How music grew, from prehistoric times to the present day

The yellow races seem to like the same kind of music and use almost the same instruments. Nevertheless each nation has its own special instruments. For example, the Burmese have a drum organ made of twenty-one drums of different sizes, hung inside of a great hoop; they also have a gong organ in which fifteen or more gongs of different sizes and tones are strung inside a hoop. The player sits or stands inside the hoop and plays the surrounding gongs. Sometimes it looks very funny to see a procession in which this instrument is carried by two men while a third walks along inside a hoop, striking the gongs not only at the side and in front of him but also behind him. (Figure 14.)

This instrument is a very important part of the Javanese orchestra called the gamelon in Java. Their particular musical possession is the anklong, a set of bamboo tubes sounded by striking them. We have heard some Javanese songs sung by Eva Gauthier and we found great beauty in them. Many of these songs are centuries old.

In these countries the people are very fond of making musical instruments which look like animals and the things they see around them, as for instance, the Burmese soung, a thirteen stringed harp, with a boat shaped body and a prettily curved neck. Think, too, of playing as they do in Burma and Siam on a harp or zither shaped like a crocodile! (Figures 12 and 13.)

The Siamese use more wind instruments than the people of other Oriental lands. When Edward MacDowell, our famous composer, heard the Siamese Royal Orchestra in London, he decided that each musician made up his part as he went along, the only rule being to keep up with each other and to finish together. The fact that they thought they were doing a really lovely thing made the concert seem very comical. But the Orientals can return the compliment. A few years ago the Chinese government sent some students to study in Berlin but after a month’s time they asked to be called home because, “It would be folly,” they said, “to remain in a barbarous country where even the most elementary principles of music had not been grasped.” (From Critical and Historical Essays of Edward MacDowell.)

Before leaving the Orientals, we want to cross the bridge with you between the Orient (East) and the Occident (West). Sometimes we find the same customs and ways of doing things in places very far apart. Sometimes this likeness will appear in a religious ceremony, a dance or song, a piece of pottery, or in a musical instrument. To find these similarities makes one believe that at sometime in the world’s history, these people so far away from each other, must have been closely related. Such a likeness can be traced in the music of the ancient Chinese and the Aztecs of Mexico, and the Incas of Peru, some of which has been sung to us by Marguerite d’Alvarez, from Peru. The Peruvians played pipes and had music in the same rhythm as the sacred chants of the Chinese. The Mexicans had all kinds of drums, rattles, stones, gongs, bells and cymbals which resemble the Chinese instruments. On the other hand we read in Prescott’s Conquest of Peru of a Sun Festival which recalls the Sun Dance of our own American Indian. The Inca or the ruler of Peru, his court and the entire population of the city met at dawn in June and with the first rays of the sun, thousands of wind instruments broke forth into “a majestic song of adoration” accompanied by thousands of shouting voices.

From the kind of instruments that the Aztecs in Mexico used, we know that their music was more barbaric than that of the Peruvians. A curious combination of love for music and barbarism is shown in the custom they had of appointing each year a youth to act as the God of music, whose name Tezcatlipoca, he was given. He was presented with a beautiful bride and for the one year he lived like a prince in the greatest luxury. He learned to play the flute and whenever the people heard it, they fell down and worshipped him! But this wonderful life was not all it seemed, for at the end of the year the beautiful youth was offered as a living sacrifice to the blood-thirsty God of Music whom he was impersonating.

Arabia is the southwestern peninsula of Asia and is bounded by the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. It was well situated to come in contact with the ancient nations of the world.

This story of Arabia and its music will include all those peoples to whom the Arabs gave of their learning. Saracen, Mussulman, Mohammedan and Islamite are different names for the same people, but they are all Arabs, even though they are not Arabians living in Arabia.

Arab music fills in the gaps between the ancient civilizations, the beginnings of early Christian music and the time of the Minnesingers and the Troubadours.

