differ-
ences in the dates and styles of individual composers.
(vi) Aristophanes and Athens. Pindar, though he may have boasted
of noble lineage, speaks and behaves as a professional musician.?
His patrons were the aristocracies of Greece and the kings or lords of
Sicily, where Stesichorus had brought choral performances into
fashion. The distinctive contribution of Athens to music was the
tragic and comic theatre, still financed by wealthy persons but effec-
tively patronized by the whole City: a drama in which the simple
movements and plain accompaniment of a citizen chorus required no
professional training in choreography and instrumentation, as did
the dithyramb or the Pindaric ode. Whereas gentlemen like Alcaeus
had touched only the smaller forms of lyric song, free-born Athenians
could now compose big works. A set of three tragedies with a comedy
had to be presented for a prize at the Great Dionysia or other yearly
festivals. The tragedians, being financially independent and bound to
a dramatic theme, tell us far less of their own music than the pro-
fessional Pindar, who is continually aware of his art, his lyre, and his
orchestration, his patrons and rivals, and his purse. But it was a
prime function of the classic comedy to criticize music as well as
politics and persons. The greatest of comedians was himself probably
the greatest of Athenian composers,* and certainly the greatest of
1 Cf. Plat. Lach. 188 d. ‘ Heraclides Ponticus’ on racial origins of music is anachronistic
fantasy. 2 Laws 700a.
з Pyth. v. 72 ff; but professional status is proved by his references to fees.
4 So Plato’s epigram: the Graces (goddesses especially of music) chose Aristophanes’
soul as their home.
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 391
Greek musical critics. Aristophanes and his audience—or its upper
layer—could catch musical allusions back to Archilochus or Alcman,
and could enjoy parodies ranging from the first classics to the latest
dithyrambic novelty. His plays are the epitome of the Athenian musi-
cal education of his time.
Boys of the upper classes went to a music-master, and in company
they were expected to intone their piece of epic or to sing the classics
at meals.! ‘Musical hoggishness' was a social and political insult.?
For advanced students there were professors of composition, cari-
catured in Aristophanes' hack Poet with his stock in trade of model
styles—Homer, Simonides, Pindar, the maiden-song, the dithyramb.?
Choruses were also trained by professionals, unless the composer
(like Aristophanes) could do it for himself. But music was much more
than an academic discipline and a fine art. At every drinking-party an
aulos was there to accompany scolia and favourite numbers from
musical comedy. The first man to drain his vase of wine during the
breath of a trumpet-blast got a prize; the drinker who sang the night
through *took the cake' as a reward.* At a smart party, as staged by
Aristophanes, the guests first pour the libation of wine on the floor
(the social rite at which libation-songs were sung); then the aulos-
girl tunes up, and the scolia go on until the eldest guest makes off
with the aulos-girl) Auletes were also employed by gymnasts for
rhythmical exercises, and by magistrates for public proclamations in
the City.
The forms of rural music were afterwards collected by Alexandrian
scholars, more from literary references than from life. They catalogued
over fifty generic or regional types of dance, with innumerable songs
of shepherd loves or of rustic labours—the ‘practical songs’ sung at
work by spinners, millers, reapers, and water-drawers.® Fifth-century
composers had drawn upon the melodic fund of popular music for
their own work. Aristophanes often uses the popular metric forms,
polishing them into sophisticated art and mixing them on occasion
with the grand styles.” It had been done before, as he tells us, by
Phrynichus and other early classical composers. ‘I reveal’ (sing his
Birds) “Ше nomes sacred to Pan, the dances to the Great Mother of
the mountains, from which Phrynichus ever drew his sweet melody,
1 Aristoph. Peace 1267 ff.; Clouds 1355 ff.
? Knights 985 ff. * Birds 904—58.
4 Ach. 1000; Knights 277. 8 Wasps 1212 ff.
$ Athen, 618e-620a, with some examples. (But the ‘Nile Chantey' of Powell, Col-
s Alexandrina (Oxford, 1925), p. 185, no. 7, is scarcely an Egyptian bargee
song.
* e.g. Aristoph. Clouds 563-74.
392 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
sucking like a bee that ambrosial fruit of song." The ‘old honey-
sweet songs from Phrynichus’ Phoenissae’ were inspired by hymns
from country liturgies. Modernists dismissed the choruses of his con-
temporary Lamprocles as 'prehistoric maypole-stuff full of grass-
hoppers'—to which the classicists retorted that this was the music
that bred the men who fought at Marathon? In the Frogs, Euripides is
made to accuse Aeschylus of stealing from this antiquated folk-song:
‘Did you get those water-drawer's ditties from Marathon, or where?’
— From Beauty I drew them to Beauty’, replies Aeschylus impres-
sively, adding, ‘that I might not be seen to have reaped the self-same
holy meadow of music as Phrynichus.'? The point is that Aeschylus
did, in fact, draw upon the same rustic hymnal. Its influence appears
in the rhythmical refrains used at the end of strophic movements in
some of his choruses.* Echoes of a more primitive music are audible
too. In a chorus of Persian elders bewailing the destruction of Xerxes’
army, his mind goes back to the dirge-cry for Bormus sung by serfs
as they reaped the cornfields by the Black Sea; at the end of two
choric strophae of the Agamemnon he recalls the Ailinon of the Linus-
song sung by peasants since Homeric times.* Aristophanes himself,
at the end of a play, will often use the old wedding-cry Hymenaeus,
or the tenella kallinike of Archilochus, or some country dance.
Popular melody was still an ingredient in the subtle and modern
music of Euripides, though he drew it (so Aristophanes alleges) not
from pure and solemn rural chants, but from the dregs of vulgar song
—dirges, drinking-catches, dances fit for castanets: in fact, the har-
moniae of low life which Plato rejected.*
The Frogs is Aristophanes' last tribute to the composer whom he
had parodied so often that he could not leave the subject when, in
406 в.с., Euripides died. In the play of 405 the god Dionysus, sick of
the bad poets left swarming on earth, goes to Hades to hear Euripides
once more. The souls of dead frogs in the Stygian marshes are initiates
of the Orphic mysteries (which claimed communication with the after-
life). Against the contrasting chorus of their simple chants, sung to the
Elysian aulos, Aristophanes stages the competition between the two
1 Birds 745 ff. (misunderstood by Wilamowitz, Griechische Verskunst (Berlin, 1921),
p. 436, n. 2).
? Wasps 220; Clouds 984 ff. (The aboriginal country-folk of Attica were believed to
have worn gold grasshoppers in their hair.)
3 Frogs 1298 ff. (cf. 910).
4 Aesch. Ағат. 381—5 (cf. E. Fraenkel's commentary, vol. ii, р. 186).
5 Aesch. Pers. 935-40; Agam. 121 (with Fraenkel, vol. ii, p. 74 on refrains, &c., at
end of movements).
$ Frogs 1301-4.
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 393
great tragic composers. Aeschylus wins by superior weight. The
clattering pomp of his oracular lines, between the monotonous thrum-
ming of the kithara—tophlattothrat tophlattothrat—is calculated to
make the modern lyrical sophistries of Euripides sound insubstantial
and wispy.! In his later plays Euripides had withdrawn the chorus
somewhat from the action, using it often for interludes of evocative
poetry in which musical sound (so critics thought) counted more than
dramatic sense. His chief innovation, however, was the lyric monody
sung by an actor on the stage. Instead of observing the strophic cor-
respondence of classical tradition, these monodies were durchkom-
poniert. Aristophanes himself had adopted this form to his own style
in his brilliantly new Hoopoe Song, where he strings together a series
of brief passages (anabolae) in variant and contrasting metres.? But
it was originally and especially associated with the musical manner
of the school of Phrynis and Cinesias, who were working out modern
ideas in the dithyramb and the kitharoedic nome.
In the last quarter of the fifth century? the dithyrambist Melanip-
pides and his successors began to exploit or emphasize the quivering
intonation suggested by the aulos, and to copy it in their kitharoedic
nomes. Although Aristophanes' musical parodies are lost, his verbal
metaphors are vivid and illuminating. He defines the style by con-
trast with the early classics. The new music was no longer virile, taut,
entonos—well tuned and unwavering: it was marked by flamboyant
kampai (‘bends’) and by a formless flexibility of melodic line.‘ It is
not clear whether kampai were in tact modulations or decorative
shakes, but Aristophanes certainly insists upon the tonal instability
of this music. The modernist tragedian Agathon appears on the
Aristophanic stage spreading out his strophae to melt in the sun: if
cold, they will not bend. When he sings, his song is like the zigzagging
of ants? The new dithyrambists, ecstatic and effeminate creatures,
are so easily bent that they have to wear stays. Their bodies are
willowy; their souls after death go fluttering among the clouds in
search of brand-new anabolae; their music is made of snowflakes and
feathers eddying in the sky; they long to be birds.* Aristophanes is
obviously alluding to the same new, sky-borne, fluttering manner
1 Frogs 1264-1363.
? Birds 227 ff.; cf. Fraenkel in Eranos, xlviii (1950). The form occurs in Euripides’
Orestes.
3 For this Melanippides the date usually accepted (c. 480-450 в.с.) makes nonsense of
musical history, and is unproved: we know only that he died before 413 в.с.
* Aristoph. Clouds 967 ff.
5 Thesm. 66-192.
* Peace 830 ff.; Clouds 332 ff.; Birds 1372-1409.
394 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
when, in the Frogs, he burlesques Euripides’ coloratura on the first
syllable of the word for ‘twirling’: e(-ev-ev-eiMocovca.!
In the light of subsequent evidence we can see that what Aristo-
phanes was describing was the breakdown of the classical tonality,
which came about chiefly through modulation and chromatic tuning.
A little later, a comedian stages a personal protest by the Muse against
the tortures she has suffered from Melanippides, Phrynis, Cinesias,
and their successors Philoxenus and Timotheus, who twist her on
the rack with their *exharmonic' notes as they modulate, knocking
a dozen different harmoniae out of five strings, regardless of the false
melodic relations produced.? We are further told that Agathon was
the first tragedian to use the chromatic genus, which Aristoxenus
noted as a prime factor in the breakdown of the classical melopoeia.
Metabolae and chromata are expressly cited as features of the style of
Philoxenus, the next leader of the new movement. In its experimental
stages, when Aristophanes wrote, these technical terms cannot yet
have been invented to describe its innovations. But it must not be
supposed that, because we now possess only Aristophanes' word-
pictures, his musical criticism was any the less precise or mature.
The reason why classical Greeks invented few technical terms was
that they did not depend on the imperfect medium of words alone;
they criticized music by caricaturing it in music, so long as a musically
educated public existed.
The Frogs was not only a foreboding of musical disruption. It was
an appeal for the whole tradition of Athenian citizens ‘bred in
athletics, the chorus, and the arts of music’, against uncultured or
alien ideas.? The chorus had already been cut down under the finan-
cial stress of the war. At the end of the play the demagogue Cleophon
is requested to hang himself, and the spirit of Aeschylus is sent up to
counsel Athens, ‘that the City may be saved and have her chorus
still’. From Aristophanes’ later plays we know what happened. Such
music as he could still provide, with a much reduced chorus, had to
conform to a level of popular taste which can be judged by the vul-
garity of the genres and the crudity of the metres.* The dithyramb
survived the war because its wide popular appeal induced the rich—
and eventually the City—to go on paying its high costs of production.
The comedy could not maintain its choric tradition, and the best
1 Frogs 1348 (cf. 1314).
2 *Pherecrates’ ap. ps.-Plutarch, De mus. 30, 3; cf. Düring in Eranos, xliii (1945).
The number of strings has been emended through editorial misunderstanding.
3 Aristoph. Frogs 729; ibid. 1419 (cf. 1504).
4 Ecclesiazusae and Plutus.
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 395
school of public musical education in Athens virtually closed down
with the Spartan auloi chortling over the destruction of the city walls.
(vii) Plato and the revolution. Plato's brief history of the musical
revolution in Athens, written in the mid-fourth century B.C., is worth
summarizing at some length:!
Our music was once divided into its proper forms. Prayers were one
form of ode, surnamed 'hymns'; opposed to this was another form,
* dirges'; another called ‘paeans’, and another ‘dithyrambs’. . . . ‘Nomes’
were a distinct kind, surnamed *kitharoedic'. It was not permitted to
exchange the melodic styles of these established forms and others. Know-
ledge and informed judgment penalized disobedience. There were no
whistles, unmusical mob-noises, or clapping for applause. The rule was
to listen silently and learn; boys, teachers, and the crowd were kept in
order by threat of the stick. . . . But later, ап unmusical anarchy was led
by poets who had natural talent, but were ignorant of the laws of music.
Over-intoxicated with love of pleasure, they mixed their drinks—dirges
with hymns, paeans with dithyrambs—and imitated aulos-music in their
kitharoedic song. Through foolishness they deceived themselves into think-
ing that there was no right or wrong way in music—that it was to be judged
good or bad by the pleasure it gave. By their works and their theories they
infected the masses with the presumption to think themselves adequate
judges. So our theatres, once silent, grew vocal, and aristocracy of music
gave way to a pernicious theatrocracy—for had it been a free democracy,
it would have been nothing to fear. As it was, the criterion was not music,
but a reputation for promiscuous cleverness and a spirit of law-breaking.
If classical drama without applause sounds austere, it must be
remembered that the theatre was the only school of the poorer citizens.
Seats were free, and under the Periclean system of State education
the poor were paid two obols' maintenance whenever they attended.
That they had to be kept quiet with sticks is only one instance of the
well-known fact that Periclean ideals of enlightenment failed to
penetrate the lower strata of society. Plato's charge against the new
dithyrambists is not lack of musical genius: it is that they used high
musical talents, showmanship, and virtuosity in the pursuit of sen-
sationalism, consciously rejecting educated standards of judgment,
and proclaiming that their end was immediate pleasure. The proof
of this charge is that the new middle classes of the fourth century,
while they no longer knew the past classics, turned away from the
music of their own time as from a vulgarizing influence, enjoyable
indeed, but no matter for serious practice or thought. Hence the
1 Laws 700a-701a (abbreviated).
396 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
reduction of musical schooling to an elementary level and the dis-
appearance of critical judgments on compositions.! The perpetual
disparagement of new music in later philosophers has given the im-
pression of a mere general prejudice against modernism, but these
writers are not expressing opinions on any actual music: they are
mechanically repeating Plato.?
From another passage we know that Plato was thinking particu-
larly of the school of Cinesias the dithyrambist, which had since pro-
duced the ultra-modernists Philoxenus and Timotheus. Aristophanes
in his last play had parodied the solo of the Cyclops, sung to the
"threttanelo' of the strumming kithara, which Philoxenus flung into
one of his dithyrambs—a concrete case of the mixing of musical
genres, for a dithyramb had never contained a kitharoedic piece.?
Philoxenus, it was told, was sent to the quarries for laughing at the
old-fashioned compositions of Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse, who
treasured Euripides’ pen. Phrynis, as well as Euripides, was now
thought out of date. Timotheus of Miletus repudiated the entire past
tradition in a famous manifesto :4
I do not sing the old things,
Because the new are the winners.
Zeus the young is king today:
Once it was Cronos ruling.
Get out, old dame Music.
A deliberate blatancy and toughness distinguishes the post-war
rebels from their precursors, who had affected to be aesthetes. The
bombastic libretto of Timotheus’ Persae was written for programme-
music of the sort which attempted (Plato says) to make the noises
of thunder, wind, hail, cats, dogs, cattle, bird-song, and all kinds of
instruments, with frequent and startling modulations.? The dithy-
rambist and the kitharoede were professional musicians, normally
aliens; and music of this kind depended on the virtuosity of per-
formers, especially of instrumentalists. The problem of modulation
produced many instrumental experiments. Plato mentions a ‘pan-
harmonium’, strung for all tunings at once. A certain Pythagoras of
Zacynthus is said to have invented a pyramid of three kitharae, tuned
to the Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian harmoniae, on a revolving stool
which he kicked round with his foot as he played—but, as the source
1 See above, pp. 339-40.
* On such repetition of Plato down to medieval times, see Egon Wellesz, A History
of Byzantine Music (Oxford, 1949), pp 38-55.
3 Plat. Gorg. 501e; Aristoph. Р/иг. 290 ff.
* Diehl, op. cit. ii, p. 150, no. 7. 5 Plat. Rep. 397a-b.
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 397
confesses, this contraption may be apocryphal.! Certainly apocryphal
are the stories that Timotheus himself added new strings to his
kithara, was ordered by the conservative Spartans to cut them out,
and appealed to the archaeological evidence of a many-stringed lyre
in a statuette of Apollo. A contemporary fragment of comedy sug-
gests that Timotheus and his school got their modulations upon a
small number of strings, and that new devices were introduced for
stopping.? Though eleven-stringed instruments probably came into
use in this period, the additions were exaggerated by theorists
ignorant of real kitharistic technique, familiar only with the kitharoid
apparatus of harmonic science, which had a string to each note.
In practice we know only that rapid changes from one idiom to
another dissolved the characteristic tunings and progressions of each.
The ‘exharmonic’ effects were soon enjoyed for their own sake.
‘How well,’ said an admirer of Philoxenus, ‘his melodies are con-
cocted with modulations and chromata.’ How inferior, he adds, is
the insipid prettiness of more recent music—all ivy and flowers
and water, a string of unrelated tunes.?
(viii) Music after the revolution. The iconoclasts soon became the
idols: Timotheus and Philoxenus eclipsed both their predecessors and
their posterity. Aristoxenus is quoted for the story of a contemporary
musician, Telesias of Thebes, who, after being educated on the classics,
grew enamoured of modern music and learned the works of Philo-
xenus by heart, but could never, in his own composition, break him-
self of the classical idiom.* It shows how decisive was the break between
the old and the new. While the immediate precursors of Philoxenus
and Timotheus seem to have been scarcely better remembered than
the classics, their successors lacked their vitality, and could not rival
their appeal to the wider public of an enlarged Hellenistic world.
They had created a large pool of enthusiastic listeners who liked
nothing better than to hear the old favourites again; and prizes were
won by musicians repeating the works of Timotheus, instead of pro-
ducing their own according to the classical rule. By Aristoxenus'
day the new style had become conventional: contemporary music,
to him, is not shocking but sugary. This was partly, no doubt,
because the new tonality no longer surprised the ear; but another
reason may be that the Alexandrian age did not (so far as we know)
1 Artemon ap. Athen. 637e-f.
? Düring in £ranos, xliii (1945) (but the ‘Pherecrates’ fragment is far from clear).
* Antiphanes, in Athen. 643d. * ps.-Plut. De mus. 31.
398 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
pursue the more bizarre instrumental experiments of the revolu-
tionary period—the noises which (as Aristotle says) could excite
babies or beasts. Among the instruments which Plato associates with
these effects is the pectis: yet a century later, when Philoxenus and
Timotheus were still widely performed, the pectis seems to be obso-
lete, for Alexandrian scholars begin disputing what it was.! Their
original orchestration cannot have been reproduced: as in the classical
period, only the vocal part in music was permanent. Although Alex-
andria, for its part, invented the hydraulic organ, we hear little of its
use before the days of the Roman arena.? In Hellenistic times, more
fashionable types of performance were the massed choirs, sometimes
doubling at the octave, which filled the big new theatres; solo kithar-
isms without words; duets of auloi playing now in unison, now anti-
phonally (but only the philistinism of a Roman general could order a
band of auletes to play all at once). Nor did the duets lead to any ven-
tures in polyphony. The question whether harmony and counterpoint
were practised by the Greeks, which intrigued eighteenth-century
scholars, can be briefly disposed of. A heterophonic accompaniment
was common, as we know from Plato ; but the instrumental parts could
not have been left to improvisation if they had been solid elements in
a truly polyphonic structure. Choral unison and monody, in their
post-classical forms, remained the staple genres of music; the astrophic
dithyramb, now using wind or strings indifferently, persisted down
to the second century B.C. and straggled on afterwards; the kitharoedic
nome flourished into late antiquity.
A century and a half after Timotheus was dead, when Philopoemen
came into the theatre victorious from Mantinea, the kitharist could
still bring the house down with the opening line of the Persae:*
He who fashioned for Hellas the glorious adornment of Freedom.
Two generations later, when Greek freedom was gone, it was known
as a curiosity of folklore that Philoxenus and Timotheus were till
lately performed as a part of boys’ education in Arcadia. The leaders
of revolution had ended as school classics of a rustic and inaccessible
countryside. Our knowledge of music now becomes so dim that we
do not even know when or how the chromatic manner was super-
seded by the common diatonic; but it is probable that by the time of
the Delphic Hymns the chromatic was used only by force of tradition
1 Plat. Rep. 399 c-d; Athen. 635-636.
? On the Aydraulis (-us) see pp. 270 and 408.
* Laws 812d (cited above, p. 338). }
* Plut. Philopoemen 11. 5 Polyb. iv. 20-21.
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 399
for rare and ceremonial occasions. All our later pieces are based on a
diatonic note-series. About 193 B.C., in a vote of thanks from Cnossos
in Crete, a visiting musician had been praised for performing not
only Timotheus and his disciple Polyidus, but also old Cretan songs,
‘аз befits an educated man’.! His programme was primarily a compli-
ment to the Cretans, whose folk-songs were famous, but it may also
indicate a growing taste for something simpler and more popular than
the grand metropolitan style which Timotheus now represented.
The typical popular genre of Hellenistic times (though it dated back
much earlier) was the pantomime. Mummers called by various
generic or local names—hilarodists, magodists, deikelists, autokabdali
—gave mixed shows.of ballet and acrobatics, indecent jokes, comic
scenes about drunkards or foreign doctors, escapes, romances, success
stories, parodies of themes from mythology. On a more pretentious
level, the story of Andromache or Antiope might be performed as a
sort of sung ballet. Cicero remarks with surprise that there were
people who could recognize a piece of this sort from the opening
instrumental notes.? We must infer that such music could attain at
least the relative permanence of a popular vogue. But the example of
the pantomime tended to break up set forms of drama. A chorus
of Euripides might be rendered as a separate concert-piece or kithar-
ism, though not with the original music. One actor would sometimes
give his own selected part from a tragedy, or sometimes sing a per-
sonal interpretation of a tragic role or theme. Nero, who took lessons
from the Greek kitharoede Terpnus, improvised an interminable piece
about Niobe, and also executed tragic parts—Canace bearing her
incestuous child, Orestes killing his mother, Oedipus blind, Hercules
mad. He seems to have sung these parts as solos, in his ‘thin husky
voice’, with other figures on the stage merely to supply the action.?
Roman drama was by then extinct, and such performances were more
like recitals with music and costumes. Another of Nero's enterprises
was a choir called Augustiani to lead his own audience's chants of
applause. The rhythmical chanting of praises to the Emperor on pub-
lic occasions was a direct precedent for the acclamations of the Byzan-
tine Church.* Together with Quintilian's outburst against orators
who liked to sing their speeches, it shows how closely, in this
period, formal or ceremonial speech approximated to a musical
recitative.
* Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, 3053.
? Ac. ii. 20. 3 Suet. Nero 21; see also p. 418.
* Cf. M. P. Charlesworth in Journal of Roman Studies xxxiii (1943), pp. 4-6.
400 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
From the fourth century B.c. onwards the musician thought of
himself as actor rather than creator or 'discoverer' (as Greeks pre-
ferred to put it). His patrons no longer wanted new music for them-
selves and their children to sing, but exhibitions to applaud from the
hands of a maestro, lavishly staged and subsidized. Technical stan-
dards were high: it was the age of the virtuoso. A star kitharist might
get for one concert a fee that would maintain a Greek trireme for a
year, or more than the cost of a first-class dithyrambic chorus.!
Extravagant verses were written on the tomb of the aulete Telephanes,
whom Demosthenes employed for a chorus in 347 B.c.; and the in-
scriptions that commemorate a winning performance soon begin to
name the aulete before the poet. The division of labour between
words and music may have begun already in the fourth century, when
new settings had to be provided for Euripides and other revived classi-
cal drama, but poet and musician are still one in the Delphic Hymns,
and there was perhaps no sudden or universal change.? Certainly,
however, sophisticated poets were growing incapable of making
music, and musicians of writing sophisticated verse. When the classi-
cal unity of Music was broken, the ‘music’ (in our narrow sense of
the term) was supplied by a professional engaged in the performance.
The modern figure of the pure composer, who is neither poet nor
player, was unknown to antiquity.
It would not be true to say that post-classical music was altogether
monopolized by the professional. Singing was still taught to children
in most Greek schools, and encouraged in some cities by prizes both
for song and for the lyre. Boys' choirs represented their cities in
festival competitions. In one city thirty noble boys were trained to
sing a hymn to Hecate once a month in the town hall. A city had to
keep a choir for festivals and religious occasions, and those who
found professional singers too expensive sometimes economized by
training the ephebes, lads of eighteen to twenty conscribed for mili-
tary and public service. But even these elementary duties were largely
taken over by unions of hired musicians. One of the Delphic Hymns
advertises the performers as technitae of the famous musicians’ union
of Athens, which served half of mainland Greece and included
composers with other professional players. These bodies soon became
1 Athen. 623d; Demosth. Jn Meid. 155; Lysias xxi. 1-2.
? A new post-Hadrianic inscription (Hesperia, xxii, 1953, pp. 125 ff.), apparently dis-
carded for the cutter's mistake, commemorates a musician with an unintelligible phrase,
of which Dr. P. Maas kindly offers his still unpublished emendation: . . . uóvov Kai прото»
(p. er» Edperniiny ХофокАа ка! TiuóÜcov écvrà ueAorovijoavra . . ., interpreting: ‘the first
and only since Euripides, Sophocles, and Timotheus to compose the music to his own
words.’ I cannot construe K. Latte's rendering in Eranos, lii (1954), pp. 125 ff.
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 401
universal. In Augustan times a ‘collegium symphoniacorum', en-
gaged for public religious services in Rome, was recognized by a
special decree of the Senate as a legitimate association. The local
unions finally amalgamated into one ‘holy oecumenical synod of
artists in the service of Dionysus’.! In spite of the majestic title—
and high rates of pay—musicians stood much lower in the social
scale than doctors or teachers of grammar and rhetoric. The public
recognition of Mesomedes was an exception and a scandal. In
archaic and classical times the professional composer as well as the
citizen had been honoured for musical excellence. In Alexandrian
sources music is reduced to a topic for anecdotes of low life or
oddments of curious information, which were later collected by
Athenaeus in the form of table-talk, suitably sandwiched between
similar talk on famous courtesans and gastronomic delicacies.
* Unheard music is better than heard’ was a Greek proverb in late
antiquity. Against it Nero used to quote another: ‘Unheard music
is unregarded.'? Contemporary opinion was not on his side. No
reputable woman would play an instrument too well, no gentleman
would dance unless in his cups, and a musical emperor was a dis-
grace:? these views were held no less by upper-class Greeks than by
Romans. But both had inherited from Alexandria a profound rever-
ence for the classical past; and classical authors had spoken respect-
fully of music. The music that Plato had admired was lost: what
remained was Plato's admiration. He could never (so these later
minds assumed) have set such a value upon mere audible music,
which they knew as a stimulant laid on at theatrical shows or at
banquets where girls from Cadiz did their celebrated hip-wobbling
dances.* It was impossible, by now, to realize that music had been
or could be a higher form of artistic expression: Plato must have
meant some mysterious ethical alchemy which music could work upon
the motions of the soul, or else the harmonic science of ‘number
conceptual and immaterial’ which enshrined truths of astronomy.
This was the ‘unheard music’ of the proverb. Through its own tra-
ditional prestige it was persistently cultivated, without relation to
any heard music, in the harmonic theory and philosophy of the later
ancient world. The idea of music—so much holier than music itself—
1 A. Н. M. Jones, The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (Oxford, 1940), pp.
229 ff.; A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (Oxford, 1953),
chap. vii; Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 4966.
* Plut. De an. procr. in Tim. 26 (cf. Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn 11-12); Suet. Nero 20.
2 Sall. Cat. 25; Cic. Pro Mur. 13; Tac. Ann. xiv. 14-15.
* Martial, xiv. 203.
402 ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC
embraced not only cosmological doctrine but moral and medical
belief. Staunching-songs, to be sung over a bleeding wound, were
already known to Homer and Pindar. Sciatica, according to Theo-
phrastus, was treated by playing the aulos over the part affected;
musical healing was important in psychiatry, and incantation in the
magical rites of Gnostic ѕесіѕ.! The more intelligent valued har-
monic theory for its mathematical beauty. But no specific motive,
after all, is necessary to explain the pious transmission of an inherited
and venerated branch of learning. Musica was established as the
seventh of Varro's ‘liberal arts’, but it was not an art in the modern
sense: it belonged to the quadrivium of mathematical subjects. The
transference of the term musica to harmonic science in itself implies
that for the liberal education music did not exist.
Our present difficulty in studying Greek music is, in the main, a
consequence of this contempt of educated post-classical Greeks for
the practical art, together with the obstinate survival of the mathe-
matical subject miscalled musica in the ancient and medieval curricu-
lum. Earlier Greeks had found in music an art which was seldom
independent of verse, but was capable of co-operation in the highest
poetic enterprises; then, at a critical moment, before music had ade-
quate means of surviving memory, the standards of judgement were
changed or shaken and the legacy of the past dissipated. From
Alexandrian times, when the old oral schooling grew insufficient,
education was based on books, and the unwritten had not the prestige
of the unheard. If the classical music had still been extant and
intelligible in writing, it could not have been neglected by so many
curious and diligent generations.? The post-classical music, if written,
was seldom methodically stored, because it was not considered worth
methodical study. Musical illiteracy in an age of book-learning is a
sure index of the decline in the status and quality of the art. Isidore
of Seville, whose erudition covered a great bulk of ancient writings,
had never heard of the existence of notation. His words are an
epitaph on the music of antiquity: ‘Unless the sounds are retained by
the memory of man, they perish, for they cannot be written.'? Fifty
years ago we hoped to recover indefinite quantities of music from
papyri: now, on the contrary, papyrology has shown by cumulative
evidence that the preservation of music in writing was casual and
sporadic. Failing some lucky chance, our knowledge of Greek melo-
1 Hom. Od. xix. 457; Pind. Pyth. iii. 51; Theophr. fr. 87 and 88 (cf. Athen. 624a-b);
Wellesz in Ambix iv (1951), pp. 145 ff.
? The hypothesis that its loss is due to medieval scribes is no longer accepted.
з Etym. їп. 15, ii (early seventh century A.D.). `
THE HISTORY OF GREEK MUSIC 403
poeia is likely to remain, for the most part, indirect. Nor can we now
look for any considerable help in the post-Aristoxenian harmonic
theorists, since we must reject the assumption that the musica of
the schools was directly concerned with heard melodic structures.
This is not to say that historical study of Greek music is impossible,
but only that certain kinds of evidence have yielded less than was
once expected. The subject therefore needs some reorientation to-
wards other problems. Work remains to be done on the deciphering
of such written pieces as we have or may find, but the central task is
still the better.dating and interpretation of the large ancient literature
from which we can reconstruct the history of poetic forms and
rhythms, of musical criticism and ideas, of the social and intellectual
environment. This, though difficult, is not beyond reach. To recover
the music itself might have been preferable. But it was to Greek
music that a good scholar applied the wise motto: Quod vides perisse,
perditum ducas!
1 G. Pasquali, ‘Ulrico di Wilamowitz-Moellendorff’, reprinted in Pagine Strava-
ganti? (Florence, 1952), p. 95.
X
ROMAN MUSIC
By J. E. Ѕсотт
INTRODUCTION
THERE is no lack of material for the study of music in the Roman
world, but the greater part of it is concerned with the instruments
rather than the music itself. What little is known about the music
proper is evidence of unequal value and often open to more than one
interpretation. We should further bear in mind that in the Graeco-
Roman world we cannot without danger apply evidence from one
part or period to the whole, and the dividing line between what is to
be called Greek and what Roman in any of the arts is never quite
certain.
Three main influences affected the Romans; the first was from the
Etruscans, the second from the Greeks, and the third from the East.
But Rome did not only borrow instruments and music; she adapted,
blended, and developed what other nations had to offer. Certain
aspects of ancient music may fairly be regarded as Roman, though
other influences may have been present. Music of some kind was
specially composed for the Latin comedy. The songs and instru-
mental calls of the Roman army were presumably of native origin;
popular ‘lays of ancient Rome’, according to the elder Cato, had
once been sung to the tibia at banquets, though they were extinct by
Cicero’s time; and the colourful popular music of the Empire, with its
emphasis on rhythm and percussion, was probably, in the main, an
Italian growth separable from Greek traditions.
Some believed that foreign ostentation in music was effeminate
and was leading to a lowering of moral standards. The archaic Law
of the Twelve Tables, published in the middle of the fifth century
B.C., forbade more than ten pipers at a funeral. A number of anti-
luxury laws were passed to restrict ostentatious performances and
banquets; one, for example, in 115 B.c. allowed only the Latin piper
in Rome.? But Roman expansion opened the way for new music and
foreign influences. We can only mention here the great number of
* Cicero, De leg. ii. 59. 2 Cassiodorus, Chron. A. U. 639.
INTRODUCTION 405
Greeks who came to Rome in professional though humble capacities.
In the capital there existed numbers of foreign groups who kept their
entity and brought their own forms of worship.! Trade expanded
enormously and brought in new fashions and new demands for
luxury. New religions were first banned, then tolerated, and then
often actively encouraged at different times by various emperors.
During the second Punic war the cult of the Great Mother, Cybele,
which centred in Phrygia, was brought to Rome in 204 в.с. It never
became completely Roman and citizens were not allowed to take part
in the ceremonies or wear the peculiar dress. However, the priests
brought with them their musical instruments and these—pipes,
cymbals, and tambourines—soon gained great popularity. So we see
portrayed, and read of, the Berecynthian pipe with bent horn (inflexo
Berecyntia tibia cornu), the mad pipe ( furiosa tibia), the hollow drums
(inania tympana) and the din made by the attendants of the goddess
as they thump the brass and the rumbling leather (aera deae comitas
raucaque terga movent)? Pl. 11 (a shows one of the chief priests and
some of the instruments. The twin Phrygian pipes and a tambourine
hanging above are to be seen on the right, while a pair of cymbals are
suspended on the left. (The other things do not concern us here.)
These pipes were much more powerful than the twin straight ones;
they could be rivalled only by the tuba. They tended to drive out the
older kind, though they never completely succeeded in doing so. It
is not possible here to discuss the spread of oriental cults in the west
during the Empire, but they should not be forgotten in considering
the spread of new ideas in music and the changes in musical instru-
ments.*
It must not be thought, however, that Rome absorbed so much
without difficulty. Polybius relates a story of Greek musicians who
came to Rome in 167 B.C. to give a performance during victory
games; their style of playing not being understood, they were laughed
off the stage and compelled to stop their concert and improvise a kind
1 G. La Piana, ‘Foreign groups in Rome during the first centuries of the Empire’, in
Harvard Theological Review, xx (1927), pp. 183 ff.; R. Paribeni, ‘Cantores Graeci nell’
ultimo secolo della repubblica in Roma', in Raccolta di scritti in onore di Giacomo
Lumbroso (Milan, 1925), p. 287.
? Dionysius Halicarnassensis, Antig. Rom. ii. 19. Ovid, Fasti iv. 181 f. Horace, А.Р.
202.
* Strong, La Scultura romana, ii (Florence, 1926), fig. 248; Jones, Catalogue of the
Ancient Sculptures preserved in the Municipal Collections of Rome: Palazzo dei Con-
servatori (Oxford, 1926), pl. 100. There is an excellent detailed representation of the
Phrygian pipes in Jones, ibid.: Museo Capitolino (Oxford, 1912), pl. 34a.
* Cumont, Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain (Paris, 4th ed., 1929),
is the standard work of reference.
406 ROMAN MUSIC
of burlesque.! Writers long continued to protest at the new styles.
Juvenal was bitter at the Syrian Orontes pouring into the Tiber with
its language, manners, and music.?
Roman authors sometimes write about music with a patronizing
air and with the notion that there existed nothing but a pale glimmer
of the past greatness of Greek music.? This was fundamentally wrong;
music, though not to everyone's taste, was very much alive. There
was nothing amateurish about either instruments or performers.
Not only in Hellenistic times, but also during the Roman empire,
instruments became more complicated, capable of greater sonority;
new and improved experimental types were introduced. The evidence
of instruments has limitations. It is, for instance, quite unsafe to take
a particular instrument and say that because it could be played in
such and such a way and with such a technique, it must therefore
have been so played by its original owner. Nevertheless, the various
instruments used are in themselves typical of Roman musical occa-
sions, in which their part was often more prominent than in classical
Greece, although in most music the voice still retained its leading
position.
INSTRUMENTS?
Aerophones
The tuba was long and straight and made usually of bronze,
though it is known to have been made also of wood and leather,
or iron; it was constructed in sections which fitted into each other
and the usual length was about 1:3 metres. The instrument was
cylindrical in shape almost to the very bell end where it rather abruptly
swelled out. The mouthpiece—conical rather than cup-shaped—was
detachable and determined the quality of the note produced just as
its length determined its pitch. There was frequently a strap to hold
the instrument tight against the mouth when playing; this was
attached to a small loop near the bell end. Perhaps about eleven
harmonics could be obtained from the instrument, which was not, one
might imagine, a very easy one to handle. It was essentially an army
instrument and, like so much Roman military equipment, borrowed
from the Etruscans. The Greeks had a similar instrument, the salpinx,
perhaps rather shorter in length and with a more prominent bell end
! Polybius, xxx. 22.
? Juvenal, iii. 62. Nor did he think much of the raised status of the cornicines: iii. 34.
3 Cf. pp. 337 and 401.
* For further information see the books and articles listed in the Bibliography.
INSTRUMENTS 407
which in addition to its use in the army was a popular solo instrument
in the musical contests.
The cornu, also of bronze but originally of horn, was conical in
section and curved into rather more than half a circle. A supporting
cross-bar allowed it to be played carried over the shoulder with the
bell end aloft over the player's head and facing in the same direction
as the player. Like the tuba, it had a detachable mouth-piece, ap-
parently rather longer than the tuba's. The cornu was Etruscan in
origin and at first used mostly for military purposes.
The bucina is often confused with the cornu, and was so confused
in Roman times, but there is no doubt that it was a separate instru-
ment; right to the end the bucinator (as the player on this instrument
was called) was sharply distinguished from the cornicen. There is no
certain representation of it in the Roman world. Tombstones of
cornicines sometimes show the cornu, but the bucinator's never his
bucina. Descriptions of the instrument are contradictory! but prob-
ably it was originally the animal's horn made into an instrument.
Certainly it was intimately connected with the countryman and it
became in the army the instrument for giving non-tactical signals. It
was less powerful than the tuba or cornu and could not be used by
itself in the heat of battle.
The /ituus was of bronze and Etruscan in origin.? It was J-shaped
with a long extension to the straight part, generically a natural horn
with a greatly enlarged mouth-piece. The /ituus found at Caere and
now in the Vatican is 160 cm. long. The instrument is in g and pro-
duces six notes; another /ituus, found in the Rhine near Düsseldorf is
in a. Its sound is that of a soft trumpet. This was also an army instru-
ment though it was used on state occasions.?
The aulos or tibia was a reed instrument known to the East Mediter-
ranean world generally.* It was nearly always played in pairs with the
help of a форВва (Lat. capistrum ; Eng. mouth band) to steady the twin
instruments in the mouth and to help to maintain a constant pressure
of wind (see pl. 12). The short pipes with perhaps three or four holes
were known in very early Roman times. There were several Greek
types used for different purposes. In the late Republic and early
Empire, pipes grew longer, perhaps 2 feet or more in length. The
1 For instance, see the descriptions in the works of reference listed in the Bibliography.
* The Caere /ituus is from an Etruscan grave. In general see McCartney, ‘Military
indebtedness of early Rome to Etruria’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome
(Bergamo, 1915), p. 121.
к rd F. Behn, Musikleben im Altertum u. frühen Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1954), pp.
137-8.
“ See pp. 269, 280, and 380-1.
408 ROMAN MUSIC
musical range was extended by increasing the number of holes to as
many as fifteen. Mechanical devices were used, when required, to
cover certain of the holes.! The single cross-flute is known to have
existed? but it is rare. Phrygian pipes were probably brought to
Rome when the worship of Magna Mater was introduced in the year
204 в.с. ; these powerful instruments were used in the ritual but appear
to have become popular everywhere; one pipe was straight, the other
ended іп a large curved bell.3
The utricularius or ascaules, in English ‘bagpipe’, came from the
East. (It is necessary to be careful in identifying the instrument, for
utricularius usually meant wine trader, and not the performer.) One
or two genuine representations in art are known;* many, including
one from Richborough, are false.
The organ, said to have been invented in Alexandria in the third
century B.C.,? became a most important instrument in imperial times.
The evidence from literature is extensive but by itself insufficient to
explain the instrument completely. Archaeology supplies more evi-
dence: there are two portable organs from Pompeii, and two terra-
cotta models,® while the instrument is shown on a number of mosaics
and contorniates. At Aquincum the remains of an organ were found
among the debris of a cellar into which it had fallen from a club-
house above during a fire. The date is fixed at A.D. 228 by an in-
scription? attached to the instrument. There are four ranks of pipes,
thirteen in each, the remains of levers, sliders, and a sounding board.
Organs were worked usually by water pressure, hence the name
hydraulis, though the pneumatic action was also in use, especially in
later times.
The syrinx (panpipes) was more the instrument of the shepherd and
the instrument of mythology than a serious musical instrument.
1 There is a convenient summary in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 1949),
p. 589.
? e.g. Giglioli, L’Arte Etrusca (Milan, 1935), pl. ccccvii, from Perugia.
* This was the tibia Berecynthia mentioned by Horace, Odes, iii. 19, 18.
* See the dictionaries listed in the Bibliography. The poem Copa, sometimes
attributed to Vergil, contains a description of what can only be the bagpipes.
5 By Ctesibius, Athenaeus, iv. р. 174. See, however, the important article by Apel,
*Early History of the Organ', in Speculum, xxiii (1948), p. 191, where the literary evidence
is considered in detail.
6 A photograph of the bronze portable organs is in Anderson 25880. There is a con-
venient illustration in the Catalogue of the Mostra Augustea della Romanita (Rome,
1938), plate cxlii, of some reconstructions made for the exhibition.
7 Nagy, Die Orgel von Aquincum (Budapest, 1934), was the original work, which I
have not been able to see. See also Hyde, 'An Inscribed Water Organ', Transactions
of the American Philological Association 1хіх (1938), р. 394. Most of the reproductions
of the water organ have been collected and studied by Mercurelli in Rivista di Archeologia
cristiana xv (1938), p. 73.
INSTRUMENTS 409
Reeds, in number up to a dozen or so, were joined together like a raft
and stopped with wax at one end. The lengths were graded and the
player blew across the open mouths, moving the instrument as he
desired.
Chordophones
The Greek lyre (Avpa) and kithara were distinct instruments. In
Roman times the lyre tended to die out and the kithara acquired more
strings; the sounding-board became larger and more unwieldy. The
instrument was now often played sitting down.! It remained to the
end the king of instruments for the soloist.
Harps with large numbers of strings were, of course, well known
to the Greeks. In the Roman world they become more popular.? They
were played sitting down with the instrument resting on the knees.
Other stringed instruments came into use, the most interesting of
which was the pandura or pandore with long thin neck and finger-
board.?
Idiophones
There were several instruments of percussion which can only be
mentioned here. The scabellum was a hinged flapping board of wood
or metal worked by the foot and used for beating time.* The sistrum
was an Egyptian rattle used in the worship of Isis, and there were
several kinds of cymbals and tambourines, bells and whistles.®
Literary Description
It is interesting to notice in both literature and in art how music and
musical instruments are portrayed by writers or artists who do not
possess the musical knowledge required for a precise description.
For example, in the poem Aetna (lines 297 ff.) the author wishes to
describe the organ being played; his observant eye has perceived the
essential features, though he is unable or unwilling to use the
technical terms.
! These statements are based on a survey of the surviving illustrations, especially
in Pompeii.
* e.g. Juvenal, Satires, iii. 64 tells of the chordae obliquae brought to Rome from the
East.
3 See p. 273.
* For references see the works listed in the Bibliography. See also below, p. 414, for
the terra-cotta from Alexandria.
5 See p. 267.
$ Cf. the well-known mosaic of street musicians, now in the Naples Museum, from
Pompeii, made by Dioscorides of Samos.
410 ROMAN MUSIC
carmineque irriguo magnis cortina theatris
imparibus numerosa modis canit arte regentis,
quae tenuem impellens animam subremigat unda.
(Just as in some vast theatre, a water organ whose musical modes har-
monise through their unequal pipes, sounds its water-worked music thanks
to the organist's skill, which starts a small draught of air while causing a
rowing movement in the water below.)!
Here we have in a few words what an intelligent onlooker sees: the
caldron-shaped body, the row of different-sized pipes, the organist
controlling the instrument, and the rowing-like action of the blowers.
Sometimes, of course, the writer has the accurate knowledge and
expresses it in the form of an enigma. Thus Julian describes the organ,
with pneumatic action and not worked by water.?
I see reeds, or pipes, of a different kind: I ween that from another, a
metallic soil, they have perchance rather sprung up. They are agitated
wildly, and not by our breath; but a blast, rushing from within the hollow
of a bull's hide, passes underneath, below the foundation of the well-
pierced pipes, and a skilled artist, possessed of nimble fingers, regulates
by his wandering touch the connecting rods of the pipes, and these rods,
softly springing to his touch, express (squeeze out) the song.
Perhaps the neatest description is of the double pipes:
els dveuos: úo vies’ épérrovaw бека, vabrav
T \ , ЕЈ п , 3 /
etg де коВєрујттѕ &ифотёра< éÀáei.
(One wind, two ships, ten sailors rowing, and one steersman directs both.)*
SOCIAL STATUS OF MUSICIANS
In the Roman world musicians held a place of honour from the
earliest times. In the list of trade guilds into which the people of Rome
were traditionally divided by Numa, successor to Romulus the first
king of Rome, pipers come first.* If the sacred pipers went on strike,
as they once did, the work of the State was held up; the pipers were
recalled to duty by a trick and a bribe.5 A boy piper was usually
present near the altar at a sacrifice, but he played not for the music's
own sake but to cover up any sound that might be accidentally heard
1 Minor Latin Poets (Loeb Classical Library), p. 386. Duff’s translation.
? Julian, Epig. ii. W. Chappell's translation in his History of Music vol.i (London, 1874).
з Anth. Pal. xiv. 14. Loeb Classical Library.
1 Plutarch, Numa 17. For some of the duties of the State pipers see Ovid, Fasti vi. 657.
A number of inscriptions attest to the guild organization. A piper is included among
the list of magistrates’ officials at Urso (Spain) in 44 в.с. Riccobono, Fontes Iuris Romani
Antejustiniani. Leges (Florence, 1941), p. 177. On the guilds, see also p. 401.
5 Livy, ix. 30. Plutarch, Qu. Rom. 55.
SOCIAL STATUS OF MUSICIANS 411
in the vicinity and thereby spoil the ceremony.! This scene is por-
trayed many times in Roman art, always with the short auloi. On
festal occasions, or when the emperor was welcomed on his return
home, there was always music to greet him.? A tuba player is normally
seen near the emperor at his triumph.? There is no doubt that the way
in which music could stimulate or calm a crowd was well known in
the ancient world and that much use was made of this knowledge.*
In the army from the days of the Servian reforms, usually regarded
as military in character, when in the sixth century B.C. tuba and cornu
players (but not bucina players) were named as an official class in the
Roman list of citizens, musicians had a well-defined status. From
inscriptions we learn that the order of seniority was tuba player, cornu
player, and lastly bucina player.® Like other professional groups, they
would at times organize themselves into clubs with elaborate rules
and conditions of entry. Thus, for example, when a member joined
he paid into the common chest 750 denarii, and when he died or got
his discharge, or if he were reduced in rank, or promoted inside the
legion, or if he had to make an unwelcome voyage overseas, he or his
heir received stated sums. This was in the early years of the third
century A.D.”
MILITARY MUSIC
In the army orders were given on different instruments. The tuba
sounded the attack or retreat, and the time for the posting of sentries.
The bucina, which could scarcely be heard outside the camp if there
was much noise, sounded the watches; it was superseded later for this
duty by the cornu which was also responsible for the sounding of the
relief for the sentries.? There were well-known calls. Pollux tells of
! Brendel has collected a number of examples in his article, ‘Immolatio Boum’,
Römische Mitteilungen, xlv (Munich, 1930), p. 196.
? Alfóldi, *Die Ausgestaltung des monarchischen Zeremoniells am rómischen
Kaiserhofe', Rómische Mitteilungen, xlix (1934), p. 79.
* See the Triumph of Marcus Aurelius in Strong, op. cit., fig. 162.
* Quintilian, Inst. orat. ix. 4 i. 10.
5 H. Last, ‘The Servian Reforms’, in Journal of Roman Studies, xxxv (1945), p. 34,
where the sources are discussed.
5 e.g. C.I.L. viii. 2564. There is a list of musicians in the army in Ephemeris Epigra-
phica, iv (Rome, 1881), p. 374, but it needs to be brought up to date.
* Tubicines, 7.L.S. 9096 (А.р. 202-5); Cornicines, C.I.L. viii. 2557+ 18050 = I.L.S.
2354 (A.p. 203). They have been discussed several times. A good account is by Carcopino
in Rendiconti della Pontif. Acad. Rom. di Archeol. series 3, iv (1926), p. 217.
* This is a simplified account applicable to the Republican period; there were changes
in procedure in later time. A convenient method of approach is to work through the
articles on the separate instruments, so far as they are published, in the Thesaurus
Linguae Latinae (Leipzig, 1900). Note also the different attempts to describe the
sounds, e.g. Ennius on the гира (taratantara), frag. 143. '
412 ROMAN MUSIC
four for the trumpet: the setting off or attack, the call of encourage-
ment during battle, the retreat, and the sign to halt or encamp.! In the
sixth century A.D. Procopius says that the Roman army in the old days
had two calls: the charge and the retreat. Sometimes they must have
been misunderstood, coming as they did from the same instrument.
He therefore suggested to Belisarius that the cavalry trumpet, lighter
in weight, being made of leather and thin wood, should sound the
charge; while the bronze trumpet of the infantry, which would be of
a different sound, should sound the retreat when a more distinctive
call was necessary in the noise of battle.?
Several stories are told of Roman generals who kept musicians in
empty camps after the army had moved on; they remained sounding
the regular calls to deceive the enemy. At other times a trumpet player
would be sent by himself away from the main body so that the enemy
would get a wrong impression of the position of the army.? These
were well-worn tricks and they show how the various calls were
identified with army life. Frequently in literature, battle or camp life
was described in terms of one or other of the instruments; thus in
medias tubas would mean ‘into the midst of the battle’, and post lituos
could be translated ‘after the battle was over’.4 In camp and on the
march the cornu players stayed near the standards, giving the sign to
move off and with the tuba encouraging the men in battle. Thus when
the Temple of the Sun at Palmyra was pillaged by the aquiliferi,
vexilliferi, and the draconarius (different kinds of standard bearers)
in A.D. 272, under Aurelian, the players of the cornu and the lituus of
the legion also took part.5 In art the cornu players are usually placed
hard by the standards.®
Twice a year, on 23 March and 23 May, the sacred trumpets were
symbolically purified at a ceremony called Tubilustrium.’ There is
reason to believe that this originally had to do with the opening of the
new campaigning season. It shows the intimate connexion that existed
between the instrument and military life. In the navy, a comparatively
late development with Rome, the need for call signs was not so great,
though there is some evidence for the use of music to keep oarsmen
1 Pollux, iv. 85. ? Procopius, Bell. Goth. vi. 23.
* e.g. Frontinus, Strat. i. 5; Livy, ii. 64. —
* Claudian, de con. Stil. iii, pref. 12, 13. 5 Historia Augusta. Vita Aurel. xxxi. 7.
