CHAPTER XXIV.

Evolution of the Lyre, Harp, and Lute.

THE BOW WITH THE BOAT.

Art is always the superfluous. Food and shelter are the first necessaries, they drive man into direct courses of activity; he becomes a fruit gatherer, a hunter in forests, a hut builder, or cave dweller; his intelligence prompts him to the making of bows and to using of arrows, and this is an advance in mechanical perception; beyond the mere force of darts or spears in this new aid to his strength. After his chief wants are satisfied he has leisure, and his instinct, after rest, is towards activity of some kind, and what he does then is pass-time. To please himself, that is the object of his exertion, willingly he undergoes much to this end.

The man who first fixed a second string to his bow began the art of making stringed instruments of music. In the chase this second string is of no use to him. He put it there solely for his pleasure. Many a morn preparing his bow for the chase, many an eve, ere setting it aside unstrung, he has “heard the tense string murmur,” has listened and the sound has pleased him; it is the voice of the string; a chance wish comes into his quiet mood, and from desire to gain another sound, he adds another string to please him more.

The beginning of a lyre is in the bow; but something beyond is needed for the endurance of the sounds, and the aid required is found in the boat allied with the bow. When the hunter came down from the mountains and the dark forests, into the vast fertile valleys of the great rivers, he naturally turned his industry to cultivation of the land, and here, amongst the water-courses set himself to the task of constructing boats, that he might go hither and thither. Perhaps the bark of old fallen trees prompted his first ventures, or as native races do at this day, he made a boat of papyrus stems, plaiting them together; the flowering ends of the stalks closely gathered up, naturally curved forming the prow, and in this way, leaving the after portions to be spread out, filled in between a floor of reeds in such a fashion as would produce a floating raft, or a carrying vessel capable of bearing him and the produce he would convey upon the waters. Singularly enough this simple craft presents an appearance that may have furnished the idea of a prow. The prow is so persistent a feature in the build of ancient vessels, that possibly its ornamental retainment maybe due to the early rudimentary possession.

Sir Harry Johnston saw this kind of papyrus boat in Uganda, floating on a little lake in the forest, making so pretty a picture that he photographed it.

Trees were hollowed by burning out the interior, long before tools had been devised, and the next suggested stage would be when young trees riven, yielded planks that could be bent into form for boat-building. Soon after he had attained this mastery we should find that the original cave-dweller became in course of time a boat dweller. Thus we imagine it happened that the earliest lyre took the form of a boat, or rather of a half-boat, the dwelling half, roofed or covered in, wherein the family lived mainly, as has been the immemorial custom in the great river regions—a custom existing even to this day. The skill acquired in developing the lines in boat-building was precisely the skill that was applied to equal advantage in lyre-building, and thus the sounds were housed.

To understand aright the process of evolution I think it very desirable that the imagination should have free play, and take us into the scenery and into the time in which it was going on, and if we can, by any chance glow of fancy, get the very atmosphere about us.

The earliest lyre of which we have any representation is the three-stringed lyre. Such a lyre is seen at page 13, the same as was slung on the mast of Queen Hatasu’s ship that she sent to the coast of Arabia.

Next in advance is the four-stringed lyre of the same pattern. In the British Museum there are two ancient examples of these. (_Fig. 47_). They usefully make clear the construction. The upper figure shews the complete instrument; the lower figure shews the interior part of the construction, the skin or parchment covering of the top of the boat being absent. The framework was covered over with thin wood or with skin, lizard skin for choice. Some illustrations of examples of this kind of lyre show that the end of the bow where the pegs are inserted, was cut to receive the strings, exactly as in later ages in violins.

This summer at Burlington House, Mr. Garstang exhibited a five-stringed lyre of this pattern which in his exploration he had recovered from one of the tombs at Beni-Hassan, which had not been in daylight for more than three thousand years. The strings naturally had perished long ago.

In the earliest times after the Egyptians had begun to depict the incidents of their daily life, and to make record of their nation’s history on the walls of tombs and temples, we find three distinct types of musical stringed instruments possessed by them; sometimes the representations of these are given in relief carved in stone, sometimes incised only and painted. Not decoration but history their minds were set upon; each man who had power held his own individual history to be of supreme importance, and thus there has been left to us a picture book of priceless veracity.

In the times when these pictures were made they already had the instruments in a high state of development, say from 4000 to 6000 years ago, and we are left to guess how long a course of time must have been necessary before from the primitive rude state they could have reached the perfected state the paintings disclose to us.

