Cymbals. The tzeltzclim, metzilloth, and metzilthaim, appear to have been cymbals or similar metallic instruments of percussion, differing in shape and sound.
Bells. The little bells on the vestments of the high-priest were called phaamon. Small golden bells were attached to the lower part of the robes of the high-priest in his sacred ministrations. The Jews have, at the present day, in their synagogues small bells fastened to the rolls of the Law containing the Pentateuch: a kind of ornamentation which is supposed to have been in use from time immemorial.
Besides the names of Hebrew instruments already given there occur several others in the Old Testament, upon the real meaning of which much diversity of opinion prevails. Jobel is by some commentators classed with the trumpets, but it is by others believed to designate a loud and cheerful blast of the trumpet, used on particular occasions. If Jobel (from which jubilare is supposed to be derived) is identical with the name Jubal, the inventor of musical instruments, it would appear that the Hebrews appreciated pre-eminently the exhilarating power of music. Shalisbim is supposed to denote a triangle. Nechiloth, gittith, and machalath, which occur in the headings of some psalms, are also by commentators supposed to be musical instruments. Nechiloth is said to have been a flute, and gittith and machalath to have been stringed instruments, and machol a kind of flute. Again, others maintain that the words denote peculiar modes of performance or certain favourite melodies to which the psalms were directed to be sung, or chanted. According to the records of the Rabbins, the Hebrews in the time of David and Solomon possessed thirty-six different musical instruments. In the Bible only about half that number are mentioned.
Most nations of antiquity ascribed the invention of their musical instruments to their gods, or to certain superhuman beings. The Hebrews attributed it to man; Jubal is mentioned in Genesis as “the father of all such as handle the harp and organ” (i.e., performers on stringed instruments and wind instruments). As instruments of percussion are almost invariably in use long before people are led to construct stringed and wind instruments it might perhaps be surmised that Jubal was not regarded as the inventor of all the Hebrew instruments, but rather as the first professional cultivator of instrumental music.
CHAPTER IV.
The Greeks.
Many musical instruments of the ancient Greeks are known to us by name; but respecting their exact construction and capabilities there still prevails almost as much diversity of opinion as is the case with those of the Hebrews.
It is generally believed that the Greeks derived their musical system from the Egyptians. Pythagoras and other philosophers are said to have studied music in Egypt. It would, however, appear that the Egyptian influence upon Greece, as far as regards this art, has been overrated. Not only have the more perfect Egyptian instruments—such as the larger harps, the tamboura—never been much in favour with the Greeks, but almost all the stringed instruments which the Greeks possessed are stated to have been originally derived from Asia. Strabo says: “Those who regard the whole of Asia, as far as India, as consecrated to Bacchus, point to that country as the origin of a great portion of the present music. One author speaks of ‘striking forcibly the Asiatic kithara,’ another calls the pipes Berecynthian and Phrygian. Some of the instruments also have foreign names, as Nabla, Sambuka, Barbiton, Magadis, and many others.”
We know at present little more of these instruments than that they were in use in Greece. Of the Magadis it is even not satisfactorily ascertained whether it was a stringed or a wind instrument. The other three are known to have been stringed instruments. But they cannot have been anything like such universal favourites as the lyre, because this instrument and perhaps the trigonon are almost the only stringed instruments represented in the Greek paintings on pottery and other monumental records. If, as might perhaps be suggested, their taste for beauty of form induced the Greeks to represent the elegant lyre in preference to other stringed instruments, we might at least expect to meet with the harp; an instrument which equals if it does not surpass the lyre in elegance of form.
