The ancient peoples of Aryan stock seem to have been highly gifted musically. Probably because of their roving habits, their warlike spirit, or their pursuit of culture, the Aryans developed early and highly, this greater need of rhythmic stimulus in percussion.
Persian agitation took the form of occultism, as is shown in the devices on the walls of their fire temples. Their Music was held to be symbolic. They believed, for example, that Music was like a tree, and that its tones were representative of fire, water, air and earth, of the signs of the zodiac, of the planets and even of day and night.[14]
Music becomes combined with ideas in the expression of rhythm, in direct proportion to the development of ideas in the culture of the several races. When war ceased to be the chief factor in the disturbance of bodily rhythm, and still later, when periods of rest became usual between long wars, the impetus already given to tribes by the decisive occupations of warfare, and the consequent increased molecular motion of the organs, turned tribal attention in times of rest to thoughts of love, decoration and poetry, but chiefly to the thought of recording the stirring deeds of their heroes in music of some kind. The Indians have probably sung their deeds ever in rhythm, though often with an instrumental accompaniment in a differing rhythm, which common practice must have filled the need of a mental state “disturbed” by the stimuli of ever present danger.[15]
Rhythmic music considered as a creation of mind and as a need of the body, the measurement of the effect of musical vibrations upon human action, is sure to lead the way to a surprising fund of new knowledge. The number of vibrations caught by the ear in the simplest drum performance must be enormous, and when it is realized that these vibrations represent a live force striking the tense nerves, and that the effects are quantitatively measurable in a psycho-physiological laboratory, a significant development of psychiatry may be confidently predicted. It would be interesting to study the differing results of the same musical environment, upon the nervous reactions of partially deaf, and of normal beings, to find out how far the subjective and conscious awareness of certain sounds, affects the objective physical results of the vibratory force producing them.
Animals are known to be sensitive to the sounds of Music, and birds even create that which is called Music; this creation on the part of birds, seems to us nothing more than their instinctive effort to re-establish disturbed internal rhythmic action.[16] At any rate, vibration is the fundamental element of Music as of life, and where Music exists there has ever been an antecedent excitement of some sort.
Complicated intellectual stimuli being absent in tribal life, the general rhythm was at most periods moderately easy to maintain. Events of sufficient newness to be exciting were rare. Tribal wars were felt to be the usual occupation of ordinary existence. So that whether polygamy or monogamy characterized the marriage relation, whether woman or man ruled the home life, whether human or animal sacrifices were offered to one or to several gods, the stimuli met in daily experiences were very similar in their monotony, and very much the same in all tribes. Customs were handed down from one generation to another, and carried from one part to another of the earth’s surface, but ordinary experiences varied little until, under the stimulation of steam-driven engines and machines, nations developed the industrial fever, which seems to characterize modern times. Even today in localities where newspapers and railroads do not penetrate, life tends to revert to primitive ideals. The interests of the tribes lay in the raising of cattle, in the birth of male offspring, in the division of labor into the search for, and the preparation of, food, and in the unification of a strong group hostile to all other groups. These occupations coexisted with a simplicity of environment, unexciting to the reposeful sense organs, amid a scenic surrounding ever untouched by artificiality; where village scenes of little variety took place; where no reason existed to cause abnormal quickness of eye movements; where occurred only rare shocks to the regular rhythm of the nerve cell motions. Thus there was little or no need of complicated rhythm in Music. It will be remembered that Music is a need for that part of humanity or of any living organism which through reason of its prior reception of irregular stimuli, has disturbed the natural internal and independent rhythmic motion, imparted by the mother in the birth process. An augmented heart action is not harmful at times, even if it be above the normal, but a heart action which is ever changing its beat, now fast, now slow, now weak, now strong, tends to derange the normal rhythmic life motion of the cells, a result caused by modern multiplicity of irregular stimuli, and observable in modern civilized man. Great multiplicity of stimuli the tribal man rarely experienced. His percussive Music was not complex, because the life stimuli were not complex; the nervous system of the savage was disturbed by but few mental processes—the simple results of the few and unvarying stimuli offered by his tribal life.
Approaching modern times, let us see what role was assumed by Music in the tribal life of the early Germanic races. In those times of war excitement, when tribes fought like wild animals, and the war spirit held full sway, the Germans on their march to battle, helmets decorated with the heads of animals, their big bodies clothed in the simple sagum, chanted their war songs, and kept up a rhythmic beating upon their shields. This ever visible trend toward rhythmic sound indicates a subconscious need of it, a need which often annoys us in our children’s craving for the noise of percussion,—a noise, it may have been observed by long-suffering parents, which they love beyond all other diversions. So long as war and religion alone occupied mankind, and before the human need of rhythmic sound became so pronounced, as to create the very complicated idea of producing vibratory impulse, from pleasurable sound intervals, combined with word pictures of human emotions—so long was mere rhythm in Music sufficient to re-establish disturbed internal motion.
The Gauls advanced a step beyond the Germans toward musical organization, by their maintenance of “bands of barders,” who were described by Tacitus as accompanying the Gallic armies in order to cheer the warriors.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Part II, p. 375: “The true song however of most birds and various strange cries are chiefly uttered during the breeding season, and serve as a charm, or merely as a call-note to the other sex.”