Music in Mohammedan countries has peculiarities which differentiate it quite distinctly from music in China and in India. In India music has always been largely associated with religion, especially in connection with the dance. Mohammedanism has never encouraged religious music. It is true that the chanting of the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer from the minarets; but except this the music which accompanies the dances of the whirling dervishes of Cairo, Bagdad, and Constantinople offers practically the only example of Mohammedan religious music.[17] Nevertheless in the brilliant days of the Abbaside caliphs and the Moorish kings of Spain music was a passion with the Saracens. Haroun-al-Raschid lavished rewards of gold and lands on his musicians and the ‘Thousand and One Nights’ proves in what esteem music was held throughout the Mohammedan Orient at the time of the Caliphate. There was a rich and elaborate musical literature, but the decadence of the Arab civilization brought with it entire oblivion of the many treatises and writings of these glorious days. The old science is forgotten, just as in China the musical wisdom of ancient times has fallen into neglect. Yet throughout the wide territories in which Mohammedanism established itself, that peculiar and distinctive type which more than any other represents Oriental music to us, a type resulting from a mixture of Persian and Arabian styles, complicated with Christian and other influences, has been traditionally handed down to the present day. As in the other systems we have discussed, harmony is practically non-existent. The scales are seven-toned and there are some eighteen theoretical modes. Both duple and triple rhythms are employed with greatest variety. In fact, one of the most striking characteristics of Mohammedan musical art is the variety and complexity of its sharp rhythms. The melodies are excessively adorned with every sort of flourish and ornament, slides, turns, grace-notes, shakes, and arabesques of every description not pleasing to our ears. Popular songs and professional musicians are to be found throughout all the Mohammedan Orient. The love song in particular is held in high esteem in all Mohammedan countries, and the following example may illustrate its charm:

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Villoteau mentions his regret at not having been able to note down ‘the accent of yielding abandonment with which the singers express the voluptuous melancholy which fills the majority of these songs.’ Some of the present-day Persian love-songs are said to be sung to poems of Hafiz. The occupational popular song is also found everywhere. In general, the standpoint taken by the Arab proverb, ‘Who does not hunt, does not love, is not moved by the sound of music nor raptured by the fragrance of blossoms is no man,’ is that of the Mohammedan Orient as regards the art of sound.

Though, strange to say, Arab music at the time of its greatest florescence possessed no system of notation, an elementary alphabetical notation has since been invented and is now in use.

In the main, the differences between Oriental music and our own may be summed up in the words of Saint-Saëns: ‘Oriental musical art is another art. The musical art of antiquity is founded on the combination of melody and rhythm. To these our art adds a third element—harmony.’ And, however much they differ from our own, it should always be borne in mind that ‘the subtly ingenious mathematical subdivisions of the Persians and Arabs, the excessive modal elaboration of the Hindoos, the narrow and constrained stiffness of the Chinese, the ambiguous elasticity of the Japanese, and the truly marvellous artificiality of the Javanese and Siamese systems are all the products of human artistic ingenuity working instinctively for artistic ends.’

II

An account of the uses of such music and the rôle it plays in customs far different from our own calls for some description of the instruments employed. Every nation had its own peculiar instruments. Those of percussion seem to us particularly characteristic. Such Oriental coloration as has been applied to our modern music has been usually in the way of rhythm emphasized by strange instruments of percussion. Drums, tam-tams, gongs, etc., do not fail to suggest at once the spirit of barbarous or outlandish peoples. The Peruvians and Aztecs had a variety of drums. The Aztecs used the huehuetl and the teponastle; the one, a drum struck by the fingers, a wooden cylinder three feet high, with a deer-skin head which could be loosened or tightened at will; the other a hollow closed cylinder of wood, having two longitudinal parallel slits close together, the strip of wood between which was struck with two drumsticks whose ends were covered with rubber. This instrument is still used by the Mexican Indians. It sounds a melancholy note, and one audible at a great distance. The Aztecs also used an enormous rattle, the axacaxtli, in place of castanets. It was a gourd pierced with holes and filled with small stones.

The most characteristic Chinese instrument of percussion is the king, a set of graduated plates, stones, or bells, hung in a frame and played with a mallet. The tone produced is smooth and sonorous. In addition, the Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Chinese have a quantity of metal gongs and cymbals, bells, tambourines, castanets, and drums of all kinds. In Siam and Burmah there is the ranat, a set of wooden or metal bars played with a mallet, in reality a xylophone; and in Java the anklong, of the same family, the bars of which are of bamboo. The Hindoos and Mohammedan Orientals also have a great number of drums, tam-tams, gongs, etc., which is not surprising in view of the predominant part rhythm was given in their music.

The stringed instruments are not less numerous. They appear to have been unknown to the Aztecs, and the Peruvians used only the tinya, a guitar with six strings. But the Chinese had a great number of them, among which the kin, a small lute with seven strings, held a peculiar place. It was long an object of veneration. Sages alone might venture to touch its strings; ordinary mortals should be content merely to regard it in silence with the most profound respect. An elaborate psaltery or zither called che, with twenty-five strings, was much in use, and there were several bowed instruments in the viol family, of uncertain ancient descent. The Cambodians, too, have instruments of the viol family, notably the tro-khmer, a three-stringed viol held like the 'cello when played. The Siamese, Coreans, and Annamites all use instruments of the guitar and mandolin family with a varying number of strings. In Burmah the favorite instrument is a queer harp with thirteen strings called the soung. In Japan there are the koto, which is a pleasing-toned zither with thirteen strings; the samisen, a small guitar associated with the Geisha girls, the buva, a type of lute, and the kokin, a primitive violin. One finds in India the sarindas or sarungis, viols with sympathetic wire strings; the vina, most generally popular of Hindoo stringed instruments, a sort of lute with two gourd resonators; and the tambura, a long slender guitar with three or more strings. But of all the stringed instruments of the Orient el’ud of Arabia is most famous. It is no other in name or fact than the lute, with broad, pear-shaped body, short neck bent back at the head, and four or more strings. Introduced by the Moors into Spain about 800 A. D., it became the favorite instrument of all Europe, was developed and improved with every care, was beautified with finest art and workmanship. From Arabia, too, may have come to Europe the first primitive violins. The Arabian rebab and the Persian kemangeh are almost identical in principle with our violin. The Arabian santirs and kanoons, zithers with many strings, played with plectra adjusted like thimbles on the finger-tips, have remained Oriental.