* e.g. Trajan’s army marching over the bridge of boats across the Danube in Strong,
Op. cit., figs. 97/98. There is a novel view of this scene in La Colonna Traiana (Rome,
1942), pl. 15.
т C. Е. і, 1, p. 313. Quasten, Musik und Gesang in den Kulten der heidnischen Antike
und christlichen Frühzeit (Münster, 1930), esp. pp. 16-25, gives an account of Roman
state music, including the Tubilustrium and the College of Pipers.
MILITARY MUSIC 413
in time.! Even though the tuba was to become a popular solo instru-
ment and often heard with other instruments in the shows, this con-
nexion with war was never forgotten. When L. Norbanus Flaccus, a
keen player of the tuba, was heard practising on this instrument on the
day he entered into his consulate in A.D. 19, it was taken as a bad
omen that the consul should be heard playing on an instrument
associated with war.’
MUSIC IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Interest in music increased during the Empire. In private life,
whether it was a little light music after supper at Pliny’s villa or a
noisy trumpet playing at Trimalchio’s dinner party, music was in uni-
versal demand.? The best entertainment, Martial believes, is where
there is no piper to drown the conversation, implying that a man is
fortunate if he finds that when he goes out to dinner.* Petronius tells
of a man of fashion who possessed a clock in his dining room with a
uniformed bucina player to tell him how much of his life was lost and
gone.® Music was employed at funerals from earliest Roman times;
later no funeral was complete without wailing pipes and trumpets
playing a last call to the dead. Trimalchio, very drunk, orders a rock
funeral and the trumpeters break into a loud funeral march (consonuere
cornicines funebri strepitu). The phrase, ‘You may send for the
trumpeters’ (ad tubicines mittas) signifies ‘prepare for the funeral."
So, too, at other ceremonies and on state occasions, music played an
increasingly important рагі. Large choirs sang and more ensemble
playing was demanded.?
Indoor concerts took place in the houses of the rich. Pl. 12, a
fresco found at Herculaneum, now in the Naples Museum, shows a
duet between a piper and a kithara player. Before an attentive
audience the piper vigorously plays her two very long straight pipes;
she wears the usual mouth band, and her bulging cheeks and eyes
! Starr, The Roman Imperial Navy (Cornell, 1941), pp. 56 and 59.
* Cassius Dio, lvii. 18.
3 Pliny, Ep. ix. 36. Petronius, Satiricon (Cena Trimalchionis), e.g. c. 26. Coleman-
Norton has made a study of musical terms and expressions from literature which were
known or could have been known to Cicero in ‘Cicero Musicus', Journal of the American
Musicological Society, 1 (1948), pp. 3-22.
* Martial, ix. 77. * Petronius, Sar. 26.
$ Ibid. 78. * [bid. 129.
8 For the carmen saeculare see Gagé, ' Recherches sur les Jeux séculaires’, Les Belles
Lettres, Paris (1934), pp. 45 f.
9 There is a charming painting from Ostia of a small group of boys singing in honour
of Diana. This is reproduced in Strong, Art in Ancient Rome, ii (London, 1929), p. 28.
414 ROMAN MUSIC
indicate the intensity of her performance. The kithara player uses the
developed form of the instrument; not so graceful and finely balanced
as the classical Greek version, it is of more solid construction and
capable of hard wear and tear. The arms are straight and there is a
strong cross-bar to hold the tuning pegs, seven of which are shown,
though the painter has indicated at least a dozen strings. The instru-
ment is held by an arm-strap, though this is not clear in the painting;
it is played with a plectrum in the right hand, the left hand plucking
or damping the strings as required. It will be noticed that the per-
formers do not play from notated music.
Small bands of street musicians paraded in the streets playing pipe,
cymbal, and tambourine. Jugglers and acrobats entertained the
crowds. The one-man band showed how feet, arms, hands, and voice
could be used at the same time. There is an interesting terra-cotta
from Alexandria, recently misunderstood, which is worth considering
in greater detail ;! it is 16-7 centimetres high and represents ап old man
playing a large syrinx with his left hand. Under his left arm he presses
against his side a bag with a single pipe attached; he holds this pipe
with his right hand, playing a simple tune or drone; his right foot
plays a scabellum. There is no connexion between the bag and the
syrinx; this is not an early form of portable organ as has been sug-
gested; it is the bagpipe played with other instruments. A young
assistant claps a pair of miniature cymbals as his master plays.
MUSIC IN THE THEATRE
In 389 B.c. performances of simple stage plays with musical accom-
paniment (saturae modis impletae) took place, with Etruscan actors
brought to Rome to dance to music played on the pipes. This native
drama was driven off the stage by innovations from Greece and took
on a literary form. More music, with more than one kind of pipe,
came into use in Latin versions of Greek comedies. The prefaces to
Terence's plays teil of four kinds besides giving the name of the com-
poser? Music was played also during the intervals. Atellana and
mimes were broad farces, which tended to drive out comedy. Played
by a very few actors, male and female, they were vulgar and often
obscene but attracted great popularity.‘
1 Weber, Die Agyptisch-griechischen Terrakotten (Berlin, 1914), pl. 30, no. 324;
Sachs, History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940), pl. viiic.
2 Livy, vii. 2. м. |
з e.g. Didascalia to Terence's Phormio: ‘Modos fecit Flaccus Claudi tibiis inpari-
bus.’
3 Duff, Literary History of Rome (London, 1909), p. 221.
MUSIC IN THE THEATRE 415
A most interesting papyrus gives a number of cues for the music.!
It dates from the second century or end of the first century А.р. The
identification of the marks is far from certain, but they include cues
for the drums, singly, five times or many times, for the striking of
some instrument (perhaps cymbals or scabellum), and two others
which cannot be explained with any degree of certainty, possibly for
castanets and pipe. It must be explained that these are only cues; no
fragments of the music, if indeed it ever consisted of more than per-
cussion effects, exist.
The pantomime? (pantomimus means the single actor who takes
part) was quite different from the mime. Its themes were from
mythology and it was essentially a dramatic dance for a single per-
former, accompanied by chorus and orchestra. The actors were male
until very late times. Predominantly, though not exclusively, Roman,
by the time of Augustus it was established in the capital. The orchestra
included pipes, panpipes, cymbals, and stringed instruments; time
was kept by the scabellum.? In some respects the pantomime may be
regarded as the successor to tragedy on the Roman stage. It made
certain demands of the audience: the facts of the story must be
known, the different steps of the dance had to be recognized; it
required a cultivated taste and never became entertainment for the
masses. The music took second place to the dancing. ‘There reigns
the art of dancing’, says Plutarch, ‘to which music is almost entirely
subordinated.”
In the amphitheatre a show began with a procession. Led by
trumpet and horn players, the principal performers with decorated
helmets marched into the arena. The start of the performance was
announced by the tuba and a small orchestra played in the back-
ground. Pl. 11 (b) shows part of a mosaic from Zliten in North Africa,®
with different kinds of gladiators. The orchestra consists of a water
organ, a tuba player, and two cornu players. The organ is on a low
stand; the reservoirs for the water are on either side. A number of
surviving illustrations of similar scenes bear witness to the enormous
popularity of the amphitheatre shows.
At times the desire for noise and large numbers of performers led
1 Greek Literary Papyri, Poetry, i, no. 76. Loeb Classical Library, ed. D. І. Page.
* Robert, ‘Pantomimen im griechischen Orient’, Hermes, lxv (1930), р. 106. Lucian,
De Salt., passim.
3 The players of the scabellum (scabellarii) had their own guild.
* Plutarch, Quaest. conviv. ix. 15.
5 Aurigemma, ‘I mosaici di Zliten’ (Africa Italiana, ii, Rome, 1926). For the pompa
and other scenes in the amphitheatre, see the long article ‘II rilievo gladiatorio di Chieti’
by Ghislanzoni in Monumenti Antichi (Rome), xix. 1908, col. 541.
416 ROMAN MUSIC
to incredible extravagance. Ammianus Marcellinus tells of kitharas
as large as carriages.! In A.D. 284 Carinus gave a series of games to the
Romans at which one hundred trumpets played together; others
taking part included a hundred horn blowers and two hundred pipers
of different kinds. It was the most-talked-of event of the year.? The
mania for novelty and large-scale entertainment was encouraged by
those in authority, who saw in this a means of distracting the atten-
tion of the masses from action in the political field.
RECITALS AND VIRTUOSI
Authors ‘published’ by big public readings and there are numerous
references to clients dutifully listening to their patron's dull books.
Under the Empire dramatic recitals became popular, even of
works which had never been intended for declamation to music.
The Greek practice of singing and accompanying oneself on the
kithara was known in the Greek cities of the south and to a lesser
degree in Rome and the western provinces, but it was a foreign intru-
sion and, though actively sponsored by different emperors and
despite hero-worship of the star performers, did not succeed in be-
coming Romanized. The principal performers and the best teachers,
so far as we can tell, were Greek. This was the form of art that Nero
wished to excel in.?
Despite the amount of ensemble playing known to have existed, it
was the soloist and, above all, the brilliant virtuoso who caught the
fancy of the Romans. Successful individual players were mobbed by
the crowd, paid fantastic engagement fees, and allowed to indulge in
any amount of artistic temperament off stage or on stage. Such artists
rarely settled in any place for long; they had full time-tables of book-
ings, and in any event it is doubtful whether there was enough popular
demand for a man to remain very long in one place. These artists, too,
banded themselves into professional groups not unlike trade unions,
and by the second century A.D. had a practical monopoly.* The artist,
when he became well known, would be honoured by his native city
and perhaps given honorary citizenships of other cities; statues
would be set up to him.
1 Ammianus Marcellinus, xiv. 6, 18.
* Vita Carini, xix.
3 See p. 399.
* Dionysiac artists: see Pauly-Wissowa, art. ‘technitai’ in Real-Encyclopddie. For
the spreading of professionalism in the Hellenistic world, and the peripatetic life, see
Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 1941),
pp. 1077 f. and 1113.
PLATE XIII
ЧҮҮ КҮ ҮҮ
and
4
ARABIC INSTRUMENTS
(a) Lute of 5 double strings (A.D. 1333-4)
(b) Psaltery of 32 strings (A.D. 1333-4)
(c) Harp of 34 strings (А.р. 1326-7)
See also pages xvi and 462-3
RECITALS AND VIRTUOSI 417
On special occasions a star performer might receive a very large
fee, in money or otherwise. Vespasian, for all his covetousness, re-
warded his artists well. When the theatre of Marcellus was reopened
he hired performers, paying no less than 400,000 sesterces to the
tragic actor Apollinaris, 200,000 sesterces to Terpnus and Diodorus
the citharoedi, as well as other lesser amounts to others who took
part.! (For very rough calculation the sestertius was worth about 2d.)
The amount of prize money a successful musician might win was con-
siderable. Two inscriptions from Aphrodisias in Asia Minor? give
lists of prize money for different contests; the highest prize was
3,250 denarii for the first citharoedus. It would not be safe to build
much on so little evidence, but so far as they go, they are of importance
at least for one part of the world.
Unfortunately we know practically nothing about the style of play-
ing or what the music was like. Sometimes it was only a question of
how loud and how long a note could be played, a test of physique
and power of lung.? There is little doubt, however, that the standard
of performance was high and the technique elaborate. Competition
was keen, and audiences were critical. Not even the hired claque, so
commonly employed, would cover up poor playing or indifferent
singing. Many of the pieces played were intimately known by the
crowd and favourite tunes were hummed in the street.®
IMPERIAL AMATEURS
The amateur vied with the professional though there was always a
social gap between the two. Society was shocked by Nero not because
of his appearing as a musician, but because he posed as a professional
artist. Many men and women of society became distinguished
amateurs. The Augustan histories tell of many emperors who were
good players. Hadrian? boasted openly of his knowledge of kithara
playing and singing; Verus? travelled about through Corinth and
Athens with instrumentalists and singers, and on his return from the
Parthian war brought from Syria players of stringed instruments and
pipers; Commodus? is described as adept in certain arts not becoming
to an emperor, one of which was singing; Elagabalus? sang, danced,
1 Suetonius, Vesp. 19.
? C.I.G. 2758 and 2759. There is a convenient translation in Tenney Frank, Economic
Survey of Rome, iv (Baltimore, 1938), p. 856.
* Galen, viii. 287.
* [n general, see the chapters in Friedlànder, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte
Roms, ii (Leipzig, 9th-10th ed., 1921-3), pp. 161 ff. ЖБД, р. 175;
8 Vita Had. xiv. 9. Vita Veri, vi. 9; viii. 11.
8 Vita Comm. i. 8. * Vita Elagab. xxxii. 8.
418 ROMAN MUSIC
declaimed to the pipes, played on the trumpet, the pandura, and the
organ; Severus Alexander! had a taste for music and could play on
the lyre, pipe, organ, and trumpet, though he never played the last
when he became Emperor.
Others, from the first century, had been interested in the art, but
none like Nero. He wished to be taken seriously as a musician and
there is every reason to believe that he had considerable, though not
exceptional, natural ability. Music was only one of his many interests,
but he trained hard and practised diligently. The services of Terpnus,
a well-known singer to the kithara, were obtained when he became
Emperor and lessons went on late into the night. He endured bodily
discomfort, lying on his back with a metal weight on his chest, taking
purges, refraining from various fruits and meat that were supposed
to injure the voice, indeed trying all the tricks of the profession to
develop his voice. At one time he refused to address his soldiers in
person so as to rest his voice, and he would have a singing teacher
present to see that he never strained it. Before appearing in public he
made detailed plans for his claque who, more than 5,000 strong,
were divided into groups and taught the various kinds of applause
that would ensure their master the success he so earnestly longed for.
We are told of three kinds of applause; bombi (probably like the
buzzing of bees), imbrices (like rain or hail on the roof), and testae
(like the crashing of pots together). The whole account given by
Suetonius in his life of Nero is most amusing. Extremely jealous of
possible rivals, the Emperor was highly sensitive about his reputation
as a musician. During the rebellion of Vindex nothing excited him so
much as the low opinion Vindex expressed about him as a kithara
player. To the very end of his life he was interested in new kinds of
instruments and promised to appear in person at the victory games,
playing on different instruments, among which were different kinds
of organ and the bagpipe.?
Nero made his first public appearance in his own palace at Rome
in A.D. 59, at the age of twenty-two. In 64 he took part in the contests
at Naples, and in 65 appeared as a citharoedus (i.e. sang and played
on the kithara) in the theatre of Pompey in Rome. Towards the end
of 66 he went on a professional tour of Greece, returning publicly in
the beginning of 68. No doubt the judges at the different contests in
which he took part would hesitate before refusing a prize; his suc-
cesses, therefore, need not be taken too seriously. Yet we know that
! Vita Alex. xxvii. 5, 9.
? Suetonius, Nero, xli, liv.
IMPERIAL AMATEURS 419
he kept to the rules, adopted a humble attitude, and on at least one
Occasion was very nervous lest a mistake he had just made should be
noticed and lose him points.
MUSIC TEACHING
Details of what pay music teachers in schools received are not
numerous, though there is a little information from Teos, in Asia
Minor, in the late third or early second century B.c.! Three teachers
of reading and writing in an elementary school were paid sums from
600 to 500 drachmas, the two teachers of gymnastics received 500,
and the music teacher 700. His duties were to give instruction in
music (i.e. theory) and in playing the kithara with the plectrum and
with the fingers; no mention of instruction on the pipes or any other
musical instrument; some of the boys were taught theory only; not
all the boys in the school received music lessons. There was an
examination in music at the end of the year to see how the pupils had
benefited by the instruction. The salary mentioned was comparatively
generous and indicates the importance attached to adequate musical
training. (The salary of a skilled workman was about one drachma
a day at this time; the highest recorded salary from the Hellenistic
world is that of a doctor who received 1,000 drachmas a year.)?
From Alexandria comes a papyrus of unique interest? of the year
13 B.C., in the form of an apprenticeship contract between the owner
of a slave and a music teacher. The papyrus is not in good condition
and there are several technical terms which are not yet fully under-
stood. However, the boy was to be taught to play various tunes on
specified instruments and also to be able to accompany other per-
formers; he was to be tested by an independent body of three, suitably
qualified. The payment of one hundred drachmas was to be made in
two parts, and the period of the contract was a year. A lot had to be
learnt in that time and it is likely the slave had some knowledge
before he started.
There is reason to believe that music was learned not from a written
text but by ear.* This conclusion must be treated with reserve, but in
art remains musicians are always represented as playing by ear or
.* Dittenberger, Sylloge (3rd. ed., Leipzig, 1915-24), 578. Hansen, Attalids of Pergamon
(Ithaca N.Y., 1947), p. 354.
? Tarn, Hellenistic Civilization (London, 2nd ed. 1930), p. 100; A. Wilhelm, Neue
Beiträge zur griechischen Inschriftenkunde (Vienna, 1915), р. 54.
* Aegyptische Urkunden aus den koniglischen Museen zu Berlin, 1125. Westermann
in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, x (1924), p. 143.
+ Н.І. Marrou, ‘МЕЛОГРАФІА’, І Antiquité classique (Brussels), ху (1946), p .289.
420 ROMAN MUSIC
memory. A number of paintings show scenes from mythology of
master teaching pupil to play on the pipes or the lyre; the master
explains, shows how the instrument should be held, then lets the pupil
try for himself, gently controlling an awkward position by guiding the
pupil's arms and hands. Other scenes depict the pupil imitating the
master as he plays, carrying out with his fingers the action as he sees
it. Although these are scenes from mythology, it is reasonable to
suppose that the painters incorporated in their work scenes from
everyday life.!
There are many such gaps in our knowledge of Roman music, and
we can only hope that new material will come to light. At present
there is enough to see the main picture, though it be blurred in places
and may always remain unfinished.
! e.g. paintings of Marsyas teaching Olympus to play the pipes.
XI
THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
By HENRY GEORGE FARMER
ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
IN the history of civilization, Islam stands as the chief animating idea
culturally between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance. Yet when one
speaks of Islamic civilization a purely sociological connotation is
implied, since in spite of its religious basis and its pristine insularity,
it spread over and conditioned a quarter of the then known world,
giving rise to a mode of life which became a cynosure for all eyes
beyond its boundaries. The explanation of this is simple enough.
When the revelations of Muhammad flashed on the world in the
seventh century of the Christian era, a message was delivered which
could not be confined to the Hijaz, the cradle of Islam. As a result,
within three-quarters of a century, the banner of the Prophet was
planted eastward at the extremities of Transoxiana, southward by the
banks of the Indus, northward to the shores of the Black Sea, and
westward on the slopes of the Pyrenees.
Out of this newly won empire arose a civilization which dwindled
that of much of the rest of the world into insignificance. From
Samarcand in the east to Cordova in the west, the grandeur of courts,
the fame of colleges, and the wealth of bazaars became a byword. Not
since the days of Grecian splendour had art, science, and literature
shone with such radiance, nor had inventions, discoveries, and im-
provements excited so much wonderment. It was Islam in its socio-
logical trend which produced this sublimation, although it was its
religious basis that was the causa causans,! since it preached а uni-
versal brotherhood which knew no racial or national distinctions, and
saw no geographical boundaries. Similarly, while it was an Arabian
polity which made this cultural elevation possible, and while the
medium of most of its dissemination was Arabic, many other peoples
of the Near and Middle East, and even of the European West, were
producers and partakers of this culture.
In such wide dominions it was inevitable that alien notions should
impose themselves on the culture of the Arab conquerors and, in
1 See the remarks of the editor of The Legacy of Islam (Oxford, 1931), p. v.
422 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
consequence, what was once purely Arabian became considerably
modified, tempered, and even replaced by other cultures, yet it was
this fusion of ideas that gave greater mobility to the new civilization
which was to have so vital an influence on the western world. Many
peoples of the Near and Middle East, and of western Europe also,
contributed to this Islamic civilization: Arab, Turk, Kurd, Persian,
Aramaean, Syrian, Egyptian, Greek, and Goth. In the East, two lands
especially played a prominent part in the music of this new cultural
uprising, Persia and Syria; and in the West, Spain. The role of Greece
was more in the theoretical sphere, through the influence of the works
of authors centuries dead.
Mesopotamia and Persia Syria and Egypt Spain and North Africa
Orthodox Caliphs 5 А с г A : Z 1 n ` 2632
Conquest of Syria. 2 3 : . 638
Conquest of Persia. Ў Е В А А с о А : . 642
Conquest of Egypt . : + 5 А . 647
Umayyad Caliphs 2 . Umayyad Caliphs . : 3 Я с . 661
Conquest of М. Africa . 708
Conquest of Spain . 713
*Abbàsid Caliphs А . ‘Abbasid Саірһѕ . авиа pois (Spain). 750
Fatimid Caliphs Б 909
Buwaihids . я А у р К Я " a SY,
Petty Kings (Spain) . + . 1016
Saljüqs Р ; A z н а g > à А B = 1037
Khwarizmi Shahs А 2 z А Я 9 : > E Я 110972
Almoravides(Spain&Africa) 1086
Saljiiqs (Syria) . 3 1094
Almohades (Spain & Atria) 1130
Ayyübids Б D : 1169
Naşrids (Granada) М 01282
Mamlük Turks ч " . 1250
Mughals. Fall of варды ; ? и З 3 А > А n . 1256
Timürids . ; Я З а А Е В С 5 5 . 1369
Mamlük Circassians А A E à . 1382
Fall of Granada i . 1492
Safawids . б A А > ; Е A б " > я 221502
Ottoman Turks . А . Ottoman Turks А б 3 5 с И,
THE CULTURAL BACKGROUND
The idea that Arabia has ever been a land of nomads and barbarism
has long disappeared. Archaeological remains have revealed traces of
a high stage of civilization in the ancient Arabian past, and we now
know that this land was once a trading centre of the world which had
a profound influence on the destinies of the East.! This could scarcely
have been otherwise, since not only Syria and Phoenicia, but much of
Arabia, was under the irresistible influence of Mesopotamian culture
1 Encyclopaedia of Islam, i (Leiden, 1913-38), pp. 377-80.
THE CULTURAL BACKGROUND 423
as far back as the third millennium в.с. While political and commercial
ties between these lands, where practically the same tongue prevailed,
must have contributed to a certain level of melioration, there was also
a fundamental reason for the persistence of cultural conformity, in
that the urban population of both the Mesopotamian and Syrian
plains was being continually reinforced by nomadic and country
elements from the peninsula itself, a flux which secured the main-
tenance and revitalizing of the pristine Semitic features of their
culture. What we know of the outward visible signs of music and
religion in ancient Arabia, partly confirms the view that the Arabs of
the peninsula were the inheritors and conservators of much of the
great Mesopotamian culture of the past.
Music, as found in the towns and oases of pre-Islamic Arabia, was
mainly practised by the women-folk, and especially by a class of
singing-girls (gainat) attached to households of the upper classes or
employed at places of entertainment. The male musician (mughanni)
and instrumentalist (2/2117) were not so common, although one writer,
Ibn Misa al-Nasibi (d. c. 860), wrote about them in a Book of Songs
(Kitab al-aghàni).? We know little of the nature of music in those days
but, as in ancient Mesopotamia, the art was associated with joy and
brightness, as etymology reveals. The word zahara meant ‘to shine
brightly’, hence that which produced ‘brightness’, a tambourine, was
called mizhar. The origin of musical instruments among the Arabs is
not unlike the story of Genesis iv. 21. According to Ibn Khurdadhbih,
Tūbal b. Lamak is to be credited with the invention of the tambourine
(duff) and the drum (tabl), whilst his sister Dilal is claimed to have
originated the lyre or kithara (mi'zaf). Lamak himself was responsible
for the lute (04), and Lot's people are given the credit of the pandore
(tunbür). Likewise, the Kurds were thought to be the first to use the
recorder (? saffara) type of instrument, while upon the Persians was
conferred the honour of devising the reed-pipe (nay), the double-pipe
(dünày), the shawm (surnáy), and the upper-chested harp ( jank).?
In ‘Stony Arabia’, the ka'ba as a place of pilgrimage, and 'Ukàz as
the home of the fair, were centres where musicians and poets con-
gregated to contest for supremacy in their arts, for even those
“treasured poems’, the Mu‘allaqat, were sung as well as recited, just
! L. W. King, Legends of Babylonia and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition
(London, 1918), p. 8. Cf. A. T. Clay, The Empire of the Amorites (New Haven, 1919),
passim.
? Farmer, Sources of Arabian Music (Bearsden, 1940), p. 18. Reprint from the Records
of the Glasgow Bibliographical Society, xiii (1939).
* Al-Mas'üdi, Prairies d'or, viii (Paris, 1861-77), pp. 89-90.
424 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
as entire odes (gasd'id) were sung in the desert in modern times.!
Tradition avers that singing (ghind’) arose from the caravan song
(huda’). Out of this were developed the lament (biga’) and the elegy
(nauh), until there was fashioned the secular song (nasb).? In ‘Happy
Arabia’ we are told that two species of song were practised, the
himyari and the hanafi. What distinction existed between them we
are not told, but the former was evidently that of the Himyarites,
whilst the latter, of more recent origin perhaps, may have been
religious music.‘ It is in ‘Desert Arabia’, thanks to the poets, that we
get a fuller and more colourful picture of music. They tell of the joy
when listening to the tavern singing-girl (dajina, qarina), of the
fascinating high trill (tudhri), the swinging refrain (tarji‘), and the
antiphon (jawdb). The instruments were the lyre ог kithara (mi‘zaf),
certain kinds of lutes or pandores (muwattar, kiran), probably with
skin ‘bellies’, the flute (qussdba), the reed-pipe (тігтағ), the per-
cussion wand (qadib), and tambourines (duff, mizhar).5
Judging by technical musical nomenclature, little alien influence
had come to Arabia since the fall of the great Mesopotamian civiliza-
tion. Where foreign influence did assert itself was at the perimeter,
especially in those lands reached through two gaps in the desert to
the north-west and north-east which, in the early years of the
Christian era, were inhabited by two Arab peoples, the Nabataeans
and the Lakhmids, whose culture bore a fairly clear impress of Syria
and Persia respectively. The former was a land which had, in the past,
seduced Greece by the sounds of the sidonios nablas (Hebrew nebel),
the kinyra (Hebrew kinnór), and the sambyké (Aramaic sabbeka), as
well as the phoinix.® If we can believe the Syrian Bar Salibi (d. 1171),
*musical tunes and melodies, with canons, stichera, and the rest came
to the Greeks from outsiders'.? Even Rome was caught by the Syrian
anbüba and the tibiae sarranae.? The persistence of the more ancient
Mesopotamian culture in Syria certainly shows itself in musical in-
struments, as in the Syriac abbüba, tabla, pelaggá, дагпа, and zemmora.
If Syria could influence Greece and Rome in music, peoples nearer
home would certainly be affected more easily. The Nabataean Arabs
1 J, L. Burckhardt, Notes on Bedouins and Wahábys, i (London, 1830), pp. 75, 253.
2 Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, pp. 81-82. з Al-Mas'üdi, op. cit. viii, p. 93.
* Farmer, History of Arabian Music (London, 1929), pp. 2-3.
5 Ibid., chap. i, passim.
* E, Pélagaud, 'Syriens et Phrygiens' in Lavignac and La Laurencie, Encyclopédie
de la musique, 11° partie, i (Paris, 1913), pp. 54—58.
ТА. Mingana, ‘Woodbrooke Studies’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, xi
(1927), p. 145.
* Pélagaud, loc. cit.
THE CULTURAL BACKGROUND 425
at Petra, and later farther north as far as Palmyra, were a people of
some political and commercial standing in the early years of the
Christian era. That they used the Aramaic script is well testified. An
inscription at Palmyra tells of the kennàrà (Кіпоға)! and Strabo men-
tions the joy of music at their festivals.? Their successors, the Arab
Ghassanids (fifth-sixth centuries), who were phylarchs of the Byzan-
tines, were passionately fond of music. The Arab poets have praised
the Ghassanid courts, where singing-girls from Mecca, al-Hira, and
Byzantium sang to the accompaniment of the barbat or lute. It was
from this region, possibly, that the Arabs borrowed the reed-pipe
called zanbaq, whose very name reveals its origin, in that it was made
of sambucus wood.* Indeed the Arabic harp-like instrument known
as the wannaj may have been a phonetic borrowing from the Syro-
Greek phoinix.5
The other gap in the desert to the north-east, the land of the Arab
Lakhmids of Mesopotamia, had been under Persian domination for
centuries, yet Persia, like other lands, had felt the pressure of ancient
Mesopotamian culture, as we have already seen. However, Persia
was now the fount of culture, although with her grotesque fable was
as persistent as with others on the origin of music which, according
to the Dabistan, began in the misty Mahabad days at the beginning of
time.’ Firdausi in his great epic, the 5йайната, dresses up the old
stories of the mythical kings and their prodigious exploits, although
much was claimed to have come from Pahlavi sources. The brilliant
courts of the kings are made resplendent with music (rid) and singing
(sarwad), whilst the strings of the harp (chang), the pandore (tanbir),
and lutes (barbat, rubab), and the breath of pipe and reed (гиум này,
nay) murmured their delightful notes. Of martial and processional
sounds were the strident blasts of horns and trumpets (Кагганау,
shaipür, büq), the thundering of drums and kettledrums (tabira, Киз),
and the noise of a tintinnabulating throng (hindi аагау, гапе, sinj).®
From Pahlavi sources we get safer news, in that we read of the
upper-chested harp (chang), the lower-chested one (vón), the lute
(barbüt), the pandore (tambür), the kannár, the shishak, probably a
! Farmer, History of Arabian Music, p. 5.
? xvi, iv. 27.
* Farmer, History of Arabian Music, p. 12.
* J. Robson, Ancient Arabian Musical Instruments (Glasgow, 1938), pp. 16—17.
5 Al-Firüzabadi, Al-Oamiis, s.v. Al-Mas'üdi, op. cit. viii, p. 91 (for гаплај read wannaj).
$ See above, pp. 250 ff.
* The Dabistán. Translated by D. Shea and A. Troyer (Paris, 1843), p. 32.
* For page references to the SSháhnáma see my chapter in A. U. Pope, A Survey of
Persian Art (London, 1938), p. 2786.
426 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
near cousin of the Sanskrit ghoshaka, and the drums (tumbak, dum-
balak), all of which can be recognized by Persian equivalents.!
Pahlavi contains many Semitic words, although Каннах is the only one
in the preceding list of instruments, yet the tabira, karrandy, and
shaipür of Firdausi reveal a genuine Mesopotamian lineage. Many
of these instruments are delineated on the Тад-і Bustàn reliefs
(A.D. 590-628)? and elsewhere.?
This was the flourishing period of the Sásanid dynasty (224-642).
It was Shapur I (d. 272) who is said to have introduced the lute into
his land.* Bahram Gir (d. 438) was famed for his musical talents, and
his famous singing-girl, Azada, with her harp, is one of the com-
monest themes with the old Persian painters.? Another king who was
fond of music was Khusrau Parviz (d. 628), whose favoured singing-
girl, Shirin, is extolled by Nidhami in his Khusrau va Shirin,? and
portrayed by the painters.” Among the famed musicians of this time
was Barbad of Fars, whose melodies were being played in Merv in
the tenth century. Another was Angisiyyà (cf. Nigisà), who sub-
mitted melodies to measure.?
As for the scientific theory of music in Persia in those days nothing
is known. The claims for the existence of treatises on music in pre-
Islamic time,!? have been shown to be myths;!! there were no such
books until long after Islam was established. Of practical theory there
is some evidence, e.g. the dastānāt of Barbad.1* We read of seven
modes before the time of Barbad,?? and of twelve and thirty during his
time, as well as 360 melodies of һіѕ,25 all of which were possibly
linked up with siderial conceits (cf. the numbers), as in Mesopotamia
ооа 6
It was through al-Hira, the capital of the Lakhmids, that Persian
musical practices filtered into Arab lands. These people, like their
1 J, М. Unvalla, King Husrav and his Boy (Paris, 1921), pp. 27-29.
? Farmer, Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments, ii (Glasgow, 1939) pp. 69-85.
з А. U. Pope, op. cit., pls. 208A, 2308, 2338.
^ Abu’l-Fida, Historia anteislamica (Leipzig, 1831), рр. 82-83.
5 A. U. Pope, op. cit., pls. 664, 672, 679.
ê Е. С. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, i (London, 1908), p. 17.
7 A. U. Pope, op. cit., pls. 898, 1042, 1476c.
8 W, Ouseley, The Oriental Geography of Ibn Haukal (London, 1800), р. 216.
э В. d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, iii (Paris, 1938), p. 548.
10 Albert de Lasalle, ‘La Musique des Persans’, La Chronique musicale (1864), p. 81.
п Farmer, ‘Ghosts: An Excursus on Arabic Musical Bibliographies’ in Isis, xxxvi
(1946), p. 125.
12 Al|-Khwaàrizmi, Mafatih al-‘ulam (Leiden, 1895), p. 238.
13 Asiatick Researches, iii (Sth ed., London, 1807), p. 63.
14 Burhan-i вай‘ (Calcutta, 1818), s.v. ‘lahn’.
15 A. de Biberstein Kazimirski, Menoutchehri, xl (Paris, 1886), pp. 13-14.
16 See p. 247.
THE CULTURAL BACKGROUND 427
suzerains, were great lovers of music, and earned some fame in this
respect. Bahram Gir, as a prince, was sent to al-Hira to be educated,
probably with this latter accomplishment in mind. It was certainly the
most important centre of Arabian culture in pre-Islamic times, and
it was from al-Hira that Al-Nadr b. а1-Наги (d. 624) introduced the
lute (па) and the more artistic song (ghind’) into Месса.! Through
this corridor also came the Persian harp (chang, Arab. jank) and pan-
dore (tanbür, Arab. tunbür), as well as the shawm (surnay).
The part played by music in the peninsula as a whole during the
so-called *Days of Ignorance', meaning ignorance of Islam, was little
different from its role in the earlier Semitic civilizations. If the Arabs
toiled for the Assyrians to the lilt of a song, they did likewise in dig-
ging the fosse at Al-Medina at the dawn of Islam.? If the temples of
Ishtar and Yahveh had their chants, so possibly had the shrines of the
Arabs.? If the Hebrews likened music at a banquet to ‘a carbuncle set
in gold’, so could the pagan Arabs refer to it as ‘painters’ work set
off with gold'.*
THE RISE OF ISLAMIC MUSIC
At the birth of Islam in the Hijaz, in the first year of the Hijra or
*Flight', which we know as A.D. 622, a new spiritual world dawned
in which naught else mattered but Islam. At first all was austerity.
When Muhammad had passed to greater glory (632), his ‘Com-
panions' sought, like the Prophet, to keep the mind of man away from
what was termed the ma/ahi or ‘forbidden pleasures’ which, as of old,
included ‘wine, woman, and song’. The Qur'àn had not contained a
word against music, but the purists of Islam began to collect hadith or
*sayings' of Muhammad which were supposed to condemn listening
to music, and these were used with considerable effect by the legists
(fugahà) to forbid any kind of music save that which was known to
have been tolerated by the Prophet. Eventually, the four great legal
schools of Islam, the Hanafi, the Maliki, the Shafi'i, and the Hanbali,
decided, more or less, against ‘listening to music’ and a most in-
teresting controversial literature on its permissibility or otherwise
grew up.5
1 A]-Mas'üdi, op. cit. viii, pp. 93-94.
? Farmer, History of Arabian Music, p. 17.
* R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (London, 1914), p. 73.
* C.J. Lyall, The Mufaddaliyyat, ii (Oxford, 1918-21), p. 101.
5 Farmer, The Sources of Arabian Music = Records of the Glasgow Bibliographical
Society, xiii (1939), pp. 92-93; History of Arabian Music, pp. 20-36; Music: The Price-
less Jewel (Bearsden, 1942), pp. 1-27; J. Robson, Tracts on Listening to Music (London,
1938).
428 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
As we have seen, music was in the hands of matrons and singing-
girls, although a few of the latter were suppressed under the earlier
of the Orthodox Caliphs (632-61). By the close of the reign of
"Uthmàn (d. 646) the male musician and instrumentalist came to the
fore in the person of Tuwais (d. 710), who is claimed as the first male
musician under Islam.! He made his name by imitating the Persian
melodies which could be heard on every hand from captives who had
been brought to the Hijaz as slaves. Indeed, so popular had this music
become, that Arab musicians found it necessary to become better
acquainted with this Iranian art in order to satisfy their clients. At the
same time, the Persian musicians, such as Nashit, were compelled to
include Arabian melodies in their repertory so as to please their
patrons.? Precisely the same thing happened in Persian lands, to which
thousands of Arabs had migrated at the conquest. Here, Arabian
music seems to have been as well known as the native art, and a cen-
tury later, when Ibrahim al-Mausili went to Persia, he was able to
study both Persian and Arabian music there? The influence of
Persian music on the Arabian practical art was considerable.*
Under the Umayyad Caliphs (661—750) the capital was removed
from al-Medina to Damascus in Syria, where their courts, unlike
those of their predecessors, almost became conservatories of music.
Yazid I (d. 683) was the earliest to have court minstrels, much to the
horror of the pious? He was 'appassioned of music'.$ Al-Walid I
(d. 715) was another music-lover and the patron of the famous singers
and composers Ibn Suraij (d. c. 726) and Ma'bad (d. 743). The former
was the first to introduce the Persian lute into Mecca (c. 685), which
was an important event since its accordatura (taswiyya) and frets
(dasatin) were the means of widening the gamut and generally con-
solidating Arabian music." Another great musician was Ibn Misjah
(d. c. 715) of al-Medina. He travelled in Syria, Persia, and elsewhere,
and picked up much that was new in these lands.? His contemporary,
Ibn Muhriz (d. c. 715), did very much the same.? Other great artists
of the period were Al-Gharid (d. 716),!° Ibn ‘A’isha (d. с. 743),! and
Malik al-Tà'i (d. с. 754).12
1 Farmer, History of Arabian Music, pp. 52-53; Encyclopaedia of Islam, iv, p. 283.
? Farmer, History, p. 55. 3 Ibid., p. 116.
* Tbid., pp. 48-49; Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, p. 750.
5 W. Muir, The Caliphate (Edinburgh, 1915), p. 314.
6 Al]-Mas'üdi, op. cit. v. 156.
7 Farmer, An Old Moorish Lute Tutor (Glasgow, 1933), pp. 26-27.
8 Farmer, History of Arabian Music, pp. 69-70; Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, p. 94.
? Farmer, History, p. 70. 10 Ibid., p. 80.
п Ibid., рр. 82-83. 12 Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, p. 211.
THE RISE OF ISLAMIC MUSIC 429
The early 'Abbàsid period (750-847) has well been called the
* Golden Age', and in music, as in art and letters, it certainly deserved
this estimation. Although court demeanour reflected Persian custom
on every side, in music, the old Arabian art, as established under the
Umayyads, held complete sway. The greatest musician of his day,
Ibrahim al-Mausili (d. 804) was a protagonist of the indigenous
music, as was his son Ishaq al-Mausili, perhaps the most famed
musician in Islam.? At the court of Al-Mahdi (d. 785), ‘music refined
the age’,? and ‘no man had a finer voice than he’.* As for Harun al-
Rashid (d. 809), the pages of The Arabian Nights reveal the wide
horizon of his musical interests. Besides those mentioned, such great
minstrels as Ibn Jami‘, Zalzal, 'Allawaya, and Yahya al-Makki were
among those patronized. Under Ma'mün (d. 833) there flourished
the famous Prince Ibrahim b. al-Mahdi (d. 839), with a wondrous
voice of three octaves.’ It was this prince who led the Persian romantic
school in music in opposition to the Arabian classical school of Ishaq
al-Mausili.? The craze lasted for a century, but when its course was
run, much of the older music, which was only preserved viva voce
had disappeared.? In Spain the Umayyad courts at Cordova vied with
Baghdad in their patronage of art and science.!? 'Alün and Zarqün
were the favoured minstrels under Al-Hakam I (d. 822). Others were
‘Abbas b. al-Nasa’i and Mansür al-Yahüdi.!! When the great Ziryab
appeared at the court of ‘Abd al-Rahmaàn II (d. 852) all who had
preceded sank into oblivion, for ‘there never was, either before or
after him, a тап... more admired’.! Here the old Arabian school
flourished in the form which Ibn Misjah had created it, and Ishàq
al-Mausili had confirmed it.
The second Baghdad period (847-945) saw the beginning of the
decline of the Caliphate, and as the years crept on the great political
empire of Islam gradually slipped away.!? The decay showed itself in
music. Most of the caliphs still kept up huge musical establishments,
! Farmer, History of Arabian Music, pp. 116-18.
? Ibid., pp. 124-6. 3 W. Muir, op. cit., р. 467.
4 [bn Khallikan, Biographical Dictionary, iii (Paris, London, 1843-71), p. 464.
5 Farmer, History of Arabian Music, p. 94; The Minstrelsy of the Arabian Nights
(Bearsden, 1945), p. 19.
* Farmer, History, pp. 113-23. 7 Ibid., pp. 120-1.
* Ibid., рр. 124-6.
? Ibid., pp. 147-9. Barbier de Meynard, ‘Ibrahim, fils de Mehdi’, in Journal asiatique,
[? vol.] (1869), pp. 201-342.
10 Farmer, History, p. 97. и Tbid,, р. 131.
12 Ibn Khaldün, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi, xx (Paris,
1865), pp. 421-2; Al-Maqqari, The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain, ii
(London, 1840-3), рр. 116-21.
18 Farmer, History of Arabian Music, p. 138.
430 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
and some, Al-Muntasir (d. 862) and Al-Mu'tazz (d. 869), were gifted
musicians,! yet the brilliance was but reflected glory of the past. The
minstrels, Ibn Bana, Abū Hashisha, and others, were second-rate.?
The last period of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate (945-1258) heralds the
rapid decay and the fall of Baghdad and all its greatness. It opens with
the political control of the caliphs by the Buwaihids (945) from
Dailam. Music still flourished, since the Dailami amirs, together with
the caliphs, were as much addicted to all forms of the art and its con-
comitants as ever? With the coming of the Saljügs (1037) from
Turkestan, who became virtual masters of the Caliphate, a fresh
cultural impingement began to show itself in Persia, Syria, and
Mesopotamia which, as we shall see, developed elsewhere. In Egypt
the Fatimid anti-Caliphate had been set up (909-1171), and its rulers,
with but one exception, patronized music, literature, and science
unstintedly.* Al-Mustansir (d. 1094) even dared to say that his court
music was ‘pleasanter’ than listening to the cantillation of the caller
(mu'adhdhin) to prayer, while pictures of his dancing-girls, contrary
to Islamic custom, adorned his palaces? Then came the Ayyübid
sultans (1169), bringing with them a Turkomanian influence which
made itself felt in the arts in general. This alien influence displayed
itself in music even more strongly under their successors, the Mam-
lüks (1252-1517), who were of Kurdish and Circassian breed, and
delighted in Turkomanian instruments such as the qūpūz (mandore).’
In North Africa, the Berber Almoravides became a political force
in 1056, and it is not unlikely that their dominion brought an indi-
genous music to the fore in Africa, and certainly we find that Spain
was manufacturing special Berber instruments.? Yet although the
Berber Almoravides (1086) and Almohades (1130) became masters of
Arab Spain, it is unlikely that their musical preferences had much
sway over the accepted Arabian practice in the Iberian peninsula.
If any extraneous inducements were likely in this respect, it would be
from Christian Spain, and indeed this did show itself in Arab Anda-
lusia іп one or two instruments, the kaitdra (guitarra) and bandair
(pandero). In the last Arab stronghold in Granada, the Nasrid rulers
(1232-1492) attempted to maintain the grandeur of the past, ‘апа for
a time revived the splendour and distinction of Moorish Spain'.? We
1 Farmer, History, p. 140. ^ н рр. D
? [bid., pp. 179-80. Ibid., pp. 189-92.
5 Ibid., р. 191. * Encyclopaedia of Islam, i, p. 223.
7 Al-Magrizi, Histoire des sultans Mamlouks, i/i (Paris, 1837), p. 36.
8 A]-Maqqari, op. cit. i, р. 59.
® S. Lane-Poole, The Mohammadan Dynasties (London, 1894), p. 27.
THE RISE OF ISLAMIC MUSIC 431
know from Ibn al-Khatib (d. 1374) what an important position the
court singers held in his day. The end of Moorish Spain came in
1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile captured Granada.
In the east, where we last saw the Saljüqs in power, the situation
of the Caliphate was rapidly deteriorating. Chafing at the Saljüq bit,
the Caliph Al-Nasir (d. 1225) begged the Khwarizmi Shah to ease
his condition, and in 1194 this was done. However, music was still
one of the glories of the palaces of the last of the caliphs, Al-Musta-
‘sim (d. 1258); and the author of A/-Fakhri tells us that this ruler
would spend many of his leisure hours in its enjoyment. His chief
court minstrel was the greatest musician of his age, Safi al-Din ‘Abd
al-Mu'min (d. 1294).! In the year 1258 the Mughal hordes under
Hülàgü put Baghdad to the sword, ‘while the treasures, material,
literary, and scientific, accumulated during the centuries while
Baghdad was the metropolis of the vast empire ofthe 'Abbasid Caliphs
were plundered or destroyed'.? Thus closed one of the great and
splendid civilizations of history. It is true that Egypt and Syria
became, by virtue of the Arabic language, the pivot of the intellectual
life of Islam, but here it was but a shadow of the past. The Mamlük
sultans maintained elaborate court music and splendid military
bands, butall this came to an end when the Ottoman Turks conquered
Egypt in the year 1517.3
After the fall of Baghdad, the axis of culture moved to the east,
when Persian, instead of Arabic, became the lingua franca. Here the
Mughal rulers, softened by Islam and Iran, became ardent and open-
handed patrons of the arts. The great musician, Safi al-Din ‘Abd al-
Mu'min, whose theoretical works on music dominated the Near and
Middle East for over 300 years, was patronized by the Juwaini family
in the service of Hülagü.* Ibn Taghribardi tells us that the П-Кһап
Abii Sa‘id (d. 1335) himself ‘cultivated music, played well on the
lute, and composed songs’.® At the court of the Muzaffarid ruler
Shah Shuja' of Shiraz (d. 1384) was the famed minstrel Yüsuf Shah
and the great scholar and music theorist Al-Jurjani (d. 1413).5 With
the Jalairids of Mesopotamia, Husain (d. 1382) and Ahmad (d. 1410),
music seems to have been of as much import as politics." Here,
1 Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, pp. 191-2.
* E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, ii (London, 1920), p. 463.
* S. Lane-Poole, A History of Egypt: The Middle Ages (London, 1901), vi, pp. 248-9, 318,
327-8; W. Muir, The Mameluke or Slave Dynasty of Egypt (London, 1896), pp. 58, 82,88.
* Farmer, in ‘Preface’ to R. d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, iii, pp. v-xiv.
* A. U. Pope, A Survey of Persian Art (Oxford, 1938), p. 2796.
* Ibid., p. 2797; В. d'Erlanger, op. cit. iii, pp. xii-xiii,
7 Journal asiatique, ser. iv (1845), v, р. 448.
432 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
Ridwan Shah and ‘Abd al-Qadir b. Ghaibi, the most famed musicians
of the day, flourished. When the conquering Timür (d. 1405) appeared
on the horizon, the Persian minor dynasties vanished. Samarcand,
farther east, became the new cultural centre, and here ‘Abd al-
Qadir b. Ghaibi (d. 1435) found shelter? Yiisuf-i Andakàni,
who 'had no equal in the seven climes', was court minstrel to
Shah Rukh (d. 1408) Amir Shahi was favoured by Baysungur (d.
1433) because of his threefold accomplishments as musician, poet,
and painter.* Even with the last of the Timürids, Husain Mirza
Ваудага (а. 1506), music was patronized without stint," and some of
its exponents, such as Qul-i Muhammad, won celebrity far and wide.9
Under the Mughal П-Кһапѕ and the Timürids, several new features
appeared in eastern Islamic music. Among them were such Chinese
instruments as the shidirghii, a long-necked lute, the yatüghan,
possibly a type of psaltery, the pipa or lute, and other instruments."
These probably infused fresh sound effects, something which may find
a parallel in painting; indeed the decorative feature in music, called
the nagsh, may also be traced in the rhetorical prose of the period,
and both may have been due to the same alien promptings.
Meanwhile the Ottoman Turks in Asia Minor had become the
rising Islamic power in the Near East, and their conquests in eastern
Europe, culminating in the capture of Constantinople (1453), gave
them a terrific prestige which was soon to carry them to the walls of
Vienna. Like other Islamic potentates, their sultans indulged in
music and song to their fullest measure, and musicians found their
courts a cornucopia. Here a son 'Abd al-'Aziz, and a grandson
Mahmüd, of the great Persian musician 'Abd al-Qadir b. Ghaibi,
received the bounties of Muhammad II (d. 1481) and Bayazid II
(d. 1512) respectively, whilst many Arabic and Persian works on the
theory of music were rendered into Turkish.* Turkish influence on
the instrumental music of the Near East and Balkans was consider-
able, but that is outside our purview.
Islamic music was born and cradled in Arabia, yet, under Persian,
! Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, pp. 4-5. * Ibid., loc. cit.
3 Notices et extraits des manuscrits. . . . xiv (Paris, 1843), p. 137.
* Pope, op. cit., p. 2798.
8 The Babur-nama (London, 1921), pp. 272, 291-2.
* E. G. Browne, Persian Literature under Tartar Domination (Cambridge, 1920),
. 505.
Ё 7 Farmer, Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments, ii (Glasgow, 1939), pp. 15-17,
pl. 10; Pope, ор. cit. 6334, 778A.
* Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, p. 5; R. d'Erlanger, op. cit. iv, pp. 3, 261; Raouf Yekta
Bey, 'La Musique turque', in Lavignac and La Laurencie, Encyclopédie de la musique,
1те partie, v (Paris, 1922), pp. 2978-9.
THE RISE OF ISLAMIC MUSIC 433
Syrian, and Greek tutelage, it became a universal art. Its extrinsic
character was changed when Safi al-Din (d. 1294) introduced the
Khurasàni scale. Then, under Mughal and Turkoman pressure, came
other alien influences. These were followed, in the fourteenth century,
by a reversion to the plain Pythagorean scale in Persia, to be spread
elsewhere later. Finally came the adoption of the modern quarter-
tone (rub‘) scale in the seventeenth century, which made the final
break with the old Arabian-Persian-Syrian system of the ‘Golden
Age' of Islam. Only in al-Andalus of the West was this latter pre-
served, and today in Morocco one may still hear sometimes, perhaps,
an echo of that music about which Shahrazad, although a Persian,
whispers so enchantingly in The Arabian Nights.
SECULAR MUSIC
We read in one of those delightful nocturnes in The Arabian
Nights: ‘To some people music is like food; to others like medicine;
to others like a fan.’ This mention of music as ‘food’ has an esoteric
significance, as will be shown later. The remark ‘like medicine’ is also
strange, because the Oriental attitude towards music did not admit
of the ‘appreciation’ of music as we understand the term. Aesthetics,
the science of the beautiful, did not exist in Islamic conceptions. The
chief reason for this was that the Orient, as we have seen in ancient
Mesopotamia and Egypt, put great trust in the doctrine of ta’ thir
(influence) in music, a dogma called by the Greeks the ethos. This
belief, together with the accretion of anthropomorphism, reigned
supreme, and one has but to read The Arabian Nights to appreciate
its far-reaching effect. The delightful imagery in the ‘Song of the
Lute’,? is not mere metaphor but anthropopathy. Music was part of
the macrocosmic system, and was accepted as such by many Islamic
philosophers, astronomers, mathematicians, and physicians. For
that reason the melodic modes (тадата!) and rhythmic modes
(19021) were closely linked up with the universe.* It was because
of this that the lute had ‘four strings, four sides, four parts, and
four tied places (frets)’,> and that the dimensions of instruments
—which, incidentally, were given almost human attributes9— were
! Arabian Nights (Lady Burton’s edition), ii (London, 1886-7), p. 463.
