CHAPTER III

BIBLICAL MENTION OF MUSIC

The Old Testament is a chronicle of the growth, movements, physical and mental habits, and religious status of the great Jewish race. Its religion with one Godhead, whose immediate presence was often felt, its music addressed to this presence, and its family, tribal, and racial organizations were all Jewish. The great moving lever of Jewish existence was a religion whose creed prohibited the making of "graven images," so painting and sculpture were not cultivated; it recognized the direct agency of supreme will in moulding daily events, and prescribed oft-repeated praise and prayer, and thus created the atmosphere of exalted devotional feeling which we find recorded in many of the books of the Bible, and which climaxed in David's Psalms.

The ancient Hebrews were in no measure a scientific people. Their one intellectual aspiration found vent in beautifying the worship of God. They were religious teachers, who have directly or indirectly shaped the creeds of the civilized world.

According to the conditions upon which I have thus far based my theories of musical evolution, early Jewish songs could not have been equal, in artistic merit, to the texts with which they were associated, for there was an utter lack, in this race, of such general culture and art sense as we found prevailing in ancient Egypt; but the Hebrews were a race apart, and their unique instincts may have made their music an exception to all rules.

Their song-impulse was confined to one line, but it was so strong that it projected itself from conception, in religious enthusiasm, to a high grade of fulfilment without touching the low plane of their general culture; nevertheless, the above-mentioned short-comings and the subsequent decadence of race nationality relegate Hebrew music to a low place as an influence upon the world's song.

They had men who devoted themselves to the playing of instruments as an accompaniment to song, and the Bible mentions more varieties of instruments than can be found in profane history of those times. Worship was such an important feature of Jewish life, and praise was so essential an element in their worship, that the masses must have learned and sung those great lyrics which to-day represent the culmination of human awe, reverence, prayer, and thanksgiving. It is impossible to imagine David singing his psalms to crude or inadequate musical settings.

Here we have a situation apparently full of vital contradictions. Most of the influences which have proven themselves necessary to the development of music were wanting, and still there is evidence that it had grown to be an expressive means. The Jews were actuated by profound religious feeling and by an exquisite sense of nature's forms. No poet has yet equalled David's simple but beautiful appreciation of the universe, and of its influence upon mankind.

The Jews of Poland, Spain, and Germany have diverse musical settings of the Psalms, so there is no traceable line of inheritance from David. This line has been obliterated by the changes incident to generations of unassisted memory. That there may be rare exceptions to this rule of change in form during extended oral transmission was abundantly proven recently by a German Hebrew musician and scholar. He played me an unwritten Passover hymn which his father had always sung at that festival time, and told me that he had not long before been entertained by a Spanish Hebrew, who sang the same melody tone for tone. This gentleman's hearing and memory are so absolute that there is no question to be raised as to this case; but as far as my investigations have gone, it stands alone.

The composer of the nineteenth century can nowhere else find such earnest and suggestive texts as in the Old Testament. They voice the hopes, sorrows, despair, reverence, and joys of our hearts just as aptly as they did those of the Hebrew bards who wrote them thousands of years ago. Their natural and direct method of expressing the emotions, and their incomparable elevation of spirit, make them appeal especially strongly to the musician, whose flights of imagination start from these emotions.

We are denied the privilege of scanning the forms and substance of Biblical melodies or chants, and must content ourselves with tracing the more prominent features of the _rôle_ which was assigned to music during that older era, and the mechanical devices which were employed to enhance rhythmic precision and sonority.

Some writers have endeavored to solve the problem presented by Hebrew music in the midst of incongruous conditions by attributing its development to the influence of presumable intercourse with prehistoric Egyptian civilization. This does not appear logical, for Hebrew music seems to have been little, if at all, affected by the continued direct contact during the long sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt.

The Jewish and Egyptian characters were so diametrically opposed (as was evinced in their beliefs, habits, and aspirations) that their emotional forms of expression could not possibly have followed common lines.

Intercourse with Egyptians did not impart even a scientific impulse to the Hebrew mind. It is therefore safe to conclude that my previously mentioned hypothesis--that the force of their impulses carried Jewish music and poetry to unique positions, as compared with those of their other arts and branches of learning--is worthy of credence.