During the years we call the Dark Ages (500 to 1300 A.D.), Europe was in a semi-barbarous state and there was little learning outside of the monasteries. All the culture and advances made by the Greeks and Romans seemed in danger of perishing in the raids and attacks of barbarous tribes, and wars among the early European peoples. But the Arabs, on whom we look today as almost barbarians, were the highly cultured race of that far-off time.

They were great mathematicians and from them we have Algebra and our Arabic numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. From them we have the arabesques, or the intricate geometric designs in carvings and traceries, seen on buildings in the countries where the Arabs built, lived, roamed or studied.

Long before the Christian era there were very wonderful Arabian universities in Bagdad and Damascus, so famous that they attracted many Greek and Hebrew scholars to learn from the Arabian philosophers and wise men.

Mohammed, their greatest prophet, who was born in 570 A.D., wrote their holy book called the Koran. While he lived the Arabs were at the height of their power.

Because they had studied the learning of the past, and had invaded and conquered parts of Europe, the Arabs brought to Europe their arts and sciences and the learning of the ancient nations. Through their conquests they also carried their ways of living into the countries of the barbarians. For example, in 711, they drove the Goths out from Spain and set up their own caliphs (rulers) in that country, so that at this time they had two capitals—the original Bagdad and one at Cordova. From these Arabs, who came from Mauretania in Africa to Spain, descended the people we call Moors. It is for this reason that we have traces of Arab music and the Moorish architecture or Arab-like buildings of which the Alhambra is best known, in Spain. In Cordova, grew up a center of learning, far greater than any in the surrounding countries. At the university was a library of over 600,000 manuscripts not yet in book form, for printing had not been invented. Here, too, great chemists studied and discovered alcohol, sulphuric and nitric acids. The clock also was invented by the Arabs, and the game of chess was first thought out when the Chinese were already playing Mah Jong! They were responsible, too, for trigonometry as well as algebra, and they knew how to make cotton goods, and were famous for the Damascus steel out of which the swords of the heroes for many generations were forged. Even today Damascus steel is looked upon as excellent.

As they were worshippers of Mohammed, they were not permitted to make portraits of human beings in stone or on parchments for they believed that they would be deprived of their souls at the day of judgment should they reproduce the human form. So they put their artistic efforts into color and design.

Not satisfied with their conquest of the Goths, they decided to enter France, but were kept out by Emperor Charlemagne who thought differently, and stopped them. It was due to this conflict that the great epic La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland) was written.

Then came the Crusades, the expeditions which went on for many years to wrest the shrine of the Saviour from the hand of the Mussulman. These wars continued so long, that nearly every European group of people came in contact with the Arab, and in so doing, learned much from him.

The Arab was a courageous, loyal person, proud and ready to die for his own ideas; he was courtly, yet careful in all business dealings and many of his traits were passed on to his descendants. Very rapidly the rough warrior of the desert was transformed into a luxury-loving, cultured man.

The Arabians seemed to be great musical blotters; because they blotted up or absorbed music wherever they went and made it theirs! But they were unlike blotters for loving it; they made a science of it and passed it on to other nations and thence to us.

So much of the Persian music was absorbed by the Arab that it would be difficult to separate them in our story. The Arabs took the very loosely-put-together music of Persia and made it over into better form. Even before the Mohammedan conquests (700–800 A.D.), Arab music was well planned, and as they spread later to North Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Greece, Italy, and Spain, they left some traces of their own music and took something of the music of the natives. Furthermore, they adopted many of the instruments that they found and they became the ancestors of some of our own.

The ancient Arabs did not write down their music, but handed it on from musician to musician, gaining and losing very little from the many hands through which it passed. They have none of what we call harmony or accompaniment, as in their orchestras all the instruments except the drums play the same tune; the drums mark the time and often play very complicated rhythms. This makes their music sound confused to us, but by hearing it often you learn in what an orderly way it is done, and you will see why many people like it.

The caliphs (rulers) had court musicians and probably more music was played and more scientific treatises on music were written by these people than by any other mediæval or ancient race.