? Ibid., v, p. 294.
* Farmer, *The Influence of Music' in Proceedings of the Musical Association, lii
(1929), pp. 89-124.
4 Farmer, An Old Moorish Lute Tutor, pp. 9-15.
5 Farmer, ‘An Anonymous English-Arabic Fragment’, in Islamic Culture, xviii
(Hyderabad, 1944), p. 202.
* Farmer, The Minstrelsy of the Arabian Nights (Bearsden, 1945), p. 13.
434 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
subject to mathematical formulas.! In addition, all was related to,
and conditioned by, cosmic things: the humours, the elements, the
seasons, the winds, the planets, the zodiac, and so on.? The hearing
of special kinds of music at particular times of the day and month,
under certain other conditions, became a part of therapeutics. It was
used in hospitals, not so much for its soothing effect, but because of
its geometrical proportion together with its astrological significance?
Within such principles there could have been no room for aesthetics.
What is of greater interest is the more universal approval of music
as the story-teller in The Arabian Nights puts it, likening the art to
‘а fan [on a sultry day]’. When a child was born into Islam the open-
ing lines of the call to prayer (adhdhàn) was chanted in its ear, whilst
the neighbouring matrons assembled with their tambourines (dufüf)
to herald joy. At the celebrations of circumcision there was further
music and entertainment. Marriage occasioned an even greater dis-
play, since the procession had its shawms (zumür) and drums (tubül)
in noisy service, while hired female musicians (mughanniyát) per-
formed less strident music in the courtyard. Even at the bier, the
wailing (wilwal) of the mourning women (naddabat) and the thud of
their tambourines, was followed by the chanting of the Qur'àn.
Thus, between the cradle and the grave, music was ever present in
Islam. All the great religious festivals encouraged public music, for the
cry was ‘Gladden thine heart, drum thine drum, and pipe thine
pipe'.* Military and processional music was cultivated on a grandiose
scale in the shape of trumpets (anfar), horns (buqat), shawms (zumür),
drums (fubül), kettledrums (naqgqdarat), and cymbals (kasat).* Its per-
formance of a divertimento (nauba) at certain prescribed hours of the
day must have beckoned the crowd. In addition there was the attrac-
tion of the singing-girls (gaindt) in the taverns, against which the
pious raved in wrath, and the less scandalous story-teller (уйг) and
violist (rababi) in the coffee-houses. The household in general found
the matrons indulging in singing to the rhythm of the tambourine.
The music of the Islamic folk was little different then from what
it is today. The toil song, a relic from the cradle of humanity, was
practised by the boatman, the sailor, the porter, the weaver, the
gleaner, and the rest? for its lilt and measure not only softened the
! Farmer, Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments, ii, pp. 90-98.
? Е, Dieterici, Die Propaedeutik der Araber (Berlin, 1865), pp. 141-6.
* Farmer, Sa'adyah Gaon on the Influence of Music (London, 1943), p. 6; E. Werner
and I. Sonne, ‘The Philosophy and Theory of Music in Judaeo-Arabic Literature’,
Hebrew Union College Annual, xvi (1941), pp. 292-88.
* Arabian Nights, ii, p. 413. 5 Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, pp. 217-22.
* Dieterici, op. cit., p. 103.
SECULAR MUSIC 435
sweat of toil but ordered it rhythmically. Then there was domestic
music: the lullaby, the children's ditties, the bridal song, and the
elegy.1 Nor was this simple homely art confined to the folk. The
Caliph Нагап delighted in listening to his minstrels repeating the
songs of the people, as we know from the reception he gave Ibn
Jami‘ when he sang the song of the Yemenite negress, and Abi
Sadaqa when he chanted the ditties of sailors and masons.?
With the middle and upper classes, music assumed a far different
character, much of it being determined by the modes and tastes set
by courtly procedure. The caliphs, nobility, and rich merchants kept
musical establishments in which highly skilled singing-girls were part
of the household.? They usually came from music schools established
specially for their training, and fabulous sums were sometimes paid
for them,‘ the price being determined by both physical and musical
charms, although the Persian poet Sa'di said *a sweet voice is better
than a beautiful face".* They were usually given an excellent educa-
tion. The male musicians and those who were specifically instru-
mentalists, were usually freedmen (mawáli) of foreign extraction,
mainly Persian, and the demand for them at the court and elsewhere
was inordinate, while the gold and other gifts showered on them
almost passes credence.’ Certainly the concerts given at court, which
were staged with great lavishness, dwarfs anything else in the history
of music. In Umayyad days these musicians, both male and female,
were quite unrestrained in their public performances at court or
elsewhere,? but later a curtain shut them off from the audience, this
provision satisfying the consciences of the auditors somewhat, in that
if they heard this ‘forbidden pleasure’ (тИйа, pl. malahi), at least
they did not see it.1° The truth was that in spite of all the condemnation
of music by the puritans, ways and means were found, sometimes
with the most delightful casuistry, to escape censure.1!
At concerts in Umayyad days (661-750) ‘the utmost propriety was
observed’, and the slightest breach of decorum was reproved by the
stroke of a stick.!? The earliest minstrel, Tuwais, used to walk back-
1 See Bibliography. i
* Al-Isfahani, Kitab al-aghán: (Bulaq, 1869), vi, p. 86; xxi, р. 104; J. Ribera, Music
in Ancient Arabia and Spain (London, 1929), p. 61.
* Farmer, History of Arabian Music, p. 67.
* Ibid., pp. 86-87, 102, 132-6. * Gulistan, iii. 28.
8 Farmer, The Minstrelsy of the Arabian Nights, pp. 18-22.
* Farmer, History of Arabian Music, pp. 81, 100, 112-17, 124-6.
в Ibid., pp. 65-77, 99-112, 145-56, 194-211.
° Ibid., pp. 67-68. 10 [bid., pp. 102-4.
1! Farmer, Music: The Priceless Jewel (Bearsden, 1942), p. 13.
12 Farmer, History of Arabian Music, p. SS.
436 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
wards and forwards along the lines of his audience.t Al-Gharid,
before he gave a recital, would explain to his audience the type of
music he was about to perform, adding some little history of the
composer and author, together with. something about its first per-
formance and performers. The mannerisms of these musicians are
not without interest. Yazid Haurà' was given to attitudinizing and
gesticulating while performing, which may have had an emotional or
rhythmical effect; these affectations impressed the great Ibrahim al-
Mausili, who made his singing-girls copy every movement of this
artist.2 The famous Ishaq al-Mausili usually began his own songs on
a high note with a terrific sforzando, hence his nickname al-malsii‘
(‘stung by a scorpion ").? Ziryab, in Muslim Spain, practised some
novel methods in teaching; for instance, bad articulation was remedied
by the insertion of a piece of wood in the pupil's mouth so as to keep
the jaws apart; it was kept there night and day until cure was effected.*
Methods of composition seem to us just as odd. Some composers,
when in an inventive mood, took a rhythmic wand (qadib) to beat out
a known rhythm, and then gave utterance to what was called an
‘improvised song’ (ейта’ murtajal)." Ma'bad, the spirit moving him
to compose, would leap into a saddle and beat on the pommel with
his wand in his chosen rhythm until his melody took definite shape.
Ibn Suraij would put on a robe garnished with jingling grelots which,
when he swayed in rhythm, helped him to fashion a new melody.’
When Ibrahim al-Mausili was asked how he composed he said that
the first thing he did was to banish all thoughts of mundane affairs.
This enabled him to lift his thoughts to the requisite emotional plane;
his creative self emerged only when he could no longer see or hear
anything external. When this sensation or transcendence was reached,
he visualized his rhythm, and within its framework, his tonal images
took shape.® Ibrahim al-Mausili, his son Ishaq, and Ziryab claimed
to have been taught melodies by the devil and genii.? The latter, when
the jinn had been prompting him in his sleep, would jump out of bed,
call his singing-girls, and get them to memorize the music while it
was still fresh in his mind.!?
In early days, the more solemn rhythms (thagál) were preferred to
! Farmer, 'The Minstrels of the Golden Age of Islam', Islamic Culture, xvii (1943),
р. 272.
2 Al-Isfahani, op. cit. iii, p. 70. * Al-Isfahani, op. cit. v, p. 70.
4 Al-Maqqari, op. cit. ii, p. 121. * : ES De.
5 Farmer, History of Arabian Music, p. 47. Al-Isfahani, op. cit. i, p. 21.
7 R. d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, i, р. 10. 8 Al-Isfahani, op. cit. у, p. 34.
9
Farmer, The Minstrelsy of the Arabian Nights, p. 20.
° Al-Maqgari, op. cit. ii, pp. 116-21.
-
SECULAR MUSIC 437
the festive rhythms (ramal, hazaj, makhiri). Under the later “Abbasid
régime, the latter became very popular. Hakam al-Wadi, censured for
pandering to the public taste by composing and singing in the lighter
vein, said: ‘For thirty years I have sung in the thaqi! rhythm and
have hardly gained a living, yet in three years of singing in the Aazaj
rhythm I have earned more money than thou hast ever seen.'! That
melodies and rhythms should be in conformity with the sentiment of
the words was stressed by Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi (d. 940), the Ikhwan al-
Safa’ (c. 961), and Ibn Sida (d. 1066), and it is this which accounted
for preferences in lighter music. We are told, however, that there
were kinds of music designed for joy and sorrow, music for the tavern
and flowing bowl, music for lovers and for mourners, music for the
description of scenes as widely asunder as the hushed scented garden
and the moving chase. Indeed, Ishaq al-Mausili spoke of a com-
position of his in which he portrayed a game of ball with a stick,
complete with the getting of a goal at the end.* That is real programme
music. Only those who have heard music in the Near and Middle
East can possibly appreciate the wide dissimilarity of reaction
to music between the Orient and the Occident? The rending of
garments, and similar sudden, unpremeditated, and often violent
acts, under music's influence, are commonplaces in Arabic literature.
Swooning is the general result of the *killing charm' of music, as we
read in The Arabian Nights,* although death itself has been recorded
several times.
The sums awarded to musicians, as recorded in the annals, are
absurdly large if judged by our standards. The same may be said of
the numbers of compositions said to be theirs or in their repertories.
Badhl, a famous songstress, is alleged to have known 30,000 songs,®
and yet, prodigious as this may seem, there are still people who
know the Qur'àn by heart. More modest was the accomplishment of
‘Uraib, another songstress, who claimed 21,000, while Ziryab in
Spain knew only 10,000.” The compositions of individual musicians
do not *hit' so high a mark, to use an Arabism, although Ibrahim al-
Mausili boasted of 900 works.® As with us in the West, certain songs
became famous, such as the Seven Fortresses of Ma'bad,? the
Seven Songs of Ibn Suraij,!? the Hundred Chosen Songs edited by Ibn
Jami‘," the song called ‘Three Maidens’, the words being attributed to
1 Farmer, History of Arabian Music, p. 111. 2 Al-Isfahani, op. cit. v, р. 97.
3 Farmer, The Minstrelsy of the Arabian Nights, pp. 11-12.
^ Ibid., loc. cit. 5 Arabian Nights, ii, 439. ® Farmer, History, р. 134.
7 [bid., pp. 130, 133. ЕЛБА р. T7 ТЫ р: 82. 10 [bid,, р. 80.
п Farmer, Sources, р. 15.
438 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
the Caliph Hàrün,! and the ‘Zayanib’ of Yünus al-Katib.2 Complete
song collections existed in profusion,? as well as biographies of
singers, instrumentalists, and composers,* together with popular
story-books about music.? It is humbling to scan the pages of the
Great Book of Songs (Kitab al-aghàni al-kabir) by Al-Isfahani (d.
967), which took fifty years to compile, consisting of twenty-one
volumes, containing nearly 2,000,000 words, dealing with the history
of Arabian music and song up to the tenth century, and to compare
it with similar Occidental achievement during the same period.
RELIGIOUS MUSIC
That music played its part in religious ceremonial in ancient
Arabia seems clear enough. St. Nilus speaks of the pagan Arabs
chanting when encircling a stone.* Noeldeke suggested that this was
similar to the Islamic tahlil, a musical utterance which belonged to
moon worship; it was used with the talbivya, which is claimed to have
been indulged in by Adam and Noah.’ Epiphanius avers that Dhu’
1-Ѕһага, a god of the Nabataeans, was worshipped on his birthday
‘with hymns’. Indeed Hisham b. al-Kalbi tells us in his Book of Idols
that ‘the melodies of mankind’ were due to the god named AI-
"Uqaysir. When Islam came to Arabia, Muhammad cried anathema
upon much of this, but from the Atlantic to the Oxus music and magic
were closely connected. What was turned directly into Islamic prac-
tice were the tahlil and talbiyya. Similarly, the pagan songs during the
pilgrimage (hajj) were given a new character and even allowed to be
accompanied by fife (shahin) and drum (fabl).8 Islam strove to dis-
credit the dance (raqs), and the literature in its condemnation is not
inconsiderable.? Ibn Taimiyya (d. 1328) scorned it as ‘proud walking
upon the earth’,! yet it was never eradicated. Today, among those
Arabs who are far distant from the Occidentalized towns, one may
still hear and see the choral dance which, while outwardly secular,
still retains its religious mien. As we shall see later, the religious
dance still exists.
Strictly speaking, however, Islam has no religious music in our
1 [bn al-‘Arabi, Al-futahdt, ii (Cairo, A.H. 1329), p. 612.
* Farmer, History, p. 80. з Farmer, Sources, pp. 89-90.
* [bid., pp. 88-89. 5 Tbid., pp. 90-93.
6 Migne, Patrologia latina, lxxi, p. 612.
7 Encyclopaedia of Islam, i, p. 965; iv, р. '640. Al-Kalbi, The Book of Idols
(Princetown, 1952), p. 33.
8 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, (1901), pp. 220-1.
* Farmer, Sources of Arabian Music, p. 90.
10 Sirajul Hag, 'Samà' and Rags’, in Islamic Culture, xviii (1944), pp. 111-30.
RELIGIOUS MUSIC 439
normal sense of the term, since there is no service in the Muslim
mosque comparable to that in the Christian church. Yet music in
praise of Allah has always found a place both inside and outside
the Muslim places of worship, e.g. in the ‘reading’ (qird’a) of the
Qur'àn, the cantillation (talhin) of the call to prayer (adhdhàn), the
‘listening to music’ (al-sama‘) of the Sufi and Darwish fraternities,
and the simple religious chants of the folk. The Qur'àn lent itself to
cantillation because of its prosodic structure; much of it consists of
rhymed prose (saj‘), the assonance of which tempted the voice to use
modulated sound in ‘reading’. Further, there was the hadith which
said, ‘Allah listens more intently to a man with a beautiful voice
reading the Qur'àn than does the owner of a singing-girl to her
voice’.! In this wise the cantillation of the Qur'àn became a necessity,
and Ibn Qutaiba (d. 889) tells us that the earliest of these chanters
who used melodies (a/hàn) was ‘Ubaidallah b. Abi Bakr (Л. 669),
though he informs us that this early cantillation was dirge-like and
quite different from ordinary melody (lahn) in singing (ghind’).? This
distinction seems to have been a fiction created by the legists who, in
their opposition to music, looked upon this singing as improper
(makrih),? and so discriminated between ‘cantillation’ (taghbir =
‘raising [the voice]’)* and singing (ghind’).5 By the ninth century,
however, even the melodies of popular ballads were being used in
the cantillation of the Qur'an.* Despite the violent opposition of the
purists to all music, the cantillation of the Qur'àn became one of its
supreme religious and cultural accomplishments. While the prosodic
vocalization and punctuation are strictly governed by rules laid down
later by Ibn al-Jazari (d. 1429),? the cantillation itself was not confined
to any fixed melodic contour, and so, from the shores of Morocce
to the Oxus, one may hear this cantillation today in almost as many
patterns as there are mosques.®
The ‘call to prayer’ (adhdhan = ‘announcement’) was instituted in
the first or second year of the Hijra (622-4) as a means of summoning
the faithful to their religious duties. At first it was but a simple
announcement in the streets,? and it was thus that Bilal, the first
1 Al-Ghazali, Ihva 'ulüm al-din, ii (Cairo, A.H. 1326), р. 185.
? Ibn Coteiba’s Handbuch der Geschichte (Gottingen, 1850), p. 265.
з Farmer, History of Arabian Music, pp. 22-23. * Or ta‘bir = ‘narration’.
5 Notices et extraits des manuscr.ts, xx (Paris, 1865), р. 419.
8 Ibn Coteiba’s Handbuch der Gesch.chte, loc. cit.
7 Al-Suviti, дап, i (Cairo, A.H. 1278), p. 96.
8 For a modern plain example see E. W. Lane, Modern Egyptians (London, 1860),
р. 376. А more ornate specimen has been recorded on H.M.V. 7-212104—5.
? Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, p. 373.
440 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
‘caller’ or muezzin (mu'adhdhin), performed it.! Shortly after this
we find it being called from the minaret of the mosque in a similar
way to the cantillation of the Qur'àn as a dirge-like chant, a character
which persisted until the tenth century in Egypt, as Al-Muqaddasi
(d. 946) tells us.? Then, as with the ‘reading’ of the Qur'àn, melody
proper, indistinguishable from ordinary singing (ghin), came into
general use; the performance of this was known by the purely secular
term tafrib,? although we read at Fars in Persia that the ‘call’ was
made without tafrib.* In the Hijaz the office of muezzin was at first
hereditary, but before long the duties became so onerous that
severa] muezzins were to be found in each mosque, and by the ninth
and tenth centuries, these were taking it in turns to make the ‘call’,®
while within the mosque itself they later joined in chorus when
chanting the ‘second call’ (igàma)." As with the cantillation of the
Qur'an, the ‘call’ is still to be heard in totally different styles, from
the plain, ingenuous, unaffected chant,’ to highly festooned colora-
tura.?
The Süfi and Darwish conception of music as an aid or approach
to religion is of the highest importance since they reveal how inti-
mately their ideals are connected with ancient beliefs,!? although on a
higher and more rationalized plane. Ibn Zaila (d. 1048) says: ‘Sound
produces an influence in the soul in two ways: one on account of its
musical structure [1.е. its physical structure], and the other because of
its similarity to the soul [i.e. its spiritual structure]. °} Sufi disciples,
such as the Persian Al-Hujwiri (eleventh century) and Al-Ghazali
(d. 1111), divide people influenced by music into two classes—those
who hear the material sound, and those who apprehend its spiritual
meaning. The latter, in Sufi doctrine, do not hear notes or beats,
melodies or rhythms, but music per se. Al-Hujwiri quotes the saying
of the Prophet, ‘O Allah, let us see things as they are’, and listening
to music could alone accomplish that, since ‘right audition consists
1 Ibn Sa'd, Biographien Muhammeds, iii, i (Leiden, 1904), p. 165.
? Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum, iii (Leiden, 1877), p. 205.
ebid ini. ро327.
4 Ibn Jubair (Gibb Memorial Series), v (Leiden, 1907), p. 194. 5 Ibid. iii, p. 439.
* Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum, vii (Leiden, 1892), p. 111.
7 Tbid. iii, p. 327.
8 Е. W. Lane, op. cit., pp. 374-5; Jules Rouanet, ‘La Musique arabe’ in Lavignac and
La Laurencie, Encyclopédie, 17? partie, v, pp. 2818-19; J. Parisot, Rapport sur une mission
scientifique en Turquie d'Asie (Paris, 1889), p. 204. i
® G. A. Villoteau, La Description de l’ Egypte: état moderne, i (Paris, 1809-26), pp. 705-
6; J. Parisot, op. cit., p. 103. A slightly ornamented version is recorded in The History
of Music in Sound, i, side 16.
10 See above, pp. 231, 258.
11 British Museum MS. Or. 2361, f. 220v.
RELIGIOUS MUSIC 441
of hearing everything as it is in quality and predicament’.! Thus
Sufi teaching reveals to us the meaning of music in almost the Scho-
penhauerian sense that it is the eternal will itself.? The Arab mystic,
Abu Sa'id b. al-‘Arabi (d. 952), believed that ultimate truth could be
apprehended only through divine ecstasy, and ‘ecstasy is lifting the
curtain and witnessing the Watcher [Allah]’. The most potent means
to the attainment of ecstasy is ‘listening to music’, for as Dhw’ I-Nün,
the Egyptian mystic has said, we have in this ‘listening’ a power that
‘creates a divine influence which stirs the heart to seek Allah’, and
leads one ‘to find the existence of the Truth beside the Veil’, as
Abw 1-Низат al-Darraj has testified?
It was from such beliefs and practices, although far less spiritual,
that sprang the numerous Darwish orders, the Mevlevi (Maulawiyya),
the Aissaoua (‘Jsawiyya), and others, with whom music and dancing
are used to create an hypnosis for the attainment of religious sub-
limation. The Mevlevi order, founded at Konia by Jalal al-Din al-
Кат (d. 1273), better known as the ‘dancing dervishes’, has a most
interesting ceremonial dance of thirteen sections which have been
described by Helmut Ritter.* A somewhat analogous rite from Upper
Egypt, consisting of seven sections, has been recorded by Victor
Loret.* The Aissaoua fraternity was founded in Morocco by Muham-
mad b. ‘Isa (d. 1524), hence its name, but since then it has spread to
other parts of the Maghrib and Egypt.’ It still exists.’
Yet the religious music of Islam does not begin and end in pious
edifices or institutions, since in every Muslim land the religious chant
has been an integral part of social life. Just as the Calvinists were
wont to indulge in psalm-singing as a secular pleasure, so the Mus-
lims in their festivals found social pleasure in the religious chant.
Wherever one looks in Islamic lands, the universality of hymns
(nashá'id) and cantillation (ѓа/ліп) is apparent. Indeed, in some in-
stances, they have been a part of education, and this has prevailed
in spite of the fact that there has always been a powerful group of
! Al-Hujwiri, Kashf al-humim (London, 1911), p. 403.
? Farmer, The Influence of Music: From Arabic Sources, p. 91.
3 D. B. Macdonald, ‘Emotional Religion in Islam’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society (1901), p. 719.
* Zeitschrift für vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, i (Berlin, 1933), pp. 28-40, pls.
5-23; Dorothy Walker, ‘Akhar al-darawish al-maulawiyya’, in Al-mustami' al-'arabi,
viii/21 (Arabic Listener), pp. 18-19.
oW Mémoires ... de la mission archéologique française au Caire, i (Paris, 1889), pp.
9-63.
в Encyclopaedia of Islam, ii, pp. 527-8.
ТЕ. W. Lane, op. cit., рр. 460-63; Rouanet, op. cit., pp. 2830-1; В. d'Erlanger,
Méloaies tunisiennes (Paris, 1937), pp. 18-20.
442 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
legists who strenuously opposed music in any form, if not always
as something sinful (haram), at least as a diversion which was con-
sidered unpraiseworthy (makrük).!
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC
The Arabs admitted that *with the exception of the Persians and
Byzantines, no people had a greater liking for musical instruments’
than themselves.? Certainly no other people ever wrote so enthu-
siastically about them. Many of the Arabic and Persian writers on
music from Al-Farabi (d. c. 950) to ‘Abd al-Qadir b. Ghaibi (d.
1435), fully describe the instruments of their day. In Muslim Spain,
where Seville was the centre of the instrument-making trade, there
were ‘works on the art of making instruments common amongst us’,
says Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi (d. c. 1286).?
One of the earliest of the instruments of the Arabs was the qadib or
rhythmic wand, whose tick-tick (fagtaqa) the Prophet disliked.‘
Hand-clapping was called tasfiq, hence тизайа or clappers,? which
to the Syrian Arabs were the shuqaifat;® the Persians called them the
сһағрӣға or chalpara. Small finger cymbals were the Arabic Каз,
which the Syrians termed sajjat. Cymbals proper, when plate-shaped,
were the sunüj, but if bowl-shaped were the ku'üs or kdsat.? Musical
glasses (harmonica) called fusiit, were known to Ibn Khaldün (d.
1406), but the instrument was played with sticks.5 The Persian ‘Abd
al-Qadir b. Ghaibi speaks of saz-i tasdt (musical cups) and 5424
каза! (musical bowls), as well as the saz-i alwah-i fulad (instrument of
slabs of steel), i.e. the glockenspiel.? We first read of a metallophone
in Ibn Sina and Ibn Zaila in the eleventh century, who term it the
sanj sini (Chinese sanj).?°
The generic name for a drum was the Arabic fabl, which equated
with the Persian duhul, and the Turkish dawil. In the specific sense
it was a cylindrical drum with two heads. A waisted drum was the
küba.! Among single-headed drums was the small vase-shaped
! Arabian Nights, vi, p. 59. 2 Al-Mas'üdi, op. cit. viii, p. 93.
з A]-Maqgari, op. cit. i pp. 42, 58-59, 197.
* Madrid MS. 603 (Arabic), fo. 79.
5 Farmer, Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments, ii, pp. 28-29.
* Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, p. 196; Farmer, Sources, frontispiece; A. Lane, Early
Islamic Pottery (London, 1948), pl. 49a.
7 Т. Arnold and A. Guillaume, op. cit., fig. 91.
5 Notices et extraits des manuscrits, xvii (1858), p. 354; xx (1865), p. 412.
® Bodleian MS. Marsh 282, ff. 78, 81.
19 R, d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, ii, p. 234.
11 Farmer, Studies, ii, fig. 13; A. Pavlovskij, ‘Décoration des plafonds de la Chapelle
Palatine', Byzantinische Zeitschrift, ii (1893), p. 384; Pope, op. cit., pl. 603.
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC 443
Читай) while a larger type was the Berber agwal, and the Arabian
darbakka or darbüka, which was identical with the Persian tunbük.?
Kettledrums ranged from tiny nuqairat, through medium-sized naq-
qàràt equating with the Turkish quddim, to the larger küsat, and the
monster Mughal kuwargda or kirgd. Single kettledrums were the
tabl shami, qas'a, and tabli bàz.? Tambourines were plentiful. Duff
was the generic term for both the circular and rectangular kind;
among the former was the mizhar, while with ‘snares’ across the skin
it was the ghirbāl because of its likeness to a ‘sieve’. In Muslim
Spain the Christian pandero (bandair) was borrowed. It was some-
what like the preceding but when rings and sonnettes were added it
was called the d'ira, or with jingling metal plates the farr.*
Among horns and trumpets the Arabic büq was generic for both,
although the word was used particularly for the conical tube types,
while the cylindrical tube was called nafir. The Persian Кагий was
extremely long and had the ‘bell’ turned back into an ‘S’ shape.?
Turks and Turkomans had the bara and bürghü. The woodwind
were covered by the term mizmar in Arabic and nai in Persian,
but the latter distinguished the flute and reedpipe as the nay-i safid
(white nai) and the nay-i siyah (black nai). The Arabs used mizmar or
zamr specifically for the reedpipe, while they called the flute the qus-
saba. Smaller flutes were the Arabic shabbaba, the Persian pisha, and
the Berber juwaq, the latter being the puzzling instrument written
humáqi by a careless copyist of Al-Maqqari. The panpipes had the
name shu‘aibiyya in Egypt, but elsewhere the more classical term
miusigal was used, hence the Turkish mithqal.6 The balàban of the
Persian and Turkoman was a cylindrical reed-pipe, while the conical
shawm was the Persian surnd, the Arabic surndy, and the Turkish
zurna.’ Other varieties were the ghaita, này гипаті (vulg. zullami),
and the Виа [zamri]. Double reedpipes, such as the Persian dünay,
the *Iragian zammara, the Maghriban maqrün, and the Turki gdshnay,
belonged to the folk, as did the ‘drone’ type of the tibiae pares,
as exemplified in the arghül.? An instrument of Chinese provenance
1 J. Robson, op. cit., pp. 14-15.
* Farmer, Minstrelsy of the Arabian Nights, p. 36.
x Ж ea of Islam, v, pp. 215-17; Pope, op. cit., pl. 706; Farmer, Minstrelsy,
р. 11.
* Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, pp. 73-75; Farmer, Minstrelsy, pls. 1, 9.
5 Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, pp. 42-44; Farmer, Turkish Instruments of Music in the
Seventeenth Century (Glasgow, 1937), pp. 28-31, 47; Kinsky, op. cit., p. 43, figs, 1, 3;
T. Arnold and A. Guillaume, op. cit., fig. 91; Ars Asiatica, xiii (Paris, 1929), pl. lv.
$ Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, pp. 541-2; Farmer, Studies, i, pp. 65-67; Minstrelsy,
pls. 7, 8, 12. * Farmer, Turkish Instruments, pp. 23-27.
* Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, pp. 539-41.
444 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
was the mouth-organ of free reeds called the mushtak in Sasanid
days, and it was still thriving under the Mughals as the chubchiq.!
That the Arabs knew of and constructed pneumatic and hydraulic
organs we know from the Müristus treatises, but both the former and
the hydraulus were early types. Their hydraulic organs were master-
pieces of mechanism, based mainly on the appliances of Philo, Hero,
and Archimedes. Their hydraulus was certainly of a type anterior
to Hero and Vitruvius.” The portative was known in Persia in the
fifteenth century.?
It is in chordophones that Islamic peoples gained world-wide
fame. The upper-chested harp or chang was the more favoured in
Persia; it was the Arabic jank, sometimes called sanj. Al-Farabi (d.
c. 950) mentions various methods of stringing and accordatura, one
with fifteen strings tuned diatonically from G to g', while another with
twenty-five strings was tuned chromatically from С to g'* The
Persian Kanz al-tuhaf (fourteenth century) gives twenty-four strings
tuned diatonically from c to c", while the Jami‘ al-alhan (1435)
describes the chang with thirty-five strings tuned enharmonically
for two octaves? It appears in both Arabian and Persian art.9
Persia had another harp which had a wooden face to the sound-
chest, instead of a parchment face as in the chang; it was called the
agri, but was tuned similarly to the chang.’ In Egypt was produced
another type called the jank misri which had a wooden sound-board
placed on one side of the strings for greater resonance.? Off the
beaten track, in the Yemen and the Hijaz, the more primitive lyre
or kithara (?) known as the mi'zaf was still favoured in the tenth
century. In Baghdad it was laughed at as a ‘rat trap’,® although Al-
Farabi recognized 1.10
The psaltery was attributed to Al-Farabi," but the instrument is
not mentioned by him under its millennium-old name of gànün.
Nor do Ibn Sinà (d. 1037) or Ibn Zaila (d. 1048) mention it, yet it is
figured in its trapezoidal form in the tenth-century Syriac lexicons.”
! Farmer, Studies, ii, pp. 9-10.
? Farmer, The Organ of the Ancients: From Eastern Sources (London, 1931), passim.
3 Bodleian MS. Marsh 282, fo. 80.
4 В. d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, i (Paris, 1930), pp. 286-94.
5 King's College (Cambridge) Persian MS. 211, ff. 21"-22.
6 А. U. Pope, op. cit., pls. 6464, 652, 7275, 1300A-B, 1808, 13304, 13535; see pl. 13 (c).
7 Bodleian MS. Marsh 282, fo. 78.
* Glasgow University MS. Bi 22-z. 18, fo. 145.
? Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, pp. 528-30.
10 R, d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, i, p. 286.
!! Tbn Khallikàn, op. cit. iii, p. 309.
12 В. Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus (Oxford, 1891), p. 3613.
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC 445
As the qànün it was known in Muslim Spain in the eleventh cen-
tury,! and in the fourteenth century it was mounted with sixty-four
strings, tuned tricordally, in Persia? the latter being of twisted
copper.? Safi al-Din ‘Abd al-Mu'min (d. 1294) invented a rectangular
psaltery of sixty-four strings called the nuzha.* The names santür,
sintir, and such like variants, were given the dulcimer, possibly from
the Aramaic.® Ibn Khaldün (d. 1406) mentions it in the Maghrib,’
but it fell into disuse generally among the Arabs, although much
favoured in Persia. See pl. 13 (b).
Bowed instruments can only be definitely traced to the tenth cen-
tury, when Al-Farabi clearly mentions a гарар being bowed.’ The
rebec of Islamic peoples had many forms. The pear-shaped instru-
ment was possibly the one which Al-Farabi described, showing it
to be mounted with from one to four strings. The boat-shaped
type was a survival of the sound-chest of the old barbiton,? and this
may have been the rabab of Muslim Spain praised by Yahya b.
Hudhail (d. 995) and Ibn Hazm (d. 1064).!° For centuries it had but
two strings tuned a fifth apart, as was the rubéba of Jerome of Mora-
via (thirteenth century). The hemispherical-chested viol, with a long
iron foot, has been more favoured in the Middle East; it is generally
called the kamdncha (Аг. kamdnja), and may have been the type to
which Ibn al-Faqih referred in 902-3 when speaking of its use by the
Сор of Egypt and the people of Sind;!? it was usually found with
two strings, tuned a fourth apart. A more elaborate instrument was
the ghichak of Persia and beyond; it had a larger sound-chest than
the Катапсйа, and had eight sympathetic strings in addition.? The
shallow, rectangular sound-chest type, has long been a folk instrument ;
it is the one which the ancient poets may have used to accompany
1 Shihab al-Din, Safinat al-mulk (Cairo, 1891), р. 473.
2 Kings College (Cambridge) Persian MS. 211, ff. 237-23".
* Bodleian MS. Marsh 282, fo. 78; Farmer, Studies, pp. 12-15.
* Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, pp. 529-30; Farmer, Arabic Musical Manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library (London, 1925), frontispiece, Oriental Studies: Mainly Musical
(London, 1953), facing p. 66, and Minstrelsy, pls. 6, 12. The name—ndgir—given the
instrument in d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, iii, p. 220, is incorrect.
* Cf. Psantrin in Chap. V, p. 245.
* Notices et extraits des manuscrits, xx (1865), p. 412.
7 Farmer, Studies, i, pp. 101-3.
8 В. d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, i, pp. 277-86; А. Pavlovskij, op. cit., in Byzan-
tinische Zeitschrift, ii (1893), p. 383; J. F. Riafio, Notes on Early Spanish Music
(London, 1887), figs. 44/45.
? Kinsky, op. cit., p. 18, fig. 2. 10 Farmer, Studies, i, p. 106.
11 E, de Coussemaker, Scriptores de musica medii aevi, i (Paris 1864—76), p. 152.
? Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum, v (Leiden, 1885), p. 59; King's College
(Cambridge) Persian MS. 211, fo. 19".
13 Bodleian MS. Marsh 282, fo. 78".
446 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
their verses! and we know of its shape from the time of ‘Abd
al-Qadir b. Ghaibi (d. 1435), although it may be seen in the frescoes
of Qusair ‘Amra (eighth century), but here it is a plucked instrument.
The greatest of all the instruments of Islamic peoples was the ‘ad
or lute. Its precursor was the Persian barbat, although there existed
earlier lute types with parchment bellies. It was when the wooden-
bellied lute was adopted that the instrument was named the ‘йа
(‘wood’).? Before the Persian lute was adopted, the Arabs tuned their
lute Bp'-c-fi-gi, but the new Persian accordatura gave it G-c—f-bb.
By the ninth century a fifth string, ер!, was added (see pl. 13 (a)). A lute
of six strings, the shashtar, was introduced later, one species of which
had sympathetic strings.* From the tenth century the Кайага was used
in Muslim Spain, perhaps a borrowing from the Mozárabes.* А
diminutive of this name, kuwaitira (vulg. kuwitira: Span. guitarra), is
still used in the Maghrib for a small lute. The shahrüd was an archlute
invented in the tenth century; it originally had a compass of three
octaves. Another class of lute was the curiously shaped rubab (not to
be confused with the bowed rabab as in a misprint in the Legacy of
Islam, fig. 90), the lower part of the belly being of skin; it was mounted
with three to five strings tuned in fourths and was most popular in
Persia." The qüpüz was a Turko-Greek mandore, hollow throughout,
including the neck, and had five double strings.? The shidurghü,
yatighan, and pipa have already been described.
Among pandores the types were innumerable. Al-Farabi mentions
two, the funbür baghdadi (Baghdad pandore) or runbür mizani
(‘measured pandore"),? and the runbür khurasüni (Khorasanian pan-
dore). The former had two strings, variously tuned, with a fretted
1 Farmer, ‘An Anonymous English-Arabic Fragment’, in Islamic Culture, xviii (1944),
p. 204; Kashf al-humüm, Glasgow University MS. Bi 22-z. 18, fo. 263.
2? R. d'Erlanger (La Musique arabe, i, р. 323) thought that ‘éd was a translation of
the Greek chelys which, he said, was a ‘tortoise’, but the Arabic lexica do not support
this. Curt Sachs (History of Musical Instruments, p. 253) has attempted to connect the
word ‘24 morphologically with the ‘musical bow’ of the primitives by making the word
equate with ‘flexible stick’. This reading is also denied us by the lexicographers.
з Farmer, Studies, ii, pp. 45-57. Farmer, Minstrelsy, pls. 1, 2, 9; R. Lachmann, Musik
des Orients, pl. 11; T. Arnold and A. Guillaume, fig. 89; A. U. Pope, op. cit., pls. 832c,
850s, 900, 909, 1308, 1316, 13304, 1353.
* Bodleian MS. Marsh 282, fo. 77; Cairo MS. fo. j. 539, bab 4, maq. 2. Farmer, Turkish
Instruments, p. 43.
5 Madrid MS. (Arabic), 603, fo. 157.
* R. d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, i, p. 42-43. Farmer, History, frontispiece.
* Kings’ College (Cambridge) Persian MS., 211, fo. 20; Bodleian MS. Marsh, 282,
fo. 78; T. Arnold and A, Guillaume, op. cit., fig. 9; Encyclopaedia of Islam, iv, p. 987.
* Encyclopaedia of Islam, iv, p. 986; Farmer, Turkish Instruments, pp. 36-37, and
Studies, i, pp. 72-75, fig. 25; Bodleian MS. Marsh, 282, Ё. 77".
° Al-Khwarizmi, Mafatih al-'ulum (Leiden, 1895), p. 237.
INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC 441
neck which gave a 'pagan scale' of quartertones. The latter also
had two strings, the frets being arranged in the order of limma,
limma, and сотта.? In the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries there were
innumerable pandores in use, and three may be mentioned. The
tunbür-i shirvindn (Shirvanian pandore) had a deep, pear-shaped
sound-chest, with a long neck, its two strings being tuned a tone
(204 cents) apart; the funbüra-yi turki (Turkish pandore), with a
smaller sound-chest but a longer neck, was mounted with two or
three strings tuned a fourth (498 cents) apart; both of these were
played with the fingers. The ndy funbür, however, was played with
a plectrum (midráb) like the lute (‘йа), and had two strings а fourth
apart? The yünqür was a Turkish three-stringed pandore invented
by Shamsi Chelebi, a son of the author (d. 1509) of Yüsuf va zulaika.*
The names, forms, and varieties of instruments in the Islamic east
and west of the past are legion, and several volumes would be required
to enumerate and describe them fully. How much they were treasured
by all, and how rapturously their music was appreciated, can be
justly evaluated only by a perusal of the countless lines of poetry
alone which have been devoted to their praises.’
THE PRACTICAL ART
The chief characteristics of Islamic music were, and are, modal
homophony, fioritura, and rhythm. From its earliest history this art
had been modal, and its systemization with the Arabs seems to have
been accomplished by Ibn Misjah (d. c. 715). In Syria we are told
that he ‘took hold’ of the ideas of its lute players (barbatiyya) and
theorists (ustükhüsiyya = orowyevatai), while in Iranian lands he
learned some of their singing (ghind’) and their rhythmic accompani-
ment (darb). When he returned to the Hijaz he adopted some of
these things which he had learned abroad into a new system of
music which he founded, although he 'rejected what was disagree-
able' in the notes or melodic modes (nagham) of Syria and Persia
which he considered were ‘alien to Arabian music’. We are told that
the system formulated by him was thereafter accepted by the people.®
Yet we see that in spite of these accretions to Arabian music there
was still a characteristic indigenous basis.”
1 R. d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, i, pp. 218-42.
2 Ibid. i, pp. 242-62. з Bodleian MS. Marsh 282, fo. 77”.
* Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, pp. 251-3; Farmer, Turkish Instruments, pp. 34-35.
5 Al-Nuwairi, Nihdyat al-arab (Cairo, 1923-37), v, рр. 113-22; Shihab al-Din Muham-
mad b. Isma‘il, Safinat al-mulk (Cairo, А.н. 1309), pp. 464 ff.
* Farmer, History, pp. 71-72.
7 J.P. N.Land, Transactions of the Ninth Congress of Orientalists (London, 1893), p.156.
448 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
This modal system, which Ibn Misjah seems to have consolidated,
consisted of eight ‘finger modes’ (asabi‘), as we read in the earliest
period of the Great Book of Songs (Kitàb al-aghàni al-kabir) of Al-
Isfahani (d. 969), and each of these modes was classified according
to its ‘course’ (мара) either with the middle finger (wustd) on the
lute, giving the minor third, or with the third finger (binsir), giving
the major third. That these modes may have been suggested by the
Syrian ikhadias is most likely, but that they were not quite identical
may be assumed from Al-Kindi,! although the last word has not yet
been said on this problem.? These ‘finger modes’ dominated Arabian
practical theory until the eleventh century when Persian ideas took a
firmer hold on Islamic culture. They have been fully described by Ibn
al-Munajjim (d. 912) in his Risala fi I-müsiqi (Treatise about Music).
With one exception (No. 7) all of these modes were identical with the
Greek and church modes. They are given here with the fourth string
taken as base ('imad):
1. МиНад fi таўга al-wustáà С. A. Bp. c. d. e. f. р.
2. Mutlaq fi тауга al-binsir С. А. В. c ш. 2) Ер
3. Sabbaba fi таўга al-wusta A. Bb. c. d. e. f. в. a.
4. Sabbaba fī таўга al-binsir А. B. c. rj Sc MB pe ek
5. Wustà fi majraha Bpsc. daer ii, ath. [slp
6. Binsir fi majraha Б ый, б. Ма Б
7. Khingir fi majrà al-wustà с. d. ep. f. р.а. b. cl.
8. Khinsir fi majrà al-binsir с. d. e. f. g. a. b. cl.
The rhythmic modes (igà'at), and there were eight of these also,
are described by Al-Kindi (d. c. 874) as follows:
=
. Khafifal-khafif [Ju Пл
. Al-hazaj ere ae
1. AFthagil al-awwal J т ror ge 11 ror NN
2. Al-thagil al-thant — | m mr r "rr af ЕР redie
3. Al-makhiri Br ина ral у=, Ев
4. Khafif al-thagil RI Mak. ur Eoo __- m
5. Al-ramal ое н
6. Khafif al-ramal Ишине ии по a
7
8
! Farmer, History, p. 151, and Historical Facts for the Arabian Musical Influence
(London, 1930), pp. 240-6.
2 X. M. Collangettes, Journal Asiatique (1906), pp. 167-8. The present writer
has dealt with the question fully in his Music in the Kitab al-aghdni, still unpublished.
Meanwhile consult Farmer, ‘The Song Captions in the Kitab al-aghani’, Transactions:
Glasgow University Oriental Society, xv (1955).
TRIP
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ARABIC MUSIC MANUSCRIPTS
(a) Upper half: Song in the Kuwasht mode
Lower half: Melody in the Mujannab al-ramal mode
(b) Melody in the Nauriz mode. Late 13th century
For transcriptions see pages 454—5
PLATET Жан
THE PRACTICAL ART 449
Each of these modes is given above in its cycle (daur) or theme,
which is repeated ad libitum. It could be varied in its character, as
there were several species (anwa‘), just as the order of the notes
(naghamat) in the melodic modes (азабГ) did not keep to their scale-
like order in performance.
In Persia, as we shall see,! the melodic modes were known by
fanciful names rather than by descriptive ones, and by the time of
Ibn Sina (d. 1037) and Ibn Zaila (d. 1048) there were twelve in use.?
Before long we find these Persian titles being adopted by the Arabs,
although one may assume from their names that some agreed with the
older ‘finger modes’ in structure. By the thirteenth century these
twelve modes were called magamat, and in addition there were six
secondary modes called in Persian avázár? With Turkoman and
Mughal sway came branch modes or modal formulas called shu‘ab,*
and by the fifteenth century there was a total of forty-eight modes,
now entitled shudid.* In Muslim Spain it had also become customary
to give fanciful names to their twenty-four /ирӣ' or melodic modes, а
title which discloses their cosmic affiliation with the four elements
(tubi). As in eastern practice, these western modes, in submission
to the doctrine of the ethos, were allotted specific times of the day for
their performance,’ a conceit which still prevails.? Here are the twelve
primary modes (тадата)) used in Eastern Islamic lands from the
thirteenth to the sixteenth century, seven of which have Persian
names. They are based on the oldest known manuscript (dated
1276) of the Sharafiyya of Safi al-Din ‘Abd al-Mu'min preserved
at Berlin. The enharmonic form of these modes is due to the
adoption of the scale of the Systematists which proceeded by limma,
limma, comma. For a clearer apprehension of these new modes a
common tonic has been chosen, while the notes have been tran-
scribed into their nearest Occidental equivalent, although the fret-
ting of the lute on p. 463 should be consulted.
“Оби ©, ар с © & Be Бу GL
Nawa @ Gs Gy о Ble Wo Gh
Büsalik с. db. eb. f. gb. ab. bb. а.
Rast © ал. tenes bh. ci.
1 See below. ? Farmer, History, p. 197.
3 К. d'Erlanger, op. cit. iii, pp. 135-6.
* British Museum MS. Or. 2361, ff. 26-26".
в В. d'Erlanger, op. cit., pp. 397-401.
* Farmer, History, p. 204, and An Old Moorish Lute Tutor, pp. 38-40.
* Farmer, The Influence of Music: From Arabic Sources, passim.
* A. Chottin, Tableau de la musique marocaine (Paris, 1939), p. 123.
450 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
‘Iraq c. ерр. fb. f. abb. bbb. bp. dpp. ci.
Isfahan c. d. fp. f. g. bbb. bp. а. а.
Zirafkand с. ebb. ер. f. арр. ab. bbb. cb. cl.
Buzurk с. ebb. fb. f. abb. в. a. cb. ct.
Zanküla с. d. fp. f. арр. bbb. bb. dpb. cl.
Rahàwi с. ebb. fp. f. арр. ab. bb. ct.
Husaini с. ebb. eb. f. abb. ab. bb. ct.
Hijazi c. ebb. fp. f. арр. bpp. bb. ct.
By the sixteenth century, under Persian influence, the old
Pythagorean scale—already flourishing in Persia since the fourteenth
century—found acceptance in the Near East. This meant that not
only the notes of the magdmdat, avadzat, and shu‘ab were changed,
but their forms also. They were now no longer 'modes' in the
commonly understood sense of the term (i.e. scales within the
gamut of which melodies were composed) but melodic patterns
which became matrices for composition, as one may see from the
examples given by Laborde, Villoteau, and Kiesewetter.! It may
be thought that these patterns restricted originality in composition,
but actually they meant no more than the Occidental practice of
fixed diatonic sequences.
The second element in Islamic music, fioriture (zawá'id, tahasin,
zuwwdq), consisted of shakes, grace notes, the drawled scale, appog-
giatura, and the tarkib. This last device was the occasional decoration
of the melody, by striking certain notes simultaneously with their
fourth, fifth, or octave. All of this arabesque or festooning gave
great licence to performers to display their artistry. Special syllables
were set apart for the vocal decoration, such as lã and yd, although
the more conventional yd laili would be just as often used. In the
instrumental sphere, one form of decoration was the above-mentioned
tarkib. Ibn Sina (d. 1035) gave this name tarkib (lit. organum) to
doubling simultaneously with the fifth, fourth, or other interval
except the octave which was naturally termed the tad‘if. The interval
of the third is not mentioned specifically, but its use is obviously
implied among those ‘other’ intervals. Many of these are given in a
lute exercise by Al-Kindi (d. c. 874) which is contained in a unique
manuscript in the Staatsbibliothek at Berlin (Ahlwardt, Verzeichniss,
5530, fo. 25-31) which is probably a fragment of the work entitled
The Treatise on Music in Relation to the Corporeal Natures (Risdla fi
...al-naghm . . . ‘ald taba i al-ashkhàs). In it are described two kinds
of movements by the plectrum hand and fingers: one which struck
1 See Vol. II, pp. 42-43, for the parallel Byzantine practice.
THE PRACTICAL ART 451
two notes simultaneously ‘with one movement’, and another in which
three notes were struck successively *with three movements'. Here is
this exercise. It opens with a phrase which shows these two move-
ments. This is followed by three simultaneous unisons, obtained by
the fourth finger on one string and the open string of another. (See
pp. 446, 457.) The remaining phrases explain themselves. The exercise
has been transposed.
Ex. 319
= >t
The third constituent was rhythm (iga‘). By the third quarter of
the seventh century this had already been systematized, since we read
of four rhythmic modes, and under the Umayyad régime (661—750)
two more had been added.! By the ninth or tenth century there were
seven or eight principal (ии!) rhythmic modes used by the Mesopo-
tamian and Syrian Arabs as described by Al-Kind?? and Al-Farabi.?
By the days of Safi al-Din 'Abd al-Mu'min (d. 1294), the Persians
had added some modes of their own devising.* When Turkomanian
and Turkish influence made itself felt in the Near and Middle East,
new rhythms in galore were tapped out, and the craze for novelty grew
apace. By the fifteenth century there were no fewer than twenty-one
rhythmic modes,* while Al-Ladhiqi (с. 1481-1512) gives a total of
thirty.®
In the eyes and ears of the Arabs, vocal music was superior to
instrumental, and this preference lasted until the final scenes depicted
in the monumental work of Al-Isfahani (d. 967). After that, Persian,
Turkomanian, Mughal, and Turkish tastes brought instrumental
music more to the fore. How important was the vocal art may be
gleaned from Al-Farabi who devoted a section to *production'—
head notes, chest notes, nasalized notes, and so on; adverting to the
glottal hiatus (nabara), and the whys and hows of the staccato notes
(shadharat) and long-vowel notes (amálàt), as well as the various
1 Farmer, History, p. 71. To Al-Khalil (d. c. 791) a ‘Book of Rhythm’ (Kitab al-iqà")
has been attributed. See Farmer, Sources, p. 14.
2 Farmer, Sa'adyah Gaon, pp. 78-99, which contains the notation of the rhythmic
modes.
з В. d'Erlanger, op. cit. ii, pp. 40-48. * Ibid. iii, pp. 172-8.
* Ibid. iii, pp. 183-232. ê Ibid. iv, pp. 470-98.
452 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
forms of songs.! Dynamics, as we understand the term, had no exist-
ence in Islamic music, which was essentially a quiescent art, and its
instruments, whether for solo work or accompaniment were, of
necessity, in accordance with this tranquility; indeed we must always
think of this art in terms of chamber music.? It is true that we some-
times read of fifty or so lutenists playing together, but such occur-
rences were unusual? Throughout the book of Al-Isfahàni it is
generally the lute, flute, or reed-pipe that is displayed, and the well-
known miniature which accompanies the story of Ishaq al-Mausili
in the Magamat of Al-Hariri (d. 1122) shows only a lute and reed-
pipe.* In the later Arabian Nights? and in the subsequent miniatures
of Persian art, more bounteous instrumental displays are granted:
the lute, flute, psaltery, reed-pipe, viol, and harp in concert. Of course,
these combinations invariably included the tambourine or drum,
since these determined the rhythm, although not all music was sub-
mitted to this mensural discipline.
