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Music from the East. 15 |
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MUSIC FROM THE EAST.
LOOKING to the East as to the cradle of civilisation, we naturally accept every relic and record coming thence as of the very highest importance. The national music of no other countries has been so carefully studied by competent and erudite writers as this; and, if it be considered in the antiquarian and scientific point of view, the able work of Carl Engel1 may be said in some measure to have exhausted the subject.
Viewed, however, on its picturesque side, a remark is to be offered to which, it seems to me, attention has not been sufficiently drawn. Instrumental resource was developed earlier, and with greater certainty, than any cultivation of the voice such as comes home to modern sympathies. However conventional they be, the pictures of harp and lyre (the latter the descendant of the old fabled tortoise-shell, cast on the strand, and strung with a sinew or
1 Music of the most Ancient Nations. |
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