Page:Van Loon--The Story of Mankind.djvu/510

442 and soon these became monotonous. Besides, they could not well be sung in the street or in the market-place.

The Renaissance changed this. Music once more came into its own as the best friend of man, both in his happiness and in his sorrows.

The Egyptians and the Babylonians and the ancient Jews had all been great lovers of music. They had even combined different instruments into regular orchestras. But the Greeks had frowned upon this barbaric foreign noise. They liked to hear a man recite the stately poetry of Homer and Pindar. They allowed him to accompany himself upon the lyre (the poorest of all stringed instruments). That was as far as any one could go without incurring the risk of popular disapproval. The Romans on the other hand had loved orchestral music at their dinners and parties and they had invented most of the instruments which (in very modified form) we use to-day. The early church had despised this music which smacked too much of the wicked pagan world which had just been destroyed. A few songs rendered by the entire congregation were all the bishops of the third and fourth centuries would tolerate. As the congregation was apt to sing dreadfully out of key without the guidance of an instrument, the church had afterwards allowed the use of an organ, an invention of the second century of our era which consisted of a combination of the old pipes of Pan and a pair of bellows.

Then came the great migrations. The last of the Roman musicians were either killed or became tramp-fiddlers going from city to city and playing in the street, and begging for pennies like the harpist on a modern ferry-boat.