II
An account of the uses of such music and the rôle it plays in customs far different from our own calls for some description of the instruments employed. Every nation had its own peculiar instruments. Those of percussion seem to us particularly characteristic. Such Oriental coloration as has been applied to our modern music has been usually in the way of rhythm emphasized by strange instruments of percussion. Drums, tam-tams, gongs, etc., do not fail to suggest at once the spirit of barbarous or outlandish peoples. The Peruvians and Aztecs had a variety of drums. The Aztecs used the huehuetl and the teponastle; the one, a drum struck by the fingers, a wooden cylinder three feet high, with a deer-skin head which could be loosened or tightened at will; the other a hollow closed cylinder of wood, having two longitudinal parallel slits close together, the strip of wood between which was struck with two drumsticks whose ends were covered with rubber. This instrument is still used by the Mexican Indians. It sounds a melancholy note, and one audible at a great distance. The Aztecs also used an enormous rattle, the axacaxtli, in place of castanets. It was a gourd pierced with holes and filled with small stones.
The most characteristic Chinese instrument of percussion is the king, a set of graduated plates, stones, or bells, hung in a frame and played with a mallet. The tone produced is smooth and sonorous. In addition, the Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Chinese have a quantity of metal gongs and cymbals, bells, tambourines, castanets, and drums of all kinds. In Siam and Burmah there is the ranat, a set of wooden or metal bars played with a mallet, in reality a xylophone; and in Java the anklong, of the same family, the bars of which are of bamboo. The Hindoos and Mohammedan Orientals also have a great number of drums, tam-tams, gongs, etc., which is not surprising in view of the predominant part rhythm was given in their music.
The stringed instruments are not less numerous. They appear to have been unknown to the Aztecs, and the Peruvians used only the tinya, a guitar with six strings. But the Chinese had a great number of them, among which the kin, a small lute with seven strings, held a peculiar place. It was long an object of veneration. Sages alone might venture to touch its strings; ordinary mortals should be content merely to regard it in silence with the most profound respect. An elaborate psaltery or zither called che, with twenty-five strings, was much in use, and there were several bowed instruments in the viol family, of uncertain ancient descent. The Cambodians, too, have instruments of the viol family, notably the tro-khmer, a three-stringed viol held like the 'cello when played. The Siamese, Coreans, and Annamites all use instruments of the guitar and mandolin family with a varying number of strings. In Burmah the favorite instrument is a queer harp with thirteen strings called the soung. In Japan there are the koto, which is a pleasing-toned zither with thirteen strings; the samisen, a small guitar associated with the Geisha girls, the buva, a type of lute, and the kokin, a primitive violin. One finds in India the sarindas or sarungis, viols with sympathetic wire strings; the vina, most generally popular of Hindoo stringed instruments, a sort of lute with two gourd resonators; and the tambura, a long slender guitar with three or more strings. But of all the stringed instruments of the Orient el’ud of Arabia is most famous. It is no other in name or fact than the lute, with broad, pear-shaped body, short neck bent back at the head, and four or more strings. Introduced by the Moors into Spain about 800 A. D., it became the favorite instrument of all Europe, was developed and improved with every care, was beautified with finest art and workmanship. From Arabia, too, may have come to Europe the first primitive violins. The Arabian rebab and the Persian kemangeh are almost identical in principle with our violin. The Arabian santirs and kanoons, zithers with many strings, played with plectra adjusted like thimbles on the finger-tips, have remained Oriental.
Wind instruments are common to all races. Flutes and fifes were known both to the Aztecs and Peruvians, and flutes, flageolets, oboes, horns, bagpipes, and trumpets are in constant use among the others. With the Aztecs conch-shells took the place of trumpets of metal. Deserving of special mention are the Chinese cheng, a set of small bamboo pipes with free reeds, precursor of the modern organ; the Hindoo tubri, a popular form of bagpipe used by the snake charmers of India; and the Arab zamr, a particularly shrill variety of oboe.
Thus we find in use among ancient semi-civilized peoples and among the Oriental races of the past and present the three great families of musical instruments; instruments of percussion, string instruments, and wind instruments, from which we have chosen and developed our orchestra. We are recalled to the remark of Saint-Saëns, already quoted, that all the musical systems of these peoples were products of human artistic ingenuity, working instinctively for artistic ends. The instinct for expression in music works so far in all races alike. But whereas those races whose music we are discussing were content with the harsh or dry sounds of the primitive instruments we have mentioned, the races of Europe have been impelled by the desire for ever richer and more flexible tone to develop and improve these instruments. Of the clumsy, hoarse viol they have made the perfect violin; of the hunting horn the mellow French horn of the orchestra; of the tremulous clavichord and spinet the powerful pianoforte. Music has become an art of sound. Those people whom, for the sake of convenience, we group together in this chapter as exotic never dissociated music from the dance or from elaborate ceremonies of one sort or another. The art of music hardly attained independence. Therefore we are almost at a loss to appreciate it outside the highly ceremonious societies in which it played its part and a discussion of some of the uses to which it was put is necessary in our chapter.