The forms of musical composition were various. The nashid,
originally a nasal psalming was, in the time of Al-Farabi, unrhythmic,®
but later it was submitted to rhythm.’ The basit, of light character,
was a vocal piece with an instrumental prelude (fariqa), although it
was set later to more imposing rhythms.® The garb was a composition
in which two rhythmic modes were used simultaneously. Some
lengthy compositions were to be found in the kull al-durüb and the
kull al-nagham, which implied, respectively, the use of all the rhyth-
mic modes and all the melodic modes in sequence.
Among the Persians, Khorasanians, and Turkomans of the tenth
century, instrumental pieces known as the fard’iq and rawdsin were
immensely popular.? Later it was the ‘amal, naqsh, saut, haw@i, and
murassa‘ which were in demand. The first was of a composite nature
and opened with a prelude. The second, as its name tells us, had
* decoration' as its characteristic. The last two had much in common
by way of their fantasia-like construction. The most important of all
was the ‘suite’ called the nauba. This seems to have originated at the
‘Abbasid court, where the performers who attended at special hours
on particular days, played in succession (mauba), and since each
minstrel usually excelled in some particular type of music, a com-
bination of these features into one performance or piece was named a
! В. d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, ii, pp. 79 ff.
2 Farmer, Oriental Studies: Mainly Musical (London, 1953), p. 58.
з Farmer, History, pp. 72, 102. * Farmer, Minstrelsy, pls. 1, 8.
ES bids р б; 8 В. d'Erlanger, op. cit. ii, p. 94.
7
Ibid. iv, p. 233. * Ibid. iv, p. 235. ? Ibid. i, p. 17.
THE PRACTICAL ART 453
паирал Up to the fourteenth century the nauba comprised four
movements, the qaul, ghazal, tardna, and furti-dasht, but in the year
1379, ‘Abd al-Qadir b. Ghaibi introduced a fifth movement called
the mustazdd.2 Each of these sections, which were vocal, was pre-
ceded by an instrumental prelude (fariga). Later still, the instrumental
chef d'auvre known as the pishrev (Ar. bashrau) was used as an over-
ture to the nauba. In Muslim Spain the nauba gharnati, as it is now
called, was known in its twenty-four modes.? The eastern nauba was
carried on by the Ottoman Turks and had constituent parts not un-
like the ‘suite’ of Persia.*
What the Islamic music of these days was actually like is not easy
to determine because of the mere scrap which has come down to us,
and even this presents on paper less vitality than our transcription
of the neumatically notated compositions of the early Christian
Church. It has been stated that the Great Book of Songs of Ishaq
al-Mausili contained music.® This is quite fallacious. At the same
time it is equally erroneous to state that the ‘Arabs never had a
musical notation’.® In early days, neither the Arabs or Persians com-
mitted their compositions to paper as a general rule, although Ibn
Sina tells us that a stenography was used by practitioners for this
purpose.’ Yet the theorists from the time of Al-Kindi used an alpha-
Бейс notation.5 It is not until the thirteenth century, however,
that we have examples of music recorded by this means, and the
present writer has published two specimens,® while other examples
exist in the works of ‘Abd al-Qadir b. Ghaibi (d. 1435).!? In these
compositions the pitch of the notes is determined by an alphabetic
notation and the mensural values by a numerical one. Meanwhile
a semi-staff notation arose farther east in Khwarizm where, in the
time of the Shah ‘Ala al-Din Muhammad (d. 1220), an eighteen-line
stave was used to carry a pitch and mensural notation." It was not
unlike the early attempts of western Europe.!? In Syria we know from
! Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, pp. 855-7.
2 В. d'Erlanger, op. cit. iv, pp. 236-8.
* Farmer, An Old Moorish Lute Tutor, pp. 19-24; Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, pp.
386-7.
4 Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, p. 386.
* Phyllis Ackerman, in A. U. Pope, A Survey of Persian Art (1939), p. 2812.
$ Grove's Dictionary of Music (1940), i, р. 66.
* Farmer, Historical Facts, p. 91.
8 Ibid., pp. 312 ff.
® Farmer, History, р. 202, and Minstrelsy, frontispiece.
!?^ Bodleian MS. Marsh 282, ff. 937-95.
п у. Belaiev, ‘Khoresmian Notation’, The Sackbut, iv (1924), р. 171, and ‘Turko-
manian Music’, Promusica, v (1927), p. 4.
13 M. Gerbert, Scriptores (St. Blaise, 1784), i, p. 157.
454 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
a treatise by Shams al-Din al-Saidawi al-Dhahabi (16th. cent.) that a
more practical scheme had been evolved in which a stave of seven to
nine coloured horizontal lines served for this purpose,! a device
somewhat similar to that shown in eastern Europe by Vincenzo
Galilei (1581) and Kircher (1650).?
At the period when the Arabs and Persians wrote music by means
of an alphabetic (abjadi) and numeric (‘adadi) notation, the former
stood for the pitch of the note (naghma) whilst the latter represented
its mensural (mizàni) extent. Reference to the fretting of the lute
(йа) on p. 463, where the accordatura (taswiyya) is G-c-f—bb—ep!, will
explain the reason for introducing the special flat sign to indicate the
minor tone of 180 cents which is a comma lower than the whole tone
of 204 cents, reserving the ordinary flat b to indicate a note which is a
limma of 90 cents.
Here is one verse (Бай = stanza) of a song (saut) taken from the
Kitab al-adwar, said to have been written before 1236, but more
probably twenty years later, by Safial-Din ‘Abd al-Mu’min (d. 1294).
It is in the melodic mode (tariqa) of kuwasht, set to the rhythmic mode
(darb) of the ramal al-diyyàá, better known as the khafif ramal. The
transcription is made from the British Museum Manuscript Or. 2361,
fo. 32, but with the copyist’s errors rectified by comparison with
other manuscripts. This has meant changing the minims for the
syllables ba-ti into crotchets. That was necessary on account of the
measure. The melody has been transposed. (See upper part of
pl. 14(a).)
‘A-la 1 - hajri lā wal-là-hi та а - па sa-bi - ru,
Wa ghai-ri ‘a - lā faq - di al-a - hi -b-ba-ti qà-di - ru.
(‘Desertion, by Allah, I cannot abjure, Though some, the loss of a
lover could endure")
1 Bodleian MS. Marsh 82, ff. 70-73; J. B. de la Borde, Essai sur la musique (Paris,
1780), i, рр. 183-90; J. P. М. Lard, ‘Tonschriftversuche und Melodieproben aus dem
muhammedanischen Mittelalter’, Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft, ii (1886),
pp. 348-50.
* Farmer, Historical Facts, pp. 323-6.
THE PRACTICAL ART 455
The rhythmic modes had changed considerably since the time of
Al-Kindi (see p. 448) and those shown in these examples on a single
stave line under the melody, would have been performed on a tam-
bourine (da’ ira) with jingling metal plates (5иий]) or bells (jalajil) in the
frame, a drum (tab/), or tiny kettledrums (nuqairat). Two or more tones
were obtained on these instruments, one of them low and strong and
the other high and weak. In addition to these the plectrum (midrab),
by which the strings of the lute were pulsated, also obeyed this rhythm
when it was convenient. Since the rhythmic phrase (daur) of the
ramal mode comprised twelve beats it has enabled us to submit the
music to the un-Oriental custom of using a time signature and bars.
Here is a theme in the old mode known as the mujannab al-ramal.
(See lower part of pl. 14(a).) |
The last example is the melody of a hemistich (misra‘) of the first
verse of a song called ‘Ala sabbikum. It is in the naurüz melodic mode
and the ramal rhythmic mode. This is also from the Kitab al-adwar of
Safi al-Din ‘Abd al-Mu'min, although the transcription is made from
a different manuscript in the British Museum, viz. Ог. 136, fo. 38°.
The contour of the melody, being plain and simple, may appear to be
quite uninteresting in itself. In performance, however, when the
singer and players introduced fioriture, a far more intriguing picture
would have been presented. These ornaments were termed tahdasin,
and since the cleverness of singer and instrumentalist was judged by
their ingenuity in the use of fioriture it is no wonder that ‘applause’
and ‘approbation’ went by the name of tahsin. Here is this melody.
(See pl. 14 (5).)
Ех 222
In view of the above it is evident that we possess no written
Arabian music earlier than the thirteenth century, no Persian before
the fourteenth century, and no similar example of Turkish music
prior to the seventeenth. On the other hand, there is an enormous
456 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
amount of music handed down orally and by rote. The Maulawiyya
darwish fraternities claim to use music composed by Al-Farabi.
One of the movements of the Turkish suite (fas/) known as the kiar
contains, in most of its modes, examples of the works of ‘Abd al-
Qadir b. Ghaibi (d. 1435), and although these, like what has pre-
ceded, have also been handed down orally, they may be more authen-
tic since the composer's Treasury of Melodies (Kanz al-alhàn), which
contained his compositions, existed until recent years.? Lastly, the
naubat andalusiyya or gharnatiyya (i.e. of ‘Andalusia’ or * Granada"),
still played in the Maghrib handed down by the refugees of the ex-
pulsions of the ‘Moors’ from Spain, exist in many specimens,?
although those in the sika and jaharka modes cannot be earlier than
the sixteenth century and cannot be Andalusian.
Finally, there is the question of form. Since every verse in Arabic
poetry contains a complete thought, a short melody was made to
fit this alone, the same being repeated for each subsequent verse. It
was Ibn Muhriz (d. с. 715) who introduced a different melody for
the second verse. When the refrain came into popularity, as in the
zajal in Spain, this also necessitated a different melody. Yet although
these short melodies were repeated times out of number, especially
in a classical ode (qasida), they were not always used in precisely the
same form, since it was in its variation that the singer, in his handling
of the ‘gloss’ or fioritura, was able to display his artistry and origin-
ality. It was much the same in instrumental music.
THE THEORY OF MUSIC
That Islamic savants were supremely gifted in the field of mathe-
matics is universally acknowledged,* and they were especially so in
the science of music (‘ilm al-müsiqi).5 At the threshold we meet with
what Al-Farabi (d. c. 950) calls a ‘pagan scale’, i.e. a scale from pre-
Islamic times.9? It was to be found on a fretted instrument called the
tunbür mizüni (measured pandore) ог funbur baghdàdi (Baghdad
pandore). Its fingerboard was divided into forty equal parts, the frets
giving a scale of quarter tones." Although this instrument and scale
1 Encyclopaedia of Islam, ii, p. 54.
2 Personal information from the late Ra'üf Yektà Bey.
3 М.Е. Yafil, Répertoire de musique arabe et maure (Algiers, 1904); Majmü' al-agháni
wa l-alhàn min kalam al-andalus (Algiers, 1904); A. Chottin, Corpus de musique marocaine
(Paris, 1931); Rouanet, op. cit., pp. 2845-77.
* Encyclopaedia of Islam, i, pp. 989-90; ii, pp. 257-8, 315-16; T. Arnold and A. Guil-
laume, The Legacy of Islam, pp. 376-97. 5 Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, pp. 749-55.
* К. d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, i, p. 227.
т Ibid. i, p. 218. The interval was known to Eratosthenes. See Ptolemy, Harmonicorum
(Oxford, 1682), ii, p. 14.
THE THEORY OF MUSIC 457
persisted in Islamic civilization until the fifteenth century, seemingly
only for the performance of those ‘pagan melodies’ of which Al-
Farabi speaks, its place in the evolution of the Arabian scale is vague.
What sort of scale obtained in the early days of Islam, when the
system of Ibn Misjah (d. c. 715) was established, we have no certain
knowledge, but all evidence seems to show that it was the Pytha-
gorean. It was not until the time of Ishaq al-Mausili (d. 850) that we
get a complete view of the theory and scale of the Old Arabian
School. Possibly two early works may have dealt with this system,
the Book of Melody (Kitab al-naghm) of Yünus al-Katib (d. с. 765)
and the Book of Melody by the father of prosody Al-Khalil b.
Ahmad (d. c. 791), but none of these has been spared for us.! In any
case, these works would have been based on what I have frequently
termed ‘practical theory’, in contradistinction from ‘scientific
theory’. Indeed, a later writer, Ibn al-Munajjim (d. 912), very aptly
distinguished between these two schools of theorists as ‘the masters
of Arabian music (ghind’)’ and ‘the masters of [Greek] music
(miisigi)’.2 In the Old Arabian School, all theory was made to con-
form to the lute, in the same way as the Greeks used the kithara for
this purpose. According to Ishaq al-Mausili and his pupils Ibn al-
Munajjim and Ibn Khurdadhbih, the scale of this school was
Pythagorean, and here is the fretting of its lute in cents:
2o ES Bg 2
ч = = is} Bex = >
ЗЕ Zs as uu
= З ч 5 vS в
чо МУ = E я 5 2
F со N
Open string (mutlaqg) О |———498 |—— 996 |————294
Ist finger (sabbaba) 204 | ———702 | ——1200 | ———498
2nd finger (wusta) 294 | ———792 | ————90 | ———588
3rd finger (binsir) 408 | ———906 | ———204 | ———702
4th finger (khinsir) 498 | ———996 | ———294 | ———792
[906]
996 |
1 Isis, xxxvi (1946), р. 128. ? Farmer, Historical Facts, p. 243.
3 Cents are hundredths of an equa! semitone. It has been stated that Ishaq al-Mausili's
accordatura of the Arabian lute gave a fifth (702 cents) between the third and second
strings. I have shown this to be completely erroneous; the tuning was by fourths (498
cents) throughout. See my Historical Facts for the Arabian Musical Influence (London,
1930), pp. 280-5, and cf. the persistent views of Kathleen Schlesinger in The Oxford
458 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
Prior to this, certain alien elements had entered the scale. Persian
practitioners had been using their own second finger fret (303 cents),
and a certain instrumentalist at. Baghdad, Zalzal (d. 791), had intro-
duced a neutral third (355 cents). Confusion and embarrassment
followed these innovations, and it was to rectify the position, it would
seem, that Ishaq al-Mausili recast the theory of the old Arabian
school into its original Pythagorean mould, which was accomplished,
we are told, without recourse to the Greek theorists who were unknown
in Arabic at that date.!
By the middle of the ninth century the famous treatises of the
Greeks were translated, some through Syriac, into Arabic, and most
of them had appeared before the close of the century. Aristotle's De
anima, the Problemata, and other works of his were well known.
The Harmonica of Aristoxenus which we possess today is known to
have been constructed from two works, the отогуєѓа and the дрҳаќ 2
That the latter was a separate work existing in the ninth century is
evidenced by the translated Arabic work, the Kitdb al-rwiis, as was
demonstrated in 1928.? That his lost work on rhythm also existed in
Arabic at this time is shown by his Kitab al-iqà' (Book of Rhythm).
Euclid was known by a Kitab al-naghm called al-müsiqi, which
was obviously the Introductio harmonica, now attributed to Cleo-
nides, and a Kitab al-qaniin which was clearly the Sectio canonis.
Nicomachus appeared in Arabic in more than one book. The present
Enchiridion which we possess in Greek includes fragments from
another treatise, unknown, but the Arabic book of Nicomachus, the
Kitab al-müsiqi al-kabir (Opus Major on Music) proves that he did
write that *larger work' which he had promised in the Enchiridion.
That the Harmonica of Ptolemy was also translated into Arabic there
is considerable evidence, and it is likely that Aristides Quintilianus
was similarly represented. In addition there were commentaries on
Aristotle's De anima by Themistius and Alexander of Aphrodisias,
as well as other works, that were known in Arabic.‘
The first-fruits of this epoch-making harvest by the Bait al-hikma
or ‘House of Wisdom’, as this school of translators at Baghdad was
called, was the interest taken in music by the 'philosopher of the
Arabs', Al-Kindi, whose extant treatises on the theory of music
History of Music, Introductory Volume (London, 1929), pp. 103-4, and The Greek
Aulos (London, 1939), pp. 274-90, 537-40, in spite of my protests.
1 Al-Isfahani, op. cit. v, p. 53; British Museum MS. Or. 2361, f. 237".
? Cf. pp. 342-3.
* Farmer, ‘Greek Theorists of Music in Arabic Translation’, 1515, xiii (1930), p. 326.
(A paper read before the 17th Congress of Orientalists, Oxford, 1928.)
* Farmer, Sources, pp. 23-30.
THE THEORY OF MUSIC 459
reveal his dependence on Greek theory.! Other leading scholars then
crowded into the arena of music theory: Al-Sarakhsi (d. 899),
Thàbit b. Ошта (d. 901), Muhammad b. Zakariyya al-Ràzi (d. 932),
Qusta b. Liga (d. 932), and the famous Al-Farab1.? Only the works
of the first and last have survived the holocausts of the past. Al-
Kindi was well acquainted with Euclid, and probably with Ptolemy
also. Indeed his Book of the Division of the Canon (Kitab fi qismat al-
qünün) was most likely a commentary on Euclid's work. Ziryàb, in
Muslim Spain, had already added a fifth string to the lute, and
Al-Kindi did likewise in the east, so as to enable him to reach the
jamá'at al-tamma (cdornpa теАвюот). He then sought to introduce а
semitonal fret called the ‘anterior’ (mujannab) between the nut and
the first finger fret, but owing to the fixed fretting of the lute, his
innovation presented a difficulty in that while the new fret, giving an
interval called the bagiyya (90 cents), i.e. the Greek limma, fitted in
admirably on the fourth, third, and second strings, it was flat by a
comma of 24 cents on the first and the new 'extra' strings. To obviate
this he added another fret of an interval called the infisal, the Pytha-
gorean apotomé (114 cents) which, although not used on the three
lower strings, gave the desired notes on the two higher strings, thus:?
af
ог БЕ
gocce ga tM e oec
Hac Poe se ES
+ e N — ц
Ist finger (mujannab 1) 90 | — 588 | —1086 | —[384]| —[882]
Ist finger (mujannab 2) [114]] —[612]} -[1110]! —408 | —906
Ist finger (sabbaba) 204 | —702 | —1200 | —498 | —996
2nd finger (wus{a) 294 | —792 | ——90 | —588 | —1086
3rd finger (binsir) 408 | —906 | —204 | —702 | —1200
4th finger (Khinsir) 385 е [Ree аа
1 Farmer, The Influence of Music: From Arabic Sources, pp. 101-3; History, pp. 151-
3; Sa'adyah Gaon, pp. 12-16; R. Lachmann and Mcel-Hefni, Ja'qüb Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi
(Leipzig, 1931), passim. ? Farmer, Sources, pp. 19-36.
з Farmer, Studies, ii, pp. 47-48. This, and the above fretting of the lute of Ishaq
al-Mausili (d. 850), disposes of the gratuitous assumption of Willi Apel that ‘Al-Farabi
[d. c. 950] introduced a new scale based on the interval of the fourth . . .0-204-294-408-
498', Harvard Dictionary of Music (Harvard, 1944), p. 45.
460 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
Al-Kindi’s scale reveals that the Persian and Zalzalian accretions at
303 and 355 cents had lost recognition in Mesopotamia, and this
inhibition partly continued, as we know from the Risdlat al-müsiqi
of the Ikhwan al-Safa (с. 980).! In Syria, however, these anomalies
were at least acknowledged, together with their concomitant notes,
as we see in Al-Farabi:?
bn
i
i=)
Bo2- = wc
© O g > Taine
о RE S
Open string (muflaq) 0 [——498 |—— 996 |———294 |=—792
Ist finger (old mujannab) 90 | —588 | —1086 | — 384 | — 882
Ist finger (Persian mujannab) 145 | —643 | —1141 | —439 | —937
Ist finger (Zalzal’s mujannab) 168 | — 666 | —1164 | —462 | —960
Ist finger (sabbaba) 204 | ——702 | —1200 | —498 | ——996
2nd finger (old wustd) 294 | —-792 | ——90 | —588 | —1086
2nd finger (Persian wustd) 303 | — 801 | ——99 | ——597 | —1095
2nd finger (Zalzal’s wusta) 355 | — 853 | —151 | —-649 | —1147
3rd finger (binsir) 408 | —906 | — 204]. —702 | 1200
4th finger (khinsir) 498 | —996 | —294 | —792 | —— |
The above scheme represents all the intervals recognized in lute
playing at this period, and does not necessarily imply that any one
lute was so fretted. According to Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Khwar-
izmi (fl. 976-7), writing in Khorasan and Transoxiana, the Persian
and Zalzalian thirds were being used in those lands, revealing how
far afield they had been accepted.? Al-Farabi was a good mathe-
matician and physicist, and his Grand Book of Music (Kitab al-
müsiqi al-kabir) is not only ‘the most important treatise on the
theory of Oriental music',* but the greatest work on music which
had been written up to his time. He was certainly in advance of the
Greeks.5 Later came the Ikhwan al-Safa (с. 980), whose contribution
F. Dieterici, op. cit., pp. 118-20. 2 Farmer, Studies, ii, pp. 49—50.
Mafátih al-‘ulim, pp. 240-2; Farmer, Studies, ii, p. 50.
1
3
* Encyclopaedia of Islam, ii, p. 54. | —
5 Baron Carra de Vaux, in R. d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, i, pp. vii-xi.
THE THEORY OF MUSIC 461
to acoustics is noteworthy.! In Egypt a great physicist, the Alhazen
of European fame, more properly Ibn al-Haitham (d. 1039), wrote a
Commentary оп [Cleonides] Harmonics (Мадаја fi sharh al-[a]rmün-
igi) and a Commentary on Euclid’s Canon (Kitab sharh дапип Uglaidis),
both of which have unfortunately perished.?
In Persia there appeared the works of the famous Avicenna, i.e.
Ibn Sina (d. 1037), The Cure (al-Shifa), and The Deliverance (al-
Najat), which contain full information on the state of musical theory
in Iranian lands, as does the Book of Sufficiency in Music (Kitab al-
kafi fi l-misigi) of Ibn Zaila (d. 1048). Ibn Sina does not appear to
have accepted Al-Kindi’s solution of the difficulty of the ‘anterior’
(mujannab) fret at 90 cents by duplicating it at 114 cents. Further, he
assigns 343 cents for Zalzal's second finger (wustda) fret, with its
*anterior' fellow at 139 cents. Nor does he admit the 'anterior' fret
at 90 cents, but furnishes the just semitone of 112 cents in its place.
Yet he realized that the normal tuning of the lute in fourths would
not produce Zalzal's second finger fret in the second octave, and
to remedy this he suggested an alternative accordatura (taswiyya).
By tuning the Ist string (zir) a major third (408 cents) higher than the
2nd string (mathna), instead of a fourth (498 cents), Zalzal's in-
tractable notes were regularized as follows :3
50
ds
50 50 D) ©
a Е £ Ed
к= пе) "d + Б
= & & 2 а
Open string (mutlaq) 0 [——498 |——996 |2—204 |—— 702
Ist finger (mujannab) 112 | —610 | —1108 | —316 | —814
Ist finger (Zalzal's mujannab) 139 | —-637 | —1135 | —343 | — 841
Ist finger (sabbaba) 204 | —702 | —1200 | —408 | —906
2nd finger (Persian wusta) 294 | —792 | ——90 | —498 | ——996
2nd finger (Zalzal's ина) 343 | — 841 | —139 | ——547 | —1045
3rd finger (bingir) 408 | — 906 | —204 | — 612 | —1110
4th finger (khingir) SO et ee 702 1 91200.
1 Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii, p. 752.
? Farmer, Sources, p. 42; ‘Greek Theorists of Music’, Isis, xiii (1930), р. 331.
* Farmer, Studies, ii, pp. 54-57; R. d'Erlanger, op. cit. ii, pp. 234-6; M. el-Hefni,
Ibn Sina's Musiklehre (Berlin, 1930), pp. 71-73.
462 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
In other parts of the Islamic East there were many more who were
interested in music theory, and in Syria there flourished Ibn al-
М№аддаѕһ (d. 1178), Abu'l-Hakam al-Bahili and his son Abu’l-Majd
Muhammad (d. 1180), as well as ‘Alam al-Din Qaisar (d. 1251).!
In Muslim Spain there was a long run of theorists beginning with
Ibn Firnās (d. 888), ‘the first who taught the science of music in
al-Andalus’.? In the tenth century (?), ‘Ali b. Sa‘id al-Andalusi com-
piled a book On the Composition of Melodies [Risala fi ta lif al-alhàn].
Greater still were the savants of the twelfth century, when Ibn Bajja
or Avenpace (d. 1139) wrote a Book of Music (Kitab al-müsigi), and
the Commentary on Aristotle's ‘De anima’ (Sharh fi'l-nafs li Aristü-
1415) of Ibn Rushd or Averroés (d. 1198) was famous in its day,
especially in Latin.* In the east both Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209)
and Nasir al-Din al-Tüsi (d. 1273) wrote on тпиѕіс,° the contribution
of the former being found in his Collector of the Sciences (Jami‘ al-
"ulüm).5
In Baghdad, in the service of the last of the ‘Abbasid caliphs, was
the greatest musician of his day, Safi al-Din ‘Abd al-Mu'min (d.
1294), whose two works on theory, The Sharafian Treatise on Har-
monic Relations (Risalat al-sharafiyya fi nisab al-ta'lifiyya) and the
Book of Modes (Kitab al-adwar), made history." He was the founder,
or organizer, of the Systematist school of music theory, a circum-
stance which has earned him the title of ‘the Zarlino of the Orient’,®
while Helmholtz considered his theories to be ‘noteworthy in the
history of music'.? He derived his scale from the Khorasanian pan-
dore, whose successive frets of limma, limma, comma have been
detailed by Al-Farabi.!° How Safi al-Din used it on the lute is shown
on the opposite page.!! One can see at a glance that this scale affords
consonances purer than our tempered system," and Sir Hubert Parry
considered it ‘the most perfect scale ever devised’.! It was this system
that led so many writers to refer erroneously to the existence of
*thirds of a tone' in Arabian and Persian music.
! Farmer, History, pp. 223-5. 3 Al-Maqqari, op. cit. i, p. 148.
* Farmer, Sources, p. 39; and History, p. 177.
* Farmer, Sources, p. 44. 5 Ibid., pp. 45, 47.
5 British Museum MS. Or. 2972, ff. 151*"-155*.
7 Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, pp. 191-2; В. d'Erlanger, op. cit. iii, pp. v-xiv. See pl. 13.
5 R. G. Kiesewetter, Die Musik der Araber (Leipzig, 1842), p. 13.
® The Sensations of Tone (London, 1895), р. 283.
10 R, d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, i, pp. 242-62.
п Ibid. iii, pp. 371, ff.; Carra de Vaux, Le Traité des rapports musicaux (Paris,
1891), pp. 52-58.
12 Riemann, Catechism of Musical History, ii (London, 1892), p. 65.
13 The Art of Music (London, 1896), p. 29.
A
an
>
THE THEORY OF MUSIC
oo
E
20 А
I А 2 A o
з 3 - =
сш. я b
Open string (тийаа) 0 498 ——996 2040 — 1792
Ist finger (zaid) 90 | —588 | —1086 | — 384 | —882
Ist finger (mujannab) 180 | —-678 | —1176 | —474 | —972
Ist finger (sabbaba) 204 | ——702 | —1200 | —498 | —996
2nd finger (Persian wusfa) 294 | —792 | ——90 | — 588 | —1086
2nd finger (Zalzal's wustaà) 384 | — 882 | — 180 | — 678 | —1176
3rd finger (binsir) 408 | — 906 | — 204 | —702 | —1200
4th finger (Khinsir) 498 | —-996 | — 294 | —792 | ———
This theory soon enveloped both the Near and Middle East, where
we see it fully utilized by the Persian theorists Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi
(d. 1310) in his Jewel of the Crown (Durrat al-taj): and by Muham-
mad b. Mahmüd al-Amuli (fourteenth century) in his Precious
Things of the Sciences (Nafis al-funün).? It was also the basis of the
Persian Treasure-house of Rarities (Kanz al-tuhaf) of the same cen-
tury,? and ће prompting of that masterly Arabic treatise entitled the
Maulana Mubarak Shah Commentary by Al-Jurjàni (d. 1413).* It was
the sheet-anchor of the Persian Collector of Melodies (Jami‘ al-alhan)
of ‘Abd al-Qàdir b. Ghaibi (а. 1435)? the Arabic Muhammad b.
Murad Treatise, and the book called The Conqueror (Al-Fathiyya)
by Al-Ladhiqi a few decades later.” The same dependence is traceable
in the Turkish Book of Modes (Kitab al-adwàr) of Khidr b. ‘Abdallah,®
and the treatise of Ahmad Ughlü Shukrallah.?
Side by side with this systematist theory there was still to be found
the occasional expression in Persia of the less intricate teaching of the
old Arabian school, the occurrence of which led Kiesewetter to
1 British Museum MS. Add 7694.
2 Ibid., Add. 16827. 5 Ibid., Or. 2361.
1 В. d'Erlanger, op. cit. iii, passim, especially the preface by the present writer.
5 Bodleian MS. Marsh 282, passim.
* British Museum MS. Or. 2361, ff. 7 В. d'Erlanger, op. cit., iv, passim.
5 Berlin MS. See J. С. L. Kosegarten, Alii Ispahanensis Liber Cantilenarum Magnus
(Greifswald, 1840), p. 36.
* Information from the late Ra'üf Yektà Bey.
464 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
imagine that it was introduced by Christian missionaries.! Yet, as
Helmholtz said of this suggestion: ‘The Europeans of those days
could teach the Orientals nothing that they did not know better
themselves, except some rudiments of harmony which they did not
want.'? The teachings of the systematist school lasted in the Near
East until the sixteenth century when the old Arabian system, i.e.
the Pythagorean, found acceptance once more. Yet the longing for
the diverse chromaticisms of the past, especially such variants as the
minor tone (180) and the Systematists Zalzalian third (384), which
had coloured their music and charmed their ears in the past had
not died, and it was that yearning which gave birth to the modern
quarter-tone system.
THE INFLUENCE
Most historians have allowed that it was to the Arabs and Persians
that ‘the mediaeval world, from Samarcand to Seville, for a very
long time, owed its highest literary and scientific culture'.? It would
not be too much to add ‘artistic culture’. That this great artistic
urge, which included music, should have made itself felt in the neigh-
bouring east is easily understood, because many of these lands had
much in common culturally. It is true that the Arabs borrowed a
few technical musical words from the Persians, as well as the accom-
plishments which these terms implied, but the Persians returned the
compliment by adopting the entire Arabic musical nomenclature.
That both India and Turkestan borrowed innumerable instruments
and technical practices through Arab-Persian persuasion is evident
to this day. One can also appreciate why peoples culturally inferior,
overwhelmed by the impact of Islam, should also be unable to resist
its musical influence. We find this with the Berbers of North Africa,
the Negroes of the western Sudan, the Swahili on the East African
coast, and the Malagasy, who have all been borrowers from this
fount, while the names of musical instruments in distant Celebes,
Borneo, Java, and even ‘Far Cathay’ carry evidence of their origin.
In Europe Islamic cultural influence took a different turn. Greece,
at Europe's eastern outpost, had always been absorbent of Oriental
ideas, and so was Byzantium.* Not a single Byzantine theoretical work
1 Die Musik der Araber, pp. 14, 46-49. Through a misunderstanding of the Arabic
term mithl, which Kiesewetter called Messel, a host of writers have given the unmeaning
title of ‘Messel system’ to the theory standardized by Safi al-Din ‘Abd al-Mu'min,
while prompting others to refer erroneously to the scale of the latter as comprising ‘third
tones’ (Dritteltóne). 2 Ор. cit p285.
з В. A. Nicholson, А Literary History of the Arabs (London, 1914), pp. 446-7.
* Cambridge Mediaeval History, iv (Cambridge, 1923), pp. 152, 773.
THE INFLUENCE 465
on music was put forward from the time of Anonymus II (fourth
century) until Psellos (f7. 1050); it was only the Arabic authors who
were producing works of speculative theory.! We know that it was
the Greek Maüristus manuscripts, translated into Arabic, which
brought about the revival of the hydraulus in Byzantium and western
Europe, when Muslim constructors began to build this instrument
from the long-forgotten Müristus designs.? Byzantium continued to
be the highway by which many.other ‘Saracen arts’ came to the West.?
As late as the Crusades Christian Europe, impressed by the use of
the Saracen military band, made it a part of its own martial tactics.*
The more important impress of Islamic civilization on Europe
was due to the presence of Muslims in the Iberian peninsula, Sicily,
and elsewhere. Spain, which was in Muslim hands, more or less,
from the eighth to the fifteenth century, became the centre from which
this new culture radiated to the rest of Europe. Indeed it is to this
land that we must turn for some of the influences which directly
affected the Renaissance.’ The poverty of Christian Europe in the
sphere of music theory and its stagnation in the practical field are
suggested by the fact that from the end of the sixth century to the
mid-ninth century no work on theory appeared in western Europe.*
While Europe only knew the Greek theorists through scraps inter-
preted by Martianus Capella, Boéthius, and Cassiodorus, the Muslims
possessed complete Arabic translations of Aristotle, Aristoxenus,
Nicomachus, Euclid, Cleonides, and probably Ptolemy and Aristides
Quintilianus.” Muslim theorists themselves, from Al-Kindi (d. c.
874) to Al-Jurjàni (d. 1413), had produced important works on the
theory of music.? What Al-Farabi and the Ikhwaàn al-Safa in the tenth
century had to say on acoustics was undoubtedly in advance of the
Greeks. They certainly acknowledged the Greeks as their teachers,
but they were critical enough to specify or to ignore some blunders.
The Arabic commentaries on Euclid's Canon and Aristotle's De
anima must surely have led to some advance in the speculative art.?
It is true that most of these treatises had remained in the Arabic
Farmer, Historical Facts for the Arabian Musical Influence, pp. 290-4.
Farmer, The Organ of the Ancients, chap. viii.
Cambridge Mediaeval History, ii, p. 592.
Encyclopaedia of Islam, v, pp. 217-21; Farmer ‘Oriental Influences on Occidental
Military Music', Islamic Culture, xv (1941), pp. 235-8.
5 C. H. Haskins, Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science (Cambridge, U.S.A.,
1924), p. 3.
* Excluding the unoriginal Isidore of Seville. See Farmer, Historical Facts, pp. 177-96,
208-28.
т See above, p. 458. 8 Farmer, Sources, рр. 19-21, 56.
? See Farmer, Historical Facts, pp. 292-4.
1
2
3
4
466 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
script and could not therefore have been generally available, but
others were translated into Latin and Hebrew, and one can still read
Averroés’ Commentary on Aristotle's ‘De anima’, translated into
Latin by Michael Scot, and benefit from what he tells us concerning
the teachings of the Stagirite, including the theory of the spherical
propagation of sound.
Two compendia of the arts and sciences, De scientiis by Alphara-
bius (Al-Farabi) and De ortu scientiarum, both translated from the
Arabic, became textbooks in European educational institutions, as
did dozens of other Latin translations from the Arabic. We find
quotations from, or references to, both these textbooks in the
writings of Gundisalvus, Magister Lambert (Pseudo-Aristotle), Vin-
cent de Beauvais, Roger Bacon, Jerome of Moravia, Walter Oding-
ton, and others.! Such works would probably urge scholars to seek
the more extensive writings of Muslim authors for wider information;
and even supposing that some of these were available only in Arabic,
the mere fact that the Muslims and Mozarabes of Spain were using
them must have produced some benefit, even though it came orally.
In the Islamic colleges in Spain, music was part of the ‘science of
mathematics’, as in the Islamic East,? although the mysterious
Virgilius Cordubensis would have us believe that it was a separate
study at Toledo? We know from Ibn al-Hijari (d. 1194) that ‘students
from all parts of the world flocked . . . to learn the sciences of which
Cordova was the most noble repository, and to derive knowledge
from the doctors and ‘ulama who swarmed in it'.* There was good
reason for the fame of the Islamic schools. Anthony à Wood tells us
that Roger Bacon, using faulty Latin translations from the Arabic
in lecturing to students at Oxford, was ridiculed by those who came
from Spain, evidently because they knew the originals.* Indeed both
Bacon and Adelard of Bath recommended students to forsake the
European schools for those of the Muslims. Yet, although the
potentialities of Islamic influence on European musical theory were
considerable, especially in view of the unmistakable proofs of in-
fluence in the other sciences of the quadrivium,® the fact is that, beyond
the quotations made by European theorists from Alpharabius, and
1 See Farmer, Al-Fárábi's Arabic-Latin Writers on Music (Glasgow, 1934), where the
question is fully discussed.
? Е, Dieterici, op. cit., рр. 1-2; E. Werner and I. Sonne, op. cit., pp. 269-72.
* Farmer, Historical Facts, p. 341.
* Al-Maqgqari, op. cit., i, p. 30.
5 J. S. Brewer, F. Rogeri Bacon: Opera quaedam hactenus inedita (London, 1859),
i, p. Ixxxvii; J. B. Trend, The Civilization of Spain (London, 1944), pp. 45-46.
в T. Arnold and A. Guillaume, op. cit., pp. 344-54, 376-97.
THE INFLUENCE 467
the mere scraps on music and therapeutics from Alkindus, Haly, Avi-
cenna, and Constantine the African,! we have little positive evidence.
We have already seen the universality of the practical art among
Muslims everywhere, and under their domination in European lands
the same inordinate love of music sprang up among the Christian
population. Some Christian rulers adorned their courts with Oriental
musicians.? It was the same with the people at large, who would
gather at the zambra (Ar. zumra) or festival, where they took delight
in the new-fangled сайа (ghaniyya), huda (huda’), anaxir (nashid), and
the /eile (laila), to become delirious with rapture as they listened to
an exotic aravia or mourisca, whose very names tell of their paternity.
That some of this Oriental art had infiltrated quite early into the
north is evident from iconography, as we see in the instruments
delineated in the St. Médard Evangeliarum (eighth century), the
Psalterium Aureum (ninth century), and elsewhere.? Much of this may
have been due to emigrant Mozarabes,‘ although the real dissemina-
tors were the minstrel class, whose showy habiliments, painted faces,
and long hair, which were the mark of the Oriental minstrel,* had
already been borrowed. The Spanish word mascara, like the English
‘masker’ (play actor) was derived from the Arabic maskhara
(buffoon). The hobby-horse and grelots were part of the impedimenta
of the morris dancers, alias ‘Moorish Dancers’, who were still
painting their faces like the ‘Moors’ in the time of Thoinot Arbeau
(1589). The hobby-horse (kurraj) and its bells (jalajil) are mentioned
by Jarir (d. c. 728), and is described among the Moors of North
Africa by Ibn Khaldün (d. 1406), and its Basque descendant, the
zamalzain, is simply the Arabic zamil al-zain (‘gala limping horse’).
What were the new arts which these minstrels spread abroad?
Firstly, there were some novel Arab-Persian instruments of Spain,
the best verbal display of which, although rather late, occurs in the
fourteenth-century Libro de buen amor,® while we have delineations
of them a century earlier in the Cantigas de Santa María." Among
1 Farmer, Al-Farábi's Arabic-Latin Writings on Music, рр. 32, 50.
2 Farmer, Historical Facts, pp. 157-8. Grove's Dictionary of Music, v (London, 1954),
p. 870.
3 R. Mitjana, ‘La Musique en Espagne’, in Lavignac and La Laurencie, Encyclopédie,
1те partie, iv (1920), p. 1928; J. Riafio, op. cit., p. 109; Kinsky, Geschichte der Musik in
Bildern (Leipzig, 1929), pp. 35, fig. 1; 39, fig. 3.
* G. T. Rivoira, Moslem Architecture (London, 1918), pp. 231, 284, 346.
* Al-Maqqari, op. cit. ii, p. 108; Al-Isfahàni, op. cit. ii, p. 174; Alf laila wa laila, iv
(Calcutta, 1839-42), p. 166.
* Juan Ruiz, И libro de buen amor (Toulouse, 1901), ll. 1251-7.
1 J. Riaño, Critical and Bibliographical Notes on Early Spanish Music (London, 1887),
pp. 109-28; J. Ribera, La Musica de las Cantigas (Madrid, 1922).
468 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
them were the atambor (at-tunbür), guitarra morisca(kaitàra ‘arabiyya),
laud (al-'üd), rabé (rabàb), canon (gànün), sonajas de azofar (sunüj aş-
sufr), axabeba (ash-shabbaba), annafil (an-nafir), atambal (at-tabl),
as well as the albogon (al-büq). Many of these, together with their
names, spread throughout Europe, the lute, rybybe, canon, tabor, as
well as the naker (naqqara), finding acceptance in Britain. The Spanish
laud and atambor, as well as the guitarra morisca, were among the
novelties, as was the bowed rabé.! The first named were especially
interesting since their necks were fitted with frets (dasdtin) discreetly
measured so as to give the Pythagorean scale, which was common to
both Muslim and Christian. Prior to this Europeans had only the
rote and harp among stringed instruments, and had only their ears
to guide them in tuning. All this was altered by the introduction of
instruments with fretted necks. The existence of this Arab-Persian
device of frets on the lute was once doubted,? but the objection has
been completely disproved.?
It may have been from the Islamic lute that western Europe re-
ceived an alphabetic notation for practical purposes,* as we see in
Hucbald's De harmonica institutione,» although we get no definite
proof of Muslim influence in this respect until later when, in a Latin
work on the Ars de pulsatione lambuti et aliorum similium instru-
mentorum, dated 1496-7, it is admitted that the tablature mentioned
was invented by ‘a Moor of the Kingdom of Granada’. Although
the Conde de Morphy considered that the Spanish lute tablature was
only ‘probably of Oriental origin’, his assessor, the more erudite
Gevaert, had little doubt that the Castilians and Aragonese 'elabor-
ated their tablature in imitation of that of the Muslims’.’
What else emerged out of Islamic practice or theory is not always
patent. Odo of Cluny (d. 942), in his section on the eight tones,
annexes to the chordae names which have a decidedly Semitic
physiognomy, three of them being Arabic, schembs (Ar. shams —
‘зип’), caemar (qamar = тооп’), and nar (паг = ‘fire’),® all of
which appears to have a raison d'étre in the doctrine of the ethos, as
1 For all these instruments see Grove's Dictionary of Music (London, 1954), s.v.
2 Karl Geiringer, ‘Vorgeschichte und Geschichte der europäischen Laute’, Zeit-
schrift fiir Musik wissenschaft, x (1928), p. 570; C. Sachs, The History of Musical Instru-
ments, р. 254. The singular of dasárin (frets) is dastan.
з Farmer, Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments, ii (1939), pp. 61-68.
* Farmer, An Old Moorish Lute Tutor, pp. 25-26.
5 Gerbert, op. cit. i, p. 118.
5 Jaime Villanueva, Viage literario а las Iglesias de España (Valencia, 1821), xi.
* Morphy, Les Luthistes espagnols du XVI siècle (Leipzig, 1902), pp. xi, xvii.
* Gerbert, op. cit. i, pp. 249-50. Cf. P. Wagner, Neumenkunde Leipzig (1912), рр. 105,
225.
THE INFLUENCE 469
in the Islamic melodic modes and the Syrian oktoechos.! Of the parts
played by Gerbert of Aurillac (d. 1003), Hermannus Contractus (d.
1054), Constantine the African (d. 1087), and Alfred the English-
man (thirteenth century),? all of whom were connected with music
and had contact with Islamic culture, we know but little, and yet
this little is extremely suggestive. Indeed one lights upon a number
of allusive points. Is it not strange, for example, that such words
as conductus, estribillo, and stanza, should be identical in their pristine
significance as in their artistic meaning with the Arabic тара,
matla’ or markaz, and bait? The conductus? was a form which, in
spite of its later ecclesiastical harbouring, had a secular upbringing
as a song form, and Anglés has recognized specimens as early as the
ninth century.* Yet outside the philological closeness of meaning we
know of no musical identity between the Latin conductus and the
Arabian majrd. Some of the conducti have the forms of the rondeau
and ballade, which were within the ken of the troubadours, who may
not have been the inventors of the gaya ciencia, since we have yet to
discover where these people found this art,? although both their verse
and their lives tell much of Spain.® J. B. Trend has suggested that they
*really derived much of their sense of form, and even their subject
matter, from the Spanish Muslims’,’ and their namecertainly reminds
one of the Arabic /arráb (minstrel), a hint which has not passed
unnoticed.?
It has long been speculated that when the Spaniards took the verse
and rhyme in the songs of the Arabs, as they did in the villancico,
they may also have adopted the music as well. This is quite under-
standable when we realize that it was often the stroke of the plectrum
on the Islamic lute or pandore which enhanced the characteristic
rhythm of the song. It was for that reason that the Arcipreste de
Hita (fourteenth century) insisted that some instruments were in-
separable from certain types of songs, and pointed out that the
Spanish vihuela de arco, cinfonie, and the like, were alien to Arabian
music, e.g. in the song called * Caguil hallaco'.!? Certainly one of the
1 Farmer, The Influence of Music, pp. 97-101, 105-7, 111; J. Jeannin, ‘Le chant
liturgique syrien', Journal asiatique, Sér. X, 20 (1912), pp. 330-3.
* Farmer, Historical Facts, pp. 32-37, 177-186.
* See Vol. II, pp. 171-4.
* El Códex musical de las Huelgas (Müsica a veus dels segles XIII-XIV), i (Barcelona,
19310903292 5 Jean Beck, La Musique des troubadours (Paris, 1910), p. 67.
* J. Anglade, Les Troubadours (Paris, 1908), p. 252.
* The Music of Spanish History (New York, 1926), p. 30.
з Julian Ribera, Historia de la música arabe (Madrid, 1927), p. 335.
* T. Arnold and A. Guillaume, op. cit., pp. 17, 373.
10 Juan Ruiz, op. cit., ЇЇ. 1516-17.
470 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
intrinsic features of Islamic music which affected Spain, and even
countries beyond, was the melisma or ‘gloss’ (zaida), which J. B.
Trend has graphically likened to arabesques in Mudéjar art. Indeed
he suggests that *the Moorish contribution to Spanish music . . . is
the Mudéjar style, that is, a manner of performance rather than a
type of musical construction’, an opinion with which most people
will agree.?
At the same time there are strong reasons for believing that
western Europe owes something to the Muslim theorists and prac-
titioners in the sphere of rhythm. This was what Julian Ribera,
the Spanish protagonist of Islamic influence, believed, although he
built up his thesis on false premises. He amassed a splendid array of
literary evidence on the Islamic influence in general which was fairly
convincing,® but his testimony from musical sources, the Cantigas de
Santa María, was less telling. It may be true that the Arabic zajal is
the parent of the virelai and ballade (perhaps even of the rondeau),
and that they may be found in the Cantigas, but it does not necessarily
follow that the music is of the same origin.* It has been urged against
Ribera's thesis that there are no confirmatory Arabic musical docu-
ments. That may be passably true, since it has been shown (p. 453)
that these do not exist before the mid-thirteenth century, yet the
argumentum ex silentio is proverbially inconclusive. The real case
against Ribera is his erroneous transcription of the rhythmic
modes of the classical Arabic authorities, which considerably
invalidates his versions of the Cantigas and of the music of the
troubadours.’
In 1925, independently of Ribera, certain other clues for possible
Islamic influence on medieval European mensuralists were brought
forward.® It was demonstrated that there were references in the Latin
treatise by the so-called Anonymus IV (late thirteenth century) to
new mensural note-values which bore such Arabic names as е/тиа-
hym and elmuarifa,’ and that Johannes de Muris (post 1325) described
another notated device called the alentrade, also of seemingly Arabic
1 Op. cit., p. 36.
? Farmer, Historical Facts, p. 157.
3 Ribera, La Musica de las Cantigas, pp. 95 ff.; Music in Ancient Arabia, pp. 177 ff.
* Gustave Reese, Music in the Middle Ages (New York, 1940), pp. 245-7, where the
pros and cons of ‘Islamic influence’ are fairly presented.
5 Farmer, Sa'adyah Gaon on the Influence of Music (London, 1943), pp. 78-87.
* Farmer, 'Clues for the Arabian Musical Infiuence', Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, 1925, pp. 61-80 — The Arabian Influence on Musical Theory (London, 1925)
issued separately.
т E. de Coussemaker, Scriptores de musica medii aevi, (Paris, 1864), pp.
339-341.
THE INFLUENCE 471
origin.! The two former were counted among the currentes or ‘run-
ning notes' to which Gustave Reese has drawn attention in the melo-
dies of Léonin of Paris, that same optimus organista praised by
Anonymus IV? It was also suggested that the musical term ochetus
(hoquetus) was derived from the Arabic iga‘at (rhythms), just as
Avicenna is made to speak in the Latin Canon of Medicine of hash,
which is the Arabic ‘ishg. Muslim rhythm was one of the features of
the Oriental art that was quite novel to Europe, which listened in
wonderment to a singer in one rhythm while the accompanying
instrumentalist played in another. So far, only two musicologists
have recognized these hints of 1925.3 Of course, it may be that these
Arabisms crept in through some Mozárabian scribe; yet why should
one have used Arabic if there had been a Latin term available?
Anonymus IV was certainly well acquainted with Spanish and
Pamplona manuscripts on musical theory.*
If so many things are hidden from us in this vexed question of
Islamic influence, there are a few which are not. One can safely say,
for instance, that the old notion that we owed our syllables of sol-
feggio to an Arabic source is quite unlikely, although even the more
accepted origin may be very doubtful. That the Muslims practised
harmony, in our connotation of the term, as stated at length by Julian
Ribera, is quite erroneous. That they permitted devices known as
the tarkibat, i.e. the simultaneous striking of the fourth, fifth, or
octave with other notes, is true enough, but this was only an in-
frequent decoration (zaida) of the melody. ‘In view of their practice
of the tarkibat’, it may be asked, ‘how was it that the Muslims did
not develop harmony?' The answer is that, in our Middle Ages, the
Muslims knew of the principles of harmony, in the Greek sense of
harmonia,’ better than Europe did, but they viewed the laws of *har-
monia' horizontally, and continued to do so, whereas Europe,
since the tenth century, has apprehended a vertical harmony. The
Muslims have advanced in their horizontal harmonia as much as
the European west has developed in its vertical harmony, while in
another sphere they have outstripped the Europeans, in the ‘heart-
beats of God', as the infinite, boundless, rhythms of the Muslims
have been called.’
1 Tbid., ii, p. 419. 2 Tbid., i, p. 342; Reese, op. cit., р. 298.
? J. B. Trend in The Legacy of Islam, p. 18; Reese, op. cit., р. 321. See С. Sarton,
Introduction to the History of Science, ii (Washington, 1931), p. 25.
* E. de Coussemaker, op. cit. i, p. 345.
5 Farmer, Historical Facts, pp. 72-82. 8 See pp. 340 ff.
7 See Farmer, ‘What is Arabian Music?’ Oriental Studies: Mainly Musical (London,
1953), pp. 53-58.
472 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
On the other hand, some Islamic peoples have advanced beyond the
use of simultaneous fourths, fifths, and octaves merely as occasional
fioriture, as the present writer has shown elsewhere.! Uspensky and
Belaiev, in their Turkmenskaya Muzyka (Moscow, 1928), have given
innumerable examples of the normal music of Turkomanian peoples
which reveal the widespread use of consecutive fourths and fifths,
in a way identical with the organum of medieval Europe. Belaiev, in
dealing with the folk-music of Georgia—where he found the same
technique—would have us believe that this feature antedates the
organum of Europe and says that ‘Europe did not invent it but
acquired it elsewhere in a ready-made form'.? The present writer had
merely hinted at the probability that the ‘rudimentary tarkib’ of
Islamic peoples was the ‘forerunner of the European organum’, where-
as Belaiev voices a certainty.? Laurence Picken* has made comparable
studies in rural Turkey where he found similar features to those of
Uspensky and Belaiev in Turkestan. Their occurrence in Asia Minor,
says Picken, shows ‘that . . . the practice of parallel fourths and fifths
can exist side by side with more or less sophisticated homophony’
which is the norm in most Islamic lands. Like Belaiev? Picken
favours an indigenous origin for this early polyphony, i.e. organum,
and suggests that since ‘long-necked lutes’, i.e. pandores, ‘have great
antiquity’ in that area, we cannot rule out the possibility that ‘the
ancient Hittite lutes (first millennium B.C.) should not have been played
polyphonically'. Yet the fact remains that we have no documentary
evidence of organum among any peoples of Islam before comparatively
modern times, and that the use of simultaneous fourths, fifths, and
octaves, was not known to them earlier than the ninth century A.D.,
and even then only occasionally as fioriture.
