MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS - online book

The History And Development Of Musical Instruments From The Earliest Times.

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	56	MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.
	turies, otherwise we should probably have earlier accounts of some instrument of the violin kind in Persia. Ash-shakandi, who lived in Spain about a.d. 1200, mentions the rebab, which may have been in use for centuries without having been thought worthy of notice on account of its rudeness. Persian writers of the fourteenth century speak of two instruments of the violin class, viz., the rebab and the kemangeh. As regards the kemangeh, the Arabs themselves assert that they obtained it from Persia, and their statement appears all the more worthy of belief from the fact that both names, rebab and kcmangch, are originally Persian. We engrave the rebab from an example at South Kensington. The nay, a flute, and the sumay, a species of oboe, are still popular in the east. The Arabs must have been indefatigable constructors of musical instruments. Kiese-wetter gives a list of above two hundred names of Arabian instruments, and this does not include many known to us through Spanish historians. A careful investigation of the musical instruments of the Arabs during their sojourn in Spain is particularly interesting to the student of mediaeval music, inas­much as it reveals the eastern origin of many instruments which are generally regarded as European inventions. Introduced into Spain by the Saracens and the Moors they were gradually diffused towards northern Europe. The English, for instance, adopted not only the Moorish dance (morrice dance) but also the kuitra (gittern), the el-oud (lute), the rebab (rebec), the nakkarah (naker), and several others. In an old Cornish sacred drama, supposed to date from the fourteenth century, we have in an enumeration of musical instruments the nakrys, designating " kettle-drums." It must be remembered that the Cornish language, which has now

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