512 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



111. PREHISTORIC MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS/ 



Music is a dnalisui. It is formed of the conjunction of two elements ; the one purely 

 musical, the other poetical; the one sensuous, the other spiritual or intellectual; 

 the one owing its origin and development to instruments and based on the mere 

 animal dcdight in sound, the other owing its origin and development to language 

 and based on the fusion of the emotional and intellectual sides of man's nature.- 



It lias been asserted that the origin of vocal music was coeval with 

 that of language, and that the construction of musical instruments 

 dates with the earliest inventions suggested by human ingenuity. 

 Those who make these assertions do so simi)ly upon theory, and when 

 pressed for their authority would be compelled to admit that actual 

 knowledge or information upon the subject does not exist. What can 

 be affirmed is that sound made by the prehistoric man of the earliest 

 epoch might have been rhythmic and so possessed one of the elements 

 of nuisic. The other elements — melody, dynamics, and harmony — fol- 

 lowed in the course of civilization, among some people at a faster and 

 among others at a slower rate. 



Vocal sounds are incapable in themselves of i^erpetuation. When 

 the vibrations made by the human voice have ceased, the incident is 

 closed and the evidence lost. It is, therefore, in the absence of any 

 written testimony, impossible to identify the practice, or even the exist- 

 ence, of vocal music in prehistoric times. We are driven to an exclu- 

 sive consideration of musical instruments, and if these should fail us, 

 we would be without evidence. 



Miss Fletcher '^ says : 



As to the birth of musical instruments, I can not even touch upon the raison d'rtre 

 of their invention, but T may call attention to their controlling influence; they have 

 become at length master of the man who made them. There is no race or people 

 possessing a theory of music who have not been indebted to musical instruments for 

 the means by which their theory has been worked out. * " ^ Before the instru- 

 ment had been evolved and man could listen objectively to his music, during the 

 long period when his voice w^as his only mode of expressicm, his mind was not stim- 

 ulated to make observations upon the relations of one to the other. He may be said 

 to have xiossessed no conscious method and to have followed no known or accepted 

 artiticial rules of composition of his song. 



This relates entirely to prehistoric times, and its author accepts 

 musical instruments as the only means of perpetuating the sounds so 

 tliey can be reproduced and studied. 



'Much of the material descriptive of prehistoric musical instruments and their 

 scales in the Western Hemisphere contained in this chapter was prepared by Mr. 

 VI. P. Ilpham, assistant in the division of Prehistoric Archaeology to whom credit 

 as joint author should be given. 



'-^Rowbothaui, History of Music, I, Introduction, jj. xi. 



■'Indian music, in Music, June, 1894, p. 189, 



