CHAPTER XXII.

In Ancient China.

THE TRUMPETS OF THE CHINESE.

Trumpets are amongst the very earliest of musical instruments, yet remote as is their date they throw no light on musical scales of the period of their use. Nevertheless for their very ancientness we cannot well pass them by without reference. Pictures of them appear in Egypt and in Assyria, but beyond that Old Time is chary of yielding evidence. The workers in metal in very early times undertook the fashioning of imitations of the horns of sheep, antelopes and oxen, and thus made they were used in primitive musical effects in relation to sovereignty or ceremonial. How strongly the aims of all royal and priestly offices determined the development even of the minutiæ of civilisation and the tendencies of domestic and industrial life, we are hardly able to appreciate with our modern notion of the individual assertiveness, limited only by the general good of the community. So it is well that, in considering the position of the worker, we should remember that he worked in order to fulfil the demand or behest of the king or the priest; for both were to him equally sacred, and often indeed in one man the two offices were combined.

Music may have remained with the people, as an instinct which in simple ways found its gratification; but as an art to be cultivated it had its beginnings to order. The musical instrument had a definite purpose to fulfil; and, under royal or priestly guidance, so long as that purpose was accomplished, little further thought was given to it. Under such conditions there was the perpetual tendency to stagnation; progress was not only unacceptable, but to the old conservatism, as in later days, the new thing was unnecessary; since, if it were desirable, it would have been thought of before by the proper responsible persons. Only under such like estimate can we understand the lack of resource, the poverty of invention, through many centuries during the sway of ancient monarchies, as regards musical instruments.

The possibilities of the various types of instruments, as we know them, were unimaginable in those days; for the human ear had not so far progressed in sensitiveness as to be able to comprehend the feeling for tone, for colour, for range, or for expressiveness, as we by long use have grown accustomed to and look upon almost as our heritage. Yet how short a period has it been since anything like a collection of instruments represented by our modern orchestra attained even a passable mechanical development! And what are the two last centuries we look back upon in comparison with the thousands of years during which the primitive instruments remained in their crude, barbaric immaturity; unimproved, and with neither want nor longing that they should be improved!

As instancing this blank, imperceptive state of mind and feeling, the trumpet is very noticeable. An ancient instrument for ages: perhaps nothing more than a ram’s horn, or horn of animal killed in the chase. Musically, to be ranked as a tooter or hooter. Then it became in ruling hands a means of signal: by sense of rhythm it conveyed to the hosts in field or fortress the message that was equal to words; and in royal and religious processions and ceremonies it communicated the intelligence for which the countless thousands waited; to inspire them, to uplift them in a contagious sympathy of exultation, or to bow them to the ground in common feeling of awe or adoration. When wealth accumulated, the pomp of ceremony increased. Then came the worker in metal, copying the product of nature, yet not venturing much beyond it.

The old monarchies of Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, with their tablets and monuments and paintings, afford no evidence of a stage of musical advance from the early horn; and we have but to contrast the wide range of our trumpet with the few notes producible on a cow’s horn, to recognise how, in the absence of higher aim inciting to achievement which we call art, the dormant possibilities of a marvellous instrument should have been unevoked: empires passed away, and the trumpet remained a horn. Do not be mystified by a misconception to which words may lead. The horn as we know it was an unknown thing in those far away times; its quality of tone not approached even, nor its chief constructive feature identified. The ram’s horn is the original parent of both trumpets and horns, and in the consideration of type belongs to that of trumpets more specifically. The shape of the mouthpiece of the trumpet determines the character of the instrument, and the old horns present only the same shallow cup. It is a matter to be noted how comparatively recent is the long, conical form of mouthpiece absolutely essential as it is to the quality of tone as we have it in the French horn used in our orchestras.

As seen in the Assyrian and Egyptian forms, the bell is evidently an added piece of funnel shaped metal, the first departure from the animal form; afterwards in the progress of music the shape was expanded with perception of its importance, until at last the bell became a marked configuration of symmetry associated with quality of tone, refined, penetrating, and sonorous. We have the old form still preserved to us in our fog horns, and some ancient horns of the town in our market place. In old Greek and Roman times some of the trumpets depicted possess very beautiful outlines; but there is nothing to indicate any great advance in musical evolution, and it scarcely seems probable that even then the production of harmonic notes went much beyond those common to the old trumpet horns. For an extended scale, much greater length than any we see given would be necessary: else the harmonic series could not be built up. Our old coach horn would about represent the limit of the musical value attained; gradually, however, longer tubes came to be used, and variety in shape and purpose awakened the perceptive faculty to the possibilities of higher things.

