The contest between Marsyas and Apollo is supposed by some to typify the
struggle between the Flute and the Lyre; Marsyas representing the archaic
Flute, Apollo the champion of the Lyre. The latter of course was
victorious: it sets the voice free, and the sound
"Of music that is born of human breath
Comes straighter to the soul than any strain
The hand alone can make." [1]
Various myths have grown up to explain the origin of Music. One Greek
tradition was to the effect Grasshoppers were human beings themselves in a
world before the Muses; that when the Muses came, being ravished with
delight, they sang and sang and forgot to eat, until "they died of hunger
for the love of song. And they carry to heaven the report of those who
honor them on earth." [2]
The old writers and commentators tell us that Pythagoras, "as he was one
day meditating on the want of some rule to guide the ear, analogous to
what had been used to help the other senses, chanced to pass by a
blacksmith's shop, and observing that the hammers, which were four in
number, sounded very harmoniously, he had them weighed, and found them to
be in the proportion of six, eight, nine, and twelve.
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