The World's Earliest Music: Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and SumerSmith, Hermann
History
The World's Earliest Music: Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and Sumer
Smith, Hermann
Music -- To 500 -- History and criticism
The Pan’s pipes as a musical instrument made its mark in history; in
almost every land in some form or other it has existed as a popular
instrument, and therefore a source of pleasure. Varied in form, and
with pipes few or many, it is found on ancient sculptures and in
paintings. Europe, Asia, Africa, and America show specimens of the
instrument ancient, and often modern; for the use survives among some
people not yet spoilt by premature civilization. The British Museum
possesses a very peculiar specimen made of stone, which was found
in Central America. Another, of which there is a cast in the Berlin
Museum, was discovered placed over a corpse in a Peruvian tomb; it was
made of a greenish stone, a kind of talc, and had eight pipes which
gave their notes as in ancient days.
[Illustration: _Fig. 3._
_Ancient Peruvian Stone Syrinx._]
The British Museum possesses an interesting relic from a tomb at Arica;
this Peruvian _huaraya puhura_ consists of fourteen reed pipes of a
brownish colour tied together in two rows, so as to form a double set
of seven reeds; both sets are of the same dimensions and are placed
side by side, one set being open at the bottom, and the other set
being closed, consequently capable of producing octaves to the open
set; a remarkable feature therefore is the presence of the open set,
indicating a clear perception of the musical relations of the two
distinct forms used.
The Chinese also have their example in the instrument they call “The
Outspread Phœnix” or the sacred bird, to them the outward symbol of
some myth that had credence from immemorial times.
[Illustration: _Fig. 4._
_Peruvian Pan’s Pipes, Double Set._
_From a Tomb in Arica._]
Whether there has been a migration of races and heritage of
primitive invention, or whether with each people the Pan’s pipes had
spontaneously originated, is a problem upon which curiosity cannot
fail to be awakened when it is noticed how these instruments, almost
identical in make and shape, are found all over the world (_see
forward_ “_In the Land of China_.”)
The Chinese instrument is an assemblage of pipes of various lengths
from which musical tones of different pitches are produced,—it is a
mouth organ. Our modern organ is likewise an assemblage of pipes, and
differs only from it in respect of number and degree. Perhaps the
blowing across the open end of a pipes was the earliest mechanical
way of producing a flute sound. The little river reed pipe of Pan is
therefore selected as the type of all flutes; the principle is the same
whatever the variation in method of sounding.
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