Many musical enthusiasts have a fancy for trying to prove that the Greeks must have used harmony, because they possessed in their scale the notes that would combine in chords; but all attempts in this direction have been fruitless, and according to Greek scholars are likely ever to be so. Grand effects can be obtained by unisonous chant: and the Greek ear was satisfied. Let us be content to learn what their music really was, and not import into it our supercivilized requirements, assured that the dressing up of the antique in modern clothes is alike repugnant to good taste and refined sentiment, and is rejected by those who care for the verity of art.
In remarks on Greek music, Dr. C. Maclean said, “the classical period of Greece has been called the adolescence of intellectual and modern man, and a very beautiful adolescence it was. Unfortunately it has departed,” and he quoted the saying of Goethe:—
“The May of Life blooms but once.”
a saying that comes home to the experience of all of us, but only do we learn its truth when the May flowers that brought joy into our lives have withered and fallen.
Hitherto the investigation in earliest music has proceeded upon evidences of man’s concern with and interest in pipes to make music with. Clearly at first such use of hollow reeds was the accident of the day to any passer-by,—as imagined by Lucretius,
“Fond zephyrs playing on the hollow reeds
First taught the peasant how to use the pipe.”
Next came the constructive idea, purpose directed to an end in view, and the development in a very primitive manner of a series of sounds in some order or regularity of succession; for us this has been the chief consideration fixing our attention, to trace the evolution of system in the construction of instruments, therefrom deductively seeking to arrive at the system of the music. With instruments of all sorts collected with a view to antiquarian or archæological reference and study, I have nothing to do, museums may be filled with them, but unless they show us civilization effective nationally to advance some musical system, to notice them would but encumber with useless matter the enquiry such as I have proposed to myself.
Musical pipes we have traced through several phases of development, from the simplest and earliest pipe up to the ultimate stage in the many-ringed flute, as perfected in the hands of the Greek people. Beyond that it is not necessary to go, because our objective is the Greek system of music, as left to us to be the source of our own. The stringed instruments will show a similar course of development from the one-stringed to the many-stringed. The evidences of this progress are very numerous, existing still, and I have no doubt that the investigation will prove to be equally interesting, for it is with the Greek Lyre that we shall arrive at the method of the music.