Sr ttt ene 
178 THE FINE ARTS. 
sent sensible objects alone, and which only by an ingenious treatment and 
combination of them are able to act upon the mind. We will here give a 
brief sketch of the history of music. 
A. Ancient Times. 
Music, the language of the soul, belongs to the most ancient arts; for the 
Bible affords us circumstantial information respecting it, and names Jubal 
as the inventor of musical instruments, among which are mentioned the 
lute and the shepherd’s pipe. In Job we read of timbrels, pipes, and Intes ; 
and Moses mentions silver trumpets: his sister also was a singer, so that 
vocal music was already artistically practised. David’s harp-playing is 
celebrated ; and under Solomon, when the music of those times reached the 
summit of its perfection, the trumpet-music was performed by more than 
4,000 persons. After Solomon music among the Israelites fell into decline, 
and during the Babylonian exile it ceased altogether; after the restoration 
the most zealous exertions of the high priests failed to restore it to its 
former state. Among the Egyptians too we find the clearest evidences of 
the cultivation of music as an art, in their representations of various 
musical instruments and of festivals and processions, which are found in 
great numbers in the temples and tombs, in the form both of reliefs and of 
paintings. 
From Egypt music was carried to Greece, where it was greatly cultivated 
and improved; but we know little that is definite respecting it, not even 
how the choruses in the ancient tragedies were performed and accompanied. 
Music it is certain played an important part among the Greeks; and their 
legislators recommended the practice of it, as having a softening and 
humanizing effect. It was placed under the protection of two Muses, and 
was said to have been invented by Epimetheus and Prometheus. Great 
musicians attained celebrity, and the names of Orpheus and Amphion have 
been handed down to these distant ages. Among the cultivators and 
improvers of the art mythology enumerates the gods and goddesses Hermes, 
Minerva, Bacchus, Cadmus, Pan, Midas, Marsyas, &c. In the sixth cen- 
tury before Christ instrumental was separated from vocal music, and Lasos 
was the first writer on music in a theoretical point of view. Pythagoras 
also paid attention to the improvement of the art, and Aristoxenus founded 
a school of music. Euclid investigated the mathematical principles on 
which music is based. Music was transplanted from the Greeks to the 
Romans, who however cultivated it but little, as they considered it to be an 
enervating art; on this account it was reckoned among the employments 
of slaves and freedmen. Among the violent political revolutions that con- 
vulsed the Roman empire, music sank into the darkness of barbarism. The 
Gauls and the Germans are known to have had a sort of music; and the 
Scandinavians had their skalds, who, like the bards and druids, recited and 
perhaps also sang their sacred songs to the accompaniment of the harp. 
It was not till the Christian worship assumed a more refined and elabo- 
rate ferm that music was again awakened from its slumber; it was then 
applied to the singing of the church, which consisted chiefly of the psalms 
562 