Yet how strangely dull is human inventiveness, unless the ideal aspiration precedes the routine of the worker, unless handicraft is stimulated by demand going before, of “saying give me the power to accomplish more; feed my ambition.” So we traverse the course of long ages, finding it barren of improvements.

The Chinese furnish a remarkable instance of a nation inventive yet stagnant; for although this people had the prototypes of almost everything that with Europeans has become of infinite value to modern civilization, the Chinese made nothing of them in practical development. Midway in time—how, when, and where, there is no information to guide us—the Chinese suddenly evolve a new thing, a telescope trumpet, a slide trumpet, the latent principle of the trombone; yet nothing came of it in their hands: it does not seem even to have been devised for any musical aim, nor to have a purpose beyond convenience.

The two trumpets here illustrated, called Hwangteih by some authorities, but by Van Aalst (that of the pattern we should in a modern house take to be a hearth broom) is named Haot’ung; but really Chinese names have such a never changing likeness that they are as difficult to distinguish as Chinese faces; and as for remembering them, my advice is, Do not try. These trumpets are on the sliding tube system. The Hwangteih is in three parts, and the Haot’ung in two parts, the first named being of very slender dimensions; the latter is often made of wood covered with copper, but when for military use it is of copper only. And here we should notice the feature peculiar to all trumpets in these Eastern lands, the extremely shallow disc like mouthpiece, with only the faintest indication of a cup,—throughout India, Burmah, Siam, and in fact the whole Asian regions contiguous. The effect of a shallow cup is the easier production of high, shrill notes; and it may be that the lip muscles are in these races thin and tense, the expanse of the disc merely exercising pressure, leaving only a minute portion of the lips for vibration equal to the diameter of the very narrow aperture entered by the stream of wind. The actual force and vigour of the breath would thus have a more predominant influence than any calculated variation of the lip muscles by will. The whole character of the music which satisfies these semi-civilized people seems to corroborate such a view. Shrillness and ear piercing intensity were the effects aimed at.

These trumpets are made in several sizes; but as the proportions differ from those which we find necessary for full harmonic development, it does not appear that more than three or four notes are obtained by ordinary playing. The globular ornaments upon the tubes serve the same purpose as they do in European instruments, they enable the player to press the tube to his lips with strength; and evidently the notion is a very old one,—showing us how little is really modern. It is curious too that years ago in the British Museum I found a little bronze statue of a trumpeter of the Roman period, the trumpet being shaped at the end like the Hao-t’ung. At the time I wondered at the singularity, trying to find out some meaning and purpose in such configuration, but was baffled; and it is only in the presence of the Chinese instrument that one sees in it a survival of an Asian original type brought by Greek or Roman into Europe after far Eastern incursions.

The Hwang-teih and the Hao-t’ung are reserved for marriage and funeral ceremonies, in which they have a formal part assigned to them; but it is chiefly for the marking of time or progress in the ceremony. Some authors say that the Hao-t’ung is only used in funeral functions, and that it gives a grave befitting note, prolonged and wailing.

The La-pa is another trumpet with telescope slide, and is, one would suppose, the most modern of the three. It is the military trumpet, and it gives four notes, differently estimated by different writers. It is singularly like the ancient Roman Lituus, and I conceive it probable that the players were in advance of the procession, and that the return curve of the bell was made with the intent that the sounds or signals should be thrown backward for the better hearing by the hosts following. The itinerant knife-grinders are stated, by ancient privilege, to be accustomed to use the trumpet to proclaim their calling in the streets.

Of the drums used by the Chinese, little need be said; drums are much alike all the world over. The Chinese have them of great size, and as large as five feet in in diameter. They are highly ornamented. Various sizes are ordained to be used in the Confucian temple, each with some specially allotted service; thus one placed on the Moon Terrace is struck six times at the end of each verse, giving two beats in answer to three beats of the larger drum. So orderly is everything arranged and traditionally kept up.