To make clear the way of evolution I recognise but three types, and class these as,—

1. The boated lyre; half-boat form. 2. The cross-bar lyre; a two-horned form. 3. The lute; paddle form.

The boated lyre preserves always the hollow shape and form of half a boat covered in, and is built up in planks or ribs, and the strings are bow-strung and strained from point to point.

The shape is seen in many of the representations of the larger boats used at the time. Two of these harps laid lengthwise together, joined at the thickest part, will give the shape I refer to, showing by comparison how naturally evolved.

Harps are indeed lyres of larger growth, and in the reign of Rameses the Third had attained their full development, as seen in the grand painting in the tomb at Thebes discovered by the famous traveller Bruce; posterity, has given it the name of Bruce’s harp. In Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s wonderful storehouse of knowledge on Egyptian things, large full-page delineations are given of this and its companion harp. Musicians frequently remark upon the absence of a front pole, their impression being that consequently the tension of the strings must have been so weak that the tone would be dull and ineffective; this however is an impression only, a practical acquaintance with woodworking and bending elastic ribs to shape, would reveal a high state of resistance particularly effective for the purposes of resonance, and would fully justify the old Egyptian craftsmen in their choice.

Many of their harps had from ten to seventeen strings and some even twenty-one and twenty-two.

The harps were frequently the heighth of a man; they were painted tastefully with lotus and other flowers, and richly ornamented and inlaid. The tuning was by means of pegs, sometimes two rows of pegs are shewn. There were long slit holes at the back for giving freedom to the air, exactly as found in modern harps.

No instance has been found of harp with supporting pole or pillar. The strings were always of gut. One harp has been discovered with strings which though they had been buried more than 3000 years still sounded on being touched. A curiously formed harp is shewn in the Paris collection having twenty-one strings, or places for strings, enough left to exhibit a manner of tying the strings (see enlarged design of this mode given on next page).

That the style had a vogue is evident since another example exists in the Leyden collection, though less complete in condition; the framework still retains the fine green colour as originally painted. Sometimes the woodwork was covered with leather, green or red. This instrument is built five sided in section, and at the back has three sound holes. The resonance should be very strong. The string-bar is well supported by its double bearings and for the kind of music demanded, I should not consider that the tuning would be of the difficulty some writers suppose.

As the boated lyre betokens a river influence, so the lyres of Class II. indicate a pastoral origin, and this is well portrayed in the Egyptian painting discovered by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in a tomb at Beni-Hassan. It is a painting representing the arrival of strangers in Egypt, and one portion of it introduces a lyre having six strings, the man holding it in the primitive fashion, and playing it with the plectrum, he is preceded by an ass bearing a burden.

The true origin is undoubtedly Asiatic, it came, perhaps, by way of Arabia into the central Nile region, and the parent form is best shown in the illustration next following (_Fig. 52_). In this shape it has existed from time immemorial, and down to the present it is found in use by native tribes, in Nubia, Ugandi, Abysinnia, and other regions. Sir Harry Johnston, in his splendid work on Uganda, gives a picture of a native, a Kavibondo, playing this same kind of lyre, eight-stringed.

He also gives an illustration of a native Mbuba playing on a strung bow, and holding the string between his teeth thrumbing it the while (he by frequently altering the shape of the mouth-cavity varied the sounds to agree with the changing resonance), in fact, making a jew’s harp of it, which is a singular confirmation of the view I take, tracing the origin of stringed instruments to the bow.

The picture of a _Kissar_ here given is taken from a fine specimen presented to the South Kensington Museum by the late Viceroy of Egypt, it has strings of camel gut, and a plectrum made of horn, which is used alone or associated with the fingers. All harps it should be remembered are, as occasion may require, subject to the use of one hand for damping the strings, which else would continue sounding too long for the right effect in the performance of the music.

From a rude instrument of this kind the true Greek lyre was in course of time evolved. I trace the intermediate stages still by the banks of the Nile. They call it in Nubia the _Kisirka_, and by other kindred names in the heart of Africa. That the bar slants is particularly a feature to be noticed, and that the tops of the uprights or horns pass through this bar. The construction of the sounding body is arranged in a square form as of a stretching framework of reeds or rods, and is covered by a skin usually. In fact the frame suggests to me the coracle or fishing punt, seen in the sculptured slabs from Assyria and Babylonia. The idea of the instrument may be originally based upon a shallow coracle, the supporting seat in the interior affording fixture for the uprights, in the same way as we have seen in boats. (_Fig. 47_).

One of these slabs contains representations of three players upon harps having the same slant bar for the strings, the particular utility of which is in its enabling players to tune the strings by pushing them higher up, or pressing them a little lower in position, thus changing the tension as they desired for the pitch of any string, a method which we find was retained in Egypt during long periods.

