Books › The heart of music : the story of the violin, 1906 › scan 113
Scan 113
The heart of music : the story of the violin, 1906
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1The Dark Days
3Robbery and piracy went in hand with hunting and legitimate fighting. Men were on a plane with animals and gratified their heinous appetites with as little hesitation as the beasts of the woods and waste-lands. In this time the mission of string music was nil,—nullified by the unproductive and unresponsive elements with which it had to combat, and over which it would have had to rise exultant to be heard at all.
5"Music was only a tinkle then," say the wise ones, and yet suddenly the impossible was accomplished; the violin, most advanced of instruments, was in use, and soon was even in a fair way to its perfection. Just so no great results arrive, abruptly and sublimely, in the midst of struggles of development and exposition.
7The growing power of the Christian Church was beginning to engulf music and materially to limit its scope. Chants took the place of the free folk-songs of the people, and it was considered most reprehensible to play stringed instruments. Many priests forbade all forms of music except religious intoning and the most austere and unmelodious hymns. Even the organs, which in their first primitive forms were known as the organum pneumaticum (pneumatic organ) and the organum hydraulicum (water organ), were con-
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.