On thequestion of Moorish influence in Spain the Spaniards them-
selves are not in complete accord. If such authors as Menéndez у
Pelayo? and Mitjana y Gordan® recognize that influence, some of
the musicians, notably Pedrell and Falla, do not. Pedrell avers
that Spanish music ‘has absorbed no influence from the Arabs’:
1 ‘Turkestani Music’, Grove's Dictionary of Music, viii, 1954.
? "The Folk-Music of Georgia’, Musical Quarterly, ix (1933), p. 417.
* See Farmer, Historical Facts, p. 112
* ‘Instrumental Polyphonic Folk-Music in Asia Minor’, Proceedings of the Royal
Musical Association, 1953-4, pp. 73 ff. ]
5 Christian Science Monitor, 8 Sept. 1927.
* See Farmer, *Moorish Music', especially the bibliography, Grove's Dictionary
of Music, v (London, 1954), pp. 868-76.
т Antología de poetas liricos, ii (Madrid, 1903), p. 68.
*'La Musique en Espagne’, in Lavignac and La Laurencie, Encyclopédie de la
musique, 1'* partie, iv, p. 1925.
THE INFLUENCE 473
although on another page he expresses less certainty when he says
that it ‘owes nothing essential to the Arabs or Moors’,! a statement
which loses its conviction unless we know what he considered to
be ‘essential’. Pedrell would trace the orientalism in Spanish music to
the Byzantine period, but does not produce that ‘documentary
evidence' which is always demanded from those who claim a Moorish
influence. Falla, whilst admitting the oriental stratum in Spanish
folk music, attributes some of it to the gipsies, seemingly because
of the word flamenco, a term which, like canto jondo, is not a
century old. Trend has dealt at considerable length with the views of
Falla on this gipsy influence in his Manuel de Falla and Spanish
Music (New York, 1929). Yet one is constrained to ask whether there
is such a thing as gipsy music per se? The latter, like gipsy religion, is,
to a considerable extent, determined by the culture and beliefs of the
land in which the gipsy abides. If gipsy music exists, how is it that it
has not influenced the music of Poland and Italy where there have
been such large settlements of gipsies? Not that the flamenco, canto
jondo, or siguiriya gitana reveal—in the contour of the melody or the
swing of the rhythm—any clearly cut Moorish or Arabian features:
since it is more the circumjacence, especially in the *manner of
performance', as Trend so acutely observes, which displays those
elements.? In these latter, we must inevitably allow, as Raoul
Laparra has said, that ‘the origin of this mentalité of the flamenco
goes back to the domination of the Moors in the Iberian penin-
sula’.?
During the past two decades there has been a marked change of
view on the question of the Arabian or Moorish influence, although
that modification has been mainly on the literary rather than the
music claims. Yet a few are still adamant. While Isabel Pope thinks
that the melodies of the Cantigas de Santa María ‘display the in-
fluence of the Church combined with the influence of the folk song,
both European and Oriental, Higini Anglès still holds an opposite
view; he states that in the 423 melodies of the Cantigas he found not
the slightest trace of Arabian influence." Jeanroy, on the other hand,
who in 1899 had said that the Arabian hypothesis was ‘a pure
legend’, had been compelled to confess in 1934 that ‘it is no longer
! Cancionero musical popular español, i (Valls, 1919), pp. 69, 84.
* J. B. Trend, The Music of Spanish History (Oxford, 1926), рр. 33-37.
* R. Laparra, ‘La Musique et la danse populaires en Espagne’, Lavignac and La
Laurencie, op. cit. iv, pp. 2394 ff.
* Annales musicologiques, ii (Paris, 1954), p. 212.
* Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ii (Kassel, 1952), col. 777.
474 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
possible to dismiss the hypothesis by a negation pure and simple’.
That admission had been forced on him by the researches of a new
generation of scholars, many of whom were not only competent in
Romance literature but in Arabic. The several works of Alois R.
Nykl had placed the problem on ‘a solid basis',? and those who
had sneered at Ribera now found that later Spanish Arabists of
the standing of A. González Palencia? and E. García Gómez
were supporting some of the theses of the older Arabist. The tempo
of acceptance was speeded after the appearance of R. Menéndez
Pidal’s Poesía árabe y poesia europea (1938-41)* and later works.’
Then followed the troubadour studies of Gustave Cohen,® Nykl,’
and Henri Pérès, while the contributions of Samuel Stern,’
Dámaso Alonso,? and Leo Spitzer! on the Mozarabic lyric—
Arabic and Hebrew—shed further light on the subject.
The question of the Arabic kharja, i.e. the coda strophe in
Oriental and Romance poetry, which had been raised. by Stern,
was emphasized by E. García Gómez,? and it still exists, as a
musical feature, in the Moroccan Khurüj.? One of the most in-
teresting discoveries was that of Lévi-Provencal who, in 1954,
demonstrated in a most positive way that Chanson V in Jeanroy's
Les Chansons de Guillaume IX was not only wrongly transcribed
but that it contained in its coda four lines of undiluted Arabic.!4
1 Revue des Deux Mondes, 151 (1899), р. 351. La Poésie lyrique des troubadours, ii
(Toulouse, 1934), p. 368.
? The Dove's Necklace (Paris, 1931); El cancionero de Aben Guzmán (Madrid, 1933).
* ‘La Poesía arábigo andaluza y su influencia', Revista Hispánica Moderna, i (New
York, 1934).
* Published in Bulletin hispanique, хі (1938), and іп 1941, with other studies, at
Madrid.
$ Cantos románicos andalusies (Madrid, 1950), ‘Les origines de las literaturas
románicas’, Filologia romanza, i (Turin, 1954).
5 ‘Le Probléme des origines arabes de la poésie provençale medieva'e', Bulletin de
la classe des lettres . . . de l'Académie royal de Belgique, 5° série, xxxii (1946).
7 “The latest in Troubadour studies’, Archivum Romanticum, xix (Florence, 1935);
L'influence arabe-andalouse sur les Troubadours', Bulletin hispanique, xli (Bordeaux,
1939); Hispano-Arabic Poetry in its Relation with the Old Provençal Troubadours
(Baltimore, 1946); Speculum, xxvi (1951), pp. 179-84.
8 ‘La Poésie arabe d'Andalusie et ses relations possibles avec la poésie des trouba-
dours’, L’Islam et l'Occident, Cahiers du Sud (1947).
ә ‘Тез Vers finaux en espagnol dans les muwaSSahas hispano-hébraiques', Al-
Andalus, xiii (1948); Les Chansons mozarabes (Palermo, 1953).
10 *Cancioncillos De Amigo Mozarabes’, Revista de Filología Espanola, xxxiii (1949).
11 ‘The Mozarabe lyric’, Contemporary Literature (Oregon, 1952).
12 ‘Sobre un posible tercer tipo de poesía arábigo-andaluza', Estudios dedicados а
Menéndez Pidal (Madrid, 1951); Al-Andalus, xvii (1952), pp. 57-127; ibid., xviii (1953),
pp. 138-9; ibid., xix (1954), pp. 43-52.
13 A. Chottin, Corpus de musique marocaine, i (Paris, 1931), p. 8.
14 ‘Les Vers arabes de la Chanson V de Guillaume IX d'Aquitaine’, Arabica, i
(Leiden, 1954).
THE INFLUENCE 475
From this we see that the oldest of the French troubadours not
only came in touch with Eastern Oriental culture during the
Crusades, but with the more potent civilization of Muslim Spain.
How much the troubadours could have been influenced from the
south is brilliantly revealed in an article entitled “Concerning the
Accessibility of Arabian Influence to the Earliest Provençal
Troubadours’ by A. J. Denomy.! For the latest opinions on the
question of the Arabian influence see Pierre Le Gentil's Le Virelai
et le villancico: Le probléme des origines arabes (Paris, 1954), and
Ettore Li Gotti's La ‘Tesa araba’ sulle ‘Origini’ della lirica romanza
(Palermo, 1955).
On the terrain of actual examples of Arabian or Moorish music
of the Middle Ages little has been revealed since the present writer
called attention to existing examples іп 1929,2 although a recent
writer, Isabel Pope, still believes that ‘no examples... are known
to survive? In 1929, however, a doubtful attempt was made by
Clifton J. Furness to solve the identity of a piece of thirteenth-
century music which was considered by Bourdillon to have been
originally ‘an Arabian or Moorish chant'.* The article by Furness
was entitled “Тһе Interpretation and Probable Derivation of the
Musical Notation in the Aucassin et Nicolette MS.'.* After having
heard Tunisian music, in which a man and a boy performed a
similar chante-fable, he concluded that it was no different from the
type of performance which has been considered to have been
practised in the Aucassin et Nicolette recital. His account was оп
all fours with that which Bourdillon,? Gaston Paris,’ and Walter
Pater* had pictured. He even went so far as to identify the scale
of the thirteenth-century music with the Algerian jahadrka mode
which he found in the present writer’s version of F. Salvador
Daniel's La Musique arabe (1863).° The latter says that it was
identical with the Aeolian mode, but his example in the song of
the Bani ‘Abbas, notated in the book quoted, shows that it was
the Mixolydian, which would equate with the Mutlaq fi majrà al-
binsir mode of Baghdad and Cordoba of old. Unfortunately the
Mediaeval Studies. xv (Toronto, 1953).
History of Arabian Music (1929), p. 203 and pl. 3.
Annales Musicologiques, ii, p. 212.
F. W. Bourdillon, Aucassin et Nicolette (Manchester, 1919), p. xxxi.
The Modern Language Review, xxiv (Cambridge, 1929). МӨ cit ap. XXXI.
Poèmes et légendes du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1900), pp. 101-2.
The Renaissance, i (of Works, London, 1900), p. 16.
The Music and Musical Instruments of the Arab (London, 1915), pp. 99 (not 93),
210-12.
e мз OC S qo. o.
476 THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
name jahárka—in relation to a mode—was unknown in the Maghrib
before the opening of the sixteenth century, although it was used
in the Near East from the fifteenth century.! There is no jaharka
mode—by name—in Tunisia,” but in Egypt it is practically identical
with our major mode? On the other hand there is obviously
nothing particularly Oriental about the mode itself, although the
airs of Aucassin and Nicolette may have Oriental features. Strange
as it may seem, an unusual—although only partial—confirmation
of the latter appeared in that same year, 1929, when Arnold
Dolmetsch undertook a musical pilgrimage to Morocco where he
frequented native musical assemblies. On one such occasion he
was asked to play something on the lute from his own land. Among
other items which he and his son Carl played in response to that
invitation was the music of Aucassin et Nicolette. The old blind
Moorish lutenist who led the native musicians hailed the music
with delight saying, ‘7 know that tune, only we would embroider it
thus. The item was then performed in the Moorish way, which
was, as Mrs. Mabel Dolmetsch put it, *what we would call divisions
on a ground', although the latter did not suspect that the term
‘divisions’ (taqasim) had been favoured by Arabic-speaking peoples for
centuries before Simpson issued his Division Violist (1659), and the
taqsim is still the most favoured instrumental form іп the Near East.>
More important was a discovery by the distinguished Arabist
Louis Massignon in 1949.6 This was reported by Isabel Pope to
be ‘a collection of Arabic music with notation’? found in two
manuscripts of the Andalusian poet Al-Shushtari (d. 1269) at Aleppo
and Cairo. It would appear, however, that these latter, neither of
them very old copies, simply show some of the songs rubricated
with the names of the modes, і.е. the talahin (melodic modes or
‘patterns’) and the durüb (rhythmic modes) to which they were
sung. Among the former are some very old names, e.g. ‘аа, hijaz,
husaini, and 'ushsháq, although others, such as айка, sika, and
jaharka, were scarcely known in Al-Shushtari’s day. Yet we know,
on the authority of Ibn 'Abbàd al-Nafzi (d. 1390), that music bad
been set to these verses. Since by that time all of the above
1 В. d'Erlanger, La Musique arabe, iv, pp. 133-4. 2 [bid., v, figs. 144-7.
3 А. Chottin, Tableau de la musique marocaine (Paris, 1939), p. 181.
4 Letter from Mrs. Dolmetsch, 22 January 1930; The Consort, Dec. (1931), p. 13.
5 Recueil des travaux du Congrés de Musique arabe (Cairo, 1934), pp. 112-13, 170.
Cf. The History of Music in Sound, i, side 16.
в ‘Investigaciones sobre Su&tarr', Al-Andalus, xiv (1949).
* Annales musicologiques, ii, p. 214.
8 Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden, 1913-38), iv, 393.
THE INFLUENCE 477
modes had become melody ‘patterns’ we can form аз general ап idea
of the contour of the melodies of Al-Shushtari's muwashshahàt as
of that of neum-written music of the early Christian Church.
Whatever may be our certainties and doubts concerning the extent
of Islamic influence on European culture, we must remember that for
700 years at least it was the Muslims and Mozárabes of Spain who,
in the earlier centuries undoubtedly, ‘alone held the torch of learning
and civilization bright and shining before the western world',! and
it was this glow that helped to light the way for Europe's progress in
music.
1 S. Lane-Poole, The Moors in Spain (London, 1890), p. 43.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL
AMBROS, A. W.: ‘Die Musik der Culturvólker des Orients’, ‘Die Musik bei den
Naturvólkern'. Geschichte der Musik. 3rd edition, edited by B. von Soko-
lowsky, i (Leipzig, 1887), pp. 341—567.
BzHN, F.: Musikleben im Altertum und frühen Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1954).
CoMBARIEU, JULES: Musique et la magie. Étude sur les origines populaires de l'art
musical, son influence, et sa fonction dans les sociétés (Paris, 1909).
HOoRNBOSTEL, E. M. von: ‘Melodie und Skala’. Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek
Peters, xix (1912), pp. 11-23.
—— ‘Die Probleme der vergleichenden Musikwissenschaft’. Zeitschrift der
internationalen Musikgesellschaft, vii (1905/6), pp. 85-97.
Kunst, JAAP: Ethno-Musicology. A study of its nature, its problems, methods
and representative personalities (The Hague, 1955).
Lac, R.: Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der ornamentalen Melopdie
(Leipzig, 1913).
LACHMANN, R.: ‘Musik der auBereuropaischen Natur- und Kulturvólker', in
Bücken, Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft (Potsdam, 1931).
— Musik des Orients (Breslau, 1929).
LAVIGNAC, A., and LA LAURENCIE, L.: Encyclopédie de la musique, 1" partie
i and v (Paris, 1913 and 1922).
Sacus, C.: ‘Die Musik der Antike’ in Bücken, Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft
(Potsdam, 1932).
—— Musik des Altertuns (Breslau, 1924).
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——— The Rise of Music in the Ancient World (New York, 1943).
SCHAEFFNER, P. A.: Les Origines des instruments de musique (Paris, 1936).
SCHNEIDER, M.: Geschichte der Mehrstimmigkeit. І. Die Naturvolker (Berlin,
1934).
WALLASCHEK, R.: Primitive Music (London, 1893).
WELLESZ, E. ‘Probleme der musikalischen Orientforschung'. Jahrbuch der
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CHAPTER I
PRIMITIVE MUSIC
(i) Ethnology
ARNDT, R. F. W.: ‘Die Religion der Nad’a’. Anthropos, xxvi (1931).
BACHTOLD-STAUBLI, H.: Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, v (Berlin,
1932/3).
BAUMANN, H.: ‘Afrikanische Wild- und Buschgeister’. Zeitschrift für Ethno-
logie, lxx (1938).
BEECHAM, J.: The Ashanti (London, 1841).
BROWN, A. R.: The Andaman Islanders (London, 1933).
BÜcHEn, K.: Arbeit und Rhythmus (Sitzungsberichte d. Kgl. Sächsischen Gesell-
schaft d. Wissenschaften. Leipzig, 1896. 6th edition, 1924).
CODRINGTON, В. H.: The Melanesians, vii (Oxford, 1891).
EBovÉ, M.: Les Peuples du Ouranghi-Chari (Paris, 1933).
480 BIBLIOGRAPHY
EMSHEIMER, E.: ‘Zur Ideologie der lappischen Zaubertrommel'. Ethnos, ix (1944).
FROBENIUS, L.: Spielmannsgeschichten der Sahel (Jena, 1921).
FUHRMANN, E.: Tlinkit und Haida (Hagen, 1923).
GRANET, M.: Danses et légendes de la Chine ancienne, i (Paris, 1926).
HERZOG, G.: “Speech Melody and Primitive Music’. Musical Quarterly, хх (1934).
Hewrrr, J. М. B.: 'Orenda'. American Anthropology, iv (1902).
KocH, K.: ‘Totemismus und Zweiklassenkultur in Neu-Guinea'. Zeitschrift
für Ethnologie, lxxi (1931).
LEENHARDT, M.: Arts de l'Océanie (Paris, 1947).
MENGES, L., and PoraPov, P.: Materialien zur Volkskunde der Turkvélker des
Altay (Mitteilungen des Seminars fiir orientalische Sprachen) (Berlin,
1934).
MENGHIN, O.: Geschichte der Steinzeit (Vienna, 1931).
Preuss, TH.: Religion und Mythologie der Uitoto (Leipzig, 1921).
——— Die Nayarit-expedition, i (Leipzig, 1912).
RATTRAY, К. S.: The Ashanti (Oxford, 1923).
——— Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vi
(Cambridge, 1908).
SCHAEFFNER, P. A.: ‘Zur Initiation im Wagi Tal (Bismarck Archipelago)’.
Anthropos, xxxiii (1938).
SCHMIDT, J. G.: ‘Neue Beiträge zur Ethnologie der Nor-Papuas'. Anthropos,
xxviii (1933).
STREHLOW, C.: Die Aranda und Loritjastámme (Frankfurt, 1907).
STUMPF, C.: ‘Musikpsychologie in England’. Vierteljahrsschrift für Musik-
wissenschaft, 1 (1885).
WESTERMANN, D.: ‘So, der Gewittergott der Ewe’. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, lxx
(1938).
Wirz, P.: Die Marind-anim, i (Hamburg, 1922).
(ii) Books and Articles on general features of Primitive Music
BIBLIOTECA CANARIA: El lenguaje silbado en la Gomera.
DANCKERT, WERNER: 'Musikwissenschaft und Kulturkreislehre’, Anthropos,
xxxii (1937).
DINCSER, O.: Die Probleme der Varianten in der Musikforschung (Geneva, 1947).
HEINITz, W.: ‘Probleme der afrikanischen Trommelsprache’, Beiträge zur
Kolonial-forschung, lv (1942).
HOoRnNBOSTEL, E. M. Von: ‘Musikalische Tonsysteme’, in Geiger and Scheel,
Handbuch der Physik, viii (Berlin, 1927).
LABOURET, H.: ‘Le Langage tambouriné et sifflé’. Bulletin du comité d'études de
l'Afrique occidentale francaise (1923).
Laca, R.: Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der ornamentalen Melopdie
(Leipzig, 1913).
— ‘Die vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, ihre Methoden und Probleme’.
Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Bd. 200 (Vienna,
1924).
MOoNTANDON, G.: La Généalogie des instruments de musique (Geneva, 1919).
NADEL, S.: Marimbamusik (Vienna, 1931).
RICARD, R.: A propos du langage sifffé des Canaris (Hesperis, 1932).
Sacus, CurT: Geist und Werden der Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1929).
—— Handbuch der Musikinstrumentenkunde (Leipzig, 1920).
——— Reallexikon der Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1913).
SCHNEIDER, M.: El origen musical de los animales símbolos (Barcelona, 1946).
— *Wandernde Melodien’. Archiv für Musikforschung, iii (1938).
BIBLIOGRAPHY 481
ScHNEIDER, M.: ‘Ethnologische Musikforschung’, in Preuss and Trimborn,
Lehrbuch der Völkerkunde (2nd edition, Stuttgart, 1956).
——— La Danza de espadas у la tarantela (Barcelona, 1948).
— ‘Los Cantos de lluvia'. Anuario musical, iv (1949).
— ‘Die Bedeutung der Stimme in den alten Kulturen’. Tribus (Jahrbuch des
Lindenmuseums), ii-iii (Stuttgart, 1953).
— Singende Steine (Kassel, 1955).
—— La Philosophie de la musique chez les peuples non européens (Paris, 1956).
— ‘Die historischen Grundlagen der musikalischen Symbolik’. Die Musik-
forschung, iv (1951).
STUMPF, C.: Die Anfänge der Musik (Leipzig, 1911).
WALLASCHEK, R.: Primitive Music (London, 1893).
(üi) Books and Articles on the Music of particular Peoples or Regions
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Nord'. Journal des Américanistes, xxiii (1931).
BzLArEV, V.: ‘The Folk-Music of Georgia’. The Musical Quarterly, xix (1933).
DENSMORE, FRANCES: Chippewa Music (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin
45) (Washington, 1910).
Nootka and Quileute Music (Bulletin 124) (Washington, 1939).
— Mandan and Hidatsa Music (Bulletin 80) (Washington, 1923).
—— Papago Music (Bulletin 90) (Washington, 1929).
—— Music of the Indians of British Columbia (Bulletin 136) (Washington, 1943).
— Pawnee Music (Bulletin 93) (Washington, 1929).
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EMSHEIMER, E.: ‘Schamanentrommel und Trommelbau’. Ethnos ix (1946).
HORNBOSTEL, E. M. von: ‘Die Musik auf den Nordwestlichen Salomon Inseln °.
R. Thurnwald, Forschungen auf den Salomon Insein (Berlin, 1912).
Kirsy, P.: ‘The Musical Practices of the Bushmen’. Bantu Studies, x (1936).
— The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa (Oxford,
1936).
Kunst, J.: Music in Nias (Leiden, 1939).
— Music in Flores (Leiden, 1942).
Mayer, R. F. H.: ‘Sonnenverehrung in Neu-Guinea’. Anthropos, xxviii (1933).
SCHMIDT, W.: ‘Uber Musik und Gesänge der Karesau-Papuas’. Kongress-
bericht der internationalen Musikgesellschaft (Vienna, 1910).
SCHNEIDER, M.: ‘Gesänge aus Uganda’. Archiv für Musikforschung, ii (1937).
— ‘A propósito del influjo arabe’. Anuario Musical, i (1946).
— ‘Lieder ágyptischer Bauern’. Festschrift fiir Kodaly (Budapest, 1942).
—— ‘La Canción de сипа’. Anuario Musical, iii (1948).
— — *Phonetische u. metrische Korrelationen bei gesprochenen и. gesungenen
Ewe Texten'. Archiv für vergleichende Phonetik (1941).
— ‘Га Relation entre la musique et le langage dans la chanson chinoise".
Anuario Musical, v (1950).
-—— 'Zambomba und Pandero’. Spanische Forschungen, i (1954).
—— ‘Uber die Verbreitung afrikanischer Chorformen'. Zeitschrift für Ethno-
logie, \xix (1937).
——— * Zur Trommelsprache der Duala'. Anthropos, xlvii (1952).
SPECK, G.: Ceremonial Songs of the Creek and Yuchi Indians (Philadelphia,
1911).
STEINMANN, А.: ‘Uber anthropomorphe Schlitztrommeln in Indonesien’.
Anthropos, xxxiii (1938).
TESSMANN, G.: Die Bubi auf Fernando Po (Darmstadt, 1923).
482 BIBLIOGRAPHY
VAISAENEN, A. O.: Wogulische und ostjakische Melodien (Helsinki, 1937).
WionA, W.: ‘Alpenländische Liedweisen der Frühzeit’. Festschrift für John
Meier (Lahe, 1949).
WITTE, P.: ‘Lieder und Gesänge der Ewe-Neger'. Anthropos, i (1906).
CHAPTER II
(Numbers in brackets, other than dates, refer to serial entries in the Glossary of
Characters, p. 190. Entries not mentioned in the text are marked f.)
(а) SOURCES AND TRANSCRIPTIONS
CHEN, C. H. and S. H.: The Flower Drum and other Chinese Songs (New York,
1943).
Chingshan Chynpuu (137) (1673).
COLLECTION PELLIOT, No. 3808, Bibliothéque nationale de France (a Tarng
musical MS.).
GRAVES, S. M., and FARLEY, M. F.: Min River Boat Songs (New York, 1946).
Jacoss, A. G.: The Chinese-American Song and Games Book (New York, 1944).
JIANG Км: Bairshyr Dawren Gecheu, Syh Jiuann, Syhbuh Tsongkan (83)
(Shanghai, 1929).
Ju Suu: Үй Jingjuann Tongjiee Shyyueh Pian (110). Melodies for 12 of the
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Ju Tzavvuu: Yuehliuh Chyuanshu (85) (1595).
TKORNFELD, P. Fritz: Die tonale Struktur chinesischer Musik; St. Gabrieler
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SHYONG PERNGLAI: Sehpuu (198).
Wugaang Chynpuu (136) (1546).
(b) BOOKS AND ARTICLES
(* indicates presence of musical examples.)
*AALST, J. VAN: Chinese Music (Shanghai, 1884).
*AMIOT, PERE: Mémoire sur la musique des Chinois tant anciens que modernes
(Paris, 1779).
BAZIN AINE, A. P. L.: Théátre chinois (Paris, 1838).
Le Siécle des Youen (Paris, 1854).
*Bose, F.: Musikalische Völkerkunde (Freiburg i. Br., 1953).
*CHAO WEI-PANG: *Yang-ko, the Rural Theatre in Ting-hsien, Hopei’. Folklore
Studies, iii (Peiping, 1944), pp. 17-40.
*CHIANG UN-KAI: K'ouen K'iu—le théátre chinois ancien (Paris, 1932).
CouRANT, M.: La Langue chinoise parlée (Paris, 1914).
*—— — ‘Essai sur la musique classique des Chinois avec un appendice relatif à la
musique coréenne'. Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavignac and L. de La
Laurencie), 17* partie, i (Paris, 1913), pp. 77-241.
CREEL, Н. G.: The Birth of China (New York, 1937), p. 99.
*CROSSLEY-HOLLAND, P. C.: ‘Chinese Music’. Grove's Dictionary of Music and
Musicians (ed. E. Blom), ii (London, 1954), pp. 219-48.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 483
*DECHEVRENS, A.: ‘Etude sur le systéme musical chinois'. Sammelbdnde der
internationalen Musikgesellschaft, ii (1901), pp. 484—551.
EASTLAKE, Е. W.: ‘The “Sho” or Chinese Reed Organ’. China Review, xi
(Hong Kong, 1882-3), pp. 33-41.
ECKARDT, H.: ‘Chinesische Musik, П. Vom Ende der Han-Zeit bis zum Ende
der Sui-Zeit (220-618). Der Einbruch westlicher Musik'. Die Musik in
Geschichte und Gegenwart, ii (ed. F. Blume) (Kassel and Basel, 1952),
cols. 1205-7; ‘III. Die T'ang-Zeit (618-907). Die Rolle der westlandischer
(Hu-) Musik. Die Zehn Orchester. Die Musik der Zwei Abteilungen.
Akademien und Konservatorien'. Ibid., cols. 1207-16.
FARMER, H. G.: ‘Reciprocal influences in music 'twixt the Far and Middle East’.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (London, 1934), pp. 327-42.
FERNALD, H. E.: ‘Ancient Chinese Musical Instruments’, Museum Journal
(Philadelphia, 1936); reprinted in Hsiao Ch’ien, A Harp with a Thousand
Strings (London, 1944), pp. 395-440.
*Fiscuer, E.: Beiträge zur Erforschung der chinesischen Musik (Leipzig, 1911);
reprinted in Sammelbánde der internationalen Musikgesellschaft, xii (1911),
pp. 153-206.
GIBSON, E. H.: ‘Music and Musical Instruments of Shang’. Journal of the North
China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, lxviii (Shanghai, 1937), pp. 8-18.
GOODRICH, L. C.: ‘The Chinese Shéng and Western Musical Instruments’.
China Magazine, xvii (New York, 1941), pp. 10, 11, 14.
GRANET, М.: Fétes et chansons anciennes de la Chine (Paris, 1919).
GROUSSET, R.: L’ Asie orientale des origines au ХҮ siècle (Paris, 1946).
GuLik, R. H. vaN: The Lore of the Chinese Lute (Tokyo, 1940).
— ‘Brief Note on the Cheng, the Chinese Small Cither'. Toyo Ongaku Kenkya,
ix (Tokyo, 1951), pp. 10-25.
1—— ‘The Lore of the Chinese Lute’. Monumenta Nipponica, vii, 1/2 (Tokyo,
1951), pp. 300-10.
HOFFMANN, A.: Die Lieder des Li Үй (Cologne, 1950).
*HOoRNBOSTEL, E. M. von: ‘Ch’ao-t’ien-tze (Eine chinesische Notation und ihre
Ausführungen)'. Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, i (1919), pp. 477-98.
*HstAo SHusIEN: ‘Га Chanson populaire chinoise’. Sinologica, i (Basel, 1947),
pp. 65-86.
IN FAaLUU: 'Tarng-Sonq Dahcheu jy Laiyuan jyi chyi Tzuujy'. Wuuchang
Hwajong Dahshyue Gwoshyue Yanjiou Luennwen Juankan, i. 4 (Tali, 1945)
(104).
KARLGREN, B.: ‘The Date of the Early Dong-so’n Culture’. Bulletin of the
Museum of Far Eastern Archaeology, xiv (Stockholm, 1942), pp. 1-28.
Коттмек, Е. A.: ‘The Musical Significance of Archaic Chinese Jades of the Pi-
Disk Type’. Artibus Asiae, xvi. 1/2 (Ascona, 1953), pp. 25-50.
Leu BuHwE! (15): Leu-Shy Chuenchiou (14), v Guuyueh (61); vi Inliuh (63).
*Levis, J. H.: The Foundations of Chinese Musical Art (Peiping, 1936).
tLiou CHERNGFUU: Dictionary of Music (in Chinese) Inyueh Tsyrdean (Shanghai,
1936).
Liou Su: Shyming (46).
T*MaA Hiao-Ts'IUN: ‘La Musique chinoise’. La Musique des origines à nos jours
(Norbert Dufourcq) (Paris, 1946), pp. 438-46.
MAHILLON, V. CH.: Catalogue descriptif et analytique du musée instrumental du
Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles (Ghent, 1880 and 1893).
—— Annuaire du Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles (Ghent, 1886 and 1890).
(Contains the conclusion of the catalogue and an account of experiments
on the /iuAleu.)
484 BIBLIOGRAPHY
MOULE, A. C.: ‘A list of the Musical and other Sound-Producing Instruments
of the Chinese'. Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic
Society, xxxix (Shanghai, 1908), pp. 1—160.
*MOULE, G. E.: *Notes on the Ting-chi, or half-yearly sacrifice to Confucius
(with an appendix on the music by A. C. Moule). Journal of the
North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, xxxiii (Shanghai, 1901),
pp. 37-73.
NoRrIND, T.: ‘Beiträge zur chinesischen Instrumentengeschichte'. Svensk Tid-
skrift fór Musikforskning, xv (1933), pp. 48-83.
PICKEN, L.: ‘The Origin of the Short Lute’. Galpin Society Journal, viii (London,
1955), pp. 32-42.
REINHARD, K.: Chinesische Musik (Eisenach and Kassel, 1956).
RoBINSON, K.: 'Chinesische Musik, I. Geschichtliche Entwicklung von der
Frühzeit (Shang-Dynastie) bis zum Ende der Han-Zeit (1523 a. Chr. bis
206 p. Chr.) (Deutsche Übers. und Bearb.: Hans Eckardt)'. Die Musik in
Geschichte und Gegenwart, ii (ed. F. Blume) (Kassel and Basel, 1953),
cols. 1195-1205.
SHIAH CHERNGDAO: 'Bairshyr Gecheu Parngpuu Biann'. Yannjing Shyuebaw
(113) (Peiping, 1932).
Shujing (91): Shuenn Dean (92); Yushu Yihjyi (93).
SouEN K'arri: * L'origine et le développement du théâtre des marionnettes chi-
noises'. Bulletin du centre franco-chinois d'études sinologiques (194), i
(Pekin, 1944), pp. 81-105 (in Chinese with summary in French).
*SOULIE DE MORANT, G., and GAILHARD, A.: Théâtre et musique modernes еп
Chine (Paris, 1926).
STANLEY, A.: 'Putoshan'. Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal
Asiatic Society, xlvi (Shanghai, 1915), pp. 1-18.
SYMAA CHIAN (16): Shyyjih (17), xxiv, f. 37 v°. Translated in R. H. van Gulik:
The Lore of the Chinese Lute (Tokyo, 1940).
*TANABE, H.: Nihon Ongaku Kowa (Tokyo, 1926).
TREFZGER, H.: ‘Das Musikleben der Tang-Zeit'. Sinica, xiii (Stuttgart, 1938).
*Т'омс Fei: Fundamentals of Chinese Music (195) (Shanghai, 1927) (in Chinese).
WALEY, À.: The Book of Songs (London, 1937).
The Life and Times of Po-Chü-I (London, 1949), pp. 150-5.
*WANG KWANG-CHI: ‘Uber die chinesische klassische Oper 1530-1860’. Orient
et Occident, Bibliothéque Sino-Internationale (Geneva, 1934).
WATERMAN, К. A., LICHTENWANGER, W., HERRMANN, V. H., PoLEMAN, Н. IL,
and Новвѕ, C.; ‘Bibliography of Asiatic Musics, Eleventh and Twelfth
Instalments, D. China’. Notes, vii, 3 and 4 (New York, 1950), pp. 415-23,
613-21.
*YANG INLIOU: Jonggwo Inyueh Shyygang (Shanghai, 1953).
Yili (37), vii.
CHAPTER Ш
(Numbers in brackets, other than dates, refer to serial entries in the Glossary of
Characters, p. 190. Entries not mentioned in the text are marked T.)
(a) TRANSCRIPTIONS
Davison, A. T., and APEL, W.: Historical Anthology of Music, i (Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1947).
GIRONCOURT, G. DE: ‘Motifs de chants cambodgiens’. Bulletin de la Société des
Etudes indochinoises, Nouvelle Série, xvi, No. 1 (Saigon, 1941), pp. 51-105.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 485
GRONEMAN, J., and LAND, J. P. N.: De Gamélan te Jogjákartá (Amsterdam, 1890).
HASLUND-CHRISTENSEN, H., and EMSHEIMER, E.: The Music of the Mongols
(Stockholm, 1943).
Ken, C. S.: ‘Die koreanische Musik’. Sammlung musikwissenschaftlicher Abhand-
lungen, xvii (Strasbourg, 1935).
Kryose, Y.: Six Japanese Folk Songs from Shinano District (Tokyo, 1937).
Konoye, Н. and N.: Etenraku (180) (Tokyo, 1935).
McPHEE, C.: Balinese Ceremonial Music Transcribed for Two Pianos, Four Hands:
Pemoengkah; Gambangan; Taboe Teloe (New York, 1940).
MATSUDAIRA, Y.: Seven Japanese Songs from Nambu District (Tokyo, 1937).
Sarons, Y.: Nihon Minyo Taikan, Kantó-hen (Tokyo, 1953).
SEELIG, P. J.: Siamesische Musik (Bandoeng, 1932).
STUMPF, C.: ‘Mongolische Gesänge’. Sammelbdnde für vergleichende Musik-
wissenschaft, i (1922), pp. 107-12.
TAKEDA, C.: ‘The Songs of the Mongols, Notations and Explanations’. Тдуб
Ongaku Kenkyü, ix (Tokyo, 1951), pp. 147-54; and x-xi (Tokyo, 1952),
pp. 67—73 (in Japanese).
TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE: Kashmiri Müsiqi, i (Srinagar, n.d.) (in Urdu).
Tokyo ACADEMY OF Music: Collection of Japanese Koto Music (Tokyo, 1888).
TORHOUT, М. DE, and HuMBERT-SAUVAGEOT: ‘Dix-huits chants et poèmes mon-
gols’. Bibliothèque musicale du musée Guimet, 17? série, iv (Paris, 1937).
Tricon, A., and BELLAN, CH.: Chansons cambodgiennes (Saigon, 1921).
(b) BOOKS AND ARTICLES
(* indicates presence of musical examples.)
AUBOYER, J.: ‘L’Indochine’. L’Asie orientale des origines au XV* siécle (R.
Grousset) (Paris, 1941).
*Bosg, F.: Musikalische Völkerkunde (Freiburg i. Br., 1953).
CHARDIN, P. T., DE, and Рег WEN-CHUNG: Le Néolithique de la Chine (Pekin,
1944).
ConpDominas, G.: ‘Le Lithophone préhistorique de Ndut Lieng Krak’. Bulletin
de l'école francaise de l'extréme orient, xlv (Paris, 1951), pp. 359-92.
*CouRANT, M.: ‘Essai historique sur la musique classique des Chinois avec un
appendice relatif à la musique coréenne'. Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavi-
gnac and L. de La Laurencie) 17? partie, i (Paris, 1913), pp. 211-20.
—— ‘Japon, Notice historique’. Ibid., pp. 242-56.
COVARRUBIAS, M.: Island of Bali (London, 1937).
*CROSSLEY-HOLLAND, P. C.: ‘Tibetan Music’. Grove's Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, viii (London, 1954), pp. 456-64.
*DEMIÉVILLE, P.: Hóbógirin (Tokyo, 1930); see article ‘Bombai’.
*ECKARDT, A.: ‘Koreanische Musik’. Mitteilungen der deutschen Gesellschaft
für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, xxiv B (Tokyo, 1930).
Euis, A. J.: ‘Musical Scales of Various Nations’. Journal of the Society of Arts,
27 March (London, 1885).
*EMSHEIMER, E.: ‘Uber das Vorkommen und die Anwendungsart der Maul-
trommel in Sibirien und Zentral-Asien'. Ethnos, vi (Stockholm, 1941), pp.
109-27.
FITZGERALD, C. P.: The Tower of Five Glories (London, 1941).
*FRANCKE, А. H.: ‘La musique au Thibet'. Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavignac
and L. de La Laurencie), 17* partie, v (Paris, 1922). pp. 3084—93.
FORER НАМЕМРОВЕ, C. VON: The Naked Nagas (Calcutta, 1946).
486 BIBLIOGRAPHY
*GIRONCOURT, G. DE: ‘Recherches de géographie musicale en Indochine’.
Bulletin de la Société des Études indochinoises, Nouvelle Série, xvii, No. 4
(Saigon, 1942), pp. 7-174.
Go.ousew, V.: ‘L’Age du bronze au Tonkin et dans le Nord-Annam’. Bulletin
de l'école française de l'extréme orient, xxix (Hanoy, 1929), рр. 146.
T*HaniCH-SCHNEIDER, E.: ‘Japanische Impressionen, I’. Musica (Kassel, 1949),
No. 3, pp. 85—90.
1—— ‘Japanische Impressionen, П’. Ibid., No. 4, pp. 129-36.
{—— ‘Japanische Impressionen, III’. Ibid., No. 6, pp. 205-9.
t—— ‘А Survey of the Remains of Japanese Court Music’. Ethnos, xvi (Stock-
holm, 1951), pp. 105-24.
ye *Koromogae, one of the Saibara of Japanese Court Music’. Monumenta
Nipponica, viii, 1/2 (Tokyo, 1952), pp. 398-406.
* —— ‘The Present Condition of Japanese Court Music’. The Musical Quarterly,
xxxix (1953), pp. 49—74.
{—— The Rhythmical Patterns in Gagaku and Bugaku (Leiden, 1954).
*"Havasur, K.: Swei-Tarng Yannyuehdiaw Yanjiou (181) (Shanghai, 1936)
(Chinese translation from the Japanese).
*Hoop, M.: The Nuclear Theme as a Determinant of Patet in Javanese Music
(Groningen and Djakarta, 1954).
*HUMBERT-LAVERGNE, M.: ‘La musique à travers la vie laotienne’. Zeitschrift
für vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, ii (1934), pp. 14—19.
*Ноттом, J. H.: The Sema Nagas (London, 1921).
*HWANG YEOUDIH: ‘Lienyang Yauren-di Inyueh'. Minswu, 1 (4) (Canton, 1942),
pp. 28-35.
IN FAALUU: 'Tsorng Lihshyy-shanq Luenn Shinjiang Gewuu’. Shanghae Jong-
iang Ryhbaw (172) (Shanghai, 12 December 1947).
*JAPANESE BUDDHIST Music: See Toyo Ongaku Kenkyü, xii-xiii (Tokyo, 1954).
*КмозР, G.: “Histoire de la musique dans l'Indo-Chine'. Encyclopédie de la
musique (Lavignac and L. de La Laurencie), 17? partie, v (Paris, 1922),
pp. 3100-46. |
*La Birmanie'. Ibid., pp. 3094—99.
*KOLINSKI, Е. M.: ‘Die Musik der Primitivstámme auf Malaka usw.'. Anthropos,
xxv (Vienna, 1930), pp. 585-648.
*KUNsT, J.: A Study on Papuan Music (Weltevreden, 1931).
Over zeldsame Fluiten en veelstemmige Muziek in het Ngadaen Nageh-
Gebied (West-Flores) (Batavia, 1931).
—— De Toonkunst van Java (The Hague, 1934).
— ‘A Musicological Argument for Cultural Relationship between Indonesia—
Probably the Isle of Java—and Central Africa'. Proceedings of the Musical
Association, lxii (London, 1936), pp. 57-76.
—— ‘Music in Nias’. Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, xxxviii (Leiden,
1940), pp. 1-89.
—— ‘Music in Flores’. Ibid., supplement to vol. xlii (Leiden, 1942).
—— Music in Java (2 vols.) (The Hague, 1949).
— ‘Kulturhistorische Beziehungen zwischen dem Balkan und Indonesien’.
Mededeeling No. CIII, Afdeling Culturele en Physische Anthropologie No. 46
Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen (Amsterdam, 1953).
*Kuwsr, J. and KuNsr-WzLv, С. J. A.: De Toonkunst van Bali (Weltevreden,
1925).
*KUROSAWA, T.: ‘The Musical Bow of the Bununs [sic] Tribe in Formosa and
Suggestion as to the Origin of the Pentatonic Scale’. Toyo Ongaku Kenkyü,
x-xi (Tokyo, 1952), pp. 18-32.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 487
Коттмев, Е. A.: ‘Nochmals die Steinzeit-Lithophone von Annam’. Die Musik-
forschung, vi (1953), pp. 1-8.
*LANGE, D. DE, and SNELLEMAN, J. F.: ‘La Musique et les instruments de musique
dans les Indes orientales néerlandaises'. Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavi-
gnac and L. de La Laurencie), 17* partie, v (Paris, 1922), pp. 3147—78.
*МСРНЕЕ, C.: ^ The Balinese wajang koelit and its music’. Djawa, xvi (Jogjákartá,
1936).
—— ‘Angkloeng gamelans in Bali’. Ibid. xvii Jogjakarta, 1937).
— A House т Bali (New York, 1944).
—— ‘The Five-Tone Gamelan Music of Bali’. The Musical Quarterly, xxxv
(1949), pp. 250-81.
*MOREUX, S.: ‘La Musique japonaise’. La Musique des origines à nos jours
(Norbert Dufourcq) (Paris, 1946), рр. 446-54.
*MUELLER, L.: ‘Einige Notizen über die japanische Musik’. Mitteilungen
der deutschen Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens in Tokio,
i. 6 (Tokyo, 1874), pp. 13-20; i. 8 (Tokyo, 1875), pp. 41-48; i. 9 (Tokyo,
1876), pp. 19-35.
*MYERS, C. S.: ‘A Study of Sarawak Music’. Sammelbdnde der internationalen
Musikgesellschaft, xv (1914), pp. 296-308.
NiPPOLD, W.: Rassen- und Kulturgeschichte der Negrito-Vélker Siidost-Asiens
(Gottingen, 1936).
Pert, N.: ‘Etudes sur le drame lyrique japonais’. Bulletin de l'école francaise de
l'extréme orient, ix (Hanoy, 1909), pp. 251, 707, and succeeding volumes.
ы ‘Essai sur les gammes japonaises’. Bibliothéque musicale du musée Gui-
met, 2* série, i (Paris, 1934).
*PHRA CHEN DURIYANGA: Siamese Music (Bangkok, n.d.).
*PIGGoTT, Е. T.: The Music and Musical Instruments of Japan (Yokohama and
London, 1893 and 1909).
PLAYFAIR, A.: The Garos (London, 1909).
RarrLES, T. S.: The History of Java, i (London, 1817), p. 472.
*Rock, J. F.: ‘The Romance of 2K’AMA-1GYU--MIGKYI’. Bulletin de
l'école francaise de l'extréme orient, xxxix (Hanoy, 1939), pp. 1-152.
*SACHS, C.: ‘Les Instruments de musique de Madagascar’. Travaux et mémoires
de l'institut d'ethnologie, xxviii (Paris, 1938).
ЅАМІМА, F.: Histoire des Miao (Hong Kong, 1924).
SCHAEFENER, A.: ‘Une importante découverte archéologique: Le Lithophone de
Ndut Lieng Krak (Vietnam)'. La Revue de musicologie, xxxiii? année, N.s.:
Nos. 97-98 (1951), pp. 1-19.
SCHLESINGER, K.: The Greek Aulos (London, 1939).
*SICHEL, A.: * Histoire de la musique des Malgaches'. Encyclopédie de la musique
(Lavignac and L. de Та Laurencie), 17° partie, v (Paris, 1922), pp. 3226-33.
*SOMERVELL, T. H.: ‘The Music of Tibet’. Musical Times, lxiv (1923),
p. 108.
SouEN К”АІ-тІ: ! L'origine et le développement du théâtre des marionnettes chi-
noises'. Bulletin du centre franco-chinois d'études sinologiques, i (Pekin,
1944), pp. 81-105 (194).
*SruMPr, C.: ‘Tonsystem und Musik der Siamesen'. Sammelbdnde für ver-
gleichende Musikwissenschaft, i (1922), pp. 129-77.
*TANABE, H.: Nihon Ongaku Kowa (Tokyo, 1926) (in Japanese).
Japanese Music (Tokyo, 1936).
Traynor, L. M., and Кіѕнве, S.: ‘On the Four Unknown Pipes of the Shó
(Mouth Organ) used in Ancient Japanese Court Music’. Тоуд Ongaku
Kenkyu, ix (Tokyo, 1951), pp. 22-53.
488 BIBLIOGRAPHY
*TUCKER, A. N.: Tribal Music and Dancing in the Southern Sudan (Africa)
(London, n.d.).
WADDELL, L. A.: The Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism (Cambridge, 1934).
WaLEY, A.: The № Plays of Japan (London, 1921).
—— The Book of Songs (London, 1937).
WATERMAN, R. A., LICHTENWANGER, W., HERRMANN, V. H., PoLEMAN, H. I.,
and Hosss, C.: ‘Bibliography of Asiatic Musics, Ninth Installment, iv.
South-east Asia, A. General, B. Burma, C. Siam, D. Indo-China, E. Malay
and Malay Archipelago (East Indies), F. Philippine Islands’. Notes, vii. 1
(New York, 1949), pp. 84-98.
—— '[bid., Tenth Installment, v. Central East Asia, A. General, B. Japan, C.
Korea'. Notes, vii. 2 (New York, 1950), pp. 265-79.
—— ‘Ibid., Thirteenth Instailment, vi. Central Asia and Siberia, A. General, B.
Tibetans, C. Mongols, D. Turkic Peoples, E. Palaeo-Siberian, Samoyeds,
Tungus, and Manchus’. Notes, viii. 1 (New York, 1950), pp. 100-18.
—— ‘Ibid., Fourteenth Installment, Addenda, I. General, II. Southwest Asia,
III. India, IV. Southeast Asia, V. Central East Asia, VI. Central Asia and
Siberia'. Notes, viii. 2 (New York, 1950), 99. 322-9.
ZOETE, B. DE, and Spies, W.: Dance and Drama in Bali (London, 1938).
CHAPTER IV
THE MUSIC OF INDIA
(i) Texts
DAMODARA: Samgitadarpana. First two chapters, introduction, text and English
translation by Arnold A. Bake. Bibliothéque musicale du Musée Guimet
(Paris, 1930).
NANDIKESVARA: Abhinayadarpana. Text and translation edited by Manmohan
Ghosh, Calcutta Sanskrit Series, v (Calcutta, 1934).
RAMAMATYA: Svaramelakalánidhi. Edited with introduction and translation by
M. S. Ramaswami Aiyar (Annamalai University, 1932).
ARNGADEVA: Sangítaratnákara. Sanskrit text with two commentaries and trans-
lation of the beginning of the first book by C. Kunhan Raja (Adyar Library,
Madras, 1945).
SoMANATHA: Rágavibodha. Edited with introduction and translation by M. S.
Ramaswami Aiyar (Madras, 1923).
Simon, A.: ‘Das Ризраяйга. Mit Einleitung und Übersetzung". Abhandlungen
der Kgl. Bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, i. Kl., xxiii (1909).
(ii) Notations
RABINDRANATH TAGORE: Twenty-six Songs. With introduction by Arnold A.
Bake and Philippe Stern. Bibliothéque musicale du Musée Guimet (Paris,
1935). о
КАТАМ Devi: Thirty Indian Songs from the Panjab and Kashmir. With an intro-
duction and translations by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and a foreword by
R. Tagore (London, 1913).
Simon, R.: ‘Die Notationen des Somanatha’. Sitzungsberichte d. philos.-philol.
u. d. histor. Klasse d. Kgl. Bayerischen Akademie d. Wissenschaften (Munich,
1903). nen
SOURENDRO MOHUN TAGORE: Six Principal Ragas. With a brief view of Hindu
Music (Calcutta, 1877).
BIBLIOGRAPHY 489
(iii) General
ABRAHAM, O., and v. HoRNBOSTEL, E. M.: ‘Phonographierte indische Melo-
dien'. Sammelbdnde der internationalen Musikgesellschaft, v (1903-4).
CLEMENTS, E.: Introduction to the Study of Indian Music (London, 1913).
DANIÉLOU, A.: Northern Indian Music. 2 vols. (London, 1949 and 1954).
Fox SrRANGWAYS, А. H.: The Music of Hindostan (Oxford, 1914).
——— ‘Indian Music’. Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th edition,
iv (London, 1954), pp. 456-60 (revised by A. A. Bake).
—— ‘Music’. The Legacy of India, ed. by С.Т. Garratt (Oxford, 1937).
FvzEE-RAHAMIM, A. B.: The Music of India (London, 1926).
Grosset, J.: ‘Inde, histoire de la musique depuis l'origine jusqu'à nos jours’.
Encyclopédie de la Musique (Lavignac and L. de La Laurencie), 1" partie, i
(Paris, 1913), pp. 257-376.
Мокевл, D. P.: Indian Music: An Introduction (Bombay, 1945).
PINGLE, B. A.: Indian Music (Bombay, 1898).
PoPLEY, A. H.: The Music of India (London, 1921).
RANADE, G. H. Hindustani Music (Poona, 1939).
SHRIPADA BANDOPADHYAYA: The Music of India (Bombay, 1945).
(iv) Special Subjects
(a) Vedic
FADDEGON, B.: ‘Studies on the Sámaveda'. Part I. Verhandelingen der Kon.
Ned. Akad. v. Wetensch. Nieuwe Reeks, lvii, No. 1 (Amsterdam, 1951).
FELBER, E., and GEIGER, B.: ‘Die indische Musik der vedischen und klassischen
Zeit’. Sitzungsberichte der Kais. Akademie d. Wissenschaften in Wien.
