74 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



the various steps to one particular step as their starting point, or 

 " key note," as we call it. But if we take a selection from these steps, 

 in what may seem at first sight an arbitrary manner, we get what is 

 called a scale. 



If, starting from the first tone or open string, we skip the first 

 small step and take the next, we shall get the interval known as a 

 whole step or whole tone. Let us do the same again. Let us next 

 take a small step : we have now a group of four notes at unequal 

 intervals, two whole steps and one half. Let us now take a large 

 step from the top one of these four, and from that, as a starting 

 point, make a succession similar to" the first four, which will bring us 

 to the octave. I am stating all this to make clear to you that music 

 as we know it is based on a succession of tones and semitones (steps 

 and half steps) in a certain order, the half steps being of such 

 a size as that it takes twelve to complete the octave. 



Some Asiatic tribes to-day, and some semicultivated races else- 

 where, make music from stringed instruments in which they use steps 

 smaller than ours, in some cases making eighteen and more steps in 

 the octave. This may be music to their ears but it is not such to 

 ours. 



Concerning the history of our modern scale, it is a development 

 of the Greek system. The first Greek lyres had only four strings, 

 which were tuned in certain successions of steps and half steps 

 according to the mode in which the music was to be played. We 

 learn from Greek records that the philosopher, Pythagoras, visited 

 Egypt about 600 B. C. and got from that place the complete octave 

 scale; but that was the utmost we knew about Egyptian music. 

 What their theories were, how long they had been known, was all 

 mystery and speculation. We saw their harps of many strings, their 

 flutes and double flutes all portrayed in painting and sculpture. A 

 few shreds of reed-pipes and rickety remains that could scarcely be 

 looked at without falling to pieces, tantalized us with the " what might 

 have been " or " used to be." But guess work is now ended. 



Near an imposing pyramid, built by Usertesen II, a monarch of 

 the twelfth dynasty, who reigned some 4,500 years ago, at the 

 entrance of the Nile into the Fayum province, and about 60 miles 

 south of Cairo, stood the town of Kahun, which was built for 

 the habitation of the architects and workmen employed in the con- 

 struction of the pyramid. It would seem that when the building of 



