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BIBLICAL AND HEBREW MUSIC. 29
services had progressed. The reader has liberty to make his own choice, for the authorities are pretty evenly balanced, — organ, drum, or fire shovel.
We must make some allowance for Oriental exaggeration in musical matters, for when Josephus speaks of a performance by 200,000 singers, 40,000 sistrums, 40,000 harps, and 200,000 trumpets, we must imagine that either Josephus' tale, or the ears of the Hebrews, were tough. All these statements only enlarge a fruitless field, for in it all is conjecture.
The flute was a favorite instrument both for joy and sorrow: the Talmud contains a saying that "flutes are suited either to the bride or to the dead."
The performance of all these instruments seems to have been always in unison, and often in the most for tissimo style.
Calmet gives a list of Hebrew instruments including viols, trumpets, drums, bells, Pan's pipes, flutes, cymbals, etc., and it is possible that these have existed among them in a primitive form.
The abbe* de la Molette gives the number of the chief Jewish instruments as twelve, and states that they borrowed three newer ones from the Chaldeans, during the Babylonian captivity.
According to records of the Eabbins, given by Forkel, the Jews possessed in David's time, thirty-six instruments.
Some of the instruments named in the Scriptures |
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