Books › The story of the violin, 1904 › scan 53
Scan 53
The story of the violin, 1904
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Story of the Violin
3proof of their existence. Did such instruments, when invented by or imported to other nations, find a sympathetic echo in the musical soul of those nations: were they popular and a success?
5If we look about among the nations of that ancient world, what do we find? Take the old Assyrians and Chaldeans. From what our scientists tell us about them, they must have been in general a practical, industrious, and ambitious people. And their music? Doubtless music was held in great esteem, but it appears to have been largely in the hands of the upper classes. It was the aristocrats of Babylon some 5000 years ago who, with much ceremony and display, went, to the rhythm and tune of musical instruments, to the temples of their national gods to worship. They played themselves; no hired bands then. We see on Assyrian bas-reliefs men and women carrying harps, lyres, psalteries; and from the cut of their clothes and the embroidery, etc., displayed on them, our learned Assyriologists have drawn the above ingenious conclusions as to the social rank of these musicians. Imagine such an Assyrian gentleman making a public spectacle of himself with a sort of ravanastron and bow in his hands, trying to play it while he walked in a solemn procession. Why, the idea would have been preposterous. As for the populace, if we may draw conclusions from their national characteristics, they would have preferred the shrill tones of a clarionet or flute, a drum, a tambourine, or some twanged instruments, to the
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