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18 National Music of the World. |
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out of the necessities and accidents of daily labour. The English paviour solaces himself with his grunt. The mule-drivers of Spain have learned their shriek and snort among the quadrupeds they hurry forward. Out of such primitive elements as these, national chant can grow; but whenever an instrument is made, there must always be established something more of certainty than belongs to such vague, wandering sounds; some feeling, be it ever so imperfect, for tune, or correctness of intonation; and, insomuch as instruments were used to inspirit or accompany the dancer, some recognition of return or periodicity— otherwise of rhythm.
The foregoing speculations have always seemed to me of great importance; almost to the point of establishing a definition and a principle. Their plausibility, at all events, can be largely proved from such specimens of Eastern music, ancient and modern, as have been collected by Villoteau, Laborde, Jomard, Sir Gore Ouseley, and that later traveller to whom art owes so much—Mr. Layard. The chants of the East, as noted by them, have one and all the same character—a certain arid melancholy—a wail which fancy cannot dissociate from the idea of coarse and languid, voices, exhausted under the influence of |
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