There is one instrument—the Yü—so singular and original in character, that it is worth serious consideration whether it would not be well to introduce it into our orchestra, to further the Wagnerian development of the music of the future. We have great use in our day for triangles and cymbals, but they cannot reach the effect produced by the Tiger, a Chinese picture of which is here given. The animal is somewhat idealised, it must be admitted; almost as much so as permitted in a photograph. Mark the singularly fascinating expression of the face embodying pain, possibly torture; and then the reposeful attitude of the tail; the whole figure symbolising the two conditions under which music exists. In the musical scheme of the Chinese the normal state of the animal is quiescent, but its voice is indispensable to the winding up of the finale. You see that the Tiger rests upon a resonant box, about three feet long and twenty inches or so wide; and it has on its back twenty-seven teeth, neither more nor less—an elaborate mystical engarnishment much resembling a saw.

At the end of the grand Confucian Hymn performed in the presence of the Emperor and all his Court, attended by his feather-swinging dancers, the chief officer assigned to this service strikes the Tiger on the head three times; three fateful knocks (thus let it be noticed anticipating Beethoven’s ominous device). Then with a vigorous swish he passes his stick three times along the projections on the Tiger’s back to announce the end of the strophe; three weird screeches are heard succeeding each other (to the great delight of Straussians) rapid as flashes of lightning, and in a hideous screech the scene ends.

And,—the Emperor retires.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Music Heard in Far Cathay.

THE OLDEST WRITTEN MUSIC.

Wherever man is molested by dreams of the night, there, in every land, will be found some form of pacification of the spirits of the dead, that they may not cause harm to survivors in the land of the living. The earliest form is generally by conjuration, by magical aid, and then the mind grown bolder as the years advance, resorts to threats, and the invocation of curses upon the unfortunate dead should he not hear and heed; the stage that follows is the intercessory stage when some one is brought in to render service, one who knows all the powerful magic of ceremony to compel the spirits, and who making it a special work, is paid for undertaking the responsibility of pacifying the spirits at due times and seasons. The person thus called in to render service, whether known to the people of the tribe as witch, magician, medicine man, or priest or priest-king, became, in this order necessary and inevitable in the growth of a civilized life. As the centuries progressed the secret ceremonies were exalted into pageants, and later took the form recognised as “Ancestor Worship,” the shifting grades of which over the known world are innumerable. From various causes familiar to the student of history, Ancestor Worship, which had its origin as a private arrangement, was at length transformed into a public function of the highest importance, with elaborate ceremonials and ritual observances, wherein such music as was possessed by the people naturally held a predominant influence.

The Chinese worship “the Spirit of Heaven” and “the Spirit of Earth,” and in their earlier times having no priest, they delegated the heavenly part of the observances to their Emperor, and busied themselves only with the earthly cares, and made the “worship” of their own particular ancestors the chief of their investments; so onerously does this observance press upon them that their outlay often beggars them, the observance has a superstitious hold upon the race, seems to be strong as heredity, ineradicable. We may smile at the Chinese, but have we not rife in our own population, superstition equally strong regarding fortune-telling and charms and palmistry, and the deeply ingrained belief in the virtue of fine funerals.

The chief duty imposed upon the Emperor is that of rigidly observing the traditionally prescribed ceremonies of “The Worship of Ancestors” at which the greatest display of Chinese music, with full orchestra is made, everything connected therewith being minutely regulated; the number of musicians, of dancers, of instruments, of vases, and all kinds of music and genuflexions, and even words rigorously fixed. Dancing was also associated with the music as equally sacred; in ancient times it held a conspicuous place in worship, having been first introduced into the ceremonies by the Emperor Shun, 2255 B.C.

We read that in “the Chinese Classics” a great Duke of one of the Royal Dynasties, Tan Foo, who lived 1325 B.C., is written of, and in the ode it is related among other things that “he charged his Minister of Instruction with the building of the houses and the Ancestral Temples.” By this confirming the antiquity of Ancestor Worship at a date, far off as old Egyptian dates, when customs, so similar, existed.

The great age of the Chinese Classics is undoubted, and Mr. Simcox says even “the most recent document in the Shoo-King belongs to the seventh century B.C., and of the famous ‘Bamboo Books’ that ‘the annals of the Bamboo Books’ may rank with the Babylonian Chronicles in authority.” These books were found after they had been buried 600 years in the grave of King Seang of Wei, who died 295 B.C. His choicest treasures, entombed with him according to ancient custom, of which we were reminded by the recent find of the royal chariot of bronze and gilded ornaments in the Tomb of Thotmes IV.