Philosophisch-historische Klasse, 170. Bd., 7. Abhandlung (Vienna, 1912).
Haus, M.: ‘Uber das Wesen und den Wert des vedischen Akzentes'. Abhand-
lungen d. Bayer. Akademie d. Wissenschaften, xiii. 2. (1874).
Ноост, J. M. VAN DER: The Vedic Chant studied in its textual and melodic forms
(Wageningen, 1929).
(b) Scales
DaANiÉLOU, A.: Introduction to the Study of Musical Scales (London, 1943).
Fox SrRANGWAYS, А. H.: ‘The Gándhára Grama’. Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society (1935), pp. 689-96.
MEHTA, MANHARRAM: Twenty-two Shrutis and two Gramas of Indian Music
(Bombay, 1938).
RAMASWAMI Aryar, M. S.: ‘The Question of Gramas’. Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society (1936), pp. 629-39.
SHRIPADA BANDOPADHYAY: The Origin of Raga (Delhi, 1946).
STERN, P.: ‘La musique indoue. Les Ragas’. Revue Musicale, iii (1923).
(c) Instruments
ManctL-DusBois, C.: Les instruments de musique de l'Inde ancienne (Paris, 1941).
Sacus, C.: ‘Die Musikinstrumente Indiens und Indonesiens’. Handbücher der
Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. (Berlin, 2nd ed., 1923).
490 BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER V
ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA?
G) Sources (Iconography)
BANKS, E. J.: Bismaya (New York, 1912).
Ворсе, E. A. WALLIS: Assyrian Sculptures in the British Museum . . . Reign of
Ashur-Nasir-Pal, 885-860 в.с.... (London, 1914).
GALPIN, F. W., The Music of the Sumerians and their Immediate Successors, the
Babylonians and Assyrians (Cambridge, 1937).
KINSKY, GEORG: Geschichte der Musik in Bildern (Leipzig, 1929).
LANGDON, STEPHEN: Excavations at Kish (London, 1925).
MORGAN, J. DE: Délégation en Perse (Paris, 1901).
OPPENHEIM, M. F. von: Tell Halaf (London, 1933).
Woo Ley, LEONARD: Ur Excavations (London, 1934).
(ii) Books and Articles
DUCHESNE, J., and GUILLEMIN, M.: ‘La Harpe en Asie occidentale ancienne'.
Revue d’ Assyriologie, xxxiv (1937).
: ‘Sur l’origine asiatique de la cithare grecque’, L' Antiquité Classique, iv
(1935).
FARMER, Henry George: ‘The Music of the Sumerians’. Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society (1939).
—— ‘Persian Music’. Grove’s Dictionary of Music, 5th edition, vi (London,
1954), pp. 676-82.
—— ‘Pandur or Pantur’. Grove’s Dictionary of Music, vi, р. 535.
—— ‘Pandoura’. Grove’s Dictionary of Music, vi, p. 534.
GALPIN, Е. W.: The Music of the Sumerians . . . (Cambridge, 1937).
—— ‘The Sumerian Harp of Ur’. Music and Letters, x (1929).
—— ‘Babylonian Music’. Grove's Dictionary of Music i, pp. 282-3.
GENOUILLAC, Н. ре: ‘Hymnes Sumériens . . .’. Revue d’ Assyriologie (1929).
LANGDON, STEPHEN: Babylonian Liturgies (Paris, 1913).
—— Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms (Paris, 1909).
Tammuz and Ishtar (Oxford, 1914).
—— Sumerian Liturgies and Psalms (Philadelphia, 1919).
— ‘Babylonian and Hebrew Musical Terms’. Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, 1921.
— Babylonian Penitential Psalms (Paris, 1927).
PELAGAUD, FERNAND: ‘Syriens et Phrygiens’. Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavi-
gnac and L. de La Laurencie), 1° partie, i (Paris, 1913), pp. 49-66.
Ричснез, T. G.: ‘Babylonian and Assyrian Music’. Hastings’ Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics (Edinburgh, 1917).
Sacus, Curt: ‘Die Entzifferung einer babylonischen Notenschrift’. Sitzungs-
berichte der PreuBischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse,
xviii (1924).
—— ‘Ein babylonischer Hymnus’. Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, vi (1925).
— Geist und Werden der Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1929).
—— ‘The Mystery of the Babylonian Notation’. Musical Quarterly, xxvii
(1941).
1 A very complete bibliography is to found in the Music Library Association
Notes, v (Washington, 1948), pp. 178-86.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 491
STAINER, JoHN: The Music of the Bible . . . with Additional Illustrations and
Supplementary Notes by F. W. Galpin (London, 1914).
THUREAU-DANGIN, F.: ‘Le Rituel du Kalu’. Revue 4’ Assyriologie (1920).
VIROLLEAUD, C., and PÉLAGAUD, F.: ‘Assyrie-Chaldée. La Musique Assyro-
Babylonienne'. Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavignac and L. de La Laurencie),
17? partie, i (Paris, 1913), pp. 35-48.
WEGNER, Max: Die Musikinstrumente des alten Orients (Münster, 1950).
WooLLey, LEONARD: Ur Excavations (London, 1934).
CHAPTER VI
ANCIENT EGYPT
(i) Sources (Iconography)
BORCHARDT, L.: Denkmäler des alten Reiches (Berlin, 1927).
CAPART, JEAN: Documents pour servir à l'étude de l'art égyptien (Paris, 1927
et seq.).
CHAMPOLLION, J. F.: Monuments de I’ Egypte et de la Nubie (Paris, 1835-45).
Kinsky, GEORG: Geschichte der Musik in Bildern (Leipzig, 1929).
Kuss, Luise: (i) ‘Die Reliefs des alten Reiches’; (2) ‘Die Reliefs und Malereien
des mittleren Reiches’; (3) ‘Die Reliefs und Malereien des neuen Reiches’.
Abhandlungen d. Heidelberger Akademie d. Wissenschaften. Phil.-hist.
Klasse, (Heidelberg, 1915 et seq.)
ROSELLINI, IPPorrro: I Monumenti dell’ Egitto e della Nubia (Florence, 1832-44).
Sacus, Совт: Die Musikinstrumente des alten Agyptens (Berlin, 1921).
STEINDORFE, G.: Die Kunst der Ägypter (Leipzig, 1928).
WEIGALL, ARTHUR: Ancient Egyptian Works of Art (London, 1924).
(ii) Books and Articles
BAILLET, AUGUSTE and Јо: ‘La Chanson chez les Égyptiens’. Mélanges Mas-
pero, i, Orient ancien (Cairo, 1934).
BORCHARDT, L.: ‘Die Rahmentrommel im Museum zu Като’. Mélanges
Maspero, i, Orient ancien (Cairo, 1934).
CAPART, JEAN: Les Débuts de l'art en Égypte (Brussels, 1903).
CLossoN, E.: ‘Une Nouvelle Série de hautbois égyptiens antiques’. Festschrift
für Guido Adler (Berlin, 1930). _
ERMAN, ADOLF: Die Literatur der Agypter (Leipzig, 1923).
FARMER, HENRY GEORGE: ‘Ancient Egyptian Instruments of Music’. Trans-
actions: Glasgow University Oriental Society, vi (1931).
—— ‘The Evolution of the Tunbur or Pandore’. Transactions: Glasgow Univer-
sity Oriental Society, v (1925).
—— ‘Egyptian Music’. Grove’s Dictionary of Music, Sth edition, ii (London,
1954), pp. 891-7.
FAULKNER, R. A.: ‘The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys’. Mélanges Maspero,
i, Orient ancien (Cairo, 1934).
HERON-ALLEN, E.: The ' Nefer’ Sign. Concerning the hitherto accepted identifica-
tion of an Egyptian hieroglyph as an instrument of music (Selsey, 1941).
HICKMANN, H.: ‘La Trompette dans l'Égypte ancienne’. Supplément aux Annales
du Service des Antiquités de l Egypte (Cairo, 1946).
492 BIBLIOGRAPHY
HICKMANN, H.: ‘Miscellanea Musicologica'. Annales du service des antiquités
de l'Égypte, xlviii (1948), 1 (1950).
—— ' Agyptische Musik’. Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, i (Kassel,
1949-51), cols. 92-106.
—— ‘Les harpes de l'Égypte Pharaonique'. Bulletin de l'Institut d'Égypte, xxxv,
(1953).
—— ‘Quelques considérations sur la danse . . . dans l'Égypte pharaonique’.
Cahiers d'histoire égyptienne, v (Cairo, 1953).
—— ‘Le métier de musicien au temps des Pharaons’. Cahiers d'histoire égyp-
tienne, vi (Cairo, 1954).
—— ‘Dieux et déesses de la musique’. Cahiers d'histoire égyptienne, vi (Cairo,
1954).
—— ‘Terminologie musicale de l'Égypte ancienne’. Ibid. xxxvi (1955).
—— ‘Le Probléme de la notation musicale dans l'Égypte ancienne’. Ibid.
(1955).
—— Musique et vie musicale sous les Pharaons. 3 vols. (Paris, 1956).
LICHTHEIM, MIRIAM. ‘The Song of the Harper’. Journal of Near Eastern Studies,
iv (1945).
LoreT, VICTOR: ‘Les Flûtes égyptiennes antiques’. Journal Asiatique (1889).
—— ‘Les Cymbales égyptiennes’. Sphinx, v (1902).
—— * Note sur les instruments de musique de l'Égypte ancienne’. Encyclopédie
de la musique (Lavignac and L. de La Laurencie), 1" partie, i (Paris, 1913),
pp. 1-30.
LYLE, RoBERT: ‘The Music of the Ancient Egyptians: A Conjectural Sketch.’
Musical Monthly Record, \xxviii (1948).
Nasu, W. L.: ‘A Wooden Handle for Small Cymbals, from Egypt’. Proceedings
of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, xxii (1900).
PULVER, JEFFREY: 'Israel's Music-Lesson in Egypt’. Musical Times, lvi (1915).
—— ‘The Music of Ancient Egypt’. Proceedings of the Musical Association
(1921-2).
ЗАсн$, Совт: ‘Die Namen der altágyptischen Musikinstrumente’. Zeitschrift für
Musikwissenschaft, i (1919).
—— ‘Die Tonkunst der alten Ägypter’. Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, ii
(1920).
—— ‘Altagyptische Musikinstrumente’. Der alte Orient, xxi (Leipzig, 1920).
— Die Musikinstrumente des alten Agyptens (Berlin, 1921).
— — ‘Zweiklange im Altertum’. Festschrift für Johannes Wolf (Berlin, 1929).
—— ‘Eine ägyptische Winkelharfe'. Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, \xix
(1933).
ЗСНАЕЕВ, H.: Die Lieder eines ägyptischen Bauern (Leipzig, 1903).
Scott, Nora E.: ‘The Lute of the Singer Har-Mosé’. Bulletin of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art (1944).
SOUTHGATE, T. L.: ‘On a Pair of Ancient Egyptian Double Flutes’. Proceedings
of the Musical Association (1890-1).
—— ‘Communication on the Ancient Egyptian Scale’. Proceedings of the
Musical Association (1890-1).
—— ‘The Recent Discovery of Egyptian Flutes’. Musical Times, xxxi (1890).
—— ‘Some Ancient Musical Instruments’. Musical News, xxv (1903).
—— ‘Ancient Flutes from Egypt’. Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxxv (1915).
STRICKLAND-ANDERSON, L.: ‘A Sketch of the Origin and Development of
Egyptian Music’. Calcutta Review, ii (1924).
WnHYTE, E. T.: ‘Egyptian Musical Instruments’. Proceedings of the Society of
Biblical Archaeology. xxi). (1899).
BIBLIOGRAPHY 493
CHAPTER VII
MUSIC IN THE BIBLE
(i) Music of the Bible
OESTERLEY, W. О. E.: ‘Music of the Hebrews’. The Oxford History of Music,
Introductory Volume (Oxford, 1929), pp. 33-65.
Prince, J. D.: ‘Music’. Encyclopaedia Biblica, iii (New York, 1902), cols.
3225-43.
VARIOUS AUTHORS. ‘Musik und Gesang’. Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegen-
wart, iv, 2nd ed. (Tübingen, 1930), cols. 294-306.
(ii) Hebrew and early Jewish Music
ELBoGEN, I.: Der jüdische Gottesdienst in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung
(Leipzig, 1913).
FINESINGER, S. B.: ‘Musical Instruments in the Old Testament’. Hebrew Union
College Annual, iii (Cincinnati, 1926), pp. 21—76.
GRESSMANN, H.: ‘Musik und Musikinstrumente’. Religionsgeschichtliche Ver-
suche und Vorarbeiten (Giessen, 1903).
IDELSOHN, A. Z.: Jewish Music in its Historical Development (New York,
1929).
OESTERLEY, W. О. E.: A Fresh Approach to the Psalms (New York, 1937).
THACKERAY, Н. St. JOHN: The Septuagint and Jewish Worship (London, 1921).
WERNER, E.: ‘The Conflict between Hellenism and Judaism in the Music of the
Early Christian Church’. Hebrew Union College Annual, xx (1947), pp.
407-70.
(iit) New Testament and early Christian Music
Вооѕѕет, W.: Kyrios Christos (Göttingen, 1921).
DÖLGER, Е. J.: Sol Salutis (Münster, 1925).
DUCHESNE, L.: Christian Worship: its Origin and Evolution. 5th ed. (London,
1927).
DucwoRE, C. W.: The Influence of the Synagogue upon the Divine Office (Lon-
don, 1927).
Knorr, J.: Die christliche Hymnodik bis zu Klemens von Alexandrien, Braun-
schweiger Vorlesungsverzeichnis (Königsberg, 1921).
OESTERLEY, W. O. E.: 7he Jewish Background of the Christian Liturgy (Oxford,
1925).
QUASTEN, J.: Musik und Gesang in den Kulten der heidnischen Antike und christ-
lichen Frühzeit (Münster, 1930).
WELLESZ, E.: Aufgaben und Probleme auf dem Gebiete der byzantinischen und
orientalischen Kirchenmusik (Münster, 1923).
WERNER, E.: “The Conflict between Hellenism and Judaism in the Music of the
Early Christian Church', Hebrew Union College Annual, xx (1947), pp.
407—70.
(iv) Literary Criticism of the Bible
BULTMANN, R. K.: Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition. 2nd ed. (Góttin-
gen, 1931).
Dipetius, M.: A Fresh Approach to the New Testament and Early Christian
Literature (London, 1936).
494 BIBLIOGRAPHY
GUNKEL, H.: Einleitung in die Psalmen, in the Handkommentar zum Alten Testa-
ment (Gottingen, 1933).
PFEIFFER, R. H.: Introduction to the Old Testament (New York, 1941).
STAERK, W.: ‘Lyrik’, in Die Schriften des Alten Testaments (Gottingen, 1920).
We cu, А. C.: The Work of the Chronicler (London, 1939).
(v) The Dead Sea Scrolls
Burrows, М. (ed.): The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark’s Monastery, i (New Haven,
1950).
——- The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, 1955).
CHAPTER VII
THE MUSIC OF POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM
(i) Sources
BAER, A.: Baal Tefilla (Der praktische Vorbeter) (Frankfurt a. M., 1877).
IDELSOHN, A. Z.: Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies (10 vols.) (Leipzig-
New York-Jerusalem, 1914-32).
KAHLE, P.: Masoreten des Ostens (Leipzig, 1913).
—— Masoreten des Westens (Stuttgart, 1927).
LACHMANN, R.: Jewish Cantillation and Song in the Isle of Djerba (Jerusalem,
1941).
MARCELLO, B.: Estro armonico-poetico (Venice, 1704).
NAUMBOURG, S.: Agudath Schirim (Recueil de chants religieux, &c.) (Paris,
1874).
Zemiroth Israel (Paris, 1847).
PORTALEONE, A.: Shilte ha-gibborim (Heb.) with Latin translation in B. Ugo-
linus, Thesaurus Antiquitatum, xxxii (Venice, 1744—67).
REBoURS, J. B.: Traité de Psaltique (Paris, 1906).
REUCHLIN, J.: De accentibus linguae Hebraicae libri III (Hagenau, 1518).
Rossi и, EBREO, S. ре’: Shir hashirim asher Lishlomo (with preface by Rabbi
Juda Leon da Modena) (Venice, 1623).
—— new edition in score by S. Naumbourg (Paris, 1877).
WERNER, E., and SONNE, I.: ‘The Philosophy and Theory of Music in Judaeo-
Arabic Literature’. Hebrew Union College Annual, xvi, xvii (Cincinnati,
1941-3).
(ii) General Subjects
BIRNBAUM, E.: Liturgische Übungen (Berlin, 1906).
CoNsoLo, F.: Libro dei Canti d'Israele (Florence, 1891).
GasTOUÉ, A.: Les Origines du Chant Romain (Paris, 1907).
— ‘Chant Juif et Chant Grégorien'. Revue du Chant Grégorien (1930-1).
GRADENWITZ, P.: The Music of Israel (New York, 1949).
IDELSOHN, А. Z.: Jewish Music in its Historical Development, 2nd edition (New
York, 1944).
Sacus, C.: Rhythm and Tempo (New York, 1952).
WACHSMANN, K.: Untersuchungen zum vorgregorianischen Gesang (Regensburg,
1935).
BIBLIOGRAPHY 495
WAGNER, P.: Gregorianische Melodien, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1911-21).
WELLESZ, E.: Aufgaben und Probleme auf dem Gebiet der byzantinischen und
orientalischen Kirchenmusik (Münster, 1923).
——— Eastern Elements in Western Chant (Oxford, 1947).
—— Byzantine Music and Hymnography (Oxford, 1949).
WERNER E.: The Sacred Bridge (Studies on the liturgical and musical inter-
dependence of Synagogue and Church) (London-New York, 1956).
— ‘The Common Ground in the Chant of Synagogue and Church’. Atti del
Congresso (Rome, 1951).
——— ‘Preliminary Notes on Jewish and Catholic Musical Punctuation’. Hebrew
Union College Annual, xv (1940).
‘Jewish Music’. Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Sth edition,
iv (London, 1954), pp. 615-36.
— ‘Church, Music of the Early’. Ibid. ii, pp. 283-91.
(iii) Special Subjects
BIRNBAUM, E.: Jiidische Musiker am Hof von Mantua (Vienna, 1893).
Burrows, M.: The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, 1955).
FARMER, G. H.: Sa'adya Gaon on the Influence of Music (London, 1943).
—— Maimonides on Listening to Music (Bearsden, 1941).
Hørs, C.: La Notation ecphonétique (Paris and Copenhagen, 1935).
IDELSOHN, A. Z.: ‘Die Maqamen der arabischen Musik’. Sammelbdnde der
internationalen Musikgesellschaft, xv (1914).
—— ‘The Mogen Ovos Mode’. Hebrew Union College Annual, xiv (1939).
KAHLE, P.: The Cairo Geniza (London, 1947).
LOEWENSTEIN, H.: ‘Eine pentatonische Bibelweise in der deutschen Synagoge’.
Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, xii (1930).
NE'EMAN, J. L.: Tzliley ha-miqra (Hebr.) (Jerusalem, 1955).
NErTL, P.: Alte jüdische Musiker und Spielleute (Prague, 1923).
Котн, C.: L' Accademia musicale del Ghetto di Venezia (Florence, 1928).
SCHÖNBERG, J.: Die traditionellen Gesänge des israelitischen Gottesdienstes
in Deutschland (Nuremberg, 1926).
SINGER, J.: Die Tonarten des traditionellen Synagogengesanges (Vienna, 1886).
SUKENIK, M.: Megillot Genuzot (Hebr.) (Jerusalem, 1950).
WELLESZ, E.: 'Studien zur áthiopischen Kirchenmusik'. Oriens Christianus.
N.S., ix, pp. 79-106 (Leipzig).
WERNER, E.: ‘The Origin of the Eight Modes of Music’. Hebrew Union College
Annual, xxi (1948).
—— ‘The Psalmodic Formula Neannoe', Musical Quarterly, xxviii (1942).
—- ‘Die hebräischen Intonationen des В. Marcello’. Monatsschrift für
Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (Breslau, 1937).
—— ‘The Origin of Psalmody'. Hebrew Union College Annual, xxv (1954).
CHAPTER IX
GREEK MUSIC
I. ANCIENT SOURCES (selected for non-specialists in chronological order).
(i) Art of Music
Homer. Text: T. W. Allen (Oxford, 1906 and 1931).
PrNDAR. Text, English translation and commentary: L. К. Farnell (London,
1932).
496 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Euripipes. Bacchae. Text and commentary (with metrical analysis): E. В.
Dodds (Oxford, 1944).
ARISTOPHANES. Text, English translation and commentary: B. B. Rogers
(London, 1902-6). :
PLATO (especially passages in Republic, Laws, Phaedo, Symposium, Philebus
Gorgias, Laches, Protagoras, Timaeus). Text: J. Burnet (Oxford, 1905-10).
Translations: B. Jowett, 4th edition (revised) (Oxford, 1953). Commen-
taries: on Phaedo: J. Burnet (Oxford, 1911), R. S. Bluck (London, 1955); on
Timaeus: A. E. Taylor (Oxford, 1928).
ARISTOXENUS. Text, English translation and commentary: H. Macran (Oxford,
1902).
——— Elementa Harmonica. Text, Italian translation and commentary: В. da
Rios, 2 vols. (Rome, 1954).
—— Further fragments. Text and German commentary: F. Wehrli, Aristoxenos
(vol. ii of Die Schule des Aristoteles) (Basle, 1945).
TivorHEus. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Die Perser (Leipzig, 1903).
Dien, E. (ed.): Anthologia Lyrica Graeca. 2nd edition (Leipzig, 1942).
PowELL, J. U. (ed.): Collectanea Alexandrina. Oxford, 1925.
(ii) History of Music (as reconstructed in and after the fourth century B.c.).
ATHENAEUS (especially Book XIV). Text and English translation (Loeb edition,
revised). C. B. Gulick (Harvard, 1950).
[PsEUDO-]PLUTARCH: De musica. Text, French translation, and commentary:
H. Weil and T. Reinach (Paris, 1900).
—— Text, Translation and Commentary: Е. Lasserre (Lausanne, 1954).
(iii) Harmonic Science (after Aristoxenus)
РтогЕМУ: Harmonics. Text: I. Düring (Göteborg, 1930), with Porphyry (ibid.,
1932), and German translation and commentary (ibid., 1934).
JAN, C. vow (ed.): Musici Scriptores Graeci (Euclid, minor theorists, sundry ex-
cerpts, some musical fragments). Text and Latin prolegomena, &c.,
Biblioteca Teubneriana (Leipzig, 1895). Supplementum of musical fragments,
ibid. (Leipzig, 1899).
ARISTIDES QUINTILIANUS. Text: A. Jahn (Berlin, 1882).
PHILODEMUS. Text: J. Kemke, Biblioteca Teubneriana (Leipzig, 1884).
THEON OF SMYRNA. Text: E. Hiller, ibid. (Leipzig, 1878).
Anonymi Scriptio de musica. Bacchii senioris introductio artis musicae. Text and
commentary: F. Bellermann (Berlin, 1841).
GEVAERT, Е. A., and VoOLLGRAFF, C.: Problèmes musicaux d'Aristote. Text,
French translation and commentary (Ghent, 1903).
(iv) Musical Documents (see also pp. 363-76 and notes).
JAN, C. VON: op. cit. (§ iii).
REINACH, T.: appendix to La Musique grecque (Paris, 1926).
Моомтғовр, J. F.: ‘Greek Music in the papyri and inscriptions’. Powell and
Barber, New Chapters in Greek Literature, 2nd series (Oxford, 1929) and 3rd
series (Oxford, 1933).
— ‘A new fragment of Greek music in Cairo’. Journal of Hellenic Studies,
li (1936).
GRANDE, C. DEL: ‘Nuovo frammento di musica greca in un papiro del museo di
Cairo'. Aegyptus, v (1936).
MARTIN, E.: Trois Documents de musique grecque (Paris, 1953).
BIBLIOGRAPHY 497
WINNINGTON-INGRAM, R. P. (with S. Eitrem and L. Amundsen): ‘Fragments of
Unknown Greek Tragic Texts’, Symbolae Osloenses, xxxi (1955).
(v) Notation
BELLERMANN, Е.: Die Tonleitern und Musiknoten der Griechen (Berlin, 1847).
FORTLAGE, K.: Das musikalische System der Griechen in seiner Urgestalt (Leipzig,
1847).
Sacus, C.: ‘Die griechische Instrumentalnotenschrift’ and ‘Die griechische
Gesangsnotenschrift'. Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, vi and vii (1924).
WESTPHAL, R.: Griechische Harmonik und Melopóie, chapter VIII (Leipzig, 1886).
(vi) Instruments
REINACH, T.: ‘Lyra’, ‘Tibia’, &c. Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités
(Paris, 1873-1917).
ScHLESINGER, K.: The Greek Aulos (London, 1939).
WEGNER, M.: Das Musikleben der Griechen (Berlin, 1949).
No full collection of archaeological evidence exists.
П. MODERN WORKS
(i) General
ABERT, H.: Die Lehre vom Ethos in der griechischen Musik (Leipzig, 1899).
Bowra, C. M.: Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides (Oxford, 1936).
EMMANUEL, M.: ‘Grèce’. Encyclopédie de la musique I (Lavignac and L. de La
Laurencie), 1** partie, i (Paris, 1913), pp. 377-540.
—— La Danse grecque antique (Paris, 1895).
GALILEI, VINCENZO. Dialogo della musica antica e moderna (Florence, 1581).
GEVAERT, Е. A.: Histoire et théorie de la musique d'antiquité (Ghent 1875—81).
—— La Mélopée antique (Ghent, 1885).
GRAND, C. Рег: Espressione musicale dei poeti greci (Naples, 1932).
JAEGER, W.: Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (Oxford, 1946).
Laroy, L.: Aristoxéne de Tarente et la musique d'antiquité (Paris, 1904).
Marrou, H.: Histoire de l'éducation dans l'antiquité (Paris, 2nd ed., 1950).
—— St. Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (Paris, 1949).
Movowos Аутр (Grenoble, 1937).
PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE, A. W.: Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy (Oxford, 1927).
—— The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (Oxford, 1953).
REINACH, T.: La Musique grecque (Paris, 1926).
—— ‘Musica’. Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités (Paris, 1873-
1917).
RIEMANN, H.: Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, i (Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1919).
ЗЕСНАМ, L.: La Danse grecque antique (Paris, 1930).
VETTER, W.: *Musik'. Pauly and Wissowa, Real-Encyclopádie der klassischen
Altertumswissenschaft (1894—still in progress).
WESTPHAL, R.: Aristoxenos. I. Commentary (Leipzig, 1883), II. Text (Leipzig,
1893).
WILAMOWITZ-MOELLENDORFE, О. vow: Griechische Verskunst (Leipzig, 1921).
(ii) Special points of History or Theory
ВАРР, C. A.: De fontibus quibus Athenaeus in rebus musicis enarrandis usus sit
(Leipzig, 1885).
498 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Date, A. M.: The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama (Cambridge, 1948).
DENNISTON, J. D.: ‘Metre, Greek’. Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 1949).
—— ‘Some Recent Theories of the Greek Modes’. Classical Quarterly, vii
(1913). р
DÜRING, I.: ‘Studies in Musical Terminology in Fifth-Century Literature’.
Eranos, xliii (1945).
GanRoD, Н. W.: ‘The Hyporcheme of Pratinas’, Classical Review, xxxiv (1920).
Сомвоѕ, O.: Tonarten und Stimmungen der antiken Musik. (Copenhagen,
1939).
ManRou, H.: ‘Medoypadgia’, L'antiquité classique, xv (1946).
MARTELLoTTI, G.: Mesomede (Rome, 1929).
Monro, D. B.: Modes of Ancient Greek Music (Oxford, 1894).
MouNrronD, J. F.: “Greek Music and its Relation to Modern Times’. Journal
of Hellenic Studies, х1 (1920).
—— ‘The Musical Scales of Plato's Republic’. Classical Quarterly, xvii (1923).
—— ‘The Harmonics of Ptolemy and the Lacuna in ii, 14’. Transactions of the
American Philological Association, lvii (1926).
PAGE, D. L.: Aleman: The Partheneion (Oxford, 1951).
REINACH, T.: ‘Га Musique des sphéres'. Revue des études grecques, xiii (1900).
RUELLE, C. E.: ‘Le musicographe Aristide Quintilien’. Sammelbdnde der inter-
nationalen Musikgesellschaft, ix (1907).
Stiles, Е. H. E.: ‘Ап Explanation of the Modes or Tones in the Ancient Greek
Music'. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, li (1760).
VETTER, W.: ‘Musikalische Sinndeutung des antiken Nomos’. Zeitschrift für
Musikwissenschaft, xvii (1935).
WINNINGTON-INGRAM, R. P.: Mode in Ancient Greek Music (Cambridge, 1936).
——- ‘The Spondeion Scale’. Classical Quarterly, xxii (1928).
— ‘Aristoxenus and the Intervals of Greek Music’. Classical Quarterly, xx
(1926).
— ‘The Pentatonic Tuning of the Greek Lyre: a theory examined’. Classical
Quarterly, new series, vi (1956).
CHAPTER X
ROMAN MUSIC
(1) General Histories and Encyclopedias
(A) Most of the older histories of music include something about Roman music in
their sections on Greece. Burney devotes a chapter to the subject and there are
valuable remarks in Gevaert, Histoire et théorie de la musique d’antiquité (Ghent,
1875-81).
BARTHOLINUS: De tibiis veterum et earum antiquo usu libri tres (Rome, 1677).
CHAPPELL, W.: History of Music. I. From the earliest records to the fall of
the Roman Empire (London 1874).
Decani: La Musica nella preistoria e nelle antiche civiltà (Reggio Emilia, 1939).
(B) Useful works of reference include the catalogue of the German Archaeological
Institute of Rome, Nairn's Classical Hand-list, and Г Année philologique.
ABERT, A. in Friedlander: Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms. 9th
edition (Leipzig, 1921-3).
Венм, Е. ‘Die Musik im rómischen Heere'. Mainzer Zeitschrift, vii (1912), p. 36.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 499
DAREMBERG-SAGLIO: Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines d'aprés les
textes et les monuments (1877-1919).
PaAuLY and Wissowa: Real-Encyclopádie d. klassischen Altertumswissenschaft
(1894—still in progress).
(ii) For the Etruscans and their connexions with Rome
FELL, R. A. L.: Etruria and Rome (Cambridge, 1924).
Сіспоп, С. Q.: L’ Arte etrusca (Milan, 1935).
M*CARTNEY, E. S.: ‘Military indebtedness of Early Rome to Etruria’. Memoirs
of the American Academy in Rome, i, p. 121.
SoLaARI, A.: Vita pubblica e privata degli Etruschi (Florence, 1931).
(iii) For the Theatre
BEBER, M.: The History of the Greek and Roman Theater (Princeton, 1939).
(iv) For Roman art and Hellenistic painting
HERRMANN, P. (ed.): Denkmäler d. Malerei d. Altertums (in progress from 1906).
REINACH, S.: Répertoire des reliefs grecs et romains, i-iii (Paris, 1909-12).
——— Répertoire des peintures grecques et romains (Paris, 1922).
Rizzo, G. E.: La Pittura ellenistico-romana (Milan, 1929).
STRONG, E.: La scultura romana da Augusto a Costantino. 2 vols. (Florence,
1923-6).
Art in Ancient Rome (Ars Una) (London, 1929).
Mostra Augustea della Romanità. Catalogue and separate bibliographies and
index (Rome, 4th ed., 1939). Section: lxx is devoted to music.
(v) The Aquincum organ
Hype, W. W.: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological
Association, \xix (1938), p. 392.
KuzsiNsKv, V.: Aquincum (Budapest, 1934). The site of the schola centonari-
orum where the organ stood is site 30 of plan I.
MERCURELLI, C.: Rivista di Archeologia cristiana, xv (1938), p. 73.
Nacy, L.: Die Orgel von Aquincum (Budapest, 1934).
—— Laureae Aquincenses, ii (1941), p. 182 for the building, pl. xli shows the
museum case with the remains on show.
(vi) Papyri
Jt is not easy to find one's way about the specialized literature. A number of
musicians' contracts are collected in Tenney Frank's Economic Survey of Rome,
volume devoted to Egypt, p. 299 (cf. p. 694 for musicians in public games). The
latest list of teaching contracts is in Taubenschlag, Law of Greco-Roman Egypt
in the light of the papyri (New York, 1944), p. 284. For the tax on trades see
the appropriate sections of Wallace, Taxation in Egypt (Princeton, 1938)
and Michigan papyri, v, Tebtunis II, p. 321 for a tax on piper and musician.
There is an important article by Westermann in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeo-
logy (1932), p. 16, on entertainments in villages. Two new papyri throw light on
the variety of musical instruments: Knudtzon, Bakchiastexte (1946), no. 2 for
а list of temple musical instruments іп д.р. 188, including a monochord; Petro-
poulos, Papyri Societatis Archaeologicae Atheniensis (1939), 43v, second cen-
tury A.D., includes references to the bagpipes and the funeral pipes.
500 BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER XI
THE MUSIC OF ISLAM
(i) Sources
AL-HEFNI, M.: Ibn Sina’s Musiklehre, hauptsächlich an seinem ‘Nagat’ erläutert,
nebst № и. Herausgabe des Musikabschnittes des ‘Nagat’ (Berlin,
1931).
AL-Huiwini: The Kashf а! mahjüb, the oldest Persian treatise on Süfism. Trans-
lated by R. A. Nicholson (London, 1911).
AL-Maqaari: The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain .. . Translated
by Pascual de Gayangos (London, 1840-3).
Ar-Mas'üpi: Magoudj: Les Prairies d'or. Texte et traduction par Barbier de
Meynard et Pavet de Courteil (Paris, 1861—77).
САВВА DE VAUX, B.: Le Traité des rapports musicaux ou Гёрйғе à Scharaf
ed-Din, par Safi ed-Din ‘Abd el-Mumin Albaghdadi (Paris, 1891).
D'ERLANGER, R.: La Musique arabe, Tome I, Al-Fardbi . . . Grand traité de la
musique . . . Livres i et ii (Paris, 1930).
—— La Musique arabe, Tome II, Al-Farabi.. . Livre Ш, et Avigenne . . . Kitábw'$-
Sifà' .. . (Paris, 1935).
—— La Musique arabe. Tome Ш, Safiyu-d-Din al-Urmawi: I, As-Sarafiy-
yah . . .: П, Kitab al-adwar (Paris, 1938).
— — La Musique arabe, Tome IV, I, Traité anonyme . . . II, А-Га ат, Traité al-
Fathiyah (Paris, 1939).
FARMER, H. G.: An Old Moorish Lute Tutor: Being Four Arabic Texts from
Unique Manuscripts . . . (Glasgow, 1933).
—— Al-Farabi’s Arabic Latin Writings on Music: In the ‘Ihs? al-ulünr ..
‘Ре scientiis! . . ., and ‘De ortu scientiarum" (Glasgow, 1934).
Turkish Instruments of Music in the Seventeenth Century, as described in
the * Siváhat пата of Ewliyà Chelebi' (Glasgow, 1937).
—— The Organ of the Ancients: From Eastern Sources (Hebrew, Syriac and
Arabic) (London, 1939).
—— ‘The Sources of Arabian Music. An Annotated Bibliography of Arabic
Manuscripts which deal with the Theory, Practice, and History of Arabian
Music'. Records of the Glasgow Bibliographical Society, xiii (1939). Issued
separately in 1940.
—— Music: The Priceless Jewel. From the ‘Kitab al-'iqd al-farid’ of Ibn ‘Abd
Rabbihi (d. 940) (Bearsden, 1942).
—— Sa'adyah Gaon on the Influence of Music (London, 1943).
—— ‘The Minstrels of the Golden Age of Islam’ (from the */94 al- -farid).
Islamic Culture, xvii-xviii (1943-4).
— ‘An Anonymous English-Arabic Fragment on Music’. Islamic Culture,
xviii (1944).
—— ‘The Song Captions in the Kitab al-aghani’. Transactions: Glasgow Uni-
versity Oriental Society, xv (1955).
HANOCH AVENARY: ‘Abu ’i-Salt’s Treatise on music’. Musica Disciplina, vi
(1952).
IBN KHALDON: Prolégomènes d' Ebn Khaldoun (Notices et extraits des manuscrits
de la Bibliothéque du Roi, xix-xxi) (Paris, 1862-8).
IKHWAN AL-SAFA': [Risdlat al-müsigi] Die Propaedeutik der Araber im zehnten
Jahrhundert (F. Dieterici) (Berlin, 1865).
BIBLIOGRAPHY 501
KOSEGARTEN, J. С. L.: Alii Ispahanensis Liber Cantilenarum Magnus (Greifs-
wald, 1840).
LACHMANN, ROBERT, and MAHMUD EL-HEFNI: Ja'qüb Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi: Risdla
fi hubr ta’lif al-alhan: Uber die Komposition der Melodien (Leipzig, 1931).
MACDONALD, D. H.: ‘Emotional Religion in Islam as affected by music and
singing. Being a translation of a book of the ‘Ihya ‘ит ad-din’ of Al-
Ghazzali’. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1901-2).
Rosson, JAMES: Ancient Arabian Musical Instruments: As described by Al-
Mufaddal ibn Salama (9th century) in the . . . ‘Kitab al-malahi’. . . (Glasgow,
1938).
— Tracts on Listening to Music: Being ‘Dhamm al-malahi’ by Ibn Abi'l-Dunyà
and * Bawáriq al-ilma” by Majd al-Din al-Tusi al-Ghazáli (London, 1938).
UNVALA, JAMSHEDJI MANECKJI: The Pahlavi Text: King Husraw and his Boy (Paris,
1921).
(ii) Books and Articles
BARBIER DE MEYNARD: ‘Ibrahim, fils de Mehdi. Fragments historiques, scénes
de la vie d'artiste au Ш siècle de l'hégire . . .". Journal Asiatique (1869).
BARTÓK, BELA: ‘Die Volksmusik der Araber von Biskra und Umgebung’.
Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, ii (1919—20).
BELAIEV, VIKTOR: Muzikalnie instrumenti Uzbekistana (Moscow, 1933).
— ‘Turkish Music’. Musical Quarterly, xxi (1935).
—— ‘Formi Uzbekskoy Muziki'. Sovetskaya Muzika (July-August, 1935).
——— ‘Three Eastern Pieces’. Monthly Musical Record, lvii (1927).
— ‘Turkomanian Music’. Pro musica (1927).
— and UsPENSKY, V.: Turkmenskaya Muzika (Moscow, 1928).
CAUSSIN DE PERCEVAL, A.: ‘Notices anecdotiques sur les principaux musiciens
arabes des trois premiers siècles de l'Islamisme'. Journal Asiatique (1873).
Сноттим, A.: ‘Les Genres dans la Musique marocaine’. La Revue musicale du
Maroc (1930).
——— Corpus de Musique marocaine, I, Nouba de Ochchák . . . (Paris, 1931).
——— Corpus de Musique marocaine, Il, Musique et danses berbéres du Pays
Chleuh (Paris, 1933).
CHRISTENSEN, ARTHUR: ‘La Vie musicale dans la civilisation des Sassanides'.
Bulletin de l’ Association Francaise des amis de l'Orient (Paris, 1936).
COLLANGETTES, XAVIER M.: ‘Etude sur la musique arabe’. Journal Asiatique
(1904, 1906).
The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden, 1913-38). s.v. ‘Bak’, ‘Duff’, ‘Ghina’, ‘Kitara’,
*Mi'zaf', ‘Митаг, *Müsiqi', ‘Rabab’, ‘Мамба’, ‘Sandj’, ‘Tabl’, "Tabl
Khana’, "Tunbür', ‘Ud’, ‘Urghan’, as well as the leading singers, instru-
mentalists, and theorists.
FARMER, HENRY GEORGE: ‘Clues for the Arabian Influence on European Musical
Theory’. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1925)= The Arabian Influence
on Musical Theory (London, 1925).
-— ‘The Arabic Musical Manuscripts іп the Bodleian Library’. Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society (1925).
—— ‘The Old Persian Musical Modes’. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
(1926).
— A History of Arabian Music to the XIIIth Century (London, 1929).
—— ‘The Influence of Music: From Arabic Sources’. Proceedings of the Musical
Association, 52nd Session (1925-6).
——— Historical Facts for the Arabian Musical Influence (London, 1930).
— ‘Greek Theorists of Music in Arabic Translation’. Isis, xiii (1930).
502 BIBLIOGRAPHY
FARMER, HENRY GEORGE: ‘Histoire abrégée de l'échelle de la musique arabe’.
Recueil des travaux du Congrès de musique arabe . . . Саше... 1932 (Le
Caire, 1934),
—— Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments, lst series (London, 1931); 2nd
series (Glasgow, 1939).
—— [Persia.] ‘An Outline History of Music and Musical Theory’. А. U. Pope's
A Survey of Persian Art (London, 1938).
—— ‘The Jewish Debt to Arabic Writers on Music’. Islamic Culture (1941).
— — The Minstrelsy of the Arabian Nights. A Study of the Music and Musicians
in the Arabic ‘Alf Laila was Laila’ (Bearsden, 1945).
——— ‘Ghosts: An Excursus on Arabic Musical Bibliographies’. Isis, xxxvi
(1946).
—— ‘Crusading Martial Music’. Music and Letters, xxx (1949).
Oriental Studies: Mainly Musical (London, 1953).
— See also Grove's Dictionary of Music, 5th ed. (London, 1954), s.v. ‘Arabian
Music’, ‘Berber Music’, ‘Egyptian Music’, ‘Iraquian and Mesopotamian
Music’, ‘Maghribi Music’, ‘Mohammedan Music’, ‘Moorish Music’,
‘Persian Music’, ‘За and Darwish Music’, ‘Syrian Music’, ‘Turkestani
Music’.
HORNBOSTEL, ERICH VON: ‘Phonographierte tunesische Melodien’. Sammel-
bande der internationalen Musikgesellschaft, viii (1906-7).
—— and LACHMANN, R.: ‘Asiatische Parallelen zur Berbermusik'. Zeitschrift
für vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, i (1933).
HUART, CLEMENT: ‘Etude biographique sur trois musiciennes arabes’. Journal
Asiatique (1884).
IDELSOHN, А. Z.: ‘Die Maqamen der arabischen Musik’. Sammelbande der
internationalen Musikgesellschaft, xv (1913-14).
KIESEWETTER, R. G.: Die Musik der Araber (Leipzig, 1842).
KOSEGARTEN, J. С. L.: ‘Die moslemischen Schriftsteller über die Theorie der
Musik'. Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, v (Bonn, 1844).
LACHMANN, ROBERT: ‘Die Musik in den tunisischen Städten’. Archiv für Musik-
wissenschaft, v (1923).
LAND, J. P. N.: ‘Recherches sur l'histoire de la gamme arabe’. Actes du Sixiéme
Congrés International des Orientalistes tenu en 1883 a Leide (Leiden,
1885).
— ‘Remarks on the earliest development of Arabic music’. Transactions of
the Ninth Congress of Orientalists, 1892, ii (London, 1893).
—— ‘Tonschriftversuche und Melodieproben aus dem muhammedanischen
Mittelalter’. Vierteljahrsschrift fiir Musikwissenschaft, ii (1886).
LoEWENTHAL, A.: Honein Ibn Ishak, Sinnspriiche der Philosophen . . . ins Deutsche
übertragen und erläutert (Berlin, 1896).
— — Musik des Orients (Breslau, 1929).
МІТЈАМА, RAFAEL: ‘La musique en Espagne’. Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavi-
gnac and Г. de La Laurencie), 1" partie, iv (Paris, 1920), especially
pp. 1920-5.
—— ‘L’Orientalisme musical et la Musique arabe’. Le Monde Oriental (Upp-
sala, 1906).
Porr, A. U.: A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present
(Oxford, 1938).
ВА’ОЕ, YEKTA Bey: ‘La Musique turque’. Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavignac
and L. de La Laurencie), 17* partie, v (Paris, 1922), pp. 2945-3064.
— Dar al-alhén kullivyàt (Constantinople, n.d.). Contains the compositions
of the old Turkish composers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 503
RIBERA, JULIAN: La Musica de las Cantigas (Madrid, 1922).
—— Music in Ancient Arabia and Spain; Being ‘La Musica de las Cantigas’...
translated and abridged by Eleanor Hague and Marion Leffingwell (Stanford
University Press, U.S.A., 1929).
—— La Musica andaluza medieval en las canciones de trovadores, troveros y
minnesinger (Madrid, 1923-5).
—— Historia de la música árabe medieval y su influencia en la española (Madrid,
1927).
ROUANET, JULES: ‘La Musique arabe’. Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavignac
and L. de La Laurencie), 1" partie, v (Paris, 1922), pp. 2676-2939.
—— and Үлп, E. N.: Répertoire de musique arabe et maure: Collection d’
Ouvertures, Mélodies, Noubet, Chansons, Préludes, Danses, etc. (Algiers,
1904 et seq.). `
SiRAJUL Нло: ‘Sama‘ and Raqs of the Darwishes’. Islamic Culture (1944).
VILLOTEAU, G. A.: La Description de l’ Égypte: État moderne (Paris, 1809-26).
WERNER, E., and Sonne, I.: ‘The Philosophy and Theory of Music, in Judaeo-
Arabic Literature'. Hebrew Union College Annual, xvi, xvii (Cincinnati,
1941, 1943).
LIST OF «ТОМЕ ЕМЯКЕОЕ
THE HISTORY OF MUSIC UN SOUND
VOLUME I
The History of Music in Sound is a series of volumes of gramophone records, with
explanatory booklets, designed as a companion series to the New Oxford History
of Music. Each volume covers the same ground as the corresponding volume in
the New Oxford History of Music, and is designed as far as possible to illustrate
the music discussed therein. The records are issued in England by The Gramo-
phone Company (H.M.V.) and in the United States by R. C. A. Victor, and the
booklets are published by the Oxford University Press. The editor of Volume I
of The History of Music in Sound is Egon Wellesz.
CHINA
THREE ANCIENT MELODIES
LP 78
Side 1 Band 1 (a) Side 1(a) Tzuey Ueng Charn (The Strumming of an
Elderly Gentleman in a State of Refined
Intoxication)
(b) (b) Lanq Taur Sha (Waves Washing the Beach)
(c) (c) Nan Jinn Gong (Entering the Palace)
INSTRUMENTAL AND DRAMATIC MUSIC
Band 2 (a) Side 2(a) The Poet Rides
(b) (b) Meihua San Nonq (Plum Blossom)
Band 3 (c) Duet from Sheau Fanqniou (The Little
Shepherd)
Band 4 (a) (d) Excerpt from Muudan Tyng (The Peony
Pavilion)
OPERA
(b) Side 3(a) Excerpt from Bair Sheh Juann (The White
Serpent)
Band 5 (b) Excerpt from Wuu Jia Po (Lady Precious
Stream)
Band 6 (c) Excerpt from Yuanmen Jaan Tzyy (Behead-
ing a Son)
Band 7 (d) Excerpt from Tsao Chyau Guan (Thatched
Bridge Pass)
TIBET
Side її Band 1 (a) Side 4 (а) Lamaist Instru mental Ensemble
(b) (b) Lamaist Chanting
(c) (c) Hymn by Two Nuns
CAMBODIA
Band 2 Side 5 (a) Bampe (Lullaby)
CONTENTS OF HISTORY OF MUSIC IN SOUND VOL. I 505
MADAGASCAR
jija 78
Band 3 Side 5 (b) Raivo (Hair-cutting ceremony)
LAOS
Band 4 (a) Side 6(a) Song of Nam-Ngum Bargeman
(b) (b) Mengphoutomdok (Buzzing of Bees)
(c) (c) Laoh-Tenh (old dance)
(d) (d) Thoum (Court of Love)
BALI
Band 5 (a) Side 7 (а) Tjroektjoek Poenjah
(b) (b) Excerpt from Tjalonarang
(c) Side 8(a) Excerpt from a Gamboeh
TAHITI
Band 6 (a) (b) Paoa (primitive song)
(b) (c) Aue Aue (modern dance)
JAPAN
Side tt Вапа 1 Side 9 (a) Gagaku (Court Music): Dance of the Great
Peace
Band 2 (b) Rokudan (Nos. 1, 3, and 6)
Band 3 (c) Chidori-no-K yoku (Song of the Sea Plovers)
INDIA
FOLK MUSIC
Band 4(a) Side 10 (a) Rice-transplanting song (Western Ghats)
(b) (b) Harvest Processional song (Western Ghats)
(c) (c) Toda song (Nilgiri Mountains)
(d) (d) Death Wail (Cape Comorin)
Band 5(a) Side 11 (а) Afridi song (Khyber Pass)
(b) (b) Marathi Weaver's song (Hyderabad)
(c) (c) Bhajan (Marathi Villagers’ Prayer) (Hy-
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Band 6 (a)
(b)
(c)
Band 7
Side iv Band 1 (а)
(b)
(c)
derabad)
Side 12(a) Sundari Nann'indarilo (Telugu) (Carnatic
devotional song)
(b) Pahádi (Dhun) (Sárangi with tablá)
(c) Kankariyé ji na Maro (Hindi)
Side 13 Rága Kedára (shannái)
JEWISH MUSIC
Side 14 (а) Laménasséah àl Haggitit (Psalm 8)
(b Móhólé] КО! Wehól Johól (Hymn for
Hasha'na Rabba)
(c) “Al Náhárót Bobal Hosehoh (Paraphrase of
Psalm 137)
506 CONTENTS OF HISTORY OF MUSIC IN SOUND VOL. I
EP
Band 2
Band 3
NEAR EAST
Band 4
Band 5
Band 6
IRAQ
Band 7
Band 8
THE MAGHRIB
Band 9
Band 10
Band 11
ANCIENT GREECE
78
Side 15(a) First Delphic Hymn
(6) Epitaph of Seikilos
MUSIC OF ISLAM
Side 16(a) Muezzin’s Call to Prayer
(b) Taqsim Bayati (Turkish)
(c) Bedouin song (from El Fayum)
Side 17 (a) Tahher Fouadaka Bil-Ràhat (His image)
(b) Ya Naees el-Tarfe (Oh you with the dream-
ing eyes)
Side 18 (а) Oomri Alayki (I spent my life) (Moroccan)
(b) Alhazo Zabi (Could it be that your eyes?)
(Tunisian)
(c) Fah el-banafseg (The narcissus flower is
blooming) (Aigerian)
INDEX
A'a't, Egyptian double reed-pipe, 269.
‘Ab (‘Abw), Egyptian horn, 269.
‘Abbas b. al-Nasa’i, 429.
Abbüba, Mesopotamian reed-pipe, 251,
252, 424.
‘Abd al-'Aziz, 432.
*Abdal-Qadir b. Ghaibi, 432, 442, 446, 453,
456.
— Jami‘ al-al ап (Collector of Melodies),
444, 463.
— Kanz al-alhàn (Treasury of Melodies),
456.
Abraham di Caceres of Amsterdam, 333.
— ‘Duet for soprano and alto’, 333-4.
Abramo dall’ Arpa Ebreo, 327.
Abu'l-Fidà, 426 nt.
Abu’l-Hakam аі-Ваһі, 462.
Abū Hashisha, 430.
Abu'l-Husain al-Darràj, 441.
Abu'l-Majd Muhammad, 462.
Abū Sadaqa, 435.
Abi Sa‘id b. al-'Arabi, 441.
ACCLAMATIONS:
Acclamatory formulae, 310, 320.
Byzantine church, 399.
Roman, 380, 392, 399.
Tribal, Hebrew, 285, 290, 291, 307, 308.
Ackerman, Phyllis, 453 në.
Adapa, Atapu, Mesopotamian tambourine,
233, 241.
