Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Lessons in Musical History: A Comprehensive Outline of Musical History From the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Present Time
Instruments of percussion were, doubtless, the first to be invented. From marking the rhythm by pounding on a tree or post with a club, it was not far to covering the end of a hollow log with a stretched skin, thus producing a rude drum. Progress was then easy toward the whole family of drums, tom-toms, gongs, cymbals, tambourines, etc., the latter kind as soon as metals and metal working had been discovered. Wind instruments were probably invented by some such accident as hearing a broken reed give forth a musical tone when blown across by the wind. The Egyptian and Greek myth has it that the god Hermes, walking b the Nile bank, picked up a tortoise shell which ad some sun-dried membranes stretched across it, and that this gave him the idea of the lyre. It is not improbable that some such accident as this really occasioned the invention of stringed instruments. Or perhaps the idea came from a tightly-stretched bowstring. However this may be, the first instrumental music must have been associated with vocal music, and must have been essentially the same in its nature and function. That is, it consisted of rhythmical successions of sounds, which owed their origin to the innate impulse to express, convey and excite feeling.
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