3. The Silver Age of Hebrew Music. — So we may per- haps fitly designate the period of the captivity and the restoration, as denoting that the national music was still preserved and cultivated by considerable numbers of the people, especially of the Levitical families, although much of its ancient glory and splendor had passed away. In the first anguish and dejection of their captivity, it was natural that the tribes should feel what is so touch- ingly expressed in Psa. cxxxvii : that by the rivers of Babylon they shoidd hang their harps upon the wil- lows ; and that, when required by their captors to sing them one of the songs of Zion, they should exclaim, with patriotic disdain, " How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" But by and by they would take down their harps again from the wiUow-boughs, and seek solace for the sorrows of their long exile in recalling the loved melodies of their native land, and the sacred psalmody of their desolated Temple. The Babylonians, besides, were a people as fond of music as themselves. IVIany of their instruments are mentioned in the book of Daniel (ch. iii, 7, 10, 15) ; and in the long period of seventy years the Hebrew exiles must have been able to enrich their own national music by many new ideas and new instruments. It is at least certain that when " the Lord turned again the captivity of Ju- dah," there was a fresh inspiration and outburst of sa- cred poetry and song : " Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing" (Psa. cxxvi, 2). Not a few of the later parts of the Psalter are of that age, some of which are not much inferior to the best compositions of David himself; and in proof of the ex- tent to which musical gifts were spread among the re- turned exiles, it may suffice to refer to the fact stated in Neh. vii, 67, that " they had two hundred forty and five singing men and singing women," by whom we are no doubt to understand professional as distinguished from amateur performers. Nor were the musical tra- ditions of the Temple forgotten, or their official deposi- taries extinct. The Levitical families of Asaph, He- man, and Jeduthun were still numerous, and still de- voted to their choral art and office. " The children of Asaph alone — the singers — were a hundred twenty and eight" (Ezra ii, 41). At the foundation of the second temple, " thej' set the priests in their apparel with trump- ets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord after the ordinance of David, king of Israel" (Ezra iii, 10) ; and when, after many interrup- tions, the house was at last finished and dedicated, the whole liturgical service of David's and Solomon's reigns was as far as possible restored. " They set the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their courses for the service of God which is at Jerusalem" (Ezra vi, 18).
In the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus (ch. i) we find an interesting reference to the musical service of the second temple in the daj'S of Simon the high-priest, the son of Onias, " who in his life repaired the house again and took care of the Temple that it should not fall." When Simon " finished the service of the altar, by stretching out his hand to the cup and pouring out
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the blood of the grape at the foot of the altar, a sweet- smelling savor," " then shouted the sons of Aaron, and sounded the silver trumpets, and made a great noise to be heard for a remembrance before the Most High. Then all the people together hasted and fell down to the earth upon their faces to worship their Lord God Almighty. The singers also sang praises with their voices, with great variety of sounds was there made sweet melody, and the people besought the Lord till the solemnity of the Lord was ended and they had finished his service."
The Talmud also contains some notices of the litur- gical music of the Herodian temple. The ordinarj' Le- vitical orchestra (according to EracJiin, 10a, and Ta- mid, vii, 3), consisted of only twelve performers, pro- vided with nine lyres, two harps, and one cymbal, with the addition, on certain days, of flutes. These musi- cians were stationed upon the "5^'^ (dukdn), or the as- cent of several steps Avhich led from the outer court to the court of the priests, and were placed under the lead- ership of the chief musician, who gave the time with " the loud-sounding cymbals." Below the steps, and at the foot of the Levites, stood the chorister boys of the same tribe who sang the refrain. The daily week-day psalm Cill'nprt ^"^d) was sung in nine parts or strophes, and the pauses were marked by the trumpet-blasts of the priests. The musical service of the Herodian tem- ple was by no means the same as that of earlier times; and if the present accentuation of the Psalter be regard- ed as representing the manner in which the psalms were sung or cantilated in the time of Herod, it would not suflSce to give us any notion of the usage which prevailed in the days of the first temple, before the ex- ile. Innovations upon ancient usage were from time to time introduced ; and among these mention is made in tlie Talmud of the use of an instrument in the later temple, which would seem to have been of the nature of a wind-organ, provided with as many as a hundred different keys, and the power of which was such, ac- cording to Jerome, that it could Ijc heard from Jerusa- lem to the Mount of Olives, and even farther. (See Saalschiitz, A rchaolor/ie, i, 281-284 ; also Appendix to the same author's Geschichte und Wilrdiguvg der Musik bei den Ilebrdern.)