Of the music of the Hebrews, nearly all that is known is to be collected from the Scriptures, and the Bible is in the possession of every one. There we meet with the first recorded song, which Moses sang at the head of the tribes, after the miraculous passage of the Red Sea. To this responded Miriam the prophetess, having a timbrel or tambourine in her hand, and being attended by all the women, carrying the same instruments, and dancing. Music formed an essential part of every Jewish ceremony. The priesthood were musicians by office, which was hereditary : they were 4000 in number, divided into bodies, each of which had its chief or leader. At the dedication of Solomon's temple a prodigious band of priests, blowing trumpets, attended. Josephus tells us that 200,000 musicians were engaged ; but as his statement is unsupported by scriptural history, we may venture to consider it as a mistake arising from some misapprehension, or else as a manuscript error. A Hebrew writer enumerates 38 musical instru ments that were kept in the sanctuary, all of which, he says, the prophet-king David could play. These are reduced to 33 by another account. It is worthy of remark that many of them, under other names, are still met with in the East and in Egypt, and, as far as can be ascertained, very little changed from their original form. Martini has given, from a manuscript of 1599, what he believes to be speci mens of the melodies sung by the Jews to certain Psalms ; but they are printed in the obsolete notation, without bars, and having no words added to them by which the measure might perhaps have been made out, it is impossible to enter thoroughly into their meaning.
The music of the Greeks has engaged the notice of so many searching antiquaries and patient mathematicana—such profound learning and unwearied labour have been bestowed cM it—it has provoked so much controversy, and the dispute has proved so barren, that we enter on the subject reluctantly, if not fearfully. But before proceeding further, we think it right to say that, after a diligent investigation of the sub ject, on which we entered with au unprejudiced mind, it is our decided opinion that what is now called Greek music has hitherto proved per plexing chiefly, if not solely, on account of the term having been misunderstood. We believe that by nuta,sike (uovcriA) the Greeks meant poetry sang, with some sort of accompaniment, and that the moderns have fallen into error by overrating the importance of the melodic part, treating this as the principal, and poetry only as an ally.
Music was a comprehensive term with the Greeks, embracing, among other things which we shall have occasion to mention, melody (melopceza, literally the making, or composition, of the song) and poetry. There is no one, 3f. VIlloteau remarks, who, after an attentive perms] of the ancient writers, is not convinced that eloquence, poetry, and melody were in early times governed by musical principles, that they were taught by the same master, and that the three arta were but one science. The Greeks never separated poetry from melody ; the poet himself set the notes to his own verse.*, and in the early times sang them at the public, games and festivals. The Greek tragedies were
operas, observes Payne Knight, meaning, we presume, that they were In a kind of recitative; end he is borne out in his assertion by the best authorities. Aristotle, in his treatise on poetry, considers the music of tragedy as one of its most essential parts. The nature of this music is indicated by several writers, but is more clearly pointed out by Philodemue than by any other, in his work in abuse of music (one of the papyri found in Herculaneum, unrolled and published at Naples , in 1793), wherein it is described as a melody nearly approaching ordi nary speech ; that is to say, recitative. Horace calls Apollo the singer. The ancient poets give us to understand that their verses were sung, and this is to be construed literally in the case of the Greek poete. Homer, according to tradition, sang his own epics. But it is needless to multiply proofs of a fact so generally received.
Admitting, then, that Greek poetry of all kinds—religious, epic, dramatic, &c.—was really sung, let us imagine what was meant by the word singing. It is not to be imagined that Homer, Tyrtmus, Pinder, &c., were singers, in our acceptation of the word; the supposition is too absurd to be entertained for a moment. But even allowing them to have been as perfect in the vocal art as the moderns are, would they have condescended to deliver their poetry in long flights of notes, in divisions, in trills, and in passages that render it difficult, and some times impossible, to get at the sense / lf, however, they had attempted to make their " heaven-bred poesy " subservient to song, would they have found a patient audience 1—Assuredly not; for the animating appeal, the interesting narrative clothed in poetical language, the pathetic description, were what the Greeks delighted in, and certainly would not have surrendered for the sake of a tune. Moreover, it must be recullected, and is a very important consideration, that when the art of printing was unknown, and manuscript copies of poems, &c., were unattainable by the people at large, on account of the expense, the multitude had no means of becoming acquainted with the productions of their poets but by hearing them recited; and as crowds assembled for this purpose, the best mode of rendering the voico of the reciter audible to many, and these congregated in open places, was, to pitch it rather high, and confine it to a small number of fixed musical notes. Such is still the practice, and with the same intent, in all cathedrals, and is called chanting—a usage which has doubtless been transmitted from the remotest ages. Such, too, is the method adopted by the iniprorrisatori , whose art, we are persuaded, is of the highest antiquity, and whose singing, it is our belief, much resembles that of the ancient Greeks in delivering their verses. Those extemporaneous poets always require an instrumental accompaniment of a simple kind, to keep the voice in tune, and, as they confess, to animate them. The Greek reciter, also were accompanied either by the lyre or the flute, and probably for the same purposes. The flute was the companion of elegiac poetry ; the lyre of the epic and the ode.