MUSIC.
The science of music, or rather of harmony, is extremely ancient—insomuch that, with respect to the latter, it is said to be coeval with Nature herself. But as it has relation to the science now in use, this, like most other arts, whose origin is very remote, is involved in obscurity; and in proportion to the astonishment and wonder excited by its uncommon powers, in a commensurate ratio does mystery, fable, and obscurity envelope its original. However, always remembering that it was from harmony,—
—“from heavenly harmony, this universal frame began.”
Proceeding step by step, it had eventually attained in Greece a very early perfection. Collins, who is justly entitled to the distinguished station held by all pupils of nature and of the muses, who is peculiarly eminent for a just poetical spirit, thus speaks of the heavenly science in his Ode on the Passions—
“Arise, as in that elder time,
Warm, energetic, chaste, sublime;—
Thy wonders in that god-like age
Fill thy recording sisters’ page.—
’Tis said, and I believe the tale,
Thy humblest reed could more prevail,
Had more of strength, diviner rage
Than all that charms this laggard age,
Even all at once together found
Cecilia’s mingled world of sound.”
It will be remembered, however, that the poet calculated as much upon the infant simplicity of nature as upon the uncommon powers of harmony; this consideration will certainly reconcile the apparent extravagance of the thought.
So great were the early powers of verse and harmony, that at one period the votaries of the muses were regarded as persons divinely inspired; they were the priests of man, his legislators, and his prophets. Insomuch was the possessor of the art, and the art itself reverenced, that the responses of the most eminent oracles were received in measured verse. Witness the response of the Delphian oracle received by the Athenian deputation, when Greece inquired for her wisest men, as given by Xenophon:—
“Wise is Sophocles, more wise Euripides,
But the wisest of all men is Socrates.”
Music eventually claimed the most unlimited control over the affections of mankind, as could be proved by an infinity of instances; we shall mention one only from a well authenticated fact, and finely illustrated in that of Timotheus from “Alexander’s Feast,” by Dryden. We omit the hyperbolic representation of the raising of the walls of Thebes by the power of Amphion’s lute, and the apparently incredible relations of the harmony of the harp of Orpheus, which are all personifications of natural effects, and which we have neither room, time, nor opportunity to explain in this place.