Hermann Smith

“ The vast volume of choral sound we listen to stirs us with contagious emotion. Our pleasure in grand organs with their roll of diapasons and arresting challenge of trumpets and tubas; our willing yielding up of ourselves to be swayed hither and thither for hours in the power of the massive orchestra, that wonderful machine of nerves and muscles,—what does it mean? It is all dynamical, all barbaric. It is not only the ear that is concerned in listening, the whole being is under strain and stress. Do I hence imply that it is wrong, is reprehensible so to employ music? ”

“ The next development of Greek ingenuity in the construction of flutes came in a remarkable guise, showing a contrast as great as our ships in mail and armour present to ships that carried our flag a century ago. Suddenly as it seems, with no transition stages, the Greek inventor brought forth his new flute of ivory encased in bronze. Evidently, it was an age of luxury. The Greeks valued in every respect each art that was known to them; they lavished wealth upon artists, and paid honours to orators and singers and players, no less than to sculptors and painters. ”

“ The light of Greece suddenly went out, and darkness surrounds all that relates to the actual characteristics of their musical instruments and their music, notwithstanding the preservation of learned treatises and the citation of numerous historical references. Musicians grope in the dark still, and are unable to realize the musical art of the Greeks. The lyre and the lute and the flute are before us in numberless painted designs, are sculptured in enduring marble,—yet they fail to raise in our minds any adequate idea of the influence of their music upon the national life. ”

“ Man’s love of power is the basis of such satisfaction.
Into this mood of meditation I was drawn the other evening after listening to Wagner’s “Procession of the Gods.” How the music takes hold of you, dips you in a sea of noise, and makes you feel alive all over. For this reason Wagner’s grand music is grand,—is greater than you. Your whole frame is plunged into an elemental excitement to which every nerve fibre thrills, and you feel conscious that latent impulses native to your being are awakened into activity; the barbaric strain in us responds, and exalts us beyond our conventional state. ”

“ And this is the little book that a little Japanese maiden will take out of her sleeve and therewith caress her thoughts with music, opening it to and fro as her fancy leads her, and perhaps finding there her song of songs, where hiddenly folding there, too, may be felt some flower token that she cherishes for remembrance, even as we treasure crushed pansies and violets. Be sure, the nature that we call human nature is much the same all the world over ”

“ In art, the Japanese are undoubtedly superior to the Chinese; the Sho that I once had and gave to a friend was most beautifully made, and in every particular delightfully finished. A large Japanese Koto, a thirteen stringed instrument that I possess, is a marvel of beauty, with lovely lac pictures running along the sides, and inlays of ivory and tortoiseshell and variegated woods in thousands of pieces, silver bosses, bronze dragons, and silk tassels, altogether a delight to the eye. ”

“ And indeed how tenderly human is their appeal across the centuries, for they bear even now evidences of the touch of the fingers of the dear lady who played her chosen flute music upon them so long and lovingly, and cherished them as companions in her life, and destined them also to befriend her in her dark tomb. Yes, you can plainly see, her fingers have worn away the rich orange stain from the beautifully shaped oval holes. For these flutes were finely finished and designed for true musical service and durability. ”

“ Music by inspiration. Yes, that is it,—the very thing we want, what we are all longing for; so little of the truly inspired music comes newly to refresh us as the birth of the days we live in. Only the old seems the ever new. How inspiring it is to listen to the themes of the old masters, and feel the old melodies pass through us like a current of life, awakening thrills of delight, the memory of the first hearing of them blending with and enhancing the emotions of the present. ”

“ So the Chinese foot predetermined the standard both for the reed pipe of bamboo with a tongue of metal, and for the reed pipe blown across as the pandean pipe is blown across: which pipe from immemorial days has remained in the imperial archives, as the unalterable standard of pitch—unalterable because nature does not alter. ”

“ Looking over the 3,000 gems in the British Museum, the bronzes, and the Sculptures, and the multitude of Vases, from earliest to latest periods, and amidst varied and ornate styles in advanced art, we see that still the same simple form remains a cherished favourite not to be displaced from the people’s choice by the newer patterns, religion and tradition had made this the companion of the ever youthful Apollo, and we find that the artists kept up the association in their representations of the well-known Homeric chronicles of gods and men. ”

“ That many-stringed lyres became accepted in certain circles of society cannot be doubted, the names of many such being current, and the extent over which the series of notes ranged being likewise stated, yet on their vases and marbles and in the best period of classic art, we find the Chelys, and the various modifications of it up to the perfected lyre in the hands of Apollo, alone thought worthy of representation. The abundance of these is marvellous, and the imagination conjures up visions of numberless treasures still waiting beneath the native soil. ”

“ He wrote largely, and completed the foundations upon which European music had been constructed, yet he had no conception of the structure that would be raised by coming generations. The Greeks had in their scale the elements of harmony yet they fell short of the realization, and it must ever be a wonder that, intellectual as they were, they missed it. Evolution was the destined way,—but it is so slow—so slow. ”

“ Nature’s gift—like the love of art for art’s sake, is a love of noise for noise’ sake; it is only a change of phrase. We should not decry this, nor should we plume ourselves upon our civilization as freeing ourselves from this original taint of barbarism. I confess to thoroughly enjoying a thunderstorm, my nature is absorbed in an energy greater than the individual, and I revel in it. ”

“ In the earliest times after the Egyptians had begun to depict the incidents of their daily life, and to make record of their nation’s history on the walls of tombs and temples, we find three distinct types of musical stringed instruments possessed by them; sometimes the representations of these are given in relief carved in stone, sometimes incised only and painted. Not decoration but history their minds were set upon; each man who had power held his own individual history to be of supreme importance, and thus there has been left to us a picture book of priceless veracity. ”

