The Romans carried back to their own country, as the results of conquest, specimens of most of the musical instruments they found in use in the countries subdued by them. Thus Greece supplied Rome with nearly all the soft instruments of the class of lyres and flutes. Germany and the northern provinces, being inhabited by warlike races, gave to their conquerors the taste for loud-sounding instruments, such as trumpets and drums. Asia, and Judæa especially, which had multiplied various kinds of metal-instruments for use in their religious ceremonies, were the means of naturalising in Roman music deep-toned instruments of the class of bells and tom-toms (a kind of drum). Egypt introduced into Italy the timbrel along with the worship of Isis. Byzantium had no sooner invented the first pneumatic organs than the new religion of Christ took possession of them for exclusive consecration to its service, both in the East and in the West.
All the musical instruments of the known world had therefore taken refuge, as it were, in the capital of the Roman empire; but their fate was only to disappear and sink into oblivion after they had played their part in the last pomps of that falling empire, and in the final festivals of the ancient mythology. In a letter in which he specially treats of “various kinds of musical instruments,” St. Jerome, who lived from 331 to 420, speaks of those which were in use in his time for the requirements of religion, war, ceremonial, and art. He mentions, in the first place, the organ, and describes it as composed of fifteen brazen pipes, two air-reservoirs of elephant’s skin, and twelve large sets of bellows, “to imitate the voice of thunder.” He next specifies, under the generic name of tuba, several kinds of trumpets: that which called the people together, that which directed the march of troops, that which proclaimed the victory, that which sounded the charge against the enemy, that which announced the closing of the gates, &c. One of these trumpets, the shape of which is rather difficult to gather from his description, had three brazen bells, and roared through four air-conduits. Another instrument, the bombulum, which must have made a frightful uproar, was, as far as we can conjecture from the text of the pious writer, a kind of peal of bells attached to a hollow metallic column which, by the assistance of twelve pipes, reverberated the sounds of twenty-four bells that were set in motion by one another. Next come the cithara of the Hebrews, in the shape of a triangle, furnished with twenty-four strings; the sackbut, of Chaldæan origin, a trumpet formed of several movable tubes of wood, fitting one into the other; the psaltery, a small harp provided with ten strings; and lastly, the tympanum, also called the chorus, a hand-drum to which were fixed two metal flute-tubes.
Fig. 155.—Concert; a Bas-relief, taken from a Capital in Saint-Georges de Boscherville, Normandy. (A Work of the Eleventh Century.)
A nomenclature of a similar kind, applying to the ninth century, exists in a history of Charlemagne, in Latin verse, by Aymeric de Peyrac. This shows as that, during the lapse of four centuries, the number of instruments had been nearly doubled, and that the musical influence of Charlemagne’s reign had made itself felt in the revival and improvement of several instruments which had been formerly abandoned. This curious metrical composition enumerates all the stringed, wind, and pulsatile instruments which celebrated the praise of the great emperor, the protector and restorer of music. The number of instruments specified are twenty-four in number, among which we find nearly all those mentioned by St. Jerome.
Fig. 156.—Concert and Musical Instruments. From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century.
The names, therefore, of musical instruments had passed through seven or eight centuries without undergoing any kind of change than that naturally resulting from variations in the language. But the instruments themselves, during this long interval of time, had been often modified to such extent that the primitive denomination not unfrequently appeared to contradict the musical characteristics of the instrument to which it still continued to be attached. Thus, the chorus, which had been a four-stringed harp, and from its name seems to indicate a collection of instruments, had become a wind-instrument.[22] So also the psaltery, which was originally touched by a plectrum (stick) or with the fingers, now only gave forth its notes under the influence of a bow; an instrument that had had twenty strings now only retained eight; another, the name of which seemed to refer to a square shape, was rounded; those primitively made of wood were now constructed of metal. There is reason to believe that, generally speaking, these changes were made not so much with the view of any musical improvement, properly so called, as with an idea of gratifying the
Fig. 157.—The Tree of Jesse. The ancestors of Jesus Christ are represented with Musical Instruments, and as forming a Celestial Concert. (Fac-simile from a Miniature in a Manuscript Breviary of the Fifteenth Century. Royal Library, Brussels.)