The art of music. Vol. 01 (of 14) : $b The pre-Classic periods
History
The art of music. Vol. 01 (of 14) : $b The pre-Classic periods
Music -- History and criticism; Musicians
Another specimen of ancient Peruvian 'Pan’s Pipes,’ at present in the
New York Museum of Natural History, gives the following scale:
[Illustration: Music]
This is a scale of eight tones and bears some slight relation to the
minor scale in use at the present day.
Among the Tahitians Captain Cook observed that the raising or lowering
of the pitch of a single flute or pipe was accomplished by rolling up
a leaf in tubular form, inserting this improvised tube into the bottom
of the flute and pushing it in or drawing it out until the required
pitch was obtained. Some such device as this quite probably suggested
the obtaining of different tones from the same pipe. The rolled-up leaf
itself was used as a pipe capable of giving forth a true musical tone.
One of the natives of the Sandwich Islands, on being questioned in
regard to their primitive musical instruments, stripped a leaf from the
_ti_ plant and, rolling it up somewhat in the shape of an old-fashioned
lamp-lighter, blew through it, producing a tone of pure reedlike
quality. Emerson says: 'This little rustic pipe, quickly improvised
from the leaf that every Hawaiian garden supplies, would at once
convert any skeptic to a belief in the pipes of the god Pan.’[6]
Among the inhabitants of New Guinea a flute or pipe is in use in which
the tones are varied by means of a slide which is pushed into the tube
or withdrawn in much the same manner as the rolled-up leaf mentioned by
Captain Cook, but evidently on a much more extensive scale. This is in
effect a primitive trombone.
Finally, flutes or pipes which are pierced with holes are found among
many savage tribes, who have discovered that the effect of lengthening
or shortening the tube could be obtained by boring holes in it and
stopping them or unstopping them with the fingers. Simple as this may
appear to us, it was a great discovery for the savage mind to make, and
must have been the culmination of many groping attempts to attain this
end extending through long ages.
On the most primitive instruments of this nature the finger holes were
but two or three in number, but flutes or pipes are now found among
nearly all savages capable of giving scales of from five to eight
tones. Fétis figures and describes an instrument made from the horn of
a stag, which was found in an ancient sepulchre, near Poitiers, France.
This instrument, which is a sort of trumpet or _flute-à-bec_,[7] is
pierced with three holes and gives a series of four diatonic tones.
The lowest with all the holes stopped; the next higher with one finger
raised, and so on. It is described as being made with great care and
precision, the holes having been placed with an exactitude which would
seem to indicate a considerable knowledge and appreciation of certain
facts of acoustics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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