“The true nature of a thing is whatsoever it becomes when the process of its development is complete.”

To use a familiar illustration, expressing potentiality,—As the oak lies in the acorn, so all the after developments of our European music, their beauty, grandeur, massiveness, lie in that little scale of A minor; repeat it in transpositions of pitch from each note, repeat it in duplications above and below, and we know that we have therein the whole range of tones comprehensible by the human ear. Mr. W. Chappell, it is true, shews that the Greeks had no major scale, yet all conceivable scales are there, that one being the plasmic germ of all.

The process of the development of music from the reed pipe and from the string of a bow may seem insignificant as a subject of enquiry, but the philosopher will not think so. There is an apt parallel or analogy in “wheat”—“the staff of life,” which I cannot omit reference to. Wheat was not found in the predynastic tombs of Egypt nor was it indigenous to that land, but was introduced into the Nile valley from the East. De Candole in his botanical researches, “The Origin of Cultivated Plants,” has shewn that the indigenous home of wheat was in the western slopes of the Persian mountains. Thence the cereal has spread in the course of ages over the whole earth. To this centre of human origin, to Iran and Media (now called Persia) the indications of my search all point for the source of music, here in this primal region the rude beginnings of the art of music were first heard, and the sounds thereof have gone out into all lands.

Greece, as was fitting, has occupied a large share of attention in these pages, her history seems a part of ours; her heroes are our heroes, her philosophers our philosophers, her poets our poets. The names of Homer and Pindar have come down the great highway of time, hailed and recognised as the names of chief Masters in Song, givers to whom the world is indebted; yet I think that to the man in the street who cares for music, there are two other names that would come to mind to stand first as the representatives of Greek song,—Sappho and Anacreon,—the man may not have known even the sound of the language in which they sung, yet English Song has made these names household words.

So when I see Sappho with her lyre pictured on the vases, and memory revives her story, or when, on an amphora, I see Anacreon depicted, trudging along, with his lyre slung on a stick across his shoulder, like a rustic traveller carrying his day’s provender, and with his dog following,—they appeal to me as familiar friends. Then, too, I remember how a Greek poet apostrophised Anacreon,—

O lover of the lovely lyre,
Who as thy sweet will sped,
Hast sailed through all the seas of life,
With passion and with song.

Still we linger over the land of Greece, its haunting charm persists from youth to old age. Mr. F. G. Frazer, in his Pausanias, recalls the beautiful thought of Schiller, how, like that poet, the traveller,

“Might have seen as in a vision
The bright procession of the Gods
Winding up the long slope of Olympus,
Sometimes pausing to look back sadly
At a world where they were no longer needed.”

A glance at the map of Asia will show you a long trend of mountains from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. This vast plateau lies like a great backbone across Asia; the Caucasus, the Armenian mountains, the Zagros mountains, the Iranian mountains; on the eastern slope of these the Hindoo Cush, and the great Divide.

It is a curious fact worth thinking about that the Lute crossed over the ranges of the Hindoo Cush to the Valley of the Indus and to the Ganges and became the parent of the Ravanastron, or Indian Violin, and other tribes of bowed string instruments. The Lyre and the Harp never passed, nor the double flutes (except as left by Alexander the Great after his conquest) and the same with China. The feeling of the Hindoos has settled upon instruments with many frets and moveable bridges, and unfortunately the relics of the real old days of that land have not been preserved.

On the Western side of this mountainous range I have shewn the type of stringed instruments that prevailed, from Chaldea and Babylonia to Egypt, from Assyria and Asia Minor to Greece, the chief feature of the lyre and the harp being an open frame with a body that is founded on a boat-shape. These open-frame instruments are not found on the Eastern side. Why? it remains an open question. Yet the long-necked Lute or Nefer became acclimatised there in India. Was the instrument the cause of the character developed in their music? It is easy to see how it would lend itself to minute division, originating twenty intervals within an octave. Race, climate, and geography, are the great factors in the developments of the art of music.

Here, with reluctance I bring this volume to a close, for its pages have already extended in number much beyond the limit of the original intent. During the progress of the work new materials have come to hand giving an additional interest to the subject, information and illustrations acquired too late for incorporation in their relevant places, and too important in their bearing upon the investigation to be lightly sketched in, with but scant recognition of value. There is much yet to be added to the search for the origin of the Apollo Lyre; both the three-stringed and the four-stringed I have found depicted on a vase, of a date at least 900 B.C., and Dr. A. J. Evans has favoured me with a drawing of a pictograph seal, representing an eight-stringed lyre, found in his explorations at Knossos in Crete, and he writes me that he now places the date 2,000 B.C. From Egypt there comes a picture of large cross-string harps, a construction undreamt of as an ancient idea, but veritably so, discovered by Dr. Flinders Petrie at Abydos, in the Tombs of the Kings. The illustration which he has given me is of great interest.

Then the American explorers in Babylonia have unearthed a tablet sculptured in relief showing musicians, and one sitting, playing a harp of eleven strings; Mr. St. Chad Boscawen gives the date of this slab circa B.C. 3,000, it was found at Tel-lo, the ancient Sirpurra. Another valuable find, much earlier in date, was a terra-cotta relief depicting a shepherd seated playing his lute, and his dog with a curly tail standing beside him (probably this lute-lover was an earlier Anacreon), the lute so like the Egyptian Nefer, and the attitude in holding the instrument exactly the same; for so remote a time the drawing of the figures is little less than marvellous. This relic was found in the schoolroom attached to the temple library at Nippur, it confirms the conjecture I put forth that the Nefer form was derived from Babylonia—I called it the paddle form.

Each year fresh treasures may be unearthed, so energetic are the new explorers, sons of nations, all rivals in archæological work, each emulating the other in adding new riches to the Museums to hold in trust for the world’s coming ages, adding to the known past other more distant millenniums.

With so much material accumulating throwing new light upon the subject, I contemplate a sequel to this volume, to be ready, if health aids the fulfilment of my wish, by the coming Christmas, and to be entitled “Our Musical Inheritance.”

Index.