HEBREW MUSIC. From the many Bible references to music, the inference necessarily arises that it filled a large part in the life of the ancient Hebrews. It is spoken of not only in the service of religion, where it might natu rally have been looked for, but also on the battlefield, at the harvest feasts and in the home. David, prince of singers, employs it to drive away Saul's melancholy. Elisha prophe sies under its inspiration. The victory at the Red Sea, the return of Saul and David after the battle with the Philstines, all important na tional events are celebrated in song. The de tails of the Temple music, the names, divisions and functions of the singers and instrumental performers are referred to at length. David utilized no less than 4,000 singers in the Temple service, of whom 288 were "skilful)' i.e., virtuosi. Josephus, describing the prepara tions for the dedication of the Temple, speaks of a band and chorus of 200,000 trumpets, 40,000 string instruments and 200,000 singers; and, even if these figures are liberally dis counted, the number must have been imposing.
Yet, in spite of all that modern research has accomplished in reconstructing the vital facts of Jewish history, very little definite informa tion exists on the subject of Hebrew music. This, in itself, is a strong indication that music was but slightly developed by the Jews. Even among the Greeks, most advanced of the an cient peoples in all that concerned the arts, it had practically no independent existence, but was bound up with poetry and dancing and entirely subservient to their demands. The Greeks spent much effort over the scientific aspects of music and its esthetic considera tions and their speculations on the subject are preserved in fairly elhborate form; but there is no trace of any treatise on slither the theory or the practise of music among the Hebrews; not even any suggestion bearing on its use is to be found in the widely varied laws of the Pentateuch. The Bible is bare of .ny real indi cation of its form, nature or mechanics. All
reasonings on the subject are necessarily a priori.
In any discussion of ancient music it must be borne in mind that a different thing is meant than that which the word connotes in its pres ent-day signification. Music, as an art, has the three dimensions of rhythm, melody and harmony; while at the dawn of civilization it was, as one writer has well put it, a Malan& of two dimensions only, rhythm and melody. So far as scholars have been able to discover, harmony is entirely a modern development. The terminology of the Bible is a stumbling block in the path of students on the subject, who cannot even identify some of the musical instruments named. There are, for example, several Hebrew names which may mean harp, an instrument undoubtedly in use by them, kinnor, woe, all translated in the Eng lish version of the Psalms as ((psaltery!) The ugab, an invention credited to Iubal, is vari ously called "organ') and ("pipe?) The one in strument preserved to the present day is the shophar, a curved trumpet, made of the ram's horn, which is still heard in the synagogue on important holy days. It is the shophar which sounded amid the smoke and thunder of Mount Sinai when the Commandments were given to Moses and to its blast the walls of Jericho fell. While the exact facts are lacking, it is es tablished that the Hebrews had instruments in the three modern categories of stringed, wind and percussion instruments. Save as there may have been interludes between the choral singing and the chanting of the priests, there seems to have been no independent instrumental music; but it almost invariably accompanied the voice and the dance. Hebrew song was probably a unison chant or song-speech, more or less melodious, but entirely subordinate to the text in rhythm and accent. From the form of much of the verse, it seems to have been, at times, antiphonal. Undoubtedly it was crude and noisy and probably without definite pitch, judged by Occidental standards. Even modern Oriental music sounds so to Western ears.