Ancient Chinese texts were printed as early as 593 B.C. In a report by Imperial order at the beginning of our era, the royal library held 165 collections of books on Music, from sixteen different editors.

My habit is to secure dates, knowing them to be of utmost value in an enquiry such as this. For a due estimate of the relation of Chinese music to that of other early nations it is well that you should compare these with the dates occurring in the previous chapters. Not a shred of knowledge exists of recorded music of Egypt or Babylonia, the earliest Greek example, the Delphic marble, dates from the third century B.C. In all countries no doubt certain folk-tunes exist by tradition of centuries, may be of ages, which ultimately are set down and put into modern notation.

In China the music of the past was looked after by “The Sect of the learned” and the responsibility for authenticity rested with the Emperor, who by dynastic right was chief of the Sect.

The Chinese attribute to an unknown antiquity the music performed at their great Confucian celebrations, and it may well be that this music is the oldest written music in the world.

Some musically-minded folk have besought me for specimens of Chinese music, wanting to see how it looks. This demand I cannot supply, for Chinese type would be necessary and Chinese compositors; moreover it would not enlighten, would to us look as columns of hieroglyphs.

This is a bit of Chinese ritual music. It is called the Guiding March, and is played by two Sheng, four other instruments also in pairs, two drums, and two pair of castanets. The music is played when the emperor, with the princes, dignitaries, and attendants, passes the second gate to enter the temple. The circles and dots at the side of several of the notes are signs that the drums and castanets are to sound. As you would not understand the march by the Chinese symbols, I have done it into English, and you have to read from the top of the right hand column, and then down each column beyond in succession—the gaps only indicate the holding on longer of the note preceding:—

The small letters are notes within the treble and the capitals for notes below it. Looks like a very early anticipation of tonic sol-fa. If you write this down on the treble stave you soon become proficient in Chinese scoring,—that is, provided you translate the Chinese characters correctly, and comprehend also the multitude of little signs used in addition, which to the native are easy of recognition.

I take up a little book that I have of Japanese songs and open it, beginning at the end, which with them is the commencement, and it looks, as I scan the page, very much the same in fashion as the English columns which I have set up before you. The characters are printed in black, and the signs in vermilion, on a beautiful silkworm paper that glistens with silvery sheen like a cocoon, and has impressed lines separating each column of characters; and each page is as a double page without inner margins, six columns to a page. Strange to say, the little book, although it measures only six inches by two inches and five eighths, is quite six feet long, for it folds backwards and forwards after the fashion of the child’s Jacob’s ladder. And this is the little book that a little Japanese maiden will take out of her sleeve and therewith caress her thoughts with music, opening it to and fro as her fancy leads her, and perhaps finding there her song of songs, where hiddenly folding there, too, may be felt some flower token that she cherishes for remembrance, even as we treasure crushed pansies and violets. Be sure, the nature that we call human nature is much the same all the world over; in one land it is but a variant of that which it is in another. The love songs as usual come first in interest, and occupy a large share in the national music, both of Japan and China; but sentiment expends itself in many ways. One song is entitled the “Haunts of Pleasure,” it is an early composition and a still popular work, the theme of which is ever new in London as in Kyoto and Peking. Then in due course sentiment displays itself in nuptial songs and in songs of domestic life,—life, its comedies, tragedies, and what not; and then in funeral odes and lamentations. I notice how old the custom is of giving one or two lines of song for the voice, followed by an interlude for orchestra.

The ritual music of the Chinese is held to rest upon tradition mainly for its due performance, as there are no distinguishing signs for time and movement, and little or no attempt at expression; indeed, all meaning is left to be shown by the attitude of the singers, and what we should call theatrical movement.

All their music is, in fact, subordinated to the vocal performer, singer, or reciter; for dancing is with them as much a religious function as it was to the tribes of Israel in the days of Miriam or David. The singing as always in unison, or attempted unison, relieved occasionally by a few fourths. For of harmony they have no idea; no feeling for it. These people have no conception of the purpose of an orchestra, as we understand it. The Chinese orchestra is merely a combination of instruments which for ceremonial use alternate with the vocal music, each instrument having its allotted place for sounding at the end of some strophe or line of the hymn, and comes in much as our snatches of instrumental melody or harmony in recitative. There is generally some mystic reference understood by the hearers, as well as the indication of the particular point reached in the ritual ceremony; such as is conveyed, for instance, in the Catholic service when bells are sounded a precise number of times, or when at certain places only is the organ allowed to be heard. So with the Chinese, only at a certain stage of the progress of the ceremony are the stringed instruments ordered to play, and at another only the wind instruments, and at others the instruments of percussion of which they have so many varieties,—drums and chimes, gongs and cymbals, castanets and tambours, and tigers. The music exists for the ceremony; not for itself.

