CHAPTER III
BIBLICAL MENTION OF MUSIC
The Old Testament is a chronicle of the growth, movements, physical and mental habits, and religious status of the great Jewish race. Its religion with one Godhead, whose immediate presence was often felt, its music addressed to this presence, and its family, tribal, and racial organizations were all Jewish. The great moving lever of Jewish existence was a religion whose creed prohibited the making of "graven images," so painting and sculpture were not cultivated; it recognized the direct agency of supreme will in moulding daily events, and prescribed oft-repeated praise and prayer, and thus created the atmosphere of exalted devotional feeling which we find recorded in many of the books of the Bible, and which climaxed in David's Psalms.
The ancient Hebrews were in no measure a scientific people. Their one intellectual aspiration found vent in beautifying the worship of God. They were religious teachers, who have directly or indirectly shaped the creeds of the civilized world.
According to the conditions upon which I have thus far based my theories of musical evolution, early Jewish songs could not have been equal, in artistic merit, to the texts with which they were associated, for there was an utter lack, in this race, of such general culture and art sense as we found prevailing in ancient Egypt; but the Hebrews were a race apart, and their unique instincts may have made their music an exception to all rules.
Their song-impulse was confined to one line, but it was so strong that it projected itself from conception, in religious enthusiasm, to a high grade of fulfilment without touching the low plane of their general culture; nevertheless, the above-mentioned short-comings and the subsequent decadence of race nationality relegate Hebrew music to a low place as an influence upon the world's song.
They had men who devoted themselves to the playing of instruments as an accompaniment to song, and the Bible mentions more varieties of instruments than can be found in profane history of those times. Worship was such an important feature of Jewish life, and praise was so essential an element in their worship, that the masses must have learned and sung those great lyrics which to-day represent the culmination of human awe, reverence, prayer, and thanksgiving. It is impossible to imagine David singing his psalms to crude or inadequate musical settings.
Here we have a situation apparently full of vital contradictions. Most of the influences which have proven themselves necessary to the development of music were wanting, and still there is evidence that it had grown to be an expressive means. The Jews were actuated by profound religious feeling and by an exquisite sense of nature's forms. No poet has yet equalled David's simple but beautiful appreciation of the universe, and of its influence upon mankind.
The Jews of Poland, Spain, and Germany have diverse musical settings of the Psalms, so there is no traceable line of inheritance from David. This line has been obliterated by the changes incident to generations of unassisted memory. That there may be rare exceptions to this rule of change in form during extended oral transmission was abundantly proven recently by a German Hebrew musician and scholar. He played me an unwritten Passover hymn which his father had always sung at that festival time, and told me that he had not long before been entertained by a Spanish Hebrew, who sang the same melody tone for tone. This gentleman's hearing and memory are so absolute that there is no question to be raised as to this case; but as far as my investigations have gone, it stands alone.
The composer of the nineteenth century can nowhere else find such earnest and suggestive texts as in the Old Testament. They voice the hopes, sorrows, despair, reverence, and joys of our hearts just as aptly as they did those of the Hebrew bards who wrote them thousands of years ago. Their natural and direct method of expressing the emotions, and their incomparable elevation of spirit, make them appeal especially strongly to the musician, whose flights of imagination start from these emotions.
We are denied the privilege of scanning the forms and substance of Biblical melodies or chants, and must content ourselves with tracing the more prominent features of the rôle which was assigned to music during that older era, and the mechanical devices which were employed to enhance rhythmic precision and sonority.