The slab from which this illustration is taken is one recovered from the palace of Ashur-nasir-pal at Nimroud. The slabs possessed by the British Museum date some of them as far back as 875 B.C., so that they are not nearly so old as the Egyptian pictures, although the character is apparently more archaic. Nevertheless the Babylonian Antiquities range back to dates almost as ancient, that is to 4500 B.C. So that there is justification for the belief that these harps were in use in that region in a very remote period, the relics whereof have perished; soil, and climate, and custom, have been favourable to the preservation of relics telling of the musical instruments of past life in Egypt from earliest times, advantages which Babylonia had not.

At the hands of the Egyptian the instrument soon took a refined ornamental form (_Fig. 54_), whilst still retaining its particular slant bar, and the horizontal method of holding, and the plectrum to sound it by. This is generally considered to be “_the magadis_,” but I do not see it so. I see only a square sounding box, with ornamental lines, but no pressure bar additional. More will be found upon “_magadizing_” further on.

The next transition undergone proves to be one of great importance and significance in history, the old method is discarded, and an upright position adopted (_Fig. 55_), the fingers of both hands being brought into use as in the larger lyres of the boat type. Thus the two styles are brought into accordance also, the performers benefitting by the change. Likewise we should notice that the number of the strings has increased to eleven or twelve, and there is a constant tendency in this direction, so that lyres become hand harps, light and portable, yet having many strings.

In the Marbles from the North West Frieze of the Parthenon at the British Museum, harps of this kind are represented, and are seen carried in the same way as in _Fig. 55_; though the remains are fragmentary the lyres are still clearly standing out in relief, and close beside them the flutes, and though but little of the carving of these remains, yet looked at from beneath, the under cut plainly shews that the flutes are double flutes as I mentioned earlier (_page 75_).

This pattern was further improved, artists exercised their skill in new designs, decorative, and constructive, the greater fulness of the sounding body of the instrument augmenting the sounds in like degree.

Fortunately two complete specimens are existing, one in the Berlin, the other in the Leyden collection, is perfectly preserved with exception of the strings. Here places for 13 strings are shewn. The body of the instrument is of thin wood and is ten inches high, the total height being two feet. The air holes are at the bottom of the lyre.

The Lute is a very distinct type and equally ancient, except that we may infer it to have arisen after the Boated and the Bar types, inasmuch as it bespeaks a higher order of skill and intelligence that comprehends and grasps a musical system; the design of the instrument was conceived accidentally perhaps, but the idea of obtaining a series of sounds from proportional measurements upon one string was an advance in the mechanics of music making.

I distinguish Class III. as of the lute form or the paddle form, originating maybe, in association with the coracle, used by the man to move himself about in water-courses and lakes in his daily business of fishing. The coracle, exactly like those of ancient British build, is depicted on the Babylonian slabs.

The Egyptian name for this lute is the _Nefer_, so ancient is the _Nefer_ that it is found in paintings in tombs of the VI. dynasty, B.C. 2000.

Many paintings show this little instrument, it is small and flat, is from three to four feet in length, and has from two to five strings, and always this form suggestive of its paddle origin; the pole, called by us a long neck, has at the top pegs which are turned to bring the strings into tune; the instrument is played with the plectrum. Sometimes it is shown played with the fingers only. Often we meet with the statement that the _Nefer_ finger-board had frets, but I am myself not quite satisfied upon this point, because the lines that in black and white look like frets, yet when inspected in the large coloured fac-simile productions given by Rosellini and others, appear as nothing other than lines of the decorative patterns inlaid on the flat finger-board.

That such fancy designings should be a guide to the player seems very probable, but I do not think that the idea of a raised fret had then arisen; in later times there is no question that frets were adopted when precise relations of pitch were sought for in the closer study of the art of playing. In their rudest form pieces of camel gut are tied on the neck to act as frets.

It is still a vexed question whether the Egyptians required, from even their many stringed harps, anything more than certain runs or conventional sequences of tones, little simple tunes that were traditionally retained, and reiterated rhythms, or possessed the knowledge of harmony as a science, and used their instruments in pursuance of aims to produce effects of sound regulated by laws based upon science. They had a great variety of instruments we know, and that the fingers of both hands were used to pluck the strings of the harps, and it seems hard to deny such a claim to a people so skilful and intelligent. Mr. W. Chappell strenuously insisted that the Egyptians understood and practiced harmony, and some other writers support the claim. The most learned authorities take the adverse view and say that nothing yet discovered by investigation warrants such a supposition. All that can be conceded is that the simple consonances of two sounds were known and practised. The present state of Asiatic nations tells very plainly that a large number of instruments may be used in combination without, through the course of ages, any idea of harmony being evolved. The Chinese, Japanese, and Siamese Orchestras are a standing witness of this fact in the history of human races.