Adelard of Bath, 466.
Adhdhán (call to prayer), 434, 439-40, 441.
Aeolian style, 382-4, 386.
Aeschylus, 392, 393, 394.
Aetna, 409.
Agathon, 387, 393, 394.
Ahaba Rabba, 332.
Áhatanáda, 198, 199, 204.
Ahmad Ughlü Shukrallàh, 463.
* Ai-ai Adonin', 385.
ai lanu, 251.
Ailinon, Linus-song, 251, 378.
Ajax fragment (papyrus), 351, 374.
Al, Sumerian kithara, 244.
Alal, Ala, Mesopotamian tambourine,
240, 268.
Аа, 233.
‘Alam al-Din Qaisar, 462.
“Alā sabbikum, 455 (Ex. 322).
Albright, W. F., 229, 255.
Alcaeus, 382, 390.
Alcman, 380, 391.
Alexander of Aphrodisias, 458.
Alfóldi, A., 411 n?.
Alfred the Englishman, 469.
Algar, Mesopotamian kithara, 230, 236,
244.
Alhazen, see Ibn al-Haitham.
“AH b. Sa‘id al-Andalusi, 462.
Alkindus, see al-Kindi.
'Allawaya, 429.
Allberry, С. В. C., 311 n°.
Allegro Porto, 327.
ALLELUIA FORMULA:
Jewish, 306.
Jewish origins of Christian usage, 320-1.
See also Hallel.
Alma-Tadema, Sir L., 272 n°.
Alonso, D., 474.
Alpharabius, see al-Farabi.
Altman, C. B., 239 п.
‘Alin, 429.
Alypius, Alypian notation, 358-63, 364,
369, 372-3.
Ambubaiae, Mesopotamian reed-pipe, 252.
Amir Shahi, 432.
Ammianus Marcellinus, 416.
Amr ibn Sah’l, 326.
Amundsen, L., 374.
Anagnostes, 320.
Anáhatanáda, 198, 199.
Anbüba, Mesopotamian reed-pipe, 424.
Andalusia, Islamic influence in, 433.
Andalusian bandair (pandero), 430.
— kaitáàra, 430.
— saeta, 50.
Anderson, 408 n*.
Anfar, Islamic trumpet, 434.
Angisiyya, 426.
Angkloeng, Balinese
167, 171, 173, 183-4.
Anglade, J., 469 n°.
Angles, H., 469, 473.
Angulo, J. de, 32 n!, 45 n*.
Animal-masks, 104, 183, 230, 236, 257-8,
467.
Animal ‘speech’ imitations, 123, 186, 396.
* Anonymus II’, 465.
* Anonymus IV', 470, 471.
ANTIPHONY:
Arabia (jawab), 424.
China, 131-2.
Early Christian, 307, 308, 311.
Egypt, 260, 262.
Greece, 338.
Hebrew, 285, 287, 288, 292, 302.
Mesopotamia, 234—5, 254.
Tibet, 139-40,
chime-idiophone,
508
Anwd, 449.
Apel, Willi, 163, 408 n5, 459 n*.
Apollinaris, 417.
Apuleius, Lucius, 261.
Arabian Nights, The, 429,433,434,437,452.
Archilochus of Paros, 380, 391, 392.
Ardja, Balinese drama, 176.
Arghül, Islamic double reed-pipe, 443.
Aristides Quintilianus, 349, 350 n?, 375,
376, 458, 465.
Aristophanes, 336, 337, 340, 362 n*, 368,
382 n!, 384, 385, 386, 387, 390—4, 396.
— The Frogs, 336, 386 п?, 392-4.
Aristotle, 277 n?, 339, 340, 388, 398, 465.
— de Anima, 458, 462, 465, 466.
— Problemata, 458.
— Pseudo-, 345 n!, 349 n?.
Aristoxenus, 281, 336-42 passim, 343-4,
347-51 passim, 357, 358, 363-4, 375,
380, 381 п!, 385, 387-9, 397, 458, 465.
Arndt, R. F. W., 56 n*.
Arnobius, 315 п“.
Arnold, T., 442 п”, 443n*, 446nn* 7,
456 nt, 466 n°, 469 n*.
Ars de pulsatione lambuti, 468.
Ars nova, 331, 335.
Asàbi', 448, 449.
Asias, or Asias kithara, 251.
Atambal, At-tabl, drum, 468.
Atambor (At-tunbür), pandore, 468.
Atellana, 414.
Athenaeus, 238 n5, 239 nn? ?, 251, 265, 269
п, 280, 281, 349 п!, 381 пз, 391 пб,
397 nn? 3, 400 n}, 401.
Auboyer, J., 162 n°, 182 nn? 2.
Aucassin et Nicolette, 475, 476.
Augustiani, 399.
Aulos, reed-pipe, 238, 252, 261, 262, 280,
339, 346, 350, 351, 369, 377, 383, 384,
386, 391, 392, 393, 395, 398, 402; see
also Tibia.
Aurigemma, S., 415 n*.
Avanaddha, Indian drums, 221-2.
Avazat, 449, 450.
Avenpace, see Ibn Bajja.
Averroés, see Ibn Rushd.
Avicenna, see Ibn Sinà.
Azada, 426.
Bacchius, 372.
Bach, C. P. E. and W. F., 335.
Bacon, Roger, 466.
Badhl, 437.
Baechtold-Staeubli, H., 59 në.
BAGPIPE:
India, 223.
Mesopotamia (5йт/опуай), 245-6, 300.
Rome(Utricularius (ascaules)),408, 414,
418.
INDEX
Bahram Gir, 426, 427.
Baikie, J., 278.
Baillet, A. and J., 264.
Bair Jiuyih, 106, 137.
Bait al-hikma, 458.
Balaban, Persian reed-pipe, 443.
Balag, Balaggu, Mesopotamian hour-glass
drum, 230, 231, 233, 234, 240.
Bamboo, 94.
— importance of in dissemination of
music, 183-6.
Bamboo tubes (primitive idiophone), 34;
(primitive chordophone), 36; see also
Zither.
Ban (Pan), Sumerian harp, 242, 244—5,
271.
Bandharkar, Rao Sahib P. R., 205.
Bangguu, Chinese hoop-drum, 128.
Bangtzye, sonorous wooden block and
genre of Chinese opera, 128-9 (Ex. 211).
Banks, E. J., 243 n*.
Barang, 166.
Barbad of Fars, 426.
Barbat, Barbiit, lute, 252, 425, 446.
Barbitos, Greek lyre, 251, 252, 381.
Bardesanes, 312.
‘Bargas of the Holy Mountain’, 135 (Ex.
222).
Bar Salibi, 424.
Basilius, 318.
Baumann, H., 32, 52.
Bazin Ainé, А. P. L., 114 n?.
Beck, J., 469 n5.
Beecham, J., 32 n”.
Beeicheu (northern songs), 112, 113 (£x.
210).
* Bees fly across the Golden Sand River',
154 (Ex. 249).
Behn, F., 407 n*.
Belaiev, V. M., 50 пз, 452 пи, 472.
Belisarius, 412.
Bellan, Ch., 159.
Bellermann, J. F., 350 n?.
BELLS and BELL-CHIMES:
Assyria, 230, 239.
China (jong and boh), 88, 89, 90, 95-6,
101, 103, 104, 105, 108, 134. |
Egypt, 267.
Korea, 142.
morris-grelots, 467.
primitive, 35.
rhythm-making grelots (Islam), 436.
Roman, 409.
wooden bells, 34.
Ben, Bent (Bin, Bint), bow-harp, 271, 273,
281.
Benzinger, I., 291 р?.
Bewer, J. A., 286 п!.
Bharata, 195, 207, 211, 213.
INDEX
Bharatandtya, 204.
Bhatkhande, Pandit, 226.
Biqd', 424.
Birch, S., 264 n!, 269 пз.
Birnbaum, E., 327 n*.
Biwa, Japanese bass-lute, 92, 147.
Blackman, A. M., 261 n!, 262 n*, 269 п!.
*Blown fifths', theory of, 14.
Boéthius, 250, 253, 465.
Boh, Chinese bells, 90, 101.
‘Bok srou' (‘Rice-pounding Song’), 160
(Ex. 262).
Book of Chronicles, 297.
Book of Lamentations, 294.
Book of Psalms, 288, 290-3, 299; see also
Psalmody, Psalms.
Book of the Dead, 257.
Book of the Wars of the Lord, 286.
Book of Yashar, 287.
Borchardt, L., 263 n!, 266 п", 267 п“, 268.
Bormus-song, 392.
Bosanquet, R. H. M., 205.
Bose, F., 121 n?, 164 nt.
Bourdillon, F. W., 475.
Bousset, W., 306 n?, 309 пз, 310 n?.
Bow:
bow-harp, 242, 244, 270, 271, 273,
275.
Egypt (ben, bin), 271, 273, 280.
earth-bow, 36, 50.
hunter's bow, 40, 57, 58.
Mesopotamia (ban), 242, 244-5.
musical bow, 14, 36, 57.
New Guinea, 179.
related to fanfared melodies, 179.
relation to drum, 58-59.
relation to pandore, 244-5.
Bowed gourd, 36, 157.
Box, G. H., 301 n*.
Bráhmanas, 203.
Breasted, J. H., 228, 281, 282 nt.
Breloer, B., 206.
Brendel, O., 411 n!.
Brewer, J. S., 466 n°.
Brihadáranyaka Upanishad, 46.
Brown, А. R., 28, 40 n°, 49 ni.
Browne, E. G., 426 пе, 431 п?, 432 п.
Bruce's harps, 271.
Brugsch, H., 272 n*.
Brunner-Traut, E., 269.
Bucina, Roman horn, 407, 411, 413.
Buddhist music, Chinese, 88, 133, 134.
— — Japanese, 149.
Budge, Sir E. A. W., 267 n?, 268.
Buecher, K., 6.
Bukofzer, Manfred, 14 n?.
Bull-roarer, 9, 37, 48, 52, 58.
Big, Arabic horn, 425, 434, 443 (albogon),
468.
509
Burckhardt, J. L., 424.
Burkitt, C. F., 311 n?*.
Burnet, J., 247 п“,
Burney, C. F., 305 пз, 309 п?.
Burney, Charles, 273 n’.
Burton, Sir Richard, 284 n!.
Byi, Chinese drum, 90.
Calabash (primitive aerophone), 32.
Callixenus of Rhodes, 265.
Canon (Qànün), Islamic psaltery, 468.
Cántigas de Santa Maria, 467, 470, 473.
CANTILLATION, CHANT:
China, Buddhist, 133-4.
Egypt, 259, 280.
India, Vedic, 199-202.
Islam, 441.
Japan, Buddhist, 149-50.
Jewish, 291-3; Scriptural, 316-18;
Psalmody, 318-20; Hasidic, 331-2;
European influences, 326-9; decline,
334-5.
Mesopotamia, 231-5 passim.
primitive, 29-31.
Tibet, 139-40.
Cantor, see Precentor.
Capart, J., 273 n”.
Caracalla, 373.
Carcopino, J., 411 n”.
Carinus, 416.
Carra de Vaux, B., 460 n°, 462 n".
Carter, Harold, 270 në.
Cassiodorus, 404 n?, 465.
Castanets, Greek, 378; Roman, 415.
Cato the elder, 404.
CELESTAS:
Cambodia, 181.
Java, 167, 171, 172.
Korea, 181.
Siam, 181.
Censorinus, 247.
Champollion, J. F., 266, 267 n, 268,
Zienn ee 272 03. Pare 83
Chang (Jank), Persian harp, 243, 423, 425,
427 (sanj), 444.
Chansons de Guillaume IX, Les, 474.
Chappell, W., 258 n?, 272 nn” $, 273 n*,
410 nê.
de Chardin, P. T., 184 n?.
Charles, R. H., n ?.
Charlesworth, M. P., 399 nt.
Charngsheng Diann (The Hall of Long
Life) (Horng Sheng), 126.
Сйаграга (Chālpāra), Persian clappers,
442.
Chen, C. H., and S. H., 132.
Cheu, 114, 115, 119, 127.
Cheupair, 115, 127.
Chiang Un-kai, 114.
510
CHIME-IDIOPHONES:
distribution in E. Asia, 181—2, 188.
relation of metallophones to xylo-
phones, 184.
See also Angkloeng, Bells and Bell-
chimes, Celestas, Clappers, Cymbals,
Drum-chimes, Glockenspiel, Gongs
and Gong-chimes, Iron chimes,
Lithophones, Metallophones, Rattle,
Scraper, Sistrum, Xylophones.
Chinese Characters, Glossary of, 190-4.
Chingshan Chynpuu, 119.
Chingyueh, 111, 112.
Chinq, Chinese lithophone, 88, 89, 90, 92,
101, 105, 108.
Chongdwu, Chinese percussion-clapper,
89.
CHORAL SINGING, CHORUS, CHOIR:
musicians' guilds (Jewish), 297-8.
synagogue and early Christian Church,
320.
emergence of ‘cantor’,
320.
in the ghetto, 328.
Greek secular, 300.
Roman, 399, 413.
Chordophones, Primitive:
bow, bowed gourd, earth-bow, earth-
zither, 36.
Chottin, A., 269 n*, 449 n®, 456 п?, 474 n},
476 n*.
Churches, Music of the Christian, 304-12,
316, 320, 324.
Chwanchyi, 126.
Chyn, Chinese zither, 89, 90, 92, 101, 103,
104, 105, 117, 123, 142, 148.
Chyr, Chinese cross-flute, 90, 108.
Cicero, 399, 401 пз, 404 n?.
Cinesias, 393, 394, 396.
CLAPPERS:
Annam, 157.
‘bones’, 267.
Burma, 164.
Cambodia, 162.
China, 89, 105, 185.
*clashing maces', 267.
Egypt, 256, 260, 261, 266-7.
‘hands and feet’, 267.
Islam, 442.
percussion, 89, 185.
Persia, 442.
Rome, 409, 414, 415.
wand-type, 267.
wooden bats, 35.
CLARINET:
modern, used in India, 223.
primitive, 37, 38.
Sumatra, 168.
Claudian, 261, 412 n*.
‘precentor’,
INDEX
Clay, A. T., 423 пі,
Clement of Alexandria, 257 n6, 259,
277, 280, 302 n*, 306 n!, 308, 315 п*,
324.
Cleonides (ps.-Euclid), 250-1, 351 n!, 376,
458, 461, 465.
Cleophon, 394.
Codex Las Huelgas, 23, 469 n*.
Codrington, В. H., 44 п!.
Coedès, G., 86 n?.
Cohen, Е. L., 298 nt.
Cohen, G., 474.
*Cold Crows playing with water', 123.
Collangettes, X. M., 448 n*.
Collegium symphoniacorum, 401.
Commodus, 417.
Сомсн$:
Chinese, 108.
Indian, 223.
primitive, 38, 52, 54, 55, 59.
sexual significance, 54.
symbolizing death, 52.
symbolizing sacrifice, 55.
Conductus, 469.
Confucian hymns, 142, 149.
— orchestra, 89-91, 143, 182.
— ritual music, 117, 142.
Confucius, 89.
Constantine the African, 467, 469.
Cooke, G. A., 312 n*.
Cornu, Roman horn, 407, 411, 412, 415.
Courant, M., 96n!, 97 пт, 98n!, 102nn* ?,
103, 108 n!, 113, 143, 144, 187 n*.
de Coussemaker, E., 331n!, 445 n",
470 n£, 471 nn? * 4,
Covarrubias, M., 183 n*.
Creel, H. G., 89n!.
Crossley-Holland, P. C., 137 n?, 142 nt.
Crotala, Egyptian idiophones, 264.
Ctesias, 239.
Ctesibius of Alexandria, 270, 281, 408 n*.
Cumming, C. G., 234.
Cumont, F., 247 n?, 276n‘, 405 nê.
Cybele, 405.
CYMBALS:
Bali, 171, 176, 203.
Burma, 164.
Cambodia, 162.
China, 103, 134.
Egypt, 267 (cup, clapper), 280.
Hebrew (zelzélim, méziltayim), 296,
297.
India, 203, 221.
Islam (sajjat, sunuj, Казат), 434, 442.
Mesopotamia (sanj), 239-40.
Phrygian, in Rome, 405.
primitive, 35.
Rome, 405, 414, 415.
Tibet, 139-40.
INDEX 511
Dabistan, The, 425.
Da'da't (Da'da'newt),
chested harp, 272.
Dahcheu, 106, 119, 137.
Dalman, G., 288 n?.
*Dámbang dék', (‘Iron Rod’ or 'Small
and Tender’), 160 (Ex. 260).
Dámodara, 197 n!.
— Samgítadarpana, 197 nn!-?, 198 пп! ?,
205 n?, 207 nn? ?, 210 n!, 211 n!, 212 n!,
214, 218 n!, 221.
Damon, 349, 389.
DANCE:
See also Mime, Mummers, Pantomime,
Theatre.
dance-tree, 3, 4, 5.
Egypt, 257, 261, 266.
Greece, 383, 391, 401.
India, 197, 203-4.
Islam, 438, 441.
Japan, dance-song, 146.
Miau, 151.
Rome, 414.
Danckert, W., 31.
Daniel, F. S., 475.
Daniélou, A., 206.
Danmono, 149.
Daremberg, C., 251 пи.
Darwin, Charles, 5, 6 п*.
David da Cività, 327.
Davies, М. de G., 260 пп5 $, 261 п“,
263 п®, 266 n*, 267 në, 271 n*, 272 nt,
273 nn* 5, 274 n*.
Davison, A. T., 163.
* Da-we Sing-ge’ (‘The lion of the moon’),
139-40 (Ex. 228).
Dawtzanq, 134.
Dead Sea Scrolls, 301.
Deb, Egyptian horn, 269.
Dechevrens, A., 123 nt.
Deimel, A., 233, 241 n?, 242. -
Delphic hymns:
Paeans, 363-9, 374, 379, 398, 400.
Transcriptions, I, 363—9; II, 369.
Demetrius Phalerius, 277.
Demiéville, P., 149 п.
Demosthenes, 400.
De musica (Pseudo-Plutarch), 379, 380 пб,
388, 389 n!, 394 п?, 397 n*.
Denomy, À. J., 475.
Densmore, F., 31 n?, 32, 40 n?, 44 п?,
45 пі, 48m, 49n?, 5012, 54 пп?-*,
Sins:
De ortu scientiarum, 466.
Dessau, H., 401 n.
Dhu’l-Nan, 441.
Diaw, 97, 98.
Diehl, E., 380 nn} 2, 386 n?, 396 nê.
Dieses, 359, 364, 388.
Egyptian upper-
Dieterici, F., 434 nn® 6, 460 n!, 466 n?.
Dilal, 423.
Dilruba, Indian chordophone, 225.
Dincser, O., 25, 26.
Dio Cassius, 277, 278, 372 n?.
Diodorus (citharoede), 417.
Diodorus Siculus, 247 n®, 251, 265, 276 n?,
271, 280, 318.
Diogenes Laertius, 246.
Dionysius (Byzantine theorist), 372, 373.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 337, 338,
374, 405 n*.
Dionysius of Syracuse, 396.
Dionysus, 251, 379, 383, 387, 392, 401.
Dioscorides of Samos, 409 n*.
Dithyramb, 377, 379, 383, 386, 387, 390-
8 passim.
Dittenberger, C. F. W., 419.
‘Dog follows a Deer, A’, 155 (Ex. 250).
Dólger, Е. J., 306 në, 311 n?.
Dolmetsch, Arnold and Mabel, 476.
Doxology (Christian), 302 n?, 310.
Driver, S. R., 295 n!,
DRONE, DRONE-PIPES:
Arabia, 241.
as divine manifestation, 53.
Mesopotamia, 241, 252.
primitive, 21, 50.
providing pes of canon, 21.
Tibet, 139.
DRUM:
Africa, 52.
Annam, 157.
Arabia, 423, 438.
Babylon, 230, 231.
Bali, 171, 172, 173, 181.
bull-symbolism, 230, 231.
Cambodia, 162, 181.
China, 88, 89, 90, 92, 101, 103, 104, 105,
107, 108, 128, 134, 185.
common objects as ‘drums’, 33.
*drum-language', 33, 34.
drum-orchestras, 38.
Egypt, 264, 267-8, 280.
hoop-drum, 128, 129.
hour-glass drum, 35, 39, 58, 105, 137,
172, 230, 231, 233, 234, 240, 424, 442.
India, 181, 203, 212, 215, 220, 221-2.
Islam, 424, 425, 426, 434, 438, 442, 452,
455, 468.
Japan, 148.
kettle-drum, 137, 233, 234, 240, 268,
425, 455, 468.
in magic, 48, 52, 55.
Mesopotamia, 230, 231, 233, 234, 238,
240.
Mongolia, 105.
Persia, 425, 426.
Phrygia, 405.
512
DRUM (cont.)
pot-drum, 33.
primitive, 33, 34, 35-36, 52, 55-57, 58.
Roman, 415. ;
sexual symbolism, 47-48, 52, 55, 56—57.
Shaman-drum, see slit-drum.
slit-drum, 34, 55, 57, 157, 185; see also
Trough.
symbolic of the god, 52, 230, 231.
symbolic of sacrifice, 52, 58.
Tibet, 137, 138, 139, 140.
tree-drum, 52, 58.
DRUM-CHIMES:
Cambodia, 164.
Duchesne, L., 304 п?.
Duff, Arabic drum, tambourine, 241, 423,
424, 443.
Рой, J. W., 414 п“.
Dufüf, Islamic tambourine, 434.
Dugmore, C. W., 304 n?.
DULCIMER:
China (yangchyn), 93.
Persia (santir), 93, 445.
Dumbalak, Persian drum, 426.
Dünáy, Persian double-pipe, 423.
Dunbaq, Persian hour-glass drum, 240.
Dupont-Sommer, A., 301 n°.
Düring, I., 342 n*, 343 n!, 346 n!, 351 n!,
352 n3, 357 ппь 3, 394 па, 397 n*.
Dyi, Chinese cross-flute, 104, 112, 124,
128, 136.
Ea, 230, 231.
Earth-bow, 36.
Eastlake, F. W., 90 n*.
Ebeling, E., 233, 249, 288.
Ebert, M., 245 n*.
Eboué, M., 33.
Eckardt, A., 142, 143.
Edelstein, E. J. and L., 310 n*.
Eidos, 347, 349.
Elagabalus, 417.
Elbogen, I., 298 пз, 301 nt, 302 пт.
Elegy, Arabia, 424.
Ellag, Sumerian horn, 242.
Ellhwu, Chinese fiddle, 93, 156.
Ellis, A. J., 163 п!.
Elymos, Phrygian twin reed-pipe, 252, 405.
Embateria, 380.
*Emptying-the-Cup Music', 98, 105-6.
Emsheimer, E., 59 nn? * € 7, 135 п,
186 n?, 187 пі.
Engel, C., 239-49 passim, 267 n!*, 272 nn^'*,
275;
Ennius, 411 n*.
Epiphanius, 438.
Epitaph of Seikilos, 369—71.
Eratocles, 349 пз.
d’Erlanger, R., 426n°, 431n*, 432 n°,
(INDEX
436 п”, 441-53 passim, 456 nn® *, 460 në,
462 nn’), 463 пп“ 7, 476 n!.
Erman, A., 257 n*, 258 п?, 259, 261 п’,
262 në, 264 n?, 266 nn*: * 1, 269 nn? 12,
272 nn* °, 274 nt, 280 п.
Ermann, E., 48 n?.
Ег$етта, 233, 234.
Esirtu, Mesopotamian harp, 243.
Esraj, Indian chordophone, 225.
‘ Etenraku' (‘Music coming through from
Heaven’), 148.
Етноѕ, Doctrine of the; see also Primitive
music.
Bali, 187.
China, 87, 88.
Greece, 341-2, 350, 401-2.
India, 196, 199, 201.
Islam, 433-4.
Jewish, 322-3; Hasidism, 333.
Mesopotamia, 246-7, 250-1, 253, 276,
211
$раїп, 449.
Euclid, 458, 459, 461, 465. See also
Cleonides.
Euripides, 251 пп, 280, 337, 368, 374, 384,
386, 392—3, 394, 396, 399, 400.
Eustathius, 270.
Evangelarium (St. Médard), 467.
Exalted Heaven, 234.
‘Faang Tzyychyi' (‘Visiting Tzyychyi’),
119, 121-2 (Ex. 202).
*"Fair, fair", cry the Ospreys’ (Ju
Tzayyuh), 105, 107 (Ex. 181).
Fakhr al-Din al-Ràzi, 462.
al-Fakhri, 431.
de Falla, M., 472, 473.
Fangsheang, Chinese iron-chimes, 112.
Fangshianq, 104.
al-Farabi (Alpharabius), 442, 444, 445,
446, 451, 452, 456, 457, 459, 460, 462,
465.
— de Scientiis, 466.
— Kitab al-müsiqi al-kabir (Grand Book
of Music), 460.
Farley, M. F., 132.
Farmer, Н. G., 97n!, 232n*, 240-5
passim, 253 nt, 269 п“, 270 п“, 274 nn ?,
275 nê, 279 03, 284 n’, 322 n*, 423-72
passim.
Fasil, 106.
Faulkner, R. O., 259, 260.
Felber-Geiger, E., 200.
Fellah songs, 25-26.
Fernald, Н. E., 92 n!.
FIDDLE, BOWED LUTE, Rebab:
Annam, 156.
Cambodia, 162.
China, 92, 93, 124, 125, 156.
INDEX
India, 181, 182.
Java, 167, 168, 169.
Mongolia, 136.
Naga, 155.
Sumatra, 168.
Tibet, 138.
Fife, Islamic (shahin), 438.
Finesinger, S. B., 296 n!, 300 n*.
Fioritura (tahdsin, zawwá'id, zuwwáüq), 447,
450, 455, 456, 472.
Firdausi, 425, 426.
al-Firüzabadi, 425 n°.
Fischer, E., 123 n!, 124 n!, 125 пі.
*Fisherman's Song', 145 (Ex. 238).
Fitzgerald, C. F., 155 n*.
Flavian, 318.
FLUTE; see also Recorder:
Arabia, 424, 443.
China, cross-flute, 90, 104, 108, 112,
124, 128, 136; globular flute, 88-89,
91, 92.
Egypt, 268.
Japan, 148.
Java, 148.
in magic, 48-57.
Mesopotamia, 241.
Miau, 152.
Naga, 155.
Niasan nose-flute, 170.
notation, 99, 144, 148.
Persia, 443.
primitive, 37-38.
Roman, 408.
sexual symbolism, 52, 56-57.
FoLk-Mustc and SONG; see also Primitive
music:
Cambodia, 159.
China, 89, 131-3, 137 (Exs. 213-21).
Crete, 399.
Egypt, 266.
European, 86; influence on Jewish
liturgica] music, 326, 327, 330, 334.
Greece, 391-2; see also Lament.
India, 196, 226-7.
Islam, 427, 434-5.
Japan, 144-5 (Exs. 238, 239, 240).
Korea, 143-4 (Exs. 236, 237).
Mesopotamia, 256-7; see also Lament,
Linus-song.
primitive song-types, 2-3, 7-8, 28-33,
38-41, 42, 45, 50-51 (Exs. 1-173).
Spain, influence on religious music,
473.
Tibet, 141 (Ex. 230).
Fox Strangways, A. H., 200 пт, 206, 214 n?,
215 n!, 216, 220.
Fraenkel, E., 392 n?.
Francke, A. H., 137 n!, 141.
Frank, Tenney, 417 n?.
513
Frankfort, H., 242 n”.
Frazer, Sir J. G., 251, 378 n*.
Friedlander, L., 417 n*.
Frobenius, L., 41 n!, 48 nê.
Frontinus, 412 n*.
Fuh Mawji, 154.
Fuhrmann, E., 49 n°.
FUNERAL MUSIC; see also Lament:
Annam, 158.
Cambodia, 161 (Ex. 266).
China, 143 (Ex. 234).
Egypt, 261, 264.
Hebrew, 294.
Roman, 404, 413.
von Fürer Haimendorf, C., 155 п?,
Furness, C. J., 475.
Gadd, C. J., 230 п>.
Gailhard, A., 107n', 112 п*, 115 nf,
116 пп!-?, 129 п!.
Gaku biwa, Japanese lute, 92, 98.
Gala, Mesopotamian precentor, 231-2.
Galen, 417 n°.
Galilei, Vincenzo, 372, 454.
Galpin, 229, 230 nn?-*, 234 п®, 235 nn? 5,
239-50 passim, 279 n?.
Gamboeh, Balinese classical drama, 176.
Gamelan, Javanese orchestra, 167, 168,
170-6, 183.
Gánas, 202.
Gangsas, Balinese metallophone, 171, 173,
174.
Gardiner, A. H., 258-9, 269 nn? ©, 272 n?.
Garstang, J., 245 n°, 267 n!*.
Gaudentius, 253, 350 n?.
Gau Ming, 115.
*Geese descend on the Level Sands’, 123.
Geiringer, K., 468 n?.
Gendér, Javanese celesta, 167, 171, 172.
Génggong, Balinese Jew's harp, 171, 186.
Gerbert of Aurillac, 469.
Gerbert, M., 50 n!, 452 n??, 467 në, 468
nn* 8,
Gersonides, see Levi ben Gerson.
Gevaert, F. A., 468.
al-Gharid, 428, 436.
al-Ghazali, 439 n!, 440.
Ghichak, bowed viol, 445.
Ghinà', 424, 427, 436, 439, 440, 457.
Ghirbal, Islamic tambourine, 443.
Ghislanzoni, E., 415 n*.
Gibson, E. H., 88 në.
Gigid (Malilu), Mesopotamian vertical
flute, 241.
Giglioli, С. Q., 408 n?.
Gilgamesh Epic, The, 229.
Ginsberg, H. L., 301.
Giovanni Maria ‘De Medicis’, 327.
Gipsy music, 473.
514
de Gironcourt, G., 156 n?, 158 n?, 159 në,
161.
Gisgigal, 234—5.
Glaucus of Rhegium, 379.
Gliri bu, Tibetan vertical flute, 137.
Glockenspiel, 442.
Goan, Chinese double-pipe, 90.
Gobubew, V., 91 па.
Goembang, Javanese bass-flute, 183.
Gombosi, O., 346 n!, 348 п?.
Gómez, E. G., 474.
Gonggina, Assam Jew's harp, 186.
GONGS, GONG-CHIMES:
Bali (gongs and kettle-gongs), 171, 173,
174.
Burma, 164.
Cambodia, 181.
China, 107, 134.
Egypt, 268.
Java (gongs and kettle-gongs), 167, 169.
Niasan, 170.
primitive, 21, 35.
Sumatra, 268.
Goodrich, L. C., 90 n*.
Granet, M., 47 n5, 107 n!, 150 n!, 188 n!.
Grantang, Balinese xylophone, 173.
Graves, S. M., 132.
Gray, G. B., 306 n*.
Great Book of Songs (Ishaq al-Mausili), 453.
Grébaut, M. E., 263 n?.
Greece, influence on Islam, 422, 465.
— — on Palestine, 300.
Green, Е. W., 268 n”.
Gregorian Chant, 318, 326, 328.
Gregory Nazianzen, 315 n*.
Gressmann, H., 290 n!.
Griffith, Е. LI., 267 n?, 273 n°.
Grimm, J. L. K., 49.
Groneman, J., 165 n!, 166 n?, 168 п".
Grosset, J., 208.
Grousset, R., 84 п?,
Guidonian Hand, 204.
Guillaume de Machaut, 329.
Guillaume, A., 442 n’, 443 në, 446 пп?’ °,
456 nt, 466 n°, 469 п’.
GUITAR:
Andalusian (kaitdra), 430.
Hawaiian, corrupting influence in India,
225
Mongolian, see Lute.
Guitarra morisca (Kaitàra 'atabiyya), 468.
Gulik, В. Н. van, 88 nn} *, 90 n°, 100 n*,
148 пз, 185 пі.
Gunkel, H., 289 пз, 291 пз, 304 n!, 305 ni.
Guo Mean, 117.
— Shiau-Shiang Shoei Yun (‘Clouds over
the Rivers Shiau and Shiang’), 117-18
123 (Exs. 194—6, 205).
Gust, 332.
INDEX
Hadandelli hàdandol, 288.
Hadrian, 372, 373, 417.
Hakam al-Wadi, 437.
Halhallatu, Mesopotamian reed-pipe, 231
234, 241.
Halil, Hebrew double reed-pipe, 293, 294
296.
Hallel (Ps. cxiii-cxviii), 302, 304, 318.
—, Christian, 306—7.
See also Alleluia.
Halown, G., 84 n?, 87 пт, 93 п“, 187 п“,
Haly, 467.
Hanafi, 424.
Hansen, 419 п!.
de Harcourt, E., 3 n.
Harich-Schneider, E., 144, 147, 177 n*.
al-Hariri, 452.
Harmonium, portable, 211, 225.
HARMONY:
Egypt, 278-9.
Islam, 471.
Mesopotamia, 248.
primitive, 13-14.
“Harmony of the spheres’, see Ethos
Doctrine of.
von Harnack, A., 305 n!, 311 n*.
HARP:
Annam, 162.
bow-harp, see Bow.
Burma, 243.
China, 92, 108.
concord harp, 238, 245.
Egypt, 255, 257, 258, 261, 263, 264, 265
270—2, 274, 275, 271, 280.
Greece, 251, 252, 300, 424, 425.
ground-harp, 162. _
Hebrew, 289, 293, 294, 296, 297, 300.
Islam, 425, 444, 452.
Korea, 143.
lower-chested harp, 235, 236, 237, 238
242, 245, 270, 272, 425.
Lydia, 251, 252, 381, 398.
Mesopotamia, 235, 236-8, 242-5, 252
253, 279.
Persia, 243, 423, 425, 427, 444.
primitive, 57, 58.
Roman, 409.
semicircular harp, 270.
shoulder harp, 270.
symbolism, 58.
upper-chested harp,
212
Syria, 251, 252, 280, 424.
Harris, R., 311 n*.
Harun al-Rashid, 429, 438.
Hasidism, 332-3.
Haskins, C. H., 465 n*.
Haslund-Christensen, H., 135 nê, 136.
Haug, M., 200.
237, 238, 243
INDEX 515
Hayashi, K., 148 n*.
Hazaj, 437.
Hazan, Hasidic cantor, 325, 331-2.
Hazézerah, Hebrew trumpet, 296.
el-Hefni, M., 459 n!, 461 n*.
Heinitz, W., 33.
Helmholtz, H., 275, 462, 464.
Heraclides Ponticus, 340 n*, 348, 382 n?,
390 nt.
Herder, J. G., 6.
Hermannus Contractus, 469.
Hermes Trismegistus, 275-6, 277.
Hermetic School, 257, 259, 275-6, 277.
Hero of Alexandria, 270, 281.
Herodotus, 259, 261-2, 264, 280.
Hery-heb, Egyptian precentor, 259.
Herzfeld, E., 243 n".
Herzog, G., 32.
Hesiod, 376 n?.
Hesychius, 251 п.
Heuzey, Leon, 231, 244 n",
Hickmann, H., 263, 264 n!, 267-74 passim,
278 në.
Hieron, 383.
Hildegard von Bingen, 10.
Hill, G. F., 300 n*.
Himyari, 424.
Hirazyoosi, 130, 145-6, 152, 160.
Hisham b. al-Kalbi, 438.
Hita, Arcipreste de, 469.
Hocket, 38, 471.
Hoffmann, A., 113 n°.
Homer, 340, 376, 377, 379, 391, 402.
Hood, M., 165 n!, 166 п!.
Horace, 381 n!, 405 п?, 408 n?.
von Hornbostel, E. M., 14, 24, 125 n?, 130,
133, 163, 278.
Horng Sheng, 126.
HoRNS and TRUMPETS:
Africa, 32, 37.
animal, 37, 269, 296.
bamboo, 53.
bone, 137.
China, 68, 108.
curved, 139.
as divine manifestation, 53.
Egypt, 269, 270.
Etruria, 407, 411, 415.
extensible, 137.
Greece, 406.
Hebrew, 296.
India, 139, 223.
Islam, 434, 443.
leather, 406.
Mesopotamia, 238, 242, 245, 424.
pedal, 138—9.
percussion, 88.
Persia, 425, 426, 443.
primitive types, 37-38.
Roman, 405, 406—7, 411, 412, 413, 415—
16, 418.
Tibet, 137-9.
Turkey, 443.
wooden, 242, 269, 406.
Hsaio Shusien, 132.
Hucbald, 468.
Hud@, Arab caravan-song, 424.
Hughes, E. R., 109.
al-Hujwiri, 440, 441 пт.
Hulstaert, Fr., 7.
Humbert-Lavergne, M., 153 п!.
Humbert-Sauvageot, 135 n!.
Humkára, 202.
Hundred Chosen Songs (Ibn Jami‘), 437.
Hutton, J. H., 155.
Hwainantzyy, 96.
Hwang, Chinese free-reed pipe, 185, 187.
Hwang Yeoudih, 152 n!.
Hwuchyn, Chinese fiddle or bowed lute,
93, 125, 128.
Hwuyueh, 106, 111.
Hyde, W. W., 408 п".
Hydraulus, see Organ.
Hymenaeus, 378, 392.
HYMN, Hymnopy; see also Delphic hymns,
Psalms:
Byzantine, 309-10, 325, 373-4.
China, 98, 100, 101-2, 134.
Christian, 308, 316, 373-4; Gnostic,
311-12; see also Psalms.
Greece (prayers), 395; see also Delphic
Hymns.
Hebrew, 289, 304; synagogal, 316;
Hasidic, 333; see also Psalms.
India, Rigvedic, 200-1; Sámavedic,
201-3.
Islam, 441.
Tibet, 138.
*Hymn for the Sacrifice to Confucius',
101-2, 142 (Exs. 177, 233).
* Hymn for the Sacrifice to the Imperial
Ancestors', 102 (Exs. 178, 179).
“Hymn from the Temple of the Ancestors’,
103 (Ex. 180).
‘Hymn to Nemesis’, 372.
“Hymn to the Sun’, 372.
‘Hymns to the Muse’, 372.
Hyon kum, Korean zither, 143.
Iamblichus, 246, 252, 275 n?.
Ibn 'Abbàd al-Nafzi, 476.
Tbn ‘Abd Rabbihi, 437.
Ibn ‘A’isha, 428.
Ibn al-'Arabi, 438 п}.
Ibn Bajja (Avenpace), 462.
Ibn Bàna, 430.
Ibn Battüta, 274 n!.
Ibn al-Fagih, 445.
516
Ibn Firnàs, 462.
Ibn al-Haitham (Alhazen), 461.
Ibn Hazm, 445.
Ibn al-Hijari, 466.
Ibn Jami‘, 429, 435, 437.
Ibn al-Jazari, 439.
Ibn Jubair, 440 пп“ *.
Ibn Khaldün, 429 п!?, 442, 445.
Ibn Khallikan, 429 n‘, 444 пи.
Ibn al-Khatib, 431.
Ibn Khurdadhbih, 423, 457.
Ibn Misjah, 428, 429, 447, 448, 457.
Ibn Muhriz, 428, 456.
Ibn al-Munajjim, 448, 457.
Ibn Masa al-Nasibi, 423.
Ibn al-Naqqash, 462.
Ibn Qutaiba, 439.
Ibn Rushd (Averroés), 462, 466.
Ibn Saad, 440 n!.
Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi, 442.
Ibn Sida, 437.
Ibn Sinà (Avicenna), 442, 444, 449, 450,
453, 461, 467, 471.
— al-Najàt (The Deliverance), 461.
— al-Shifa (The Cure), 461.
Ibn Suraij, 428, 436, 437.
Ibn Taghribardi, 431.
Ibn Taimiyya, 438.
Ibn Zaila, 440, 442, 444, 449.
— Kitab al-kafi fi'l-müsigl (Book of Sufi-
ciency in Music), 461.
Ibrahim b. al-Mahdi, Prince, 429.
Ibrahim al-Mausili, 428, 429, 436, 437.
Idelsohn, A. Z., 298 n!, 300 пз, 316 n?,
8021328881
Imbubu, Mesopotamian reed-pipe, 241,
25182592:
In Faaluu, 106 п!, 108, 136 n*.
Ingguu, Chinese drum, 92.
Inhu, 233.
Tgà'àt, 433, 448-9, 471.
IRON Or METAL-PLATE CHIMES:
Cambodia, 161, 162.
China (fangsheang), 108, 112.
Isacchino Massarano, 327.
al-Isfahani, 435-8 passim, 448, 451, 452,
458 п1.
Ishaq al-Mausili, 429, 436, 437, 452, 453,
451, 458, 459 n*.
Isidore of Seville, 320, 402.
Iskáru, 234.
Iwato, 130, 146, 160.
Iyar, Ramakrishna M., 200.
Jacobo Sansecondo, 327.
Jacobs, А. G., 132 n}.
Ja Fuhshi (Cha), 119, 120, 121 n!, 122 п1.
von Jan, C., 374 n?.
Jannai, 325.
INDEX
Jastrow, M., 230m,
239 n?, 242 nê, 300 п!.
Játi, 210-11, 213.
*Jaujiun's Lament', 137.
Jeannin, J., 469 n!.
Jeanroy, A., 473, 474.
Jehudah Halevi, 325.
Jehudai Gaon, 325.
Jeng, Chinese zither, 90, 93, 104, 123, 136,
138, 142, 145, 148.
Јепа Yih, Duke of Peh, 97.
Jerome of Moravia, 445.
JEW'S HARP:
Assam, 186 (gonggina).
Bali, 171; orchestras, 186 (genggong).
used in courtship, 154—5, 186.
used in fanfared melodies, 178-9.
in relation to free-reed development,
185-7.
Java, 170, 186.
Miau, 152.
Naga, 155.
New Guinea, 186.
Papua, 178.
primitive, 35.
Siberia, 187 (Qoygoy, kunka).
Sumatra, 168.
technique, 186-7.
Jiang K we'i, 98, 99, 100, 109.
— Nine Songs for Yueh,109—11 (Exs. 184-6).
Jing Farng, 92, 96, 97.
Jingshih, 128-30.
Jiun, Chinese chordophone, 91, 92.
Joen, Chinese chordophone, 92, 96.
Johannan ben Zakkai, 315.
Johannes de Muris, 470.
Jones, A. E. M., 401.
Jones, H. S., 405 n’.
Jones, Sir William, 205.
Jong, Chinese bells, 90, 95-96.
Jose ben Jose, 325.
Josephus, 278, 300.
Joshua ben Hananya, 315.
Joulii (Ceremonial of the State of Jou), 87,
102.
Juba II of Numidia, 280.
Juh, Chinese trough, 89, 101, 185.
Julian, 410.
Julius Honorius, 251 n°.
al-Jurjani, 431, 463, 465.
Ju Shii, 98, 99, 103, 104 р?, 109, 109 n?,
117, 166.
Justin Martyr, 304.
Ju Tzayyuh, Prince, 100-4, 143, 168.
Juvenal, 406, 409 п?.
Juwáq, Berber flute, 443.
231n?, 2381,
Kaitára, Andalusian lute, 430, 446.
Кайага 'arabiyya, 468.
INDEX
al-Kalbi, 438 n’.
Кай (Gala), Mesopotamian precentor,
231-2, 235, 247, 254, 259.
Kamada, Takeo, 145.
Kamancha (Kamánja), bowed viol, 445.
Kanzabu, Mesopotamian flute, 241.
Kanz al-alhan (Treasury of Melodies),
‘Abd al-Qadir b. Ghaibi, 456.
Kanz al-tuhaf (Treasure-house of Rarities),
444, 463.
Karan, Mesopotamian horn, 242.
Karlgren, B., 91 n!, 150 n?.
Karná, Persian trumpet, 443.
Karranáy, Persian horn, 425, 426.
Kasát (Sajjat, sunuj), Islamic cymbals,
434, 442.
Kassar, Kasra, Egyptian lyre, 244 n.*
Kathákali, 204. |
Kaufmann, C. M., 272 n*.
Kauthumas, 202-3 (Exs. 291, 292).
Kazimirski, А. de B., 426 п!5,
Kazoo (mirliton), 36.
Keh, C. S., 142, 143.
Keluri, Sarawak mouth organ, 178.
Kena'na'wr, Egyptian kithara, 273.
Ketoeng-ketoeng, Javanese zither, 167.
al-Khalil b. Ahmad, 451 n!, 457.
Khidr b. ‘Abdallah, 463.
al-Khwarizmi, 426 п!°, 446 n°.
Kiesewetter, R. G., 450, 462 n°, 463,
464 n!.
al-Kindi (Alkindus), 448, 450-1, 453, 455,
458-60, 465, 467.
King, L. W., 231, 247 п, 250 п“, 423 п!.
Kinnarf, Indian chordophone, 224.
Kinnór, Kinyra, harp, kithara, 273, 289,
293, 294, 296, 297, 424.
Kinsky, G., 237-45 passim, 268 n®, 271 п?,
272 п!, 443 n°, 445 n*, 467 пз.
Kiran, Arabic pandore, 424.
Kirby, P. K., 270 n*.
Kirby, P. R., 34, 35 n?, 38, 40 n!, 55 nt.
Kircher, A., 454.
Kirtan music, 217.
Kishibe, S., 90 n*.
Kisub, 233, 234, 235.
Kitab al-aghàni al-kabir (Great Book of
Songs) (al-Isfahani), 438, 448.
KiTHARA; see also Lyre:
asias kithara, 251.
Egypt, 257, 258, 263, 264, 272-3.
Greece, 339, 342, 346, 351, 376, 377,
381, 389, 393, 396, 397, 398.
Hebrew (kinnor), 296.
Islam (mi‘zaf), 423, 424, 444.
Mesopotamia (al, algar, githros), 230,
236, 237, 238, 242, 244, 246, 253.
Roman, 409, 413-14, 416, 418, 419.
Kiyose, Y., 146 n*.
517
Knosp, G., 153 n?, 156 nn? 3, 157, 158 n!,
159 n!, 162 n*, 164 п*.
Knudtzon, J. A., 242 п“, 269 n'^,
Koch-Grünberg, T., 50 n*.
Koeh, K., 56 n?, 57 n}.
Koeileei, 104, 106, 111, 127.
Kolinski, Е. M., 180 në.
Konghour, Chinese harp, 92.
Konoye, H. and N., 148 n.
Kontakion, 310, 325.
Koouchyntzyy, Chinese free-reed whistle,
186.
Kosegarten, J. G. L., 463 n*.
Koto, Japanese zither, 149; see also
Yamada koto, Yamatogoto, Soo no
koto.
Kroll, J., 309 n°.
Küba, hour-glass drum, 442.
Kuencheu, 126-30 (Ex. 209).
Kumoizyoosi, 130, 146, 165.
Kunka, East Siberian Jew's harp, 187.
Kunst, J., 14103, l6n!, 56n*, 165n’,
170mn'»99 177; 178 n4 180 ngit: 6
183 п“, 186 nn? *, 188 n?, 189 n?.
Kunst-Wely, C. J. A., 170 n*.
Kurosawa, Takatomo, 179 п1.
Küs, kettledrum, 425.
Кизаг, kettledrum, 443..
Kuttner, Е. A., 93 п?.
Kuwarga (Kürgà), kettledrum, 443.
de Laborde, J. B., 450, 454 п*.
Lach, R., 324 п!.
Lachmann, R., 14, 133, 133 n?, 316 n*,
324 т, 446 n?, 459 па.
al-Ladhiqi, 451, 463.
Lajard, F., 236 n?, 241 п“.
LAMENT, DIRGE:
Arab (biga‘), 424.
Egypt, 259, Manerós, 264-5; nehwt,
261.
Greece, 378; harmoniae employed, 395.
‘Ai-ai Adonin’, 385.
* Ailinon' (Linus song), 378.
Bormus song, 392.
Hebrew (ai /dni), 251, 287-8, 293-4;
metre, 295.
Islam (wilwal), 434.
Mesopotamia, 230; antiphonal, 233-4;
Linus-song, 251.
‘Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys’,
259-60.
Lamprocles, 349, 392.
Land, J. P. N., 165n', 166n?, 168 n!,
447 n’, 454 п!.
Landsberger, B., 248, 249-50.
Lane, А., 442 n*.
Lane, E. W., 439 n°, 440 п, 441 п".
Lane-Poole, S., 430 n°, 431 n°.
518
Langdon, S., 230-5 passim, 239-44 passim,
248, 249, 254, 288 пт, 292 п!.
de Lange, D., 165n!, 166 п?,
168 п!, 177.
Laparra, В., 473.
La Piana, G., 405 п1.
de Lasalle, A., 426 n™.
Lasos of Hermione, 342, 382.
Last, H., 411 п.
Lavignac, A., and de La Laurencie, L.,
Encyclopédie de la musique. See under
individual contributors.
Layard, A. H., 239 n”.
Lector, 320.
Leenhardt, M., 3 п}.
Le Gentil, P., 475.
Leibniz, G. W., 109.
Leo Hebraeus. See Levi ben Gerson.
Leon da Modena, 327, 328.
Léonin of Paris, 471.
Lepsius, R., 256 n?, 260 n°, 262 n*, 264 n3,
266 n’, 267 nn*??, 269 nn’ 7, 270 n},
271 nt, 272 n!*;
Leu Buhwei, 87, 93-96.
—— Leu Shyh Chuenchiou (Spring and
Autumn of Leu Buhwei), 87, 94 n^ ?,
Lévi, S., 196.
Levi ben Gerson (Leo Hebraeus, Gerson-
ides), 330-1.
Lévi-Provengal, 474.
Levis, J. H., 110 n!, 113 n?, 125.
Levy, Sara, 335.
Liang Borlong, 126.
Liang Tzaypyng, 123.
Libro de buen amor, 467.
Lietzmann, H., 308 n?.
Li Gotti, E., 475.
Liijih Yuehling, 187.
Lilis (Lilissu), Mesopotamian kettledrum,
233, 234, 240.
Lima, 166.
Limenius of Athens, 369.
Ling Luen, 93 ff.
Linus-song (Ailinon), 251, 378, 385.
Liou Shi, 91 n*.
LITHOPHONES, STONES, and STONE-CHIMES:
Annam, 156, 157.
China (ching), 88, 89, 90, 92, 101, 105.
108.
Korea, 142.
primitive, 35.
Little Shepherd, The, 107, 115-16 (Exs.
182, 189).
LITURGICAL MUSIC, LITURGY; see also
Cantillation, Hymn, Psalms:
China, Buddhist, 133-4; Taoist, 134.
Early Christian, 307-11, 316, 317.
Egypt, 258-62 passim, 280.
India, Vedic, 199-204; Kirfan, 217.
167 п!,
INDEX
Jewish, 291-3, 297 8; synagogal, 301-
2, 303-7 passim, 313-24, 329; Hasidic
331-4.
Korea, Buddhist, 142.
Mesopotamia, 234—6, 254, 259-60.
‘Liturgy and Prayer to the Moon God’,
235.
Lituus, Roman trumpet, 407, 412.
Liuhleu, Chinese note-series, 95-97, 100;
pitch-pipes, 183-4; notation, 99.
Liu Shea-An, 133.
Livy, 410 n5, 412 n3, 414 n?.
Bloyd> LITS. 14m?
Lord's Prayer, The, 312.
Loret, C., 270.
Loret, V., 260 ni, 267 п", 268 n', 269,
272118, 0073 050 200005 2786 28S
441.
Loud, G., 239 n”.
Lucian, 415 n?.
Luckenbill, D. D., 291 n!.
Lure; see also Fiddle, Guitar, Кайдға,
Pandore, Viol:
as basis of Islamic modal theory and
tablature, 447-50, 468.
Cambodia, 162.