“ Any day some new discovery may confute our speculations; but still we cannot but indulge in them. We, with modern eyes, look upon these flutes only as musical instruments; but to the Egyptians every tone heard alone or in combination, every movement, every gesture of the player had its mystic meaning, and its occult significance in association with rituals and observances and ceremonies.
In these early ages, double flutes appear to have flourished everywhere amongst neighbouring nations; and the single flute, if the pictured representations and designs are to guide us, was comparatively rare. ”

“ Historically the settlement of scale had its importance, although it came too late in time to be for the Greeks an effective force in their national music. The glory of Greece was fast departing, century after century in the course we have looked upon during our survey, empires had risen, empires had fallen, and in the disrupted state of social conditions, chaos often came, the Greek race itself was worn down and ultimately became absorbed amongst strangers, conquering races, and in the end we have to speak of her Art as Greco-Roman. Out of all these world changes we have isolated Music. ”

“ One rarely hears the Sheng now-a-days, on account, some say, of a curious superstition that a skilful performer becomes so wedded to its music, that he is ever playing, and that, as the instrument is played by suction or drawing in of the breath, a long continuance in practice brings on inflammation of the lungs; so no performer is believed to live more than forty years! Others however, and these are the philosophers, maintain that the ancient music and the ancient methods of playing are lost, and the construction of the instrument after the ancient plan is a lost art. ”

“ The term flutes, it is necessary to remember, is in ancient usage of literature applied to include all pipes blown across and likewise those sounded by means of reeds that the breath sets vibrating.
All the world over men have found delight in fluting, and the flute as an instrument appears to be the common property of the human race. Either of bones of animals or birds, of reeds or alders, of stones or of clay, the art of man has fashioned flutes from the beginning of time’s records. ”

“ These people have no conception of the purpose of an orchestra, as we understand it. The Chinese orchestra is merely a combination of instruments which for ceremonial use alternate with the vocal music, each instrument having its allotted place for sounding at the end of some strophe or line of the hymn, and comes in much as our snatches of instrumental melody or harmony in recitative. ”

“ In considering questions of early origin and of direction of human intelligence, there is no point of more importance to bear in mind than the allowance of long periods for the operation of the process we are now accustomed to call evolution. When we have traced history to its utmost verge in the dim past, the civilization we come then in contact with, in those very ancient days gives evidence of many centuries—aye, even many tens of centuries—having been necessary for that growth of adaptations recognised as the outcome of human intelligence and industry in such communities. ”

“ When with the modern knowledge of musical instruments we examine the nature of those which they had in their command, we have every reason to doubt the practical application of those fine distinctions of the pitches of the musical notes insisted upon by their learned theorists. The instruments simply could not give them, the exactness was beyond their staying and playing powers. The strings of a lyre had not the delicate permanence of pitch requisite for such claims, and certainly the flutes could not have rendered intervals so accurate. ”

“ I want to take you back in imagination ages beyond these dates, to find the man who made this little organ, this little Sheng that to-day can arrest our attention with absorbing interest. There was some first dreamer, inventor, originator; some one who played and toyed with the bamboos that grew beside his path, and thought out this little thing that was to descend from generation to generation, and become a household name in huts and palaces and temples. In the far east the bamboo is everywhere the resource of man for the supply of his daily needs. ”

“ Hippocrene, faithful to its ancient renown, runs cool and bright, that whoso will may drink therefrom and pause to meditate on Time’s concurrent freshness, ever-passing: the ear is charmed with sounds, the winds waken the soft susurrus from the pine-forests on the heights, it wanders down the pathways of the hills to mingle with the drowsy hum of bees, and the tinkling of the goats bells, and with luscious song of hidden nightingales in pale green olive groves. ”

“ Then came the worker in metal, copying the product of nature, yet not venturing much beyond it.
The old monarchies of Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, with their tablets and monuments and paintings, afford no evidence of a stage of musical advance from the early horn; and we have but to contrast the wide range of our trumpet with the few notes producible on a cow’s horn, to recognise how, in the absence of higher aim inciting to achievement which we call art, the dormant possibilities of a marvellous instrument should have been unevoked: empires passed away, and the trumpet remained a horn. ”

“ Certainly it is the unknown man who is the true great man, though history has obliterated his name and graven a royal cartouche in its place. The mythical is always later than the real.
This curious instrument: what a juggle of words it has led me to. The inspiration I have to talk of is done by inspiring,—its music is made as the lark’s music is, by inspirating. Note you how the bird sings by drawing in breath, by inspiring; and higher and higher he mounts, filling the air with melody for a half mile around him ”

“ Yet surely for a little while we should find some good in letting our imagination dwell upon the scenes and surroundings that were real in Greek life; some good also in cherishing the belief that the dead beliefs of old humanity were once living beliefs.
Pindar, second only because Homer was first, was revered by the whole Greek race, and considered their greatest lyric poet. From the pillars of Hercules to the verge of India, wherever there were Greeks, there Pindar was amongst them. How high an honour, therefore, it was that fell to Midas the flute player. ”

“ The final scale was the triumph of the mathematicians, they gained their ideal. Beyond this, however, nothing was accomplished,—nothing for actual Music. Harmony was not discovered, no great composer arose, certain lyrists and auloi-players we know of, whose deeds excited enthusiasm, but in what kind of display their art consisted no evidence exists, beyond the music to a few hymns, the melodic phrases of which do not commend themselves to us as examples of musical genius or talent. ”