t of which has come much of the
tender regard we have for it as the expression of home and love in the
higher aspects.

All the leading types of instruments were discovered in the early
periods of human history, but the full powers of the best have been
reached only in recent times.

11. The art of music was highly esteemed in antiquity, and every great
nation had a form of its own. But it was only in three or four
countries that an art was developed of such beauty and depth of
principle as to have interest for us. The countries where this was
done were Egypt, Greece and India.

12. Modern music differs from ancient in two radical points: Tonality,
or the dependence of all tones in the series upon a single leading
tone called the Key; and Harmony, or the satisfactory use of combined
sounds. This part of music was not possible to the ancients, for want
of correctly tuned scales, and the selection of the proper tone as
key. The only form of combined sounds which they used was the octave,
and rarely the fifth or fourth. The idea of using other combined
sounds than the octave seems to have been suggested by Aristotle,
about 300 B.C. The period from the Christian era until about 1400 A.D.
was devoted to apprentice work in this department of art, the central
concept wanted being a _principle of unity_. After the beginning of
the schools of the Netherlands, about 1400, progress was very rapid.
The blossoming time of the modern art of music, however, cannot be
considered to have begun before about 1600, when opera was commenced;
or 1700, when instrumental music began to receive its full
development. Upon the whole, the former of these dates is regarded as
the more just, and it will be so used in the present work.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: KING DAVID, PLAYING ON THE THREE-STRINGED CRWTH.

(From a manuscript of the eleventh century now in the National
Library, Paris.)]

Book First.

THE

Music of the Ancient World.

PRIMITIVE TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS, AND AN ARTISTIC MONODY, WITHOUT REAL
TONALITY.

CHAPTER I.

MUSIC AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.

By a curious fortune we are able to form an approximately accurate
idea of the musical instruments in use in Egypt as long ago as about
4000 B.C. The earliest advanced civilization of which any coherent
traces have come down to us was developed along the Nile, where the
equable climate and the periodic inundations of the river raised the
pursuit of