The Greeks, although perhaps excelling all other nations in this, as in the other arts, are not the only people among whom music was cultivated and esteemed. Both China and Arabia are said to have felt its influence upon their customs, manners, and institutions. The musical traditions of China might seem to be but repetitions of the marvels of the Greeks. King-lun, Kovei, and Pinmonkia, are said to have arrested the flow of rivers, and to have caused the woods and forests, attracted by the melody of their performance, to crowd around. The Chinese are said to believe, that the ancient music of their country has drawn angels down from heaven, and conjured up from hell departed souls: they also believe that music can inspire men with the love of virtue, and cause them faithfully to fulfil their several duties. Confucius says "to know if a kingdom be well governed, and if the customs of its inhabitants be bad or good, examine the musical taste which there prevails." There is still extant a curious document, which shows the importance which a ruler of this people attached to music, as a moral and political agent. We allude to a proclamation of the Emperor Ngaiti, who ascended the throne of the Celestial Empire in the year of the tenth æra 364. After complaining, that tender, artificial, and effeminate strains inspire libertinism, he proceeds, in severe terms, to order a reformation in these matters; the first step to which, is a prohibition of every sort of music but that which serves for war, and for the ceremony Tido. The Arabs also appear to have held similar opinions as to the power of music. They boast of Ishac, Kathab Al Moussouly, Alfarabi, and other musicians, whom they relate to have worked miracles by their vocal and instrumental performances. With the Arabs, music was interwoven with philosophy; and their wise men imagined a marvellous relation to exist between harmonious sounds and the operations of nature. Harmony was esteemed the panacea, or universal remedy, in mental and even bodily affections; in the tones of the lute were found medical recipes in almost all diseases. Upon one occasion, in the presence of the grand vizier, Alfarabi, accompanying his voice with an instrument, is related to have roused a large assembly to an extreme pitch of joyful excitement, from which he moved them to grief and tears, and then plunged all present into a deep sleep, none having the power to resist the enchantment of his performance.
The children of Israel cultivated music in the earliest periods of their existence as a people. After the passage of the Red Sea, Moses, and his sister Miriam, the prophetess, assembled two choruses, one of men, and the other of women, with timbrels, who sang and danced. The facility with which the instruments were collected on the spot, and with which the choruses and dances were arranged and executed, necessarily implies a skill in these exercises, which must have been acquired long before, probably from the Egyptians. We have abundant evidence in Holy Writ, of the high estimation in which music was held among the Hebrews at a later period of their history. They also appear to have successfully applied it to the cure of diseases. The whole of David's power over the disorder of Saul may, without any miraculous intervention, be attributed to his skilful performance upon the harp. In 1st Samuel, c. xvi., we read that Saul's servants said unto him, "Behold now, an evil spirit from God troubleth thee: Let our lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man who is a cunning player on an harp: and it shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well." Saul having assented to this proposal, the son of Jesse the Bethlemite was sent for, and stood before him. "And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him." So great were the esteem and love for music among this people when David ascended the throne, that we find that he appointed 4000 Levites to praise the Lord with instruments, (1. Chron. c. xxiii.;) and that the number of those that were cunning in song, was two hundred four score and eight, (c. xxv.) Solomon is related by Josephus to have made 200,000 trumpets, and 40,000 instruments of music, to praise God with. In the 2d chapter of Ecclesiastes, music is mentioned by Solomon among the vanities and follies in which he found no profit, in terms which show how generally a cultivated taste was diffused among his subjects. "I gat me men-singers and women-singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts." Many other passages of similar import might be quoted from the sacred writings, and among others, some from which it would appear that musicians marched in the van of the Jewish armies, and not unfrequently contributed to the victory by the animation of their strains; and that music was the universal language of joy and lamentation. There is, however, one portion of Holy Writ, which, from the highly interesting testimony it incidentally bears to the love of music which prevailed in Jerusalem, and the skill of her inhabitants, we cannot forbear to notice. We allude to the 137th Psalm, "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Sion. As for our harps, we hanged them up upon the trees that are therein. For they that led us away captive required of us there a song and melody in our heaviness: Sing us one of the songs of Sion." From the facts here narrated, we may judge how great was the attachment of the Jewish people for the musical art; their beloved city sacked, their temple plundered and destroyed, their homes desolate, in the midst of danger and despair, deserted by their God, surrounded by infuriated enemies, (Isaiah, xiii. 16.,) nevertheless their harps were not forgotten. From this beautiful and pathetic lamentation, it would also appear that the repute of Hebrew musicians was far extended. No sooner had they arrived in the land of their captivity, than the Chaldean conqueror required of them a song and melody in their heaviness, demanding one of the songs of Sion. The fame of the captives must have long preceded them, for, according to Dr Burney, the art was then declining in Judea.
