522 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



The music of tlie Arabs seems to involve extraordinary complica- 

 tions, and lias furnished endless occupation for musical historians and 

 theorists. The most interesting fact in regard to it is that the principal 

 intervals of our scale, namely, the octave and fifth, were also the most 

 important intervals with them. But the resemblance ended here, for 

 their octave was divided into sixteen, or, according to some authors, 

 into seventeen parts, and these not always equal, so that their music 

 must have been very different from anything we are accustomed to. 

 Sanscrit literature contains traces of a musical system in India some 

 three thousand years old, which is still cultivated there. They have 

 also the octavo division, which is subdivided theoretically into twenty- 

 two parts. Their practical scale consists of seven degrees, among 

 which the twenty-two theoretical intervals are unequally divided. The 

 notes in the iisable scale admit of many changes, forming distinct 

 modes, and the system generally has many analogies with that of the 

 Greeks. It is worthy of remark, however, that, judging by the frets 

 on their i)rincipal stringed instruments, the subdivision of the octave 

 by the fifth and fourth is acknowledged. 



Another Aryan branch, the Persian, interests us because, so far as 

 the early history of nations can be made out, their music seems to have 

 been the remote ancestor of our own. The Aryans of Persia, like those 

 of India, had originally a liking for minute intervals of sound, for they 

 divided the octave into twenty-four parts. 



It is through the known migrations of tliese races westward, and 

 particularly into Greece, that their connection with our music is gene- 

 alogically established. It is believed that, under the name Pelasgians, 

 they settled in Asia Minor and in Greece some two thousand years 

 before the Christian era, and their descendants or relatives, Lydians 

 and Phrygians, afterwards mixed with other colonists, such as the 

 Dorians, iEolians, lonians, and Etruscans, who exercised considerable 

 influence on their manners and customs. 



The early history of Greek music is enveloped in obscurity. The 

 Greeks had a most elaborate system of meter and rhythm, but it 

 belonged chiefly to their poetry. The principal way in which they 

 applied the idea of time to music was by making the duration of the 

 sounds of unequal lengths correspond to the measures in their poetry, 

 so that in singing, the long syllables should be sung to long notes and 

 the short syllables to shorter notes. This was natural, but there is 

 evidence that the idea was carried further, as signs for unequal length 

 of notes existed in music unaccompanied by poetry, thus coming a little 

 nearer to our modern notation. The earliest indications of a regular 

 system of music are found in the little that is said of the poet musician 

 Olympus, a Pelasgian by origin. He is believed to have lived during 

 the twelfth century B. C., and is of some importance in history, as cer- 

 tain Greek authors and modern philologists ascribe to him the intro- 

 duction into Grecian music of the so-called Enharmonic system. Others 