The popular love of music is displayed everywhere in daily life, bands of musicians parade the streets, all the domestic festivals are celebrated with music, and children in their play are constantly singing. Girls are taught to play the moon-shaped guitar, and the balloon-shaped, and the three-stringed guitar, whilst they sing the ballads which the Chinese say are thousands of years old.

The singing is very peculiar, being a kind of singsong extremely nasal; so little have the lips to do with the enunciation that it can hardly be called vocalisation. This we find almost everywhere the characteristic of barbaric song; the savage and the semi-civilised seldom get beyond a high pitched nasal chant. Yet, when civilisation has progressed, the strong conservative instinct remains, and this same twang is a delicious indulgence, and a sign of long descent and high breeding. I am told by those who have had the experience, that the only opportunities of hearing the natural voice of the Chinese and Japanese in singing are when groups of workmen are starting off to work, or when soldiers are passing; and then some good musical effect is produced in unison, the singers joining in their quaintly sounding and well known melodies, which have been handed down for generations. No decent, self-respecting, or respectability-loving Chinese would condescend to the vulgarity of singing in the natural voice: they use invariably falsetto, emitted mostly through the nose, the mouth almost shut. Male and female alike cultivate this evidence of gentility.

The music of the hymn in honour of “The Most Holy Ancient Sage Confucius” is very interesting when we consider the time during which it has been preserved and handed down, and the national importance attached to it. It is performed twice a year with great pomp on the “lucky days” chosen for the worship of Confucius and the spirits of departed sages in the spring and autumn of each year. Superstition assigns to the music a particular keynote, in which the hymn is to be sung, according to the month of the moon; so that in the second month the lu is chia-chung, and in the eighth month the keynote is nan-lu.

This is the first strophe of the hymn to Confucius which they play.

That is to say, it is as near as our notation can give it. See also page 151 ante for concluding strophe.

It is called the “Sacrificial Hymn to Confucius,” the altar being loaded with offerings of meats, grain, fruits, wine, silk, spices and incense. A characteristic of Chinese worship is the firm inculcated belief that the spirits in whose honour a ceremony is performed descend from heaven to receive the offerings prepared for them.

The hymn has six stanzas, divided to accompany the ceremonial stages, thus,—

1. Receiving the approaching Spirit.
2. First presentation of offerings.
3. Second presentation.
4. Third and last presentation.
5. Removal of the viands.
6. Escorting the Spirit back.

As in Old Chaldea, the people of that vast valley of Mesopotamia, and from far up in Assyria, crowded their dead to Erech, their primitive home, and the burial place of all their race; century after century all who could do so sent their dead down the great river ways to repose near the mouth of the Euphrates, to Erech the sacred city of the dead. The dying trusted their kinsfolk to do this last duty. Even to-day the Chinaman will take his coffin and perhaps a small handful of earth with him, when he leaves his country for Australia or California, and looks to some of his kin to send him home when he dies in a foreign land, and they perform the trust, labelling their countryman’s coffin “dry goods” to get him home at the cheapest rate.

