MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. - I. IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. Among the Hebrews music was practiced principally in religious manifestations by the priestly class in the Temple and outside it, and thus bore an eminently sacred character. Concerning the musical instruments used by them there are no exact indications either as to their form or as to the precise terminology of each; precious references are offered by Egyptian, Assyrian and Phoenician civilization, from which Israel drew inspiration for its instrumental types.
Among stringed instruments the Bible most often mentions the nébhel or great harp, probably of Phoenician origin, with 12 strings, which according to the historian Josephus was played with the fingers; the hinnār or harp of smaller size, of lesser sonorous power and of lower range, with ten strings, which was played with the plectrum and which seems to have had a form akin to the Greek kithara: this was the instrument preferred by David for accompanying the singing of his psalms and his dances around the Holy Ark. More numerous are the wind instruments; among them the šōphār, made from a ram's horn, which, given the small number of sounds at its disposal (tonic, fifth and octave), was not used for melodies but for signals: it is the only one still in use today in the Synagogue for the religious service that celebrates the new year; the maghrēphāh was a panpipe with a very powerful sound; the bavāsrah was a silver trumpet, long, played by the priests (Solomon assembled 120 of them for the feast of the Dedication of the Temple; two bāyāsrah are depicted in an interior bas-relief of the arch of Titus), the hāllī was a double-reed wind instrument of the oboe family, the 'ighābh a pastoral flute: it was used in the first Temple and is cited only in psalm 150. Of the many percussion instruments by far the most important are those required by the rite of the sacred dances, which were an integral part of Israelite liturgy: first of all the tōph, a kind of tambourine with which the prophetess Miriam accompanied herself singing the canticle of Moses (Ex. 15, 20) and which the daughter of Jephthah joined to the dance (Iud. 11, 34); other instruments of the kind are the cymbals or bronze plates ṣelsēlim, played by the Levites and of which the mēsiltajim or castanets may be considered a variant; the sālīlim (triangles), used like the tōph, especially by women to accompany themselves in the dance; the mēnā'an'im or sistra, of which so many examples are found in museums. Of the bells (pa'āmānim) of Egyptian derivation, which the high priest wore attached to the hem of his garment, it cannot be said that they had a musical function, but rather that they belonged to the complex of attributes that accompanied the supreme priestly dignity.
Particularly interesting is the grouping of Hebrew musical instruments in the permanent orchestra of the Temple: the minimum number of 12 players (12 was a sacred number, matched by the identical number of singers, like the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 strings of the great harp nébhel, etc.) was formed by 2 nébhel (which could reach as many as 6), 9 hinnār (which could be increased without limit), 2 hāllī (which could reach the number of 12 and took part only on certain festivities), a pair of cymbals, that is a couple of small plates. This basic nucleus was considerably enlarged on the occasion of special celebrations, up to hundreds and sometimes thousands of performers. Of these mass performances we are informed especially by the Jewish historian Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities, which, together with the Miṣnāh (ca. 220 A.D.), constitute the most important sources in this regard.
II. IN THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST CENTURIES
Not only do instruments find no place in official use, but they are severely prohibited by all the Fathers, who see in them signs of paganism. The Roman world had inherited from the Greek the principal types of instruments, represented by the kithara and the lyre for string instruments, and by the various families of the auloi for wind instruments. Some Fathers explain the abundance of instruments among the Hebrews as a special gift of God to the weakness of their spirit, and St. John Chrysostom includes in this concept also Christian communities only recently converted from idolatry, which confirms the non-official use of instruments, such as the timbrel and the psaltery, even among the first Christians. Clement of Alexandria tolerates the lyre and the kithara, because they were used by King David, but he admits their use only at the agape.
