Chapter 2 Origins of Musical Instruments the Migration Theory

It is curious that more is known about the rather vague quasi{mystical, quasi{aesthetic, quasi{mathematical course of music theory than about the de nite facts concerning how the physical instruments were developed. The history of music theory is well recorded, from Pythagorus (about 580 B.C.) to the present. From India there is the Natya{Shastra, perhaps as old as 200 B. C., in which instruments were classi ed in four categories: the stringed, wind, membranous percussion, and metal percussion. Evidently, by then there must have been already a long period of development. This continues in the Sangita Makarandah of the 8th or 9th Century, the Sangita{ Ratnakare of the 13'th Century, and the Raga{Vibodha and Chaturdandi Prakashika of the 17'th Century, down to the Hindusthani Sangita Paddhati of V. N. Bhatkande, in the 20'th Century. Arab theoreticians include Al{Kindi (' 873), Al{Farabi (950), Avicenna (1037), and Safe al{Din (13th Century). They discourse on mystical properties, then proceed to more mundane matters of calculation of intervals, de nition of modes, rhythm, principles of composition, and properties of instruments that composers need to know. Early European works after Pythagorus are rare but not entirely unknown; for example the De Musica of St. Augustine (late 4'th Century), and another De Musica by Aurelian (c. 850). But starting in the 16'th Century, we have a veritable ood of European works on music theory: Tartaglia (1543), Giose o Zarlino (1558, 1588), G. Benedetti (1563, 1585), Vincenzo Galilei [father of Galileo], (1589), Simon Stevin (1605), Father Marin Mersenne (1636), Jean Philippe Rameau (1722 et. seq.). In contrast, the process by which one evolved the actual design and mechanical construction of the instruments was often not recorded. In early times this knowledge was handed down verbally from master craftsman to apprentice { no doubt, often secretively { and is now lost. We shall be concerned mostly with the violin, about which quite a bit is known, and the piano, for which we know in detail just how its present form was developed. But before turning to them, let us survey a little of what is known about other instruments.