Curiosities of Music A Collection of Facts Not Generally Known, Regarding the Music of Ancient and Savage Nations

This book has endeavored to bring together the most curious points in the music of many nations, ancient and modern. Music has been broadly defined by Fetis as "the art of moving the feelings by combinations of sounds" - taken in this broad sense it may be considered as coeval with the human race. Vocal music is as natural in man, to express feelings, as it is for a cat to purr or a lion to roar; regarding instrumental music, the primitive man might have found in every hollow tree a reverberating drum, and in every conch shell or horn of cattle, the natural beginnings of instrumental music; we shall find later that many nations ascribe the discovery of their music to the accidental appliance of some natural instrument. That the art of music was esteemed among the more educated of the early Christians is very strongly shown by a fresco in the cemetery of Domitilla (in Rome). This painting which seems to be of the first or second century of our era, represents Christ as Orpheus, charming all nature by his music. It is probably only an allegorical figure, representing his divine gifts, but the figure must be a shock to all who are accustomed to see the face of Jesus, as drawn by the Leonardo da Vinci. Instead of the meek and beautiful form, we see here a lank loosely built young man, sitting in a very uncomfortable attitude, on a rock, and twanging away at a four-stringed lyre.