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MILITARY MUSIC AND ITS STORY. |
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thighs, and he was immediately endowed with irresistible strength, whilst the voice of the god or spirit was found most efficacious in creating fear and dismay in his enemies.
At a later stage of development, the horn arrives, and man finds its frightening power far more potent than his fetish, the drum. Martial music becomes a separate function, and the horn its first exponent, by . irtue of its special value in "scaring the foe."1
The horn, then, is the prototype of our modern military trumpet. It frequently occurs in Greek art, where it serves to distinguish the barbarians from the Greeks who used the trumpet, and is mentioned by both Greek and Latin poets in their accounts of primitive wars.
When it was that the Greeks adopted the trumpet is not quite certain. That Homer was acquainted with this rare contrivance we may safely conjecture, although he never refers to it in his heroic battle scenes, except as a simile. But, of course, trumpets were in use ages before this by the Egyptians, a nation far advanced in a civilization which surpassed anything the ancient world ever arrived at. With the Egyptians military music had an important place, their chief instruments being the trumpet and drum, which, says Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson,2 were common about the -sixteenth century before our era. Both of these instruments were utilized to regulate and enliven the march, |
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1 Rowbotham, "History of Music," 1885. 'Wilkinson, "The Ancient Egyptians," 1833. |
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