Critical Historical Essays | Page 6

the trumpet and all its derivatives must be accepted.
On this point there has been much controversy. But it seems reasonable
to believe that once it was found that sound could be produced by
blowing across the top of a hollow pipe, the most natural thing to do
would be to try the same effect on all hollow things differing in shape
and material from the original bamboo. This would account for the
conch shells of the Amazons which, according to travellers' tales, were
used to proclaim an attack in war; in Africa the tusks of elephants were
used; in North America the instrument did not rise above the whistle
made from the small bones of a deer or of a turkey's leg.
That the Pan's pipes are the originals of all these species seems hardly

open to doubt. Even among the Greeks and Romans we see traces of
them in the double trumpet and the double pipe. These trumpets
became larger and larger in form, and the force required to play them
was such that the player had to adopt a kind of leather harness to
strengthen his cheeks. Before this development had been reached,
however, I have no doubt that all wind instruments were of the Pan's
pipes variety; that is to say, the instruments consisted of a hollow tube
shut at one end, the sound being produced by the breath catching on the
open edge of the tube.
Direct blowing into the tube doubtless came later. In this case the tube
was open at both ends, and the sound was determined by its length and
by the force given to the breath in playing. There is good reason for
admitting this new instrument to be a descendant of the Pan's pipes, for
it was evidently played by the nose at first. This would preclude its
being considered as an originally forcible instrument, such as the
trumpet.
Now that we have traced the history of the pipe and considered the
different types of the instrument, we can see immediately that it
brought no great new truth home to man as did the drum.
The savage who first climbed secretly to the top of the stockade around
his village to investigate the cause of the mysterious sounds would
naturally say that the Great Spirit had revealed a mystery to him; and
he would also claim to be a wonder worker. But while his pipe would
be accepted to a certain degree, it was nevertheless second in the field
and could hardly replace the drum. Besides, mankind had already
commenced to think on a higher plane, and the pipe was reduced to
filling what gaps it could in the language of the emotions.
The second strongest emotion of the race is love. All over the world,
wherever we find the pipe in its softer, earlier form, we find it
connected with love songs. In time it degenerated into a synonym for
something contemptibly slothful and worthless, so much so that Plato
wished to banish it from his "Republic," saying that the Lydian pipe
should not have a place in a decent community.

On the other hand, the trumpet branch of the family developed into
something quite different. At the very beginning it was used for war,
and as its object was to frighten, it became larger and larger in form,
and more formidable in sound. In this respect it only kept pace with the
drum, for we read of Assyrian and Thibetan trumpets two or three yards
long, and of the Aztec war drum which reached the enormous height of
ten feet, and could be heard for miles.
Now this, the trumpet species of pipe, we find also used as an auxiliary
"spiritual" help to the drum. We are told by M. Huc, in his "Travels in
Thibet," that the llamas of Thibet have a custom of assembling on the
roofs of Lhassa at a stated period and blowing enormous trumpets,
making the most hideous midnight din imaginable. The reason given
for this was that in former days the city was terrorized by demons who
rose from a deep ravine and crept through all the houses, working evil
everywhere. After the priests had exorcised them by blowing these
trumpets, the town was troubled no more. In Africa the same
demonstration of trumpet blowing occurs at an eclipse of the moon;
and, to draw the theory out to a thin thread, anyone who has lived in a
small German Protestant town will remember the chorals which are so
often played before sunrise by a band of trumpets, horns, and
trombones from the belfry of some church tower. Almost up to the end
of the last century trombones were intimately connected with the
church service; and if we look back to Zoroaster we find