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Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University by Edward MacDowell
page 20 of 285 (07%)
saying that the Lydian pipe should not have a place in a
decent community.

On the other hand, the trumpet branch of the family developed
into something quite different. At the very beginning it was
used for war, and as its object was to frighten, it became
larger and larger in form, and more formidable in sound. In
this respect it only kept pace with the drum, for we read
of Assyrian and Thibetan trumpets two or three yards long,
and of the Aztec war drum which reached the enormous height
of ten feet, and could be heard for miles.

Now this, the trumpet species of pipe, we find also used as an
auxiliary "spiritual" help to the drum. We are told by M. Huc,
in his "Travels in Thibet," that the llamas of Thibet have
a custom of assembling on the roofs of Lhassa at a stated
period and blowing enormous trumpets, making the most hideous
midnight din imaginable. The reason given for this was that
in former days the city was terrorized by demons who rose from
a deep ravine and crept through all the houses, working evil
everywhere. After the priests had exorcised them by blowing
these trumpets, the town was troubled no more. In Africa the
same demonstration of trumpet blowing occurs at an eclipse
of the moon; and, to draw the theory out to a thin thread,
anyone who has lived in a small German Protestant town will
remember the chorals which are so often played before sunrise
by a band of trumpets, horns, and trombones from the belfry of
some church tower. Almost up to the end of the last century
trombones were intimately connected with the church service;
and if we look back to Zoroaster we find the sacerdotal
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