Music and Its Masters

by O. B. Boise

As the instincts and capacities of the Aryan race have always been unique, it may prove instructive to glance at those features of its prehistoric existence in Asia which have been brought to light through comparative philology and mythology. In the first place, these sciences establish the fact that we of the West (Greeks, Italians, Germans, English) and the Hindoos of the East are of common origin. Our ancestors listened to the same legends, ballads, and mythical tales while gathered as children about one and the same mother, and they have handed them down to this generation of the descendants of each so little changed as to furnish ample proof of family relationship. Many of the more important words of the various Aryan languages are suggestively similar, and this in spite of the five thousand years of transmission, and of the diverse conditions incident to the growth of widely separated clans into great nations.

The Aryans were worshippers of Nature in her more spectacular and heroic forms and moods,—in storms, fire, sunset, and dawn, but looked upward for their Supreme Deity. The sky, with its fathomless depths of blue and its star mysteries, was their Zeus. From this it will be seen that they were, in a way, idolaters, but their idolatry was not degrading; it was, indeed, ennobling. They contemplated Nature, and in her processes saw the hand of an all-pervading, beneficent power,—a God. They worshipped the God thus, and in no other way, revealed to them through His works.

Their conceptions of family and community organization have served, and still serve, as models to civilized nations. They were paternal, the clans being large families with patriarchal heads, and elected councillors. They were pastoral, cultivating the soil and herding cattle, sheep, horses, and pigs; but they were at the same time good warriors. They wore leathern shoes, garments woven from wool, and they had at least a rudimentary knowledge of the sciences.

From all this I infer that the early Aryans were a race of freemen, not subject to the class discrimination that ruined Egypt.

Their appreciation of nature, and their reverence, ambition, and pertinacity fitted them to become the especial guardians of the arts, and their comparative class equality enabled them to fulfil the requirements of my theory that music can only flourish in a widely diffused interest and knowledge. It must breathe a genial and suggestive atmosphere.

Our main business is with Aryan music after it came under the influence of Egyptian culture, but it may interest my readers to flash, for a moment, the light of analogy back upon its earlier period. We have found the early Aryans less learned than the Egyptian scholar class, but also less superstitious and less pedantic. They were normal human beings in their occupations, susceptibilities, and social life. With such a picture in view it is quite natural for our imaginations to hear its complement in expressive sounds,—peaceful lullabies, songs of praise and love, and sonorous rejoicings.

In remote times the region which is supposed to have been the original home of the Aryans must have been fertile, for early poets were enthusiastic in describing its charms. The climatic changes that made the soil arid as it is to-day may have suggested, or may even have necessitated, migration; still, what condition or combination of conditions induced the Aryans to abandon Central Asia can never be positively known; but it is certain that they, like irresistible tidal waves, rolled westward and southward, destroying, carrying before them, or absorbing and dominating all peoples and institutions in their course.

One of the streams of Aryan migration flowed towards the south and formed the Hindoo and Persian nations, and another came into Europe by way of the Hellespont and took up its abode in Greece and Italy. Three others, the Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic, followed in the order named, passing to the north of the Black Sea, and occupied respectively Western, Central, and Eastern Europe.

Of all the nations who have developed from these original nuclei, the Hindoos show least evidence of close intercourse with the world's great teacher, whereas the Greeks, perhaps because of their proximity to Egypt, were led to avail themselves of her tuition to the fullest extent.

The ancient Hindoos were less scientific than the Chinese or Egyptians, and isolation has prevented them from advancing with modern civilization. Their music is less the fruit of theories than it is of natural Aryan impulse. They do not look upon it as a science, but as a matter of the emotions, the result of, and intended to quicken, the imagination. I have seen Hindoo melodies which exhibited a correct appreciation of rhythmic adjustment, still their accomplishments do not entitle them to a place among the potent factors in musical evolution.