Chapter 39

MUSIC AMONG THE HEBREWS AND ASSYRIANS.

Second in point of antiquity, but first in modern association, comes the music of the Hebrews, and of the other allied nations of Assyria and Babylon, from whom they learned a part of their art of music. The place of music in the cult of the Hebrews was very large and important, yet in spite of this fact they never elevated their music into an art, strictly so called. There are no evidences of a progressive development of instruments and a tonal sense among this people. As they were when first we meet them, so they continued until they pass out of the view of history as a nation, when the sacrificial fires went out in the great temple at Jerusalem on the 11th of July, A.D. 70, and the heathen Roman defiled the altars of God. In the beginning Genesis tells us of one Jubal, who was the father of such as handle the harp and the organ (kinnor and ugabh--the little triangular harp of Assyria, and the shepherd's pipe, which here stands for all sorts of wind instruments). In the course of the centuries the harp changed its form somewhat, and perhaps had an increased number of strings; the flute was multiplied into several sub-varieties, and the horn was added. From Egypt they had the timbrel, a tambourine, to which Miriam, the sister of Moses, intoned the sublime canticle, "The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." There were also the sistra, those metallic instruments serving in the temple service the same purpose that the bells serve in the mass at the present day--that, namely, of letting the distant worshipers know when the solemn moment has arrived.

Vast numbers of musicians were employed in the greater temple service, 4,000 being mentioned in I Chronicles xxiii, 5, as praising God with the kinds of instruments appointed by David. According to Josephus, this great number was vastly increased in still later times, the numbers given being 200,000 trumpeters and 40,000 harpers and players upon stringed instruments. Even if we take the figures as greatly exaggerated, they show nevertheless that the art of music had a great place among this people.

The instruments known were few in number, and their type underwent little change from the earliest days. The principal instrument of the older time was the _Kinnor_, or little triangular harp, which we find in the record of the primeval Jubal, and which more than 1,000 years later was played before Saul to defend him from the evil spirit. This also was the instrument most prominent in the temple service, and this again was hung upon the willows of Babylon. The name kinnor is said to have been Phoenician, a fact which points to this as the source of its derivation. It is not easy to see how this could well be, unless we regard the name as having been applied to the invention of Jubal at a later time, for Jubal lived many years anterior to the founding of the great metropolis of the Mediterranean. The kinnor was a small harp having from ten to twenty strings. The usual forms are shown in the accompanying illustration. The strings were fastened upon a metal rod lying along the face of the sounding board. The type of construction is totally unlike that of the Egyptian harps, and its musical powers were apparently considerably inferior. Its form was the following:

Another instrument often mentioned in the English version of the Bible is the psaltery, of which the form is somewhat uncertain, but is thought to have been four-sided. Various ancient representations have been supposed to be this instrument, but none of them satisfactorily, at least not authoritatively. It was probably a variety of harp. The nebel is also said to have been a psaltery, but its etymology points to the Phoenician nabel, a triangular harp like a Greek delta. The forms of the psaltery were four-sided or triangular. It was probably the predecessor of the Arab canon, which again is much the same as the santir. (See Fig. 25.)

There were two kinds of flute, both of them reed pipes, the smaller being merely a shepherd's pipe. They were used for lamentations and for certain festivals, as in Isaiah xxx, 29: "Ye shall have a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, the Holy One of Israel."

Many of the different names of musical instruments in the common version of the Scriptures are merely blunders of the Septuagint translators, who rendered the word kinnor by about six different terms, where no distinction had been originally intended by the sacred writers.

Among the Hebrews we find the same progression from men alone as musicians to women almost exclusively, and it is likely that the Hebrews gained the idea from Egypt. Jubal was the discoverer of the harp, according to the tradition in Genesis, and David manifested no loss of manliness while playing before the Lord. Nevertheless when he sang and danced before the ark his wife despised him in her heart. Miriam, the sister of Moses, may well have been a professional musician, one of the singing and dancing women, such as are represented over and over again in the monuments. In the time of Moses, and for some time later, women had no status in the public service; but in the later days of the second temple the women singers are an important element of the display. Ezra and Nehemiah speak of them, and the son of Sirach, in the Apocrypha, recommends the reader to "beware of female singers, that they entice thee not with their charms."

According to the views of many writers, the Hebrews had a larger harp than the small one represented in Fig. 8. It may have been something like one which was found in Egypt, but the form is clearly Assyrian, belonging to the same type as the small harps already given. It certainly is not Egyptian. (See Fig. 9.)

The liturgy of the temple must have been singularly noble and imposing. Never had a church so grand a body of poetry as this of the Hebrews, which they heard in the very sonorous words of David, Moses, Isaiah and Ezekiel, with all the subtle suggestion of a vernacular as employed by minds of the first poetic order. The Hebrew parallelism afforded exactly the kind of formula in which one congregation could most effectively respond to another.

"The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; The world and they that dwell therein; For He hath founded it upon the seas, And established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in His holy place?"

When the priests had intoned one line, we may suppose that the whole choir of Levites made answer in the second line, completing the parallelism.

There are other psalms in which the people have a refrain which comes in periodically, as, for instance, in the one: "O give thanks unto the Lord; [refrain] for His mercy endureth forever." (Ps. cxxxvi.)

The voice of these masses stood to the Hebrews' mind as the feeble type of the great song which should go up from the entire Israel of God when the scattered members of the cult were gathered in their time of fullness and glory. For us also the same image stands. And while the art of this venerable and singularly gifted people did not attain a place of commanding influence upon the tonal side of music, it nevertheless has borne no small part in affording a vantage ground for later art in the line of noble conceptions, inspiring motives and brilliant suggestions. It has been, and still is, one of the most potent influences in the art-music of the world. Nor is it without interest that the scattered representatives of this race have been and continue to be ministers of art in all the lands into which they have come. The race of Israel has made a proud record in modern music, no less than that of the ancient temple.

II.

The Assyrians held music in honor, and employed it for liturgical purposes, as well as those of social and private life. Among the discoveries at Nineveh and Babylon are many of a musical character. Strong bearded men are playing upon harps which are of a triangular form, but of a different structure to any which we have thus far given. (See Fig. 10.)

The one upon the left is a eunuch. In the following figure we have the banjo-like instrument so constantly seen in the Egyptian representations.

There are several instances of some sort of an instrument, apparently consisting of metallic plates or rods, played by means of a hammer. Many have considered these to have been the original type of the modern instruments of percussion, where metal plates are vibrated by means of hammers or mallets. The following is one of this kind.

The general appearance of these processions indicates that the Assyrians were in the habit of massing a large number of players upon important occasions. We have no idea what the effect of this music can have been, but upon the tonal side it cannot have had any great resonance or power. Enough if it satisfied the ears of the dignified players and those who employed their services as a part of the pageant of their great festivals.