Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 149.djvu/545

Musical Instruments and their Homes. By Mrs J. Crosby Brown and Wm. Adams Brown. Published by Dodd, Mead, & Co., New York. Agents in England, Messrs Ellis & Elvey, 29 New Bond Street, London.

Under the above title a sumptuous volume comes to us from America—not in rivalry to work so splendid as that of Messrs Hipkins and Gibb, whose exquisite coloured plates have recently familiarised us with all the most celebrated musical instruments of European nations in times past and present, but rather designed to illustrate the gradual improvement of such instruments from their most primitive types as found amongst numerous races, savage and semi-civilised, in Asia, Africa, America, and various widely scattered groups of islands. Not that Europe is omitted—on the contrary, many curious specimens are shown of French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and other instruments.

The work is illustrated by 270 most careful drawings in pen and ink by Mr Brown, from specimens in the splendid collection which his mother purposes presenting to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Arts.

The first half of the volume is devoted to the music of China, Japan, Corea, India, Siam, and Burmah. The second half treats of the music of the Arabs, Persians, Turks, and of all the negro races, the Indians of North and South America, and of divers peoples, ranging from Greenland to the Equatorial Isles.

A great mass of very interesting information is thus accumulated, and we are enabled to see at a glance the musical development of these various nations, and what instruments find most favour with each. Thus we also see plainly the natural order in which musical invention has invariably progressed: first, the manufacture of instruments of percussion, including all varieties of drums, castanets, cymbals, bells, and rattles; secondly, all manner of wind instruments, from the Æolian harp and rudest form of bagpipes to the musical clarionet or stately organ; and thirdly, the invention of stringed instruments, and the discovery of the effect of divers materials in producing diversity of tone, progressing from the single-stringed banjo to the most perfect of piano-fortes.

To glance first at the music of the Chinese. One of the many anomalies in that strange race is that with all their vaunted reverence for the teachings of Confucius, and notwithstanding all he said in favour of music, they now deem its pursuit the lowest of callings; and though music holds a prominent and essential place in all solemn ceremonials of worship, as also on such occasions as births, weddings, and funerals, professional musicians are looked upon with contempt, and their ranks are recruited from the lowest of the people, the respectable Chinese deeming it below their own dignity to perform on any instrument.

And yet it is recorded of Confucius that when, in the days of his poverty and starvation, his disciples marvelled that he should continue to sing and play as usual, he taught them that "the wise