A little cane harp, used by the natives of Borneo I believe, came into my possession many years past, and is probably nearly a century old. This simple instrument shows how easily satisfied the ear is with pleasing sounds when the people have continued in an early stage of civilization, and still represent the primitive state of nations that have passed away. The harp is 13-1/2 inches by 9, and is constructed of pieces of cane, 29 in number, lashed together raft-fashion. The strings are formed of the outer silicious layer of the cane; a double incision is made on the surface of each rod to within an inch of each end, and the strip thus severed is lifted up to form a string: the opposite side of the rod is treated in the same way: the strips vary in width from a sixteenth of an inch, less or more. The 29 rods are laid together and firmly braided with a wire-like fibre, making a flat, raft-like form, shewing the strips or strings back and front; then rods are slipped under the strips, making bridges for them at each end, all the front strings sound, but the strips at the back merely exercise a counter strain against the pull of the front, and are interlaced criss-cross in threes, so as to admit a pair of tension bars, which act as required to tighten or slacken the front strings as a whole, since when unused the tension should be lowered as is the case with gut strings. The ingenuity of the construction of this instrument is admirable in its simplicity, and the work is beautifully done. All the Malagasy are expert in this braiding which to them is a fine art. The instrument is well worthy of illustration, speaking to us of the past within the present. (_See plate inserted_).

This cane-harp yields sounds bright and delicate and clear, it is held tambourine fashion over the head, and played by the finger nails of the right hand gliding at will over the strings, producing a succession of sounds rhythmical and wild, incessantly varied: four or five sounds repeatedly renewed over the series of strings, and intermingled with these, little bells strung on cords at each side, rattle against them. Imagine the native scene, groups of young girls decked with flowers, their brown skins flashing with the sunlight, dancing with the abandon of youthful vigour, in full exuberance of the joy of living, striking their uplifted harps in a wild frequency of orderly confusion, guided by instinct yet the while obeying the rules their mothers had taught them, dancing in heedless delight in the ways made imperative by tradition, rushing hither and thither, in and out, and around, weaving circle within circle, a dazzling maze of lithe bodies, of rapid feet, and laughing voices, eyes flashing as jewels, brown arms and hands swinging a cloud of harps over a restless sea of sound,—bring to the mind’s eye a scene like this, then you will understand how the multitudinous music of the ancient days, simple as were its means, satisfied by the wealth of sensuous excitement it created in young and old.

The Kings of old had a pride in the number of their trained musicians, as in the number of their horsemen and war-chariots. Music added to the pomp of ceremonial days; it testified to greatness, the throne and the temple alike demanded its aid. In the intervals when wars had ceased, the court had to be provided with music for pastime, and the people to be gratified with spectacles and feastings. The priesthood seem to have been the managers of the shows and to have held control of the music to be played, they being the men of learning; yet so far as I am aware, no record remains to tell what that music was, no indication exists, no hint even that it ever was written down, or a method of notation devised for the guidance of the multitude of players. Surmises there have been that some unexplained markings occurring in Egyptian writings have reference to musical usages, but later authorities do not favour the guesses, which have led to nothing. The temple being the focus of the musical life the music would have been chiefly of the processional kind, and the wonder to us is how it was managed unless there had been an Art of Music in force in those days, remote though they were. How did King Solomon manage his four thousand musicians?

Babylon and Nineveh have left a few slabs with pictures of musicians—that is all. In Egypt we come into the possession of a knowledge considerably wider in range than other ancient lands together have yielded. Through the sacrilege of Time we have been admitted to Tombs and Temples, have shared the prerogative of the gods, seeing the hidden things and life-stories meant for their gaze only, in the darkness that to them was light. A marvellous faith. Those harps were supposed to play though no hand touched them, those pipes to pipe sweet tones that lost themselves in the silence.

Egypt bred men of great genius in the art of war, of great genius in the art of architecture, surely she must have had men great in the art of music. How were these musicians ruled? The beneficent conductor had not then been invented. In truth _one_ would have been of little avail in their grand festival processions, would have been lost amidst the lofty columns of their vast temples. Not a hieroglyph anywhere to tell us how the master musician controlled his hosts “of harpers harping with their harps.”

These old-world pictures speak no words; they shew us six or eight men following in a line, clapping their hands to regulate the accents and rhythm of the musicians; thus they were led, and that is all we know—may be indeed all that we are likely to know. Thus as Keats tells us, the past—

————“doth tease us out of thought, As doth eternity.”