Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1884 — Ancient Music. [ARTICLE]

Ancient Music.

The Egyptian flute was only a cow’s horn with three or four holes in it, and their harp or lyre had only three strings The Grecian lyre had ouly seveu strings and was very small, being held in one hand. The Jewish trumpets, that made the walls of Jerisho fall, were ram’s horns; their flute was the same as . the Egyptian; they had no other instrumental music but by percussion, of which the greatest boast was the psaltery, a small triangular harp or lyre, with wire strings, and struck with an iron needle or stick; their sackbut was something like a bagpipe; the timbrel was a tambourine, and the dulcimer was a horizontal harp<with wire strings and struck with a stick like the psaltery, They had no written music and had scarcely a vowel in their language, and yet, according to Josephus, they had two hundred thousand musicians playing at the dedication of Solomon’s Temple. Our Chicago Theodore Thomas would have died irr the greatest agonies at such a concert.— The Bye. - »<■ - '