This worship of ancestors is not only the chief feature of the Chinese religion; it pervades the daily life of millions, and is believed in with a strength of sentiment and in a way which we find it difficult to comprehend. Yet, as we know, ancestor worship is perpetuated with us to this day,—witness “Almanac de Gotha,” and “Debrett’s Peerage.” Oddly enough comes slipping into my memory a reminiscence of a day long past, hearing of an old dame I knew saying to her grandson: “Ah, Willie, my boy, if your father had only married Miss B—— instead of your mother; your life would have been very different; you might have been riding in a carriage.” And she, poor simple old soul, she wondered why the laugh went round. Yes, the “might have been” is a haunting idea from which few altogether escape in life. Would you know my thought? I was thinking that had I lived in antique times—and some would say, how know you that you did not so live?—then verily I should have been irresistibly impelled to the worship of one’s ancestors, and should have comprehended how it entered into the heart and the conscience, and with music and symbolism set up a real and binding obligation not to be gainsaid; instead of which I am drawn to worship the offspring of somebody else’s ancestors, and find that to be the greater mystery. Ah, me! what a queer topsyturveydom civilization brings about. Did you ever ever try to get behind a child’s mind, to see into the inner recesses of its realistic consciousness? Watch the little girl with her favourite inanimate doll, how she holds important serious conversations with her; how the doll has to be good, attentive to her lessons, dressed and undressed, with a most serious belief in its participations in eating and drinking and playing day after day. What if no words come in response; if the food prepared is not eaten? The belief suffers nothing; the little lady will supply the fitting speeches in reply, and will eat up the offerings of sweets herself. Yes, the bewitching creature will go on believing. She lives in a world of lunacy all her own, with which our bigger world has nothing to do; and unless we can become as little children, it passes our understanding. This is the stage of mind at which the Chinese stay—checked, undeveloped. The development of the mind of the child life that is growing around our feet we watch with never-failing interest, well knowing that childish things will be put away, and its illusionary world will fade and be as a world of dream. Yet the future of the Chinese we cannot so interpret by any signs of the present outlook, nor imagine how many centuries must pass before their minds can be fitted to work in parallel grades with European thought and culture.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Evolution of the Lyre, Harp, and Lute.

THE BOW WITH THE BOAT.

Art is always the superfluous. Food and shelter are the first necessaries, they drive man into direct courses of activity; he becomes a fruit gatherer, a hunter in forests, a hut builder, or cave dweller; his intelligence prompts him to the making of bows and to using of arrows, and this is an advance in mechanical perception; beyond the mere force of darts or spears in this new aid to his strength. After his chief wants are satisfied he has leisure, and his instinct, after rest, is towards activity of some kind, and what he does then is pass-time. To please himself, that is the object of his exertion, willingly he undergoes much to this end.

The man who first fixed a second string to his bow began the art of making stringed instruments of music. In the chase this second string is of no use to him. He put it there solely for his pleasure. Many a morn preparing his bow for the chase, many an eve, ere setting it aside unstrung, he has “heard the tense string murmur,” has listened and the sound has pleased him; it is the voice of the string; a chance wish comes into his quiet mood, and from desire to gain another sound, he adds another string to please him more.

The beginning of a lyre is in the bow; but something beyond is needed for the endurance of the sounds, and the aid required is found in the boat allied with the bow. When the hunter came down from the mountains and the dark forests, into the vast fertile valleys of the great rivers, he naturally turned his industry to cultivation of the land, and here, amongst the water-courses set himself to the task of constructing boats, that he might go hither and thither. Perhaps the bark of old fallen trees prompted his first ventures, or as native races do at this day, he made a boat of papyrus stems, plaiting them together; the flowering ends of the stalks closely gathered up, naturally curved forming the prow, and in this way, leaving the after portions to be spread out, filled in between a floor of reeds in such a fashion as would produce a floating raft, or a carrying vessel capable of bearing him and the produce he would convey upon the waters. Singularly enough this simple craft presents an appearance that may have furnished the idea of a prow. The prow is so persistent a feature in the build of ancient vessels, that possibly its ornamental retainment maybe due to the early rudimentary possession.

Sir Harry Johnston saw this kind of papyrus boat in Uganda, floating on a little lake in the forest, making so pretty a picture that he photographed it.

Trees were hollowed by burning out the interior, long before tools had been devised, and the next suggested stage would be when young trees riven, yielded planks that could be bent into form for boat-building. Soon after he had attained this mastery we should find that the original cave-dweller became in course of time a boat dweller. Thus we imagine it happened that the earliest lyre took the form of a boat, or rather of a half-boat, the dwelling half, roofed or covered in, wherein the family lived mainly, as has been the immemorial custom in the great river regions—a custom existing even to this day. The skill acquired in developing the lines in boat-building was precisely the skill that was applied to equal advantage in lyre-building, and thus the sounds were housed.

To understand aright the process of evolution I think it very desirable that the imagination should have free play, and take us into the scenery and into the time in which it was going on, and if we can, by any chance glow of fancy, get the very atmosphere about us.

The earliest lyre of which we have any representation is the three-stringed lyre. Such a lyre is seen at page 13, the same as was slung on the mast of Queen Hatasu’s ship that she sent to the coast of Arabia.

