| Musical instruments are divided into three | | | | things of age-long use; but many centuries would |
| categories, percussion instruments, wind | | | | appear to have affected their development very |
| instruments, and stringed instruments. Simple | | | | little and in the same way that we are |
| forms of these are known to every tribe on the | | | | accustomed to regard the races who use them |
| earth, and in their simplest form may be available | | | | as standing but on the threshold of human life. |
| the hand of early man. So almost any hard | | | | Therefore, we may perhaps, regard these simple |
| substance could be fashioned as an instrument of | | | | instruments of to-day, and the vague musical |
| the drum kind. The wind instrument is merely the | | | | systems with which they are allied, as presenting |
| stem of a reed or the horn of some animal and | | | | a parallel illustration of the state of matters from |
| the sonorousness of a cord or fibre in a state of | | | | which the musical art of the earliest civilisation |
| tension could hardly escape observation in any | | | | was evolved. |
| land whose people numbered bows and arrows | | | | It should be noted that in the above statement |
| among their weapons. The violin is an obvious | | | | we cannot include electronic organs and electric |
| development of the principle that a tightly | | | | keyboards, common to the twenty first century. |
| stretched cord can be made to produce sound by | | | | When we guess at the type of musical |
| being set in vibration. | | | | instruments that were used by early man, we |
| These, then, are the simplest forms in the | | | | can be sure that there was no Yamaha electone |
| production of music-the voice; the stretched cord; | | | | organs or Roland G70 and Ketron Audya arranger |
| the reed-pipe or horn; and the drum, clapper, or | | | | keyboards. Anyway, these modern keyboards |
| rattle, these last being but varying applications of | | | | would have been useless because they hadn't |
| the same principle of percussion. These primary | | | | invented electricity yet. |
| means of producing sound are well known to all | | | | Thus it is not very difficult to imagine what music |
| the primitive peoples of the world, and by most | | | | may have been like in the earliest ages of the |
| have been carried to a varying pitch of | | | | world; but of its history in those times we know |
| development. Thus the ideas of solo singer or | | | | nothing; and the earliest records extant give us |
| narrator alternating with a chorus, and of one | | | | but brief, disconnected glimpses of an art already |
| body of voices alternating with another, are to | | | | of high antiquity. Our oldest sources of information |
| found almost everywhere. | | | | upon the subject of music are to be found in the |
| The knowledge that varying-sized sonorous | | | | sculpture work of the Assyrians, the carvings and |
| bodies produce varying tones is also common to | | | | wall-paintings of the Egyptians, the Old |
| early man in general, and many tribes have, from | | | | Testament, and Homer. From these four sources, |
| slabs of wood or stone of a specially sonorous | | | | we can obtain a great amount of information, |
| quality, devised an instrument of the harmonicon | | | | information, however, which it is impossible to |
| kind. The same principle of combination has also | | | | present in any certain chronological sequence. |
| been widely applied to the wind | | | | All that we can be sure of is that we see music |
| instru�ment; and pipes of varying size, | | | | as existing among four distinct races, and in each |
| double-pipes, pandean pipes (the syrinx of the | | | | case, in a state of high development. But whether |
| ancients), and pipes with finger holes, are to be | | | | the musical systems of the Assyrians, Egyptians, |
| found in all countries. A further step has been | | | | Israelites, and Greeks were developed separately, |
| taken in cases where there has been what might | | | | or whether they were varying developments of a |
| be called a cross application of the fundamental | | | | common inheritance derived from some still earlier |
| principles of the different types of musical | | | | civilisation, or whether each race had carried on a |
| instrument. For instance, the discovery that the | | | | purely independent process of evolution from the |
| volume of sound produced from a stringed | | | | beginning of time, are questions that may never |
| instrument can be increased by the addition of | | | | be answered. All that we know is that music |
| some contrivance of the sounding-board order, | | | | undoubtedly existed among these ancient nations, |
| belongs to an early stage of development. | | | | and existed in a state of high development; |
| Such are the general types of musical instruments | | | | beyond that, we can only deal in guesswork. |
| in use among uncivilised races. They are doubtless | | | | |