Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/34



xylophone or glass-harmonicon. Similar forms occur in Asia and elsewhere.

6.—Primitive Harps and Zithers, strung with plant-fibres, gut or bamboo-strips, and with various devices for resonance.

Stringed instruments.—The bow being one of the first implements of hunting and warfare, it may have been among the earliest of musical instruments. Certain it is that rude harps shaped like a bow occur frequently among savages. The number of strings varies from one or two upward, though the weakness of the framework usually limits both number and tension. Experiments are frequent with rude lyres or zithers having strings stretched over a resonance-body, such as a flat piece of wood or a hollow box. These types pass over into rudimentary lutes, having both a resonance-box and a neck to extend the strings. Much ingenuity is shown in making the strings out of plant-fibres, hair, other animal tissues, metal. Many examples are found of instruments sounded by the friction of a bowstring, prefiguring the great family of viols. Occasionally pieces of wood or metal of different sizes are so fastened to a resonance-box that they can be sounded by snapping, as in the African 'zanze.'

6.—Primitive Harps and Zithers, strung with plant-fibres, gut or bamboo-strips, and with various devices for resonance.