government, which also may be considered as the time of science par excellence, symphony has been added to music. The development of symphonic music is dependent on the development of musical instruments. Musical instruments themselves have their germ in the hunter stage of society. A tree overthrown by a tempest may be cross-cut into sections with a stone ax, reënforced by fire. Such a section may then be hollowed out with a stone adz and living coals. A vessel thus wrought serves many purposes. At night, when the tribe dances in glee, this mortar or tub for soaking skins becomes a drum. A wild gourd holding pebbles becomes a timbrel. A staff cut with notches is played upon with another and smaller one with rhythmic rasping thrum, and becomes a viol. A reed or a section of bark or the hollow bone of a bird makes a flute. A tablet two fingers wide and a span in length, suspended from a staff with sinew, becomes a roarer which is whipped through the air—the first trumpet of primitive man.
A group of such implements (and there are many others in primitive life) constitutes the first orchestra. When science comes and the nature of sound itself is understood as a property, instruments are invented and improved by the husbandry of mind until a great variety of musical instruments are developed; thus symphony grows from the soil of time. What, then, is symphony? It is a succession of melodies, every one of which is produced by a group of instruments, one of which may be that of the human voice. Now, as these instruments play in unison, one or another is selected to play the leading melody, and the other instruments are made to play subsidiary melodies in harmony with the leading melody. As the melodies pass in succession, a new theme is chosen for the leading melody, and thus there is a succession of themes.
This elementary statement seems to be necessary that we may properly understand the evolution of music and the derivative character of the pleasures which it produces; for symphonic