The first mention of music is made in Genesis iv. 21. Jubal, the son of Lamech and Adah, is described as the "father of all such as handle the harp and organ." Jubal was of the seventh generation of Adam's descendants, and the world was, according to Biblical records, in its second century of existence. These "harps and organs" were doubtless similar to those depicted in pictures painted in the fourth Egyptian dynasty. The first named were frames upon which one or, at most, a very limited number of strings were stretched, and the "organs" were pan-pipes (a series of reeds of graded lengths, bound together, and played by blowing into them as they were passed back and forth across the lower lip). The pan-pipes were probably played in unison with the voice, whereas the primitive harp was used, with the existing instruments of percussion, to mark rhythms only.

All historians agree in their deductions as to the order in which the several classes of instruments made their appearance on the musical stage. As rhythm is the heart pulsation of music, it naturally took hold of the first singers of in any measure formulated melody, leading to swaying of the body, clapping of the hands, stamping of the feet, and quickly suggested the employment of other resonant means for marking its progress. Our drums were at first only hollow pieces of wood, our cymbals, triangle, and gong may have had double duties,--musical and culinary,--and our harp and piano were anticipated by single strings stretched to yield a sonorous tone regardless of pitch.

Next came the wind instruments,--at first single reeds blown to mark rhythms, then pan-pipes, and much later single pipes provided with finger-holes like the unimproved flute. Last of all came the instruments from which the tones are drawn by passing a bow over the strings. The idea of adapting the vibrating length of strings to a desired pitch, through pressing them down upon a fingerboard, is comparatively modern. These general classes took on numerous forms and were made from various materials.

The existence of Jubal and his musical line of descendants bespeaks a wide-spread interest in and use of song, but Genesis yields no further enlightenment, no texts, nor any other allusions to the subject of music.

Exodus xv. furnishes the next mention. The treacherous quicksands of the Red Sea having swallowed up the Egyptians, Moses and the children of Israel join in a song of rejoicing and thanksgiving to God, to whose direct interposition they ascribe their deliverance. The song as recorded is too circumstantial to have been spontaneous. Moses, in writing his account of the occurrence, doubtless embodied the sentiments which burst forth from the hearts of his people in the presence of the event in a more orderly and more amplified form. The sentiments are lofty, and the effect produced by the singing of that vast chorus of just rescued was, beyond compare, the grandest focus of human enthusiasm that the world has witnessed; for Moses had six hundred thousand fighting men alone.

"Miriam the prophetess," after the song, or during lapses in the singing, to incite the throng to renewed efforts, "took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and dancing. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." The timbrels were drums, probably much like our tambourines in size and shape.

The trumpet is mentioned three times in the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of Exodus in connection with the delivery to Moses of the Commandments. The last occasion is after the consummation of this universe-shaping ceremony,--viz., "And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking."

The thirty-second and thirty-third chapters of Deuteronomy contain one of the Bible's most sombre lyrics. Moses, whose life has been devoted to the welfare of the Israelites, who has for forty years struggled to overcome in them the demoralization incident to centuries of bondage, sings there a parting song to his people, for they are about to enter into possession of the promised land, which happiness is denied him. Could a sadder picture be imagined than this good man, so little confident in the fruits of his past teaching, exhorting the Israelites for the last time?

It would make my sketch tiresome to burden it with the less important musical events chronicled in sacred history, like the songs of Deborah, Hannah, etc., so I shall skip four centuries, the musical exercises of which seem to have been marked by no extraordinary occurrences, unless we accept the fall of Jericho as a musical phenomenon.

At the end of this period we come upon David, who might appropriately be called the Isaiah of our art, for his songs voice the conception of a full, free, resourceful musical fruition, unmeasured as yet by even the greatest composers who have given them settings. I. Samuel xvi. makes the first mention of David's musical capacity,--viz., "And Saul said unto his servants, Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring him to me.... And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him." David's first recorded "psalm of thanksgiving" is in II. Samuel