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 sportive fauns and the lush-eyed satyrs of the woods have indeed
learnt the mystery of these pipes and make merry under the vine-leaves.
I have in my mind’s eye now a curly-headed satyr handling the pipes,
and I wish that I knew the charm to bring before you the saucy curious
look with which he is regarding them. All that modern exigencies allow
me I give here, just the hands and the pipes. Notice the expectant
thumb; what is it he is contemplating? What is he about to do? He
intends to press the bulb of the pipe, but evidently something is
wrong, and I am so anxious to know what it can be. Then there is a
short line on the top of the furthest pipe; it was a puzzle to me years
ago, and the satyr and I we are still puzzling over it. Each pipe has
but one bulb, and I think very probably these simple creatures of
nature would be unable to manage more. Four oval holes are given to
each pipe, the artist has so marked them, and the firing that the
vase underwent in the kiln retains them with indelible truth. When
I see on wall paintings that finger holes are marked I am doubtful,
because it may be the work of an overwise restorer, and so of copies
of the wall-paintings on the tombs; and, indeed, I am sorry to know
that modern painters and engravers are not trustworthy in details, but
palm off home made suppositions about the proper finish of musical
instruments, the nature of which they do not comprehend. They are
ignorant even of any necessity for comprehending such simple things.
I was looking over a valuable book on sculpture yesterday, in which
highly finished delineations were given of the friezes of the
Parthenon; in one engraving four flute players were represented each
playing a single pipe. I was dazed; wondered if my memory had played
me tricks. So I went and looked at the marbles, and sure enough I was
right; the sculptor had carved two hands and two pipes in the natural
way of the double pipes! At that period I should not expect to see the
single pipe, and I do not remember on any Etruscan vase a player on one
pipe only. Neither should one expect to see the bulb form represented
here because the straight form suits best the sculptor’s art; and in
marble vases, also, the double pipes are quite plain as may be seen
on a beautiful vase in the entrance hall of the British Museum. Read
Keat’s poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and then go and look on this
marble picture of
The happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new.
Or if you are denied that delight, read those five stanzas of a poem
that will be immortal as the memory of our race, and will outlast the
marble beauty it realizes; read it in quietness, and then, in Keat’s
sweet words,
With eyes, shut softly up alive,
the scene will grow within you, as that pale singer heard it, singing
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account