| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. |
25 |
||
|
histories of music as a small organ, consisting of seven pipes placed in a box with a mouthpiece for blowing. But the shape of the pipes and of the box as well as the row of keys for the fingers exhibited in the representation of the mishrokitha have too much of the European type not to suggest that they are probably a product of the imagination. Respecting the illustrations of Hebrew instruments which usually accompany historical treatises on music and commentaries on the Bible, it ought to be borne in mind that most of them are merely the offspring of conjectures founded on some obscure hints in the Bible, or vague accounts by the Rabbins.
The Syrinx or Pandean Pipe. Probably the ugab, which in the English authorized version of the Bible is rendered " organ."
The Bagpipe. The word sumphonia, which occurs in the book of Daniel, is, by Forkel and others, supposed to denote a bagpipe. It is remarkable that at the present day the bagpipe is called by the Italian peasantry Zampogna. Another Hebrew instrument, the magrcpha, generally described as an organ, was more likely only a kind of bagpipe. The magrcpha is not mentioned in the Bible but is described in the Talmud. In tract Erachin it is recorded to have been a powerful organ which stood in the temple at Jerusalem, and consisted of a case or wind-chest, with ten holes, containing ten pipes. Each pipe was capable of emitting ten different sounds, by means of finger-holes or some similar contrivance : thus one hundred different sounds could be produced on this instrument. Further, the m.igrcpha is said to have been provided with two pairs of bellows and with ten keys, by means of which it was played with the fingers. Its tone was, according to the Rabbinic accounts, so loud that it could be heard at an incredibly long distance from the temple. Authorities so widely differ that we must leave it uncertain whether the much-lauded magrcpha was a bagpipe, an organ, or a kettle-drum. Of the real nature of the Hebrew bagpipe perhaps some idea may be formed from a syrinx with bellows, which has been found repre- |
|||