China (pipa, pyipar, sanshyan), 91, 92,
97, 98, 99, 104, 108, 109, 112, 123, 128,
136, 147, 432, 446.
as esoteric symbol, 433.
Hebrew, 294.
Islam, 423, 424, 425, 427, 433, 445, 446,
447-50, 452, 454, 468.
Japan (gaku biwa), 92, 98, 147.
Mesopotamia, 251.
Mongolia, 136.
Persia, 425, 426.
primitive, 36, 48.
Sumatra, 168.
Tibet, 138.
Luther, Martin, 128 n!.
Lyall, C. J., 427 n*.
Lyre; see also Kithara:
Egypt (kassar), 244 në.
equated with kinnor, kithara, 296; with
githaros, 300.
Greece, 300, distinguished from kithara,
338-9, 357; phorminx 376, 377, 381,
382, 394.
Mesopotamia (in doctrine of the Ethos),
250-1.
Persia (barbitos), 251, 252, 381, 390.
Roman, 409, 416.
Lysias, 400 n!.
Ma' (Met, Ma"), Egyptian reed-pipe, 269.
Maas, P., 372 n?, 400 п?.
Ma'bad, 428, 436, 437.
McCartney, E. S., 407 n*.
INDEX
Macdonald, D. B., 441 n*.
Mace, C., 256 n?, 267 n!.
McPhee, C., 170-6 passim, 183 n?, 186 n!,
187 n?, 188.
Magadis, Greek harp, 251, 252.
Magen Aboth, 332.
Magna mater, 52, 408.
Mahaffy, J. P., 265 në.
Mahmüd, grandson of ‘Abd al-Qàdir b.
Ghaibi, 432.
Makhiri, 437.
Malik al-Tà'i, 428.
Malilu, ong Mesopotamian flute, 241.
Mandore, see Lute.
Manerós, 261, 264—5.
Manichean Psalter, 311.
Mansir al-Yahüdi, 429.
Мадата,, 332, 433, 449-50, 452.
al-Maqgari, 429 п!2, 430 nn*-5, 436 nn* 19,
442 n?, 443, 462 п?, 466 п“, 467 në.
al-Maqrizi, 430 n”.
Marcello, Benedetto, 328.
Marcellus, 417.
Mariette, A., 263 n”.
Marrou, H.-J., 336 п?,
419 n*.
Martellotti, G., 372 n!.
Martial, 401 n*, 413.
* Martial Virtue Music', 147 (Ex. 242).
Martianus Capella, 465.
Martin, E., 371 n!.
Martin, F., 235, 241 nn* 18, 243 п“.
Maspero, Gaston, 257, 259, 260 n?, 264,
268 n?, 276 n°, 277.
Masróqithà, Mesopotamian recorder, 238,
245.
Massignon, L., 476.
al-Mas'üdi, 423 n°, 424 пз, 427 n!, 442 n*.
Matsudaira, Y., 146 n!.
Mayer, В. Е. H; 56 n*.
Mazi, Manzi, Mesopotamian tam-
bourine, 234, 241.
Meibom, M., 253 ni.
‘Meihua San Nong’ (‘Plum Blossom’),
119-20, 121 (Exs. 197, 198).
Meillet, A., 195.
Meissner, B., 236 n?, 290 n!, 295 n?,
Melanippides, 393, 394.
MELODIC PATTERN and STRUCTURE:
Annam, 156-7; fanfared, 159.
Bali, 174—6.
Burma, 164-5.
China, see Poetic form.
Islam, 450-6 passim; fioriture, 450-1.
Japan, 149.
Jewish synagogal, 316-20.
New Guinea, fanfared, 179-80.
primitive, 17-28, speech-rhythm, 31-
32; structure, 29-31.
338 n?, 340 n!,
519
Melodies, classification of primitive, 12-
13.25, 89:
Melodies, fanfared, 14, 24, 31, 159, 161,
178—80, 188.
Membranophones, see Drum, Kazoo.
Ména‘an‘im, Hebrew sistrum, 296.
Menecles, 279.
Menéndez y Pelayo, 472.
Menges, L., 59 пп 3, 5,
Menghin, O., 12.
Menyt, Egyptian clapper, 260.
Mercurelli, C., 408 n”.
Мея, Mesopotamian tambourine, 241.
Mesomedes of Crete, 337, 372, 373,
401.
METALLOPHONES, i.e. metal forms of xylo-
phones; see also Bells, Celestas,
Gongs, Iron Chimes:
Bali, 171, 173, 174.
Indochina, Indonesia, 183.
in relation to aerophones, xylophones,
183-4.
Islam, 442.
Java, 167, 168, 181.
Tibet, 138.
Meyer, Н. A. W., 309 пп» 2,
Meziltayim, Hebrew cymbals, 296, 297.
Migne, J.-P., 438 n*.
MILITARY MUSIC, ORCHESTRAS:
China, 103, 106.
Egypt, 266, 270.
Islam, 434, 465.
Roman, 406-7, 412-13.
Mime (farce):
Greece, 399.
Rome, 309.
See also Mummers, Pantomime.
Mingana, A., 311 n°, 424 п".
Mir Khawand, 252 n?.
Mirliton (kazoo), 36.
Missinai tunes, 329.
Mitjana y Gordan, R., 467 n?, 472.
Mi'zaf, kithara, 423, 424, 444.
Mizhar, Islamic circular tambourine, 423,
424, 443.
Mizmar (Zamr), Arabian reed-pipe, 424,
443.
Mizmór, Hebrew penitential psalm, 233.
Monpes and SCALES:
Annam, 156, 188.
Arabia, pre-Islamic (based on pandore),
456-7.
Bali, 171, 187-8.
bamboo in relation to scale-formation,
94—95.
Cambodia, 159-62.
Chaldea, 253.
China, 87, 93-101, 130-3, 187.
diatonic, 99-100.
520 INDEX
Monpes and SCALES (cont.)
influence in Japan, 144-5, 147; in
Siam, 163.
Javanese parallels, 166.
Liuhleu note-series, 95-100 passim.
Yann scale of Tarng Dynasty, 97-98.
* Yellow Bell' system, 94—100 passim.
Egypt, 276-9.
Greece, 340-90.
Aristoxenian theory, 343-8, 357, in
relation to notation, 363-70.
Harmoniae, 347-8, 349-63, 384—90,
392, 394, 396.
Systems: ‘Perfect’, 345-8, 352-3;
Ptolemaic, 351 9, in relation to
notation, 359-63; Pythagorean,
341-2, 357.
Tonoi, 347-8, 349-63; in relation to
notation, 363-73; 375.
India, 204—16.
Islam, 433-64 passim.
Japan, *Chinese' modes, 144—5, 147.
*national', 145-7.
influence in China, 130; in Java, 165.
Java, 165-7.
Jewish, 320-4, 332.
Mesopotamia, 246-9.
Mongolia, 135.
origin of Pythagorean system, 246-7.
Persia, pre-Islamic, 426; Pythagorean,
433.
primitive, 14-17, 22.
Siam, 163.
Mond, R., 261 n”.
Monro, D. B., 348, 349 n*.
Montandon, G., 34.
Monteverdi, Claudio, 328.
de Morant, С. S., 107 пт, 112 п?, 115 n},
116 nn!'-?, 129 п!.
de Morgan, J., 241 п!, 243 пп’, *, 244 n°,
267 ns.
Morosini, Giulio, 328.
Morphy, Conde de, 468.
Mortar, Chinese idiophone, 105.
Moule, А. C., 89 n?, 93 п?, 103 пт, 112п!.
Mountford, J. F., 349 n*, 374 nn? 3.
Mousiké (Musica), 340, 402-3, 457.
MOUTH ORGAN:
Borneo, 185, 186.
China (sheng), 90-92, 101, 103, 104, 112,
124, 128, 147, 150, 151, 153, 184, 185.
Dyak, 153.
Islam (mushtak, chubchiq), 444.
Japan (shoo), 147.
Laos, 153.
Miau, 150-1.
mouth-pipes, 32.
related to Jews' Harp, 185.
Sarawak (keluri), 178.
Mowinckel, S., 292 n?.
Mowry, Lucetta, 306 nê.
Mrdanga, Indian drum, 222.
Mu'allaqát, The, 423.
Mueller, E. W. K., 147.
Muhammad, 421, 427, 438.
Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Khwarizmi,
460.
Muhammad b. Mahmüd al-Amuli, 463.
Muhammad b. Murád Treatise, The, 463.
Muhammad b. Zakariyyà al-Ràzi, 459.
Muir, W., 428 n5, 429 пз, 431 пз.
Müller, D. H., 314.
Müller, Max, 264.
Mummers, 104, 230, 236, 257-8, 309, 383,
399.
al-Muntasir, 430.
al-Muqaddasi, 440.
Mürcchaná, 210, 211.
Murray, Margaret, 257-8. |
Musáfiq, Arabic clappers, 442.
Music, see also Ethos, Doctrine of the:
and speech, 6, 7, 22.
esoteric import, 43-51, 86, 87, 199,
201, 202, 203, 230-1, 256-7, 258-9,
274, 276, 441.
identified with joy, 236, 262, 274;
with light, 46—48 ; with sacrifice, 46—47,
51, 230-1.
inducing effeminacy, 265.
legendary origins, 5—8, 257.
sexual dualism between instrument and
player, 51-59.
spiritual conceptions (primitive), 41-60.
spiritual conceptions, Indian, 197-9.
Musical glasses, bowls, cups, Islamic, 442.
MUSICIANS, MUSIC, Position in Society:
Egypt, 260, 262, 264-5.
Greece, 373, 377, 391, 400-1.
Hebrew, 290-1, 298.
Islam, 423, 428, 429-32, 435, 437.
Mesopotamia, 232, 236-9.
primitive, 401.
Roman, 401, 404, 408, 410-12, 413,
415-16.
Musicians, Female:
Arabia, 423, 428.
Egypt, 260, 263-4.
Greece, 391.
Hebrew, 286, 288, 289, 294, 299.
Islam, 434, 435, 437.
Mesopotamia, 235, 238-9, 248.
Persia, 425, 426.
Rome, 413.
Musicians Guilds, Greece, 400-1;
Hebrew, 298; Roman, 410 n!, 411, 415
nê.
Musil, A., 284 п!, 285 пп" 2,
Müsiqál, Islamic panpipes, 443.
INDEX 521
al-Mu'tazz, 430.
Muwashshahat (Al-Shushtari), 477.
Muwattar, Arabic pandore, 424.
Myers, C. S., 177 n*.
Nadel, S., 35 n*.
al-Nadr b. al-Hàrith, 427.
Nafir, Islamic horn, 443.
Nagy, L., 408 n”.
Nancheu, 112-13.
Naqqárát, Naker, Islamic kettledrum, 434,
443, 468.
Nar (Маги), 231-3, 235.
Narada, 208.
Nasb, 424.
Nasha’ id, 441.
Nashit, 428.
Nasir ai-Din al-Tüsi, 462.
*National Song', 144 (Ex. 237).
Nature concerts, Aboriginal, 9, 21.
Nauba, 452, 453.
Naubát andalusiyya (Gharnatiyya), 456.
Nauh, 424.
Naville, E., 261 n?, 268 n°.
Nay, Persian reed-pipe, 423, 425, 443.
Nebel, nebhel, nablas, uncertain meaning,
?harp, ? psaltery, discussed, 273, 296.
— harp, 246, 251, 252, 297, 424.
= lute, 294.
= pandore, 245.
= ?psaltery, 293, 296, 297.
= viol, 290.
Nehwt (Niyahat), 261.
Nem, 166.
Nero, 399, 401, 416, 417, 418-19.
NEUMS:
China, melodic accents, 113-14.
Japan, indicating pitch, 149.
Lombardic, 326.
Newberry, P. E., 271 n*.
New Year mating festivals, music for,
152
Nicholson, R. A., 427 пз, 464 n?.
Nicomachus, 253, 278, 458, 465.
Nidhàmi, 426.
Nidhana, 202.
Niggunim, 333.
Niing Wang, Prince of Ning, 118.
- Chyushian Shernchyi Mihpuu (Rare and
Valuable Secret Treatise of an Emaciated
Immortal), 118.
Nine Songs for Yueh (Jiang Kwei), 109-11.
Nippold, W., 189 n!.
Noeldeke, 438.
Nome, 369, 372, 379, 385—6, 391, 393, 395,
398.
Nomos, 250, 276.
Noo drama, 141, 148.
Norbanus Flaccus, L., 413.
Norden, E., 308 n?.
NOTATION:
China, 94-101; Taoist, 134.
Greek, 338, 351; Alypian, 358-64, 367,
369, 372, 373.
Islam, 453-4, 455, 468.
Japan, 98, 147, 148, 149.
Jewish, 316-17.
Mesopotamia, 248-50.
Tibet, Lamaist, 142.
Nüba, 106.
al-Nuwairi, 447 n*.
Nuzha, Persian psaltery, 445.
Nykl, A. R., 474.
Obermann, J., 289 п}.
OBOE, OBOE-TYPE REED-PIPE; see also Reed-
pipe:
Annam, 158, 159.
Burma, 164.
Cambodia, 162.
China (suoonah), 137.
Hebrew (Aalil), 296.
India (shannai), 223.
Java (selompret), 167.
Mesopotamia (šem), 241.
Tibet (rgya glin), 137.
Odes of Solomon, 311, 312.
Odo of Cluny, 468.
Oesterley, W. О. E., 291 n?, 297 n?, 298 n3,
299 nn? 4, 301 п“, 304 n*.
Oktoechos, 322, 469.
Olympus, 250, 380, 381.
Opera, Chinese, 104, 107, 112, 114-17,
126-30, 137.
Oppenheim, M. Е. von, 240 пм, 244 n°.
ORCHESTRA; see also Gamelan:
Annam, 157-8, 181.
Assyria, 238.
Bali, 170-6, 181, 186.
Burma, puppet theatre, 164.
Cambodia, 159, 162, 181, 182.
China, 90 ff., 103, 104, 106, 108 (table),
112, 142, 182.
Chingyueh theatre, 112.
Confucian (Jou), 90 ff., 182.
drum, 38.
Elamite, 238.
Hann, 104.
hydraulic, 157.
idiophonic, 165, 167.
Japan, 98, 145, 148.
Java, 165, 167.
Jew’s harp, 186.
Koeelei puppet theatre, 104, 106.
Korea, 142.
military, 103, 266, 270, 406-7, 412-13,
434, 465.
Noo theatre, 148.
522
ORCHESTRA (cont.)
panpipe, 38, 50.
primitive, 37-38.
Roman theatre, 415-16.
Siam, 163, 181.
Sumatra, 168.
Tarng, 108.
Tibet, 139.
ORGAN:
pneumatic, 408, 444.
portative, 444.
water (Aydraulus), 270, 398, 408, 409-10,
415, 418, 444, 465.
Organum, 102, 450, 471-2.
Orpheus, 250, 381.
Ottoboni Codex 59, 371, 372.
Ouseley, W., 426 п.
Ovid, 252, 405 n°, 410 n*.
Paean, 351, 363-9, 374, 375, 377, 379, 395.
Pakhawaj, Indian cylindrical drum, 222.
Palencia, A. G., 474.
Palgah (Pelagga), Mesopotamian hour-
glass drum, 240, 424.
Pandero (Bandair), Andalusian tam-
bourine, 430, 443.
PANDORE, PANDOURA:
as basis of Systematist Theory, 462-4.
derivation of names, 244—5.
Egypt, 261, 263-4, 275.
in relation to organum, 472.
in relation to ‘pagan’ scale, 456.
Islam, 423, 424, 425, 427, 446-7, 456-8,
462, 468.
Mesopotamia, 236, 244, 245.
Persia, 425, 427.
Roman, 409, 418.
Panharmonium, experimental Greek
chordophone, 396.
PANPIPES:
China (shiau), 90, 92, 184.
Egypt (shu‘aibiyya), 443.
Greece (syrinx), 377.
Islam (màsigal), 443.
Java, 167-8.
magical use, 48.
orchestras, 38, 50.
primitive, 3, 14, 37.
Rome (syrinx), 408—9, 414, 415.
South America, 184.
Turkey (mithqal), 443.
Pantomime, Roman, 399, 415.
PAPYRUS TEXTS:
Egypt, ‘Songs of Isis and Nephthys',
250
Papyrus Bremner-Rhind, 259
of Greek music, 337-3, 351, 373-4,
384 n?, 402, 415, 419.
* Ajax' fragment, 351, 374.
INDEX
‘Berlin’ paean fragment, 374.
Papyrus Michiganensis, 374.
Papyrus Osloensis, 374.
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus, 308, 373-4.
Papyrus Rainer, 374.
Papyrus Zenor, 374.
Paribeni, R., 405 п!.
Paris, G., 475.
Parisot, J., 440 nn® *.
Parry, Sir Hubert, 462.
Pasquali, G., 403 n!.
Pater, Walter, 475.
Patton, J. H., 389 n?.
von Pauly, A. F., 416 n*.
Pavlovskij, A., 445 nê.
Peak pràmpel (‘Seven Words’), 160 (Ex.
261).
Pearl, O. M., 374 п“.
Pectis, Lydian harp, 251, 252, 381, 398.
Pedrell, F., 472, 473.
Pei Wen-Chung, 184 n?.
Pélagaud, F., 232, 243 n'^, 424 nn® 8,
Pelog, 165-6, 174, 176, 179, 188.
Pengawak, 174.
Pengawit, 174.
Pengétjet, 174.
Percussion wands, stamping-sticks, 34, 35,
424, 436, 442.
Perés, H., 474.
Peri, N., 146 n?, 148 nê.
Persia, musical influence on Arabia, 425-
9.
Pésantérin, Hebrew harp, 300.
Peterson, E., 307 n!, 310 n*.
Petrie, W. M. Flinders, 261 nê, 267 nn* ®,
27] n322 73 ne
Petronius, 413.
Pfeiffer, R. H., 286 n!, 300 n!, 301 nt.
Philby, St. John, 284 п!,
Philo Judaeus, 247, 278, 301.
Philoxenus, 337, 386, 394, 396, 397,
398.
Phoinix, Greek harp, 251, 280, 424, 425.
Phorminx, Greek lyre, 376, 377, 381, 382,
394.
Photinx, Alexandrian reed-pipe, 280.
Phra Chen Duriyanga, 163 n?.
Phrynichus, 391, 392.
Phrynis, 393, 394, 396.
Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., 379 пз, 401 nt.
Picken, L., 472.
Pidal, R. M., 474.
Piggott, F. T., 144, 147 пт, 148 пб, 149 n^ ?.
Pinches, T. G., 249.
Pindar, 336, 377, 379, 380, 381-3, 388,
390, 402.
Pindaric ode, 339, 391.
Pipa, Chinese lute, 432, 446.
Pisha, Persian small flute, 443.
INDEX
PITCH:
China, 87, 93-94, 95, 183-4.
Egypt, 275.
Greece, 348-52.
India, 211-12.
Islam, 453-5.
Japan, 149.
Java, 165; Bali, 172.
Miau, 151.
Niasan, 170.
Pitu (Рий), Mesopotamian reed-pipe, 242,
232
Рїуушїт, 324.
Plato, 253, 265, 276, 277 пп, 336, 338-40,
341, 342, 343, 348, 349, 378, 384—7, 390,
392, 395, 396, 398, 401.
Plectrum, types of Egyptian, 274-5.
Pliny the Younger, 311, 413.
*Plum Branch, The', 149 (Ex. 243).
Plutarch, 253, 257, 258 пп“ °, 270, 276 n!,
324, 345 n!, 375 n!, 379 пт, 398 п“, 401 n?,
410 nn* 5, 415.
— Pseudo-, 250, 251 т, 379, 380 n°, 388,
389 п!, 394 n?.
РОЕТ1С FORM in relation to Melody:
China:
cheu, 114—15, 119, 127.
pyngtseh, 113-14.
tsyr, 113-14, 125, 128.
Greece, 363-86 passim, 390-6 passim.
Aeolian, 382-3.
dirge, 378, 384, 392.
dithyramb, 377, 379, 391, 393, 395,
396.
drinking songs (scolia), 384, 391.
lyric monody, 393.
nome, 379, 381, 391, 393, 395.
ode, 380, 390, 395.
paean, 363-9, 395.
rhythmography, 371.
India, 219-20.
Islam, 449, 450.
Jewish, Biblical, 293-5, 308-11; syna-
gogal, 316-18, 324-6.
Pollux, Julius, 245, 278 n*, 280, 411-12.
Polo, Marco, 168.
Polotsky, H., 311 n*.
Polybius, 398 n5, 405, 406 n!.
Polyidus, 399.
Polyphony, lyrical, 295.
— in New Guinea, 180.
— in scriptural cantillation, 318.
— primitive, 13, 20-22, 51.
Pope, A. U., 245 n$, 425 п, 426 nn? 5, 7,
431 nn* 8, 432 пп“ *, 443 пз, 444 nf,
446 пз.
Pope, I., 473, 475, 476.
Porphyry, 252 n!.
“Possessed, The’, 153 (Ex. 248).
Potapov, P., 59 пп?’ 5.
Powell, J. U., 391 n*.
Pranava, 202.
Prastáva, 202.
Pratihára, 202.
Pratinas, 382-4, 386.
PRECENTOR ; see also Cantillation:
China, Buddhist, 134.
Early Church, anagnostes, cantor, lec-
tor, psalmista, 320.
Egypt, hery-heb, 259; chanter, 277.
Jewish, 285, 316; cantor, 320; kazan,
325, 331-2; sheliach tsibbur, 320.
India (Vedic), udgátar, 202.
Mesopotamia, gala, 231-2; kali, 231-
2, 235, 247, 254, 259; náru, 232-3,
235; zamméru, 231, 232-3.
Preuss, Th., 40 nê, 46, 47, 54.
PRIMITIVE MUSIC, 1-82:
related to animism, 256-7.
survivals in Cambodia, 159, 161.
survivals in Egypt, 255-8.
survivals in Indian Archipelago, 176-7.
survivals in Mesopotamia, 229-31.
survivals in Negrito civilization, 179-80.
Proclus, 277 n”.
Procopius, 412.
Prolation, Principle of, 331.
Pronomus of Thebes, 380.
Psalmista, 320.
PsALMODY:
Christian compared with Jewish, 316.
Jewish, 306.
ancient tunes preserved by Marcello,
328-9.
instrumenta] accompaniment,
297, 299, 302, 315, 320.
metrical structure in relation to cantil-
lation, 294-5, 305, 309-10, 312,
313-14.
place in acts of worship, private, 306;
Temple, 291-3, 298-9; synagogue,
301, 304, 313, 318.
Tones, 318-19, 324.
decline in favour of metrical chant,
324-6.
29/6
PSALMS:
Apocryphal, 301.
Biblical; see also Book of Psalms:
for various occasions, 288, 290-3,
298-9, 301.
place in acts of Jewish worship, 291-
3, 298-9, 301, 304, 313, 318, 328-9.
types of, 291-3.
Christian usage, 304-7, 311-12, 316.
Gnostic, 311.
Mesopotamian, 230, 233, 254.
Psalms of Solomon, 301, 305.
Psalterium Aureum, 467.
524
PSALTERY:
China (yatighdn), 432, 446.
Hebrew (? nebhel), 293, 296, 297.
Islam (qànün), 444-5, 468.
Persia (nuzha), 445.
Psantrin, upper-chested harp, 246; psan-
trin sümfonyáh, concord harp, 238,
` 245-6.
Ptolemy, 281, 342, 345-6, 351-2, 355-8,
360, 361, 456 n”, 458, 459, 465.
Pukku, Ellag, Mesopotamian horn (or
drum), 242.
Pulleyblank, E. G., 105 па.
PUPPET-THEATRES:
Burma, 164.
China, chingyueh, 111-12; koeelei, 104,
106, 111, 127.
Pusey, E. B., 245.
*Puuan Jow’, (‘The Spell of Puuan’, or
‘Universal Benediction’), 120, 121 n!,
122 (Exs. 199, 203).
Pygmies, 21, 29, 178.
Pyipar, Chinese lute, 91, 92, 97, 98, 99,
104, 108, 109, 112, 123, 128.
Pyipar Jih (The Story of the Lute) (Gau
Ming), 115, 127.
Pyngtseh, 113-14.
Pythagoras of Samos, 246, 247, 252-3,
275, 278, 279, 341.
Pythagorean scale in Islam, 433, 450, 457,
458, 459, 464, 468.
Pythagoras of Zacynthus, 396.
Qadib, rhythmic wand, 424, 436, 442.
Qànün, psaltery, 444-5, 468.
Оагпа, Mesopotamian horn, 238, 245, 424.
Qasaba, Mesopotamian flute, 241.
Qemqem, Egyptian kettledrum, 268.
Qinàh, 295.
Qithárós, Hebrew kithara, 300.
Qithros, Mesopotamian kithara, 238, 245.
- Qongon, Jew's harp, 187.
Quasten, J., 303 п", 306 n!, 310 пт, 412 п".
Quibell, J. E., 268 n™.
Quintilian, 399, 411 n*.
Quintus Curtius, 239.
Qul-i Muhammad, 432.
Qüpüz, Turkoman mandore, 430, 446.
Qur'àn, The, 427, 434, 437, 439, 440.
Qussába, Arab flute, 424, 443.
Qusta b. Liga, 459.
Qutb al-Din al-Shiràzi, 463.
Rabab, rabé, Islamic bowed viol, 445, 446,
468.
Raffles, T. S., 183.
Raga (rágint), 25, 106, 212-16, 225, 226.
Rag dun, Tibetan horn, 137.
Ramal, 437.
INDEX
Ramman, 231, 258.
Rana Sririga, Indian horn, 139.
Randall-Maclver, D., 256 n?, 267 па.
Rattle, 34-35, 37, 44, 45, 54, 55, 240 ?.
Rattray, R. S., 33.
Ra'üf Yektà Bey, 432 п", 456 п?, 463.
Rawlinson, G., 237 п“.
Rebab, Persian spike-fiddle, 167, 168, 169,
176, 181. 182.
Rebec, rybybe, 445, 468.
Rebours, J. B., 332 n*.
RECORDER, VERTICAL FLUTE; see also Flute:
Arabia, 423.
China (shiau), 90, 92, 101, 108.
Egypt (wa’yr), 269.
Hebrew (ügabh), 289, 296.
Mesopotamia (gigid), 241 ; (masróqithá),
238, 245; (saffara), 245, 423; (shab-
Бара), 245, 443 (tig), 233, 241.
primitive, 38.
Tibet (glin bu), 137.
REED-PIPE; see also Oboe:
Alexandria (photinx), 280.
Arabia, 423, 424, 425.
Bali, 176.
Cambodia, 162, 185.
China, 90, 185, 187.
development of free reed, 185-7.
Egypt, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 268-9,
275, 278, 280.
Greece (aulos), 238, 252, 261, 262, 280,
339, 346, 350, 351, 369, 377, 383, 384,
386, 391, 392, 393, 395, 398, 402. See
also Rome, Syria (tibia).
Hebrew, 289.
India, 222-3.
Islam, 423, 425, 443.
Java, 183.
Mesopotamia, 230-1, 234, 238, 241,
242, 251, 252, 424.
Persia, 423, 425, 443.
Phrygia (e/ymos), 252, 405.
Roman (tibia or aulos), 404, 405, 408,
410-11, 424.
sexual symbolism, 230-1.
Syria (tibia), 238.
Reese, G., 270 n?, 273 n6, 470 п“, 471.
Reinach, T., 341 n!, 374 n?, 379 n!, 380 пе.
Reisner, G., 233, 249.
Réjong, Balinese kettle-gong, 171, 172,
173.
Rgya gliri, Tibetan oboe, 137.
Rhythmic wand, 424, 436, 442.
Riaño, J. F., 244 n?, 445 п, 467 nn? 7,
Ribera, J., 435 n?, 467 п", 469 n*, 470,
470 n°, 471, 474.
Riccobono, S., 410 n*.
Ridwan Shah, 432.
Riemann, 462 n".
INDEX
Rigveda, 58 n?, 200-1.
Rio, F. A., 327 n*.
Ritter, H., 441.
Ritusen, 145.
Rivoira, G. T., 467 n*.
Rkar dun, Tibetan trumpet, 137.
Rkpratis$ákhya, 195.
Robert, 415 n?.
Robinson, K., 83 пі,
Robson, J., 425 п*, 427 n5, 443 п!.
Rock, J. F., 154 n?, 155 п!.
Romanus, 325 n?.
Roscher, W. H., 280 n*.
Rosellini, I., 266, 271 nn* №,
Dum
Rostovtzeff, M. I., 416 п“,
Roth, C., 327 n?.
Rouanet, J., 440 п, 441 п", 456 n*.
Rousseau, J.-J., 6.
Rowbotham, J. F., 242 n”.
Rubāb, Persian lute, 425, 446.
Rubéba, viol, 445.
Ruiz, Juan, 467 п, 469 n°,
*Running Water', 156 (Ex. 252).
Rüyin, này, Islamic reed-pipe, 425.
Ryosen, 145.
272 pls;
Saadya Gaon, 322.
Sabbekà, lower-chested harp, 238, 245,
252.
Sacadas of Argos, 380.
Sachs, C., 34-37 passim, 52-58 passim,
84-89 passim, 93n!, 101, 102, 108,
131 01, 139n!, 141n?, 144, 145 пз,
148 ni, 154 n!, 155 në, 162-6 passim,
172 пп?, 5, 180-5 passim, 229, 243-50
passim, 257 n*, 258 nn? 3, 262, 263,
267-73 passim, 279, 295n?, 296n!,
325 пз, 345 п!, 346 п!, 380 п, 414 nf,
446 n?, 468 п?.
Saeta, Andalusian, 50.
Ikhwan al-Safa, 437, 460, 465.
Saffüra, Mesopotamian recorder,
423.
Safi al-Din 'Abd al-Mu'min, 431, 433,
445, 449, 451, 454, 455, 462-4.
— Kitab al-adwar (Book of Modes), 454-
5, 462.
— Risdlat al-sharafiyya, &c. (Sharafian
Treatise on Harmonic Relations), 449,
462.
Saglio, E., 251 п,
St. Jerome, 245.
St. Nilus, 438.
Saionji, Y., 145 n?.
Sallust, 401 n.
Salomonis, E., 50 п1.
Salpinx, Greek trumpet, 406.
Sámaveda, 201-2.
245,
525
Sambamoorthy, P., 218.
Sambuca, sambyke, Syrian harp, 251, 252,
424,
Samgitadarpana, see Dàmodara.
Samgttaratnákara, see Sàrngadeva.
Saminsky, L., 314 n!.
Sanj, Arabic cymbal, 240.
Sanj sini, Chinese metallophone, 442.
Sanshyan, Chinese plucked lute, 93, 128,
136.
Santir, Persian dulcimer, 93, 445.
Sappho, 382.
al-Sarakhsi, 459.
Sarangi, Indian chordophone, 224, 225 п!.
Sarngadeva, 197 пі.
— Samgttaratnákara, 196, 197, 198 nn” ?,
205, 206 n°, 207 nn? ?, 208, 210, 211 n!,
212 2[#@ п
Sarod, Indian chordophone, 224.
Sarpa, Indian horn, 223.
Sarton, G., 471 n°.
de Sarzec, E., 244 п!?,
Saun, Burmese harp, 243.
Savina, F., 152 п?.
Sayce, A. H., 259 nn* *,
Sàz-i alwah-i аа, glockenspiel, 442.
Scabellum, Roman clapper, 409, 414, 415
Schaeffner, P. A., 8, 34, 54, 56 n6, 58 n°,
188 n*.
Schebesta, P., 4.
Scheil, V., 244 n!.
Schlegel, F., 10.
Schlesinger, Kathleen,
457 n*.
Schmid, E. F., 335 nt.
Schmidt, J. G., 33, 56 пп“ 8.
Schmidt, W., 6. |
Schneider, M., 17 n!, 22 n!, 32 п“, 41 n?,
45 п, 47 n5 51 n}, 54 пі, 55 n*;
Schrader, E., 236 n5, 237 пп? * 5,6, 238 n*,
Schünemann, G., 335 п!.
Scolia, 380, 391.
Scraper, Chinese, 89,
primitive, 34, 46, 51.
Seami, 148.
Seba' (Seby), Egyptian flute, 268.
Seelig, P. J., 163.
Seh, Chinese zither, 89, 90, 92, 101, 103-6,
117, 142.
Sehem, Egyptian sistrum, 260, 267.
Sehpuu (Music for the Seh) (Shyong Pern-
glai), 117.
Selah, 234, 292.
Selompret, Javanese oboe, 167.
Sem Halballatu, Mesopotamian oboe,
241.
Ser, Egyptian tambourine, 268.
Seššet, Egyptian sistrum, 260, 267, 280.
Setar, Indian chordophone, 214, 224.
168 п?, 380 n5,
101, 105, 185;
526
Sethe, K., 269 n’.
Seven Fortresses (Ma‘bad), 437.
Seven Songs (ibn Suraij), 437.
Severus Alexander, 418.
Shabbàba, Mesopotamian recorder, 245,
443.
Shahin, Islamic fife, 438.
Shàhrüd, Arabic arch-lute, 446.
Shaipür, Persian trumpet, 425, 426.
Shaman, 35, 40, 45, 59.
Shaman drum, 35.
Shams al-Din al-Saidawi al-Dhahabi, 454.
Shamsi, Chelebi, 447.
Shannai (Surnahi), Indian oboe, 223.
Shaqshaq, Arabian rattle, 240 n?.
Sharpe, S., 261 n™.
Shashtàr, Arabic lute, 446.
SHAWM:
Islamic (zurmüàr), 434, 443.
Persian (surnd), 423, 427.
Sheau cheu, 119.
Sheliach tsibbur, 320.
Shells (idiophone), 34.
Sheng, Chinese mouth organ, 90-92, 112,
124, 150, 151, 153, 185.
Shen Iau, 113.
Shiah Cherngdao, 109 п“.
Shiau, Chinese panpipes, 90, 104.
—, Chinese vertical flute, 90, 92, 101,
104.
Shidirghà, Chinese lute, 432, 446.
Shieh Yuanhwai, 114, 125.
Shihàb al-Din, 445 n!, 447 n5.
Shirin, 426.
Shiuantzong, Emperor, 106, 107, 109.
Shiun, Chinese globular flute, 88, 91, 92.
Shoeimodiaw, 126.
Shoo, Japanese mouth organ, 147.
Shóphar, Hebrew horn, 296.
Shu‘ab, 449, 450.
Shu'aibiyya, Egyptian panpipes, 443.
Shudüd, 449.
Shuenn, Emperor, 101.
Shujing, Yushu Yihjyi (Canon of Docu-
ments), 101.
Shuqaifat, Islamic clappers, 442.
al-Shushtari, 476, 477.
Shyjing (Book of Songs), 89, 104—5, 109,
150, 184, 185.
Shyong Pernglai, 117.
Shyu Yuanbair, 119.
Sibitu, Mesopotamian harp, 243.
Sichel, A., 177 п, ^
Sievers, E., 313.
Simonides, 388, 391.
Simpson, Christopher, 476.
Sinnitu, Mesopotamian reed-pipe, 241.
Sirajul Haq, 438 n”.
Šiššatu, Mesopotamian harp, 243.
INDEX
SISTRUM:
Egypt, 257, 258, 260, 261, 262, 280, 282.
Mesopotamia, 236, 239.
Roman, 409.
Hebrew, 296.
Slendro (Salendro), 166, 176.
‘Slim Cambodian, The’, 163 (Ex. 268).
Slit-drum, 34, 55, 57, 157, 185; see also
Trough.
Smith, В. Payne, 444 n?2,
Smith, Sidney, 235.
Snelleman, Е. F., 165 n!, 166 n?, 167 n,
168 пт, 177.
Socrates (Church historian), 311.
‘Sol-fa’, system used in China and Japan,
101; not derived from Islam, 471. '
Solmization in Greece, 345, 352 n?, 353.
Solomone de' Rossi il Ebreo, 327, 328.
Somervell, T. H., 141.
SONG, VOCAL MUSIC; see also Cantillation,
Ethos, Folk-song, Hymnody, Opera,
Primitive music, Psalmody, Theatre:
Annam, 158 (Exs. 256-8).
Arabia, 424, 427.
Borneo, 177.
Cambodia, 159-60 (Exs. 260-6).
China, 89, 104-15 (Exs. 181-6, 209-11).
Egypt, 260, 261-2, 264, 266.
fellah, 25-26.
Greece (in Palestine), 300, 338-9, 341,
343, 348, 378, 380, 383-5 passim, 391,
400, 402.
India, 196-204, 226-7.
Islam, 423-4, 434—40 passim, 451-2.
Japan, 49—50.
Jewish, 284-91 passim, 307, 315, 320,
333.
Mesopotamia, 236-8 passim, 256-7.
Miau, 150.
Mongolia, 136.
primitive, 2-3, 7-8, 11, 14, 17-20, 28-
33, 38-41, 42, 45, 50-51 (Exs. 1-173
passim).
Sparta, 380.
Tibet, 137-42 (Exs. 225-32).
*Song of Chingis Khan', 135-6 (Ex. 223).
*Song of Deborah', 286.
‘Song of Lamech’, 285.
‘Song of Miriam’, 286.
Song of Songs, 300.
‘Song of the Harper’, 264.
‘Song of the Rising Sun and the Abiding
Moon’, 143-4 (Ex. 236).
‘Song of the Well’, 285.
‘Songs of Ascent’, (Pss. 120-34), 314.
‘Songs of Isis and Mephthys’, 259.
Sonne, I., 322 n?, 325 n?, 434 n?, 466 nê.
Sonnette (idiophone), 239.
| Soo no koto, Japanese zither, 145.
INDEX
Souenk'ai-ti, 104 n!, 106 n?, 111 n?, 186 n*.
SOUL:
acoustic nature, 10.
influenced by music, 440-1.
universal, residing in song, 33.
Sound-languages, primitive, 6-8, 32.
SPAIN:
disseminator of Islamic culture, 465,
466.
influence on Arab provinces, 430, 442.
Islamic influence in, 422, 429, 445, 446,
453, 459, 462, 472-5.
Islamic instruments in, 467-8.
Islamic melodic modes in, 449.
Jewish influence in, 325-6.
Speck, G., 45 п*.
Speech, forerunner of music, 5-7, 31-32.
Spencer, Herbert, 6.
Spies, W., 176 nn?-*, 183 nt, 186 n°.
Spitzer, L., 474.
Spondeion, 380, 388.
Spondeiakos, Tonos, 324.
*Spring Breezes', 156-7 (Ex. 253).
Sringa, Indian horn, 223.
Staff-notation (western) in China,
Islamic, 453-4, 455.
Stanley, A., 134 nt.
Steiger, 332.
Steinmann, A., 56 n!, 58 n*.
Stern, S., 474.
Stesichorus, 380, 390.
Story of the Laundress of Fine Textiles,
The (Liang Borlong and Wey Lianfuu),
126.
Strabo, 250, 251, 261, 262, 265 пп! ©, 425.
Street Cries, Chinese, 130-1.
Street musicians, Rome, 409 пб, 414.
Strehlow, C., 47 n?, 58 nê.
Strong, E., 405 пз, 411 n?, 412 n*.
Stumpf, C., 6, 135 n*, 163.
Suetonius, 418, 399 n°, 401 n?, 417 п!, 418.
Sukenik, E. L., 301 пз.
Su-ki-nyi-ma (‘ Lady, bright as the sun’),
139 (Ex. 227).
Sümpónyàh (Symphonia), 300. See Bag-
pipes.
Suoonah, Chinese oboe, 137.
Sür, Mesopotamian horn, 245.
Surnà (Surndy, Zurnà), Persian shawm,
423, 427, 443.
Susira, Indian wind instruments, 221,
222-3.
al-Suyüti, 439 п’.
*Svayambhunáth-stotra', 220.
Swete, Н. B., 304 пз.
Symaa Chian, 87, 88 n!, 94, 96, 188.
101;
Tabàlu, Mesopotamian drum, 240.
Tabira, Persian drum, 425, 426.
527
Tabl, Arabic drum, 240, 423, 438, 442,
455, 468.
Tablà, pair of drums, 222, 424.
Tabor, 468.
Tabret, 241, 293, 294.
Tacitus, 401 n°.
Tagore, R., 226.
Tagore, S. M., 205 n*.
Tahaàsin, see Fioritura.
Tahlil, 438.
Taittiriya-áranyaka, 200.
Takeda, Chüichiró, 135 п3.
Talbiyya, 438.
TAMBOURINE,
DRUM:
Andalusia (pandero), 430, 443.
China, 90.
Egypt, 260, 261, 264, 268.
Hebrew, 296.
Islam, 434, 443, 452, 455.
Mesopotamia, 233, 234, 236, 240, 268.
Phrygian, 405.
Roman, 409, 414.
Tambür, Persian pandore, 425.
Tambura, Indian chordophone, 181, 224.
Tanabe, E., 105 n°.
Tanbür, Tunbür, pandore, 423, 425, 427,
446-7 ; (atambor), 468.
Tann (Tanin), Arabian drone-pipe, 241.
Tannery, Paul, 270 п”.
Taqsim, 476.
Tarkib, 450, 471, 472.
Tarn, W. W., 419 n*.
Tarngshu (Tarng History), 98, 105, 164.
Taur, Chinese hand-drum, 90.
Taylor, А. E., 241 nt.
Teben, Egyptian drum, 268.
Tefilla, 301, 332.
Tegethoff, F., 7.
Telephanes, 400.
Telesias of Thebes, 397.
Telestes, 386, 390.
Tenella kallinike, 380, 392.
Terence, 252, 414 n°.
Terpander, 250-1, 252, 381, 382.
Terpnus, 399, 417, 418.
Tertullian, 306 n!.
Tessman, G., 32 nê.
Thabit b. Qurra, 459.
Thackeray, Н. St. J., 298 n*, 301 n!.
Thagal, 436-7.
THEATRE, Music in the:
Bali (gamboeh, ardja), 176.
Burma, puppet-theatre, 164.
China (chingyueh), 112; (koeelei) pup-
pet-theatre, 104, 106, 111, 127, 186;
Tarng ‘Pear Garden’, 106-7.
Japan (Noo drama), 141, 148.
India (kathákali, yaksagána), 204.
TABRET, TIMBREL, HAND-
528
Themistius, 458.
Theocritus, 384.
Theophrastus, 402.
Thomas, Bertram, 284 n!, 286 n?.
Thrasyllus, 350.
‘Three Maidens’, 437.
Thucydides, 380 n?.
Thureau-Dangin, F., 231, 240 nn” 3.
Thymelici, 300.
Tibia, Roman reed-pipe, 238, 404, 405,
408, 410-11, 424.
Tibullus, 280.
Tig, Tigi, Tigi, Mesopotamian vertical
flute, 233, 241.
Timbrel, 241, 286, 293.
Timbütu, Mesopotamian drum, 240.
TIME, RHYTHM:
Annam, 157.
Cambodia, 160-1.
China, 113-14, 127.
Greece, 363-86 passim, 390-6 passim;
rhythmography, 371.
India, 216-20.
Islam, rhythmic modes, 448-50, 454-6.
Jewish, Biblical, 294-5, 305, 308-10;
synagogal, 316-18.
Miau, 151-2.
Mongolia, 135.
Tibet, 138-41.
Timotheus of Miletus, 337, 369, 394, 396-
9.
Tjoengklik, Balinese xylophone, 173.
Tóph, Hebrew timbrel, 241, 293, 294, 296.
de Torhout, N., 135 п!.
Torrey, C. C., 305 n?, 312 n*.
Totemism in primitive music, 8-12, 42,
56, 58-59; in Egypt, 257-8; in Meso-
potamia, 230-1.
Trefzger, H., 108.
Trend, J. B., 466 në, 469, 470, 471 пз, 473.
Triangle, 134.
Tricon, A., 159 n*.
Trigónon, Syrian harp, 252, 280.
Tropos spondeiakos, 324.
Troubadours, Islamic influence on, 474—5.
Trough, Chinese idiophone, 89, 101, 185.
Trumpets, see Horns and Trumpets.
Tsawmann, 103.
Tsueypyng | Shan (Kingfisher-Feather-
Screen Mountain), 128-9 (Ex. 211).
Tsyr, 113, 114, 125, 128.
Tuba, Roman trumpet, 405-6, 407, 411,
412, 413, 415.
Tübal b. Lamak, 423.
Тиби’, 449.
Tubil, Islamic drum, 434.
Tucker, A. N., 159 n?.
Tumbak, Persian drum, 426.
*Tuning-fork' (Niasan aerophone), 170.
INDEX
Tuwais, 428, 435,
Tylor, J. J., 267 n*.
Tyrtaeus, 380.
Tzarjiuh, 114-15.
Tzayyuh, Prince Ju, see Ju Tzayyuh.
Ub (Uppu), Mesopotamian kettledrum,
234, 240.
‘Ubaidallah b. Abi Bakr, 439.
‘Od, Arabic lute, 251, 423, 427, 446, 447,
454, 468.
Udgátar, 202.
Udgitha, 50, 202.
'Ügàbh, Hebrew vertical flute, 289, 296.
Ugaritic religious texts, 289.
Unvalla, J. N., 426 п!.
Upadrava, 202.
Upanishad, Brihadáranyaka, 46.
'Uraib, 437.
Uspensky, P., 472.
Utricularius (Ascaules), Roman bagpipe,
408, 414, 418.
Vaisaenen, A. O., 58 п!,
Valerius Maximus, 246.
Valiha, Malay tube-zither, 177.
Varro, 380 n!, 402.
Verus, 417.
Vespasian, 417.
Villancico, 469, 470, 475.
Villaneuva, Jaime, 468 n*.
Villoteau, G. A., 440 n°, 450.
Viná, Indian chordophone, 181, 207, 221,
223-4.
Vindex, 418.
Viol (Hebrew), 290.
Viol (Islamic), bowed, 445-6, 452, 468;
plucked, 446.
Violin, India (‘toy’), 225.
— Indian use of European, 225.
Virelai, 470.
Virgilius Cordubensis, 466.
Virolleaud, C., 231 nn*:8, 232, 243 n'*.
* Visiting the Son of Heaven', 125.
de Vitry, Philippe, 330-1.
дп, Persian harp, 243, 425.
Wace, A. J. B., 282.
Waddell, L. A., 142 пт,
Wa'di (Wa'd'ai, Wa'deni), Egyptian reed-
pipe, 269.
Wagner, P., 318 n*.
Waley, A., 105, 108 n}, 109 n?, 148 n5, 185.
Walker, D., 441 n*.
Wallaschek, R., 6.
Wang Kwang-chi, 130 n!.
Wann, wannaj, Arabic harp, 243, 425.
Ward, W. H., 239 n*.
Wa’ yr (Wa'ra', Wa'r), Egyptian recorder,
269.
INDEX
Weber, A., 210.
Weber, W., 268 п", 414 nt.
Wegner, M., 296 n!, 380 п.
Weigall, A., 268 n°.
Weil, H., 379 п!.
Welch, A. C., 297 пт.
Wellesz, E. J., 310, 311 n!, 325 n?, 374 n!,
396 n?, 402 n3.
Werckmeister, A., 100.
Werner, E., 302 nn? *, 310 пп! 5, 315 n?,
317 па, 322 пп! ?, 324-8 passim, 331 n!,
434 n?, 466 п.
Westermann, A., 419 n°.
Westermann, D., 33.
Wey Liangfuu, 126.
WHISTLE:
bone (Mesopotamia), 241.
China, whistle-flutes, 89;
(koouchyntzyy), 186.
Shandong free-reed, in relation to Jew’s
harp, 185-6.
*Whistle-language' (primitive), 32.
von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., 403 n!.
Wilhelm, A., 419 n?.
Wilkinson, J. G., 255, 260—74 passim.
Wilwal, 434.
Winnington-Ingram, R. P., 341 n?, 346 n!,
352 nn *, 367 n!, 374, 375 n?, 380 n°.
Wiora, W., 25 nl.
Wirz, P., 47 п*, 54 n?, 57 nô, 58 n*.
Wissowa, G., 416 n*.
Witte, P., 41 n?.
à Wood, Anthony, 466.
Wooden bats, 35.
— bells, 34.
— block (Chinese), 128-9.
— fish (Chinese slit-drum), 134, 185.
Woolley, L., 239 пп“ * *, 241 пм, 243 n3,
244 n5,
Wright, W., 312 n!.
Wugaang Chynpuu, 119.
Wuudih, Emperor, 96.
free-reed
Xiphilinus, 372 nt.
XYLOPHONES; see also Metallophones:
Annam, 157.
Bali, 171, 173.
Cambodia, 162, 181.
development of bamboo *blown tube',
# fied.
Java, 167.
in relation to metallophone, 183-4.
Niasan, 170.
primitive, 35, 38.
Siam, 181.
Sumatra, 168.
Yafil, N. E., 456 n*.
Yahyà b. Hudhail, 445.
529
Yahyà al-Makki, 429.
Yajur Veda, 200.
Yaksagána, 204.
Yamada koto, Japanese zither, 148.
Yamatogoto (Wagon), Japanese zithe1,
177.
Yamazumi, 149.
Yangchyn, Chinese dulcimer, 93.
Yang Dahjiun, 123.
Yangguan San Dye (‘Three Repetitions of
the Tune: The Yang Pass’), 119, 121
(Exs. 200, 201).
Yang, Inliou, 105 n!, 117 п!.
Yann, 112.
Yatighan, Chinese psaltery, 432, 446.
Yazid Начга, 436.
Yeadyi, 116.
‘Yellow Bell’, Chinese modal system, 94—
100 passim.
Yeu, Chinese scraper, 89, 101, 105,
185.
Yih Guhren (‘Remembering a Friend’ or
‘In memory of a deceased Friend’),
122 (Ex. 204).
Yilii (Rites and Ceremonies), 90, 181.
Yilii Jingjuann Tongjiee Shyyueh Pian
(Melodies for twelve songs in the Shyjing),
Ju Shii, 109, 117.
Yoh, Chinese cross-flute, 90.
Youtie, H. C., 374 n*.
Yuancheu, 114.
Yuehchyn, Chinese lute, 92, 124.
Yuehfuu, 87, 96.
Yuehfuu Shyji, anthology of poems, 137.
Yunn, 97, 98. 4
Уйпааг, Turkish pandore, 447.
Yünus al-Kàtib, 457.
— ‘Zayanib’, 438.
Yüsuf-i Andakàni, 432.
Y üsuf Shah, 431.
Zaggal, Mesopotamian upper-chested
harp, 237, 238, 243.
Zagsal, Mesopotamian harp, epical com-
position, 235, 236, 237, 238, 242, 244.
Zaida, 470, 471.
Zajal, 410.
Zalzal, Zalzalian theory, 429, 458, 460,
461, 464.
Zaméru, 233.
Zammeéru (Ilukaka), 231, 232-3.
Zanbaq, Arabian reed-pipe, 425.
Zansa, African plucked xylophone, 35.
Zarqün, 429.
Zawa’id, see Fioritura.
Zelzélim (Meéziltayim), Hebrew cymbals,
296.
Zimmern, H., 292 п!.
Ziryàb, 429, 436, 437, 459.
530 INDEX
ZITHER, ZITHER-MUSIC: magic power, 88.
Annam, 158, 159. Malaya, 177.
Cambodia, 162. Mongolia, 136.
China, 86, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 99, 101, | Niasa, 170.
103, 104, 108, 117, 123, 136, 138, 142, | primitive, 36.
148. Sumatra, 168.
handbooks, Chinese, 137. technique, 111.
India, 181, 207, 221, 223-4. Tibet, 138.
Japan, 145, 148, 149, 177. de Zoete, Beryl, 176 nn*‘, 183 n’,
Java, 167. 186 në.
Korea, 142, 143. Zumür, Islamic shawm, 434.
Madagascar, 177. Zuwwaàq, see Fioritura.
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