III. IN THE MIDDLE AGES
As regards the musical instruments used in the Church after the first centuries and in the early Middle Ages, it is not easy to give complete and exact references. Walafrid Strabo gives us notice of a substantial instrumental practice, speaking in particular of the abbey of Reichenau, in whose school, opened in 824, an education was imparted comprising the theory and practice of singing, as well as the art of playing various instruments: organ, harp, flute, trumpet, trombone, cornet, triangular zither, three-stringed lyre. Also in the Monastery of St. Gall the sons of nobles received from Tutilo a complete instrumental instruction: "in omnium genere fidium et fistularum," as Ekkehard writes in De casibus monasterii Sancti Galli. In other chronicles and in many medieval treatises the instruments received an ever more notable place and documentation, adapting also to the growing development of dance music. In the female monasteries of the 10th century the organistrum had also spread, a kind of viola operated by a wheel under the strings rather than by the bow and which, being an almost mechanical and non-artistic instrument, was called "viola da orbo": in Italy it was commonly called "ghironda," in France "vielle (à roue)" and in England "hurdy-gurdy." It had 4-6 strings (2 of which with fixed sound, of the drone type, and the others movable by means of buttons) and, in its larger models, was played by two people. After the year 1000, with the rise of the first polyphonic forms, the system was also established of accompanying the singing with some instruments that were to serve as reinforcement and substitution of the vocal parts, but one cannot say precisely which and how many instruments were used, e.g., in the Cantoria of Notre Dame in Paris, which is nonetheless one of the best known. On the occasion of a great feast in a church in Ghent in 1389, the use of trumpets, clarions and instruments of every sort is attested to us by Jean Froissart (1338-c. 1410). With the ars nova the instruments that participate in the sacred functions become more numerous and more intimately connected with the very character of the compositions: traces of the intervention of organs and trumpets are found, for example, in the lower voices of Machaut's Mass, which have an instrumental character, and in the Trent codices, works in which irregular intervals, overly abundantly melismatic figurations and unusual fragmentation of the words under the notes allow one to discern the remnants of instrumental performances.
Percussion instruments in the Middle Ages (timpani, crotala, tambourines, little bells, bronze cymbals, etc.) are proper to the jongleurs and generally to secular music, especially dance music. One of the oldest string instruments is the harp, which goes back to the Hebrew "nébhel" and, in Europe, to the "cithara Anglica" or Irish harp. The harp was much used in the churches of France and Spain: here in particular its use was preserved until rather recent times in the Cathedral of Pamplona. Other string instruments are the lyre, the psaltery, the zither, the lute, the cistrum, the guitar; the virginal, spinet and harpsichord are plucked, while the clavichord (ancestor of the piano) is percussive. Among these latter, all with keyboards, the virginal is the one that was most widely used in female monasteries. It arose in the 15th century and took on a particular development in the 1600s; it had a rectangular shape and a very sweet sound. A typical bowed instrument used since the Middle Ages in female monasteries and widespread predominantly in the 17th century is the "tromba marina," of elongated shape, hexagonal body and open at the bottom, provided with a neck and taller than a person. It had one or at most two strings and was played with the bow, holding it resting against a shoulder. It was called trompette marine in France and Trumscheitt and Nonnengeige (nuns' fiddle) in Germany.
A rudimentary and very ancient type of wind instrument is the Greek "syrinx" or pan flute, to which are added the various flutes, straight and transverse, the flagolets, the ocarina and the organ; clarinets and saxophones then are of the single-reed type (a flexible lamella which, situated near the mouthpiece, opens and closes the tube containing the air), while to the double-reed type belong the oboes, bassoons, the con-
bassoons, bagpipes, the harmonium, the regal, the accordion. Among mouthpiece instruments are found the various kinds of simple horns, the cornet, the ophicleide, the slide horn, the valve horn; the simple trumpet, the keyed trumpet, the slide trumpet, the valve trombone, the valve trumpet.
IV. IN THE RENAISSANCE
In the 15th century instruments continued to be paired with singing, even in sacred music. The motet Nuper rosarum flores by Dufay, performed in 1436 for the inauguration of St. Mary of the Flower in Florence, would have been, according to Van den Borren, reinforced by trombones and other wind instruments. Thus there continues, in parallel with the a cappella style, the flourishing of that instrumental practice which would culminate in the rich and multicolored orchestral palette that during the 16th century unfolded in a particular way in the chapel of St. Mark in Venice, where, in addition to the voices, the 2 choirs and the 2 organs, there are cornetti, trumpets, trombones, bassoons, violins and viols: it is the works of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli that open the way to the genre of the spiritual concerto which finds its expression in the term "concertato" proper to the early Baroque.
V. BAROQUE AGE
In Rome too, in 1611, there is evidence of lutes, theorboes, bowed instruments and the like, generally used in churches. The peak of instrumental excess was reached in the full Baroque period (v. Mass by O. Benevoli, Salzburg 1628, for 54 real parts, 16 voices and 38 instruments). In the following century, however, a movement of purifying reforms began which, from the Cecilian movement led by Ett, Eiblinger, Greit, etc., was later to lead to the promulgation of the motu proprio by Blessed Pius X (1903), with which sacred music was restored to its dignity, and only the sound of the organ was permitted in church, while a sober selection of string and wind instruments was tolerated as an exception. - See plate CI.
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Luisa Cervelli