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CURIOSITIES OF MUSIC. |
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CHAPTER I.
Music has been broadly defined by Fetis as "the art of moving the feelings by combinations of sounds;" taken in this broad sense it mav be considered as coeval with the human race.
Vocal music, in a crude form, is as natural in man, to express feelings, as it is for a cat to purr or a lion to roar ; as regards instrumental music, the primitive man might have found in every hollow tree a reverberating drum, and in eveiy conchshell or horn of cattle, the natural beginnings of instrumental music; we shall find later that many nations ascribe the discovery of their music to the accidental appliance of some natural instrument; our surest guide in watching the rise of the art, should be the manner in which savage peoples, yet in a state of nature, produce music, and we shall find too, that even the lowest in the scale, even those beings who make the monkey tribe nearer and dearer to us, as possible relatives (the bushmen of Australia for example), have still a method of " moving the feelings by means of combinations of sounds." |
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