In the physical sciences, we have surpassed the nations who excelled in music; in war we have equalled their most glorious feats; in poetry and oratory we are not inferior. Shall not our future history also tell of triumphs in the tuneful art? We believe that sooner or later, the time will surely come when our country in her turn will boast of masters in the art, whose memories will ever be preserved and hallowed. But whatever the future may bring forth, the marvellous accounts of the powers of ancient music will meet with little indulgence from modern scepticism. At present such effects are unknown among us, and therefore unintelligible. Among the early Greeks, for many centuries, the several characters of poet, musician, lawgiver, and philosopher, were combined in the same individual; and it is probable that the music of that period consisted principally of recitative or musical declamation. This species of composition, so utterly neglected and unknown to the English school, possesses great powers of expression, both when in its simple form and when accompanied. A modern example of the effects it is capable of is recorded by Tartini. He relates, in the following terms, as one of many similar instances which had come under his observation:—"In the 14th year of the present century, (the 18th,) in the opera they were performing at Ancona, there was at the beginning of the 3d act a line of recitative, unaccompanied by any instruments but the bass, by which, equally among the professors and the audience, was raised such and so great a commotion of mind, that all looked in one another's faces, on account of the evident change of colour which took place in each. The effect was not that of grief, (I very well remember that the words expressed indignation,) but that of a certain congealing and coldness of the blood, which completely disturbed the mind. Thirteen times was the drama repeated, and the same effect always followed universally; a palpable sign of which was the deep previous silence with which the audience prepared themselves to enjoy its effects."[14]
The line of recitative has unfortunately not been preserved; nor is it known what the opera, or whose the music, which produced an effect which may not be inaptly described in the words of Byron:—
"An undefined and sudden thrill,
Which made the heart a moment still,
Then beat with quicker pulse."
The music of Allessandro Scarlatti was then current and universally popular in Italy. This composer was particularly famous for the excellence of his recitative; and his general merit may be judged of by the fact, that he is placed by Arteaga, in his work on the revolutions of the musical drama in Italy, among the early authors belonging to the period which he terms the golden age of Italian music. On these grounds, we may reasonably conclude, that he was the composer of that terrible line of recitative.
We have ourselves also witnessed a somewhat similar example of the powers of Italian recitative. Many of our readers, doubtless, have witnessed Pasta's wonderful performance in Anna Bolena, who also may remember Anna's exclamation, "Giudici ad Anna! ad Anna giudici!" when Henry's intention of bringing her to trial is first made known to her. Such was the fearful tone, of mingled horror, amaze, and wrathful indignation, with which that greatest queen of tragic song gave out these words, that, in a foreign land, we have on more than one occasion observed some of the audience, as these fiery accents burst forth upon them, to start, change colour, and almost shudder at the intensity of the conflicting passions she exhibited. Much, nay most, of this was undoubtedly owing to the genius of the songstress. We do but mention these examples, to show how perfect a medium of musical expression and dramatic effect, good recitative becomes, when adequately performed. Still, the wonders related of ancient music—wonders not confined to one age, one people, or to one quarter of the globe, but, on the contrary, commencing at a remote period of man's history, including Jews, Chinese, Arabs, and Greeks, amongst whose records their memory is preserved—will meet with a cold assent from most; and perhaps few among us would be found bold enough to avow a belief in their reality. We have certainly no warrant for their truth in the powers or effects of our national music, and thus experience directly contradicts the testimony of antiquity.
On the same grounds, however, had no specimens of ancient handiwork been preserved, we might also have doubted the excellence and beauty of any of those works of art which, nevertheless, immortalized those by whose hands they were fashioned. Were not the Dying Gladiator now before us, it might, at this day, be deemed a monstrous supposition, that a statue of a dying man should have existed, in which there might be seen how much of life was left. Inferiority is ever sceptical and self-satisfied; it is only given to the really wise to know how much lies hidden from their view. Though the scope and object of all the imitative arts is the same, to dignify, elevate, and embellish nature—though the beauty of the ideal is the aim of the musician, equally as it is the aspiration of the poet, painter, and the sculptor, the character of these pursuits is in some respects essentially different. In the latter, material objects are imitated and embellished, the things themselves are bodily before the eyes, and the beauty and excellence of the work will appear by comparison with nature herself. These arts also possess great landmarks of taste and skill, which speak the same language to all ages. Of the symmetry of the sculptor's chiselled forms, of the beauty of the poet's or the painter's pictures, we have a standard in nature's own originals, seldom, probably never, exhibiting the same concentration of refined and elevated beauty in one individual object, but, nevertheless, furnishing an accurate and never varying standard, for the exercise of the judgement; while the heart, that inner world, ever uniform and unchanging amid the manifold vicissitudes of human life, supplies a test by which the poet's thoughts and sentiments may be correctly tried. Thus, in the lapse of ages, the public taste has known no change; and though more than 2000 years have passed away, the works of ancient Greece are worshipped still.