Apparently the impulse to instrument-making arises largely from the desire for a sound to accentuate a dance-rhythm—clappers, whistles, twanged strings. In prehistoric remains some bone whistles occur, and everywhere pipes abound.
Hence it has been urged that flatile instruments were the earliest. Another theory is that the order of invention was drums, pipes, strings. It is better to say that instruments were first used to keep time, then to produce sustained tones, then to make melodies. The precise way in which these results were secured probably varied with the materials at hand and the ingenuity at work.
9. The Origin of Music.—After noting facts like these we naturally ask how music came into existence. It is true that external nature supplies suggestions, as in the sighing and whistling of the wind, the rippling and roar of falling water, the cries of beasts, the buzzing or calls of insects and the songs of birds; but the influence of these on primitive song is apparently slight. Herbert Spencer argued that song is primarily a form of speech, arising from the reflex action of the vocal organs under stress of emotion (as a cry follows the sensation of pain). More likely is the hypothesis that music is derived from some attempt to work off surplus energy through bodily motions, to coordinate and decorate which rhythmic sounds, vocal or mechanical, are employed, and that what was at first only an accessory to dancing was finally differentiated from it. But these speculations are not specially fruitful.
The traditions of many races recount the impartation of instruments or
of musical ideas to men by the gods. These myths are significant, not
as historic statements of fact, but as testimonies to the strange potency
and charm residing in musical tones.
