REMARKS ON MUSIC.
(Continued from [page 103].)
Music is capable of a variety so infinite, so greatly does the most simple differ from the most complex, and so multiplied are the degrees between those two extremes, that in no age could the incidents respecting that fascinating art have been few or uninteresting: But, that accounts of these incidents should be handed down to us, scanty and imperfect, is no matter of surprize, when we recollect that the history of music is the history only of sounds, of which writing is a very inadequate medium; and that men would long employ themselves in the pleasing exercise of cultivating music before they possessed either the ability or the inclination to record their exertions.
No accurate traces, therefore, of the actual state of music, in the earlier ages of the world, can be discerned. Our ideas on the subject have no foundation firmer than conjecture and analogy.
It is probable, that among all the barbarous nations some degree of similarity is discernable in the stile of their music. Neither will much difference appear during the first dawnings of civilization. But in the more advanced periods of society, where the powers of the human mind are permitted without obstacle to exert their native activity and tendency to invention, and are at the same time affected by the infinite variety of circumstances and situations which before had no existence, and, which in one case accelerate and in another retard; then that similarity, once so distinguishable, gives place to the endless diversity of which the subject is capable.
The practice of music being universal in all ages and all nations, it would be absurd to attribute the invention of the art to any one man. It must have suffered a regular progression, through infancy, childhood, and youth, before it could arrive at maturity, the first attempts must have been rude and artless; probably the first flute was a reed of the lake. Music is supposed to have taken its rise in the earliest periods of society. “Juba,” we find soon after the creation of the world; “was the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ;” and it is more than probable that Moses, the most ancient of all writers, was well acquainted with this art. The Egyptians, were the promoters of science in the Hebrew nation, and Moses was instructed in all the learning of the Egyptians. The sublime and animated song of Moses on the overthrow of Pharoah in the red sea, was, we believe, adapted to the sweet strains of music; for we are told it was sung by Moses and the children of Isræl:—&Israel; After the conclusion of the song, “Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances; 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.”
We read in the Mosaic law of the sounds of trumpets in approaching the field of battle, and the power of trumpets in its religious observances.
A. O.
(To be continued.)
New-York, Sept. 26, 1796.