The Arab Scales

There has been much argument about Arab music as to whether the scale was divided into seventeen steps or eight, as is our scale. Some people think they hear it as seventeen tones divided into one-third steps, but Baron d’Erlanger, a great authority on ancient Arab music, says that there are two distinct musical systems still in use. One comes from their ancient home in Asia, and the other from the Pharaohs of Egypt. And the fact that these two systems have been mixed in using them leads to the question of what the real scale is. Baron d’Erlanger finds, as the result of his experiments, that if we could lower, ever so slightly, the third and seventh tones of our scale, we would have the old Pharaoh scale in its simplest form. The other scales can be played on stringed instruments on which there are no fixed tones as there are on a keyboard instrument like a piano, and can therefore play the intervals that do not exist on the piano.

It is impossible to say how many scales or modes the Arabs use, because each change of the tiniest part of a step creates a new mode, and there are many combinations possible. Some say that there are thirty-four modes; another says that there are twenty-four, one for each hour of the day. There are also modes for the four elements—fire, water, earth, and air; for the twelve signs of the zodiac, and for the seven planets.

Each mode has a name, called after all sorts of things like cities or tribes or ornaments, in fact, anything familiar to the people.

The weird effects made by the Gloss or musical ornaments like the trill, grace notes and slidings give the music a dreamy fascinating character, the charm of which is increased by its frequent changes from double to triple time, or from triple to double.

Instruments

It is through the instruments that we can trace the Arab influence in our own music. When we come to the story of the Troubadours, you will see them using the lute, the principal instrument of the Middle Ages. This was called el oud, which gradually became lute, because the Europeans heard the words that way.

So you can see here, how art travels through the chances and changes of wars, wanderings, conquests and political shiftings of power among the different nations.

Most of the Arab instruments are of Persian, Egyptian and Greek origin, but as we said above, the Arab became so mixed with other peoples of the world, that in wandering about, what is really theirs in music or instruments, or what was borrowed from others, is difficult to tell. But we can tell you that the popular music of the Arab, as you hear it today, in bazaars and cafés of Northern Africa and in parts of Asia where Arabs are still to be found, has remained practically unchanged throughout the centuries. Even the instruments are the same.

El oud still remains the popular instrument and shares its popularity with the kanoun, which is probably of Persian origin. This kanoun is like a zither, and is specially tuned for every scale. It is said that the Arab spends three-quarters of his life tuning his instruments.

Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger, an Englishman living in Tunis, has spent twelve years studying the ancient Arabian music in order to preserve it, for it is dying out through the arrival of modern European civilization accompanied by phonographs, jazz and radios.

Their viols are of real interest because it is claimed that they are the ancestors of the great violin family. These ancestors are of different styles and are called the rebab and kemangeh, sometimes played with the bow and sometimes without. They have kissars and lyres and various forms of zithers, besides the kanoun. The Arabs’ fondness for strings is proof that they were indeed sensitive and fine, while most of their neighbors liked the drums and brasses much more, showing a lower grade of civilization. By this we do not mean that the Arabs were not fond of their drums, because the drum was one of the chief features of their music. Indeed they had many kinds—the atambal which looks like two kettle-drums hitched together; the derbouka which is really a vase with a skin stretched over the base; the taar like our tambourine; the bendaair, an open faced shallow drum, with snares (cords) stretched across inside the head somewhat like our own snare drum; and the dof, a squarish drum played with the hands and knuckles like the taar, but with the snares. The Hebrews had an instrument like this called the tof or toph and the Persians also had the dof or duff. So, here again, you see how one nation affects the other. (Figure 8.)

Then they had flutes called the ijaouak and gosba with three or more holes, which they used for sad tunes.

Every visitor to a Mohammedan country is introduced to Arab religious music at day-break, noon and sun-down, by the muezzin (priest) who calls the faithful of Mohammed to prayer, from an opening in the tower of a mosque. This call has been handed down to the Mohammedans from a time even before the coming of Mohammed (6th century A.D.).