Next in advance is the four-stringed lyre of the same pattern. In the British Museum there are two ancient examples of these. (Fig. 47). They usefully make clear the construction. The upper figure shews the complete instrument; the lower figure shews the interior part of the construction, the skin or parchment covering of the top of the boat being absent. The framework was covered over with thin wood or with skin, lizard skin for choice. Some illustrations of examples of this kind of lyre show that the end of the bow where the pegs are inserted, was cut to receive the strings, exactly as in later ages in violins.

This summer at Burlington House, Mr. Garstang exhibited a five-stringed lyre of this pattern which in his exploration he had recovered from one of the tombs at Beni-Hassan, which had not been in daylight for more than three thousand years. The strings naturally had perished long ago.

In the earliest times after the Egyptians had begun to depict the incidents of their daily life, and to make record of their nation’s history on the walls of tombs and temples, we find three distinct types of musical stringed instruments possessed by them; sometimes the representations of these are given in relief carved in stone, sometimes incised only and painted. Not decoration but history their minds were set upon; each man who had power held his own individual history to be of supreme importance, and thus there has been left to us a picture book of priceless veracity.

In the times when these pictures were made they already had the instruments in a high state of development, say from 4000 to 6000 years ago, and we are left to guess how long a course of time must have been necessary before from the primitive rude state they could have reached the perfected state the paintings disclose to us.

To make clear the way of evolution I recognise but three types, and class these as,—

1. The boated lyre; half-boat form.
2. The cross-bar lyre; a two-horned form.
3. The lute; paddle form.

The boated lyre preserves always the hollow shape and form of half a boat covered in, and is built up in planks or ribs, and the strings are bow-strung and strained from point to point.

Fig. 48.

The shape is seen in many of the representations of the larger boats used at the time. Two of these harps laid lengthwise together, joined at the thickest part, will give the shape I refer to, showing by comparison how naturally evolved.

Fig. 49.

Harps are indeed lyres of larger growth, and in the reign of Rameses the Third had attained their full development, as seen in the grand painting in the tomb at Thebes discovered by the famous traveller Bruce; posterity, has given it the name of Bruce’s harp. In Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s wonderful storehouse of knowledge on Egyptian things, large full-page delineations are given of this and its companion harp. Musicians frequently remark upon the absence of a front pole, their impression being that consequently the tension of the strings must have been so weak that the tone would be dull and ineffective; this however is an impression only, a practical acquaintance with woodworking and bending elastic ribs to shape, would reveal a high state of resistance particularly effective for the purposes of resonance, and would fully justify the old Egyptian craftsmen in their choice.

Many of their harps had from ten to seventeen strings and some even twenty-one and twenty-two.

The harps were frequently the heighth of a man; they were painted tastefully with lotus and other flowers, and richly ornamented and inlaid. The tuning was by means of pegs, sometimes two rows of pegs are shewn. There were long slit holes at the back for giving freedom to the air, exactly as found in modern harps.

No instance has been found of harp with supporting pole or pillar. The strings were always of gut. One harp has been discovered with strings which though they had been buried more than 3000 years still sounded on being touched. A curiously formed harp is shewn in the Paris collection having twenty-one strings, or places for strings, enough left to exhibit a manner of tying the strings (see enlarged design of this mode given on next page).

That the style had a vogue is evident since another example exists in the Leyden collection, though less complete in condition; the framework still retains the fine green colour as originally painted. Sometimes the woodwork was covered with leather, green or red. This instrument is built five sided in section, and at the back has three sound holes. The resonance should be very strong. The string-bar is well supported by its double bearings and for the kind of music demanded, I should not consider that the tuning would be of the difficulty some writers suppose.

Fig. 50.

As the boated lyre betokens a river influence, so the lyres of Class II. indicate a pastoral origin, and this is well portrayed in the Egyptian painting discovered by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in a tomb at Beni-Hassan. It is a painting representing the arrival of strangers in Egypt, and one portion of it introduces a lyre having six strings, the man holding it in the primitive fashion, and playing it with the plectrum, he is preceded by an ass bearing a burden.

The true origin is undoubtedly Asiatic, it came, perhaps, by way of Arabia into the central Nile region, and the parent form is best shown in the illustration next following (Fig. 52). In this shape it has existed from time immemorial, and down to the present it is found in use by native tribes, in Nubia, Ugandi, Abysinnia, and other regions. Sir Harry Johnston, in his splendid work on Uganda, gives a picture of a native, a Kavibondo, playing this same kind of lyre, eight-stringed.