MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS - online book

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

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	MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.	73
	was told by archaeologists in Mexico that these instruments always contained the interval of a third, but on examining several speci­mens which he saw in museums he found some in which the two sounds stood towards each other in the relation of a fourth; while in others they constituted a fifth, in others a sixth, and in some even an octave. This is noteworthy in so far as it points to a conformity with our diatonic series of intervals, excepting the seventh. The teponaztli (engraved above) was generally carved with various fanciful and ingenious designs. It was beaten with two drumsticks covered at the end with an elastic gum, called ule, which was obtained from the milky juice extracted from the ule-tree. Some of these drums were small enough to be carried on a string or strap suspended round the neck of the player; others, again, measured upwards of five feet in length, and their sound was so powerful that it could be heard at a distance of three miles. In some rare instances a specimen of the teponaztli is still preserved by the Indians in Mexico, especially among tribes who have been comparatively but little affected by intercourse with their European aggressors. Herr Heller saw such an instrument in the hands of the Indians of Huatusco—a village near Mirador in the Tierra templada, or temperate region, occupying the slopes of the Cordilleras. Its sound is described as so very loud as to be distinctly audible at an incredibly great distance. This cir­cumstance, which has been noticed by several travellers, may per­haps be owing in some measure to the condition of the atmosphere in Mexico. Instruments of percussion con­structed on a principle more or less similar to the icponaztli were in use in several other parts of America, as well as in Mexico. Oviedo gives a drawing of a drum from San Domingo which, as

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