The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-04-18
ORIGIN OF MUSICAL SOUNDS.
[Grove's Dictionary of Music

tGrove's Dictionary of Music.l
 @The stages in the rise of music have been as follows first, natures instru- ments-the cleft in the rock, the hole in the cabin, the distant trickling water, or the wind blowing into a reed: then the imitation of these sounds by the voice, followed by the imitation of these and the voice by artificial instruments Again, the increased accuracy of artificial in struments initiated by the voice; and finally, the power of expression of the voice initiated by the instruments, vocal and instrumental music aiding each other.
 "An idea of what remote nations may have done in the way of music can only be gathered from representations of in- struments and obscure records of the various periods, and these indications are naturally tooVague tor any precise esti- mate to be formed, but there is no reason to imagine that it reached high point of development with them. A painting on plaster in the British museum, taken from tomb at Thebes, and reproduced in Mir. William Chappell's valuable His tory of Ancient Muslc,' represents party of comedy Egyptian ladies, about the time of Moses, enjoying some concerted music. Three are playing upon instru- ments of the guitar or lute kind, fourth upon double tibia, while fifth appears to be beating time by clapping her hands. If domestic music was custom ary so far back, why was the wonderful development of modern times so long ia being brought about9 Even the Greeks, with all their boundless love for and ap- precistion of the beautiful, and their power of its reproduction, cannot be sup posed to have gone far in the cultivation of music. Most of their modes are unsatisfactory to modern ears, and are not in harmony with cultivated nature Their use of music seems to have been to form an accompaniment to oratory and to furnish rhythmical tunes for dancing With their voices they seem to have been sound rather than music properly so called, if we consider Plutarch's warning to his disciples against indulging in too violent vociferation for fear of such calam- itous conse quences as ruptures and con- vulsions. The student then, as at the present day, apparently took upon him. self to make all the noise he could against the advice of his instructors.
 "Porson, the Greek his, brian, further illustrates the tendency of classical musi- clans to substitute noise for music by point to several antique Grecian 6as re- Hefs in the temples in which the wind instrument players are all represented as wearing chin cloths or bandages tightly tied round the cheeks and brought under the chin to prevent the performers burst ing asunder their cheeks.
 "Another cause for the development of singing in Italy was the necessity f. r finding the best singers for the papal service, in which females were not per mitted to take part. Boys were employed as in our own cathedrals, and counter tenors, or talsetto-singers, chiefly Span iards. But as solo-singing increased in importance, the counter-tenors no doubt began to realize the fact that by culti- vating the f4lsetto they were running their more robust registers, and the fact be- came more and more patent that as soon as boy was beginning to acquire some cultivation of taste his voice left him. This led te the custom of preventing breaking by artificial means. At not very remote time no females were per- mitted to appear on the stage at Rome in any entertainment, operatic, dramatic, or chorographic, the singing parts being filled by the best-looking artificial so- prani and contralti that could be found"