CHAPTER XVI.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. THE VIOLIN, ORGAN, ETC.

I.

During the entire period covered by the division of the story with which we have been now for some time dealing, the influences operating upon the tonal sense in the direction of harmonic perception had also been highly stimulative to the sense of melody. All the devices of counterpoint, with their two, three and four tones of the moving voice against one of the _cantus fermus_, were so many incitations in the direction of melodic cleverness. This influence was still further strengthened by the constant effort of the composer to impart to each voice as characteristic an individuality of movement as possible. Hence there is a distinct gain in smoothness of melody, and there are occasional appearances of truly expressive quality in this part of the music, even in the most elaborate of the contrapuntal compositions. Meanwhile the various forms of popular minstrelsy, whose general course we have already traced, were powerfully appealing to this part of the musical endowment of the hearers. But the great means of cultivating an ear for melody, both in players and hearers, was the violin, which, contemporaneously with the present point of our story, had reached its mature form and nearly all of its tonal powers. In fact, the tonal education of the mediæval musicians had been carried forward in several directions by the instruments in use. The harp and its influence upon the development of chord perceptions have already received attention, but there was another instrument which, during the period subsequent to about 1400, exerted even a more powerful influence--I mean the lute. The lute and the violin appear in crude forms at nearly the same time in Europe. The violin was the instrument of the north, the lute of the south. Later they move together geographically, sharing the popular suffrages. By the time of Palestrina the lute had come to its full powers and most complete form. Within twenty years after the death of Palestrina orchestral music started upon the career which has never since stopped, the violin at the head of the forces, thanks to the insight of the great musical genius, Monteverde.

The lute belongs to the same class of instruments as the guitar, differing from that, however, in important details of construction. It has a pear-shaped body, composed of narrow pieces of bent wood glued together; the sounding board is flat, and of fir. The neck is longer or shorter, according to the variety of lute. It was strung with from eight to eleven strings, which in the east were of silk, but in Europe were catgut down to the end of the seventeenth century, when spun strings were substituted for the bass. The finger board was marked by frets, indicating the places at which the strings should be stopped. There were four or more of the longest strings which were not upon the finger board, and were never stopped. They were used for basses. Melodically the instrument had little power, although its tone was gentle and sweet. Its influence, like that of the guitar of the present time, was in the direction of simple harmony, mainly restricted to the nearest chords of the key. The essential point in which the construction of the lute differed from that of the guitar, was in the back, which in the latter is flat, so that ribs are indispensable for preserving the rigidity of the body against the pull of the strings. The lute body is very solid, from the mode of its construction involving an application of the principle of the arch. The standard appearance of the lute was the following:

The stringing and tuning varied much in different periods. According to Prætorius, the lute had four open strings tuned according to the scale in _a_ below. Later, a G was added above and below, and the tuning was that at _b_.

[Music illustration]

Another authority--Baron--gives a tuning for an "eleven-course" lute, as follows:

[Music illustration]

The F below the bass staff had ten frets, G eleven, and each of the highest six strings twelve frets. The instrument thus had a compass of three octaves and a half from the C below the bass. All the strings were in pairs, two to each unison, excepting the upper two, which were single. The instrument was a very troublesome one to keep in order. Mattheson, who wrote in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the lute was still cultivated, said that a lutist of eighty years must have spent nearly sixty in tuning his instrument. The pull of the strings broke down the sounding board or belly, which had therefore to be taken off and righted once in every two or three years. The lute was derived from an Arabian or Persian instrument, of which the Arab eoud, Fig. 24 (p. 113), was the latest representative.

The problem of locating the frets accurately upon the finger board was one of the causes which led to close investigation into the mathematical relation of the tones in the scale; and the directions given for placing them by various Arab and other writers afford precise and valuable information concerning their views of intonation. The lute was made in a great variety of sizes, the largest being what was called the arch lute, which was more than four feet long from bottom to the end of the neck. This was employed by Corelli for the basses of his violin sonatas, and Händel made similar use of it. A diminutive lute has come down to our own days under the name of Mandolin. It is strung with metal strings, however, and played with a plectrum, whereas the mediæval lute was played with the fingers. Monteverde employed still another variety of the lute in his orchestra, called the Chitarrone, whence our word guitar. This was a very large lute, with many strings, which were wire, and played, therefore, with a plectrum. The chitarrone in the collection at South Kensington has twelve strings upon the finger board, and eight bass strings tuned by the pegs at the top of the long neck. It was used mainly for basses. The guitar, of which a figure is omitted on account of the familiarity of the instrument, was the Spanish form of the lute, or the Spanish form which the Moorish lute took in that country.

The essential feature of the violin is the incitation of the vibration by means of the bow. We do not know when or where this art was discovered, but it is supposed to have been in the remote east, at a very early period. The argument of Fétis, that since the Sanskrit has four terms for bow, according to the material of which it was made, therefore the art of the bow must have been known before the Sanskrit ceased to be a spoken language, has little weight. For while it is true that Sanskrit was not a spoken, or, more properly, a living, language in ordinary life after about 1500 B.C., it is true, on the other hand, that it remained in use as a language of religion and of the learned down to times very recent. In that case there would necessarily be additions made to it from time to time, as new concepts came up for expression, in the same manner as additions were made to Latin during the Middle Ages, and even in modern times. Still, all the nations around Hindostan have the tradition that the art of playing music by means of a bow is very old, the Ceylonese attributing the invention to one of their kings who reigned about 5000 B.C. Their ravanastron is very crude. (See page 72.) A similarly simple instrument is in use to the present day in many parts of the east. The Arab form of it, known as the rebec, is represented on p. 113, Fig. 23. It has two strings of silk, and is played with the point downward, like a 'cello. It is not possible after this lapse of time to determine which was the original form of the violin in Europe. Very early we find the crwth in the hands of the Celtic players, as noticed in chapter VI. The form given in Fig. 22 (p. 107) is rather late, most likely, and somewhat of a degradation, since many of the elements of the violin are wanting in it. The clumsy resonance body is of the same width all the way, preventing the depression of one end of the bow in order to avoid sounding adjacent strings. As the bridge of the crwth was nearly flat, the adjacent strings were octaves, or related in such a way that when sounding together chords were produced. Many have supposed that all the strings were sounded together at each drawing of the bow. This is not impossible, for in one of the sculptures on a capital in the old church at Boscherville in Normandy a stringed instrument is represented in which the tone is produced by a revolving bow, on the principle of the hurdy-gurdy, whereby chords must have been produced continually. (See p. 208.) The same carving has two stringed instruments of the violin family, one held like a violin (No. 6), the other bass downward, like a 'cello (No. 1). These two figures are fragments of the same carving. They are supposed to date from about the eleventh century. Many similar representations occur, such as the following from old manuscripts.

These oval instruments had the same deficiency as the crwth, in respect to indentations at the side of the instrument, for permitting the depression of the bow. The oldest type of this instrument in use appears to have been the form known as the rebec, the Arab form, which came into Europe in the time of the crusades. According to certain authorities this was the primitive type from which our violin was derived. The form is better shown in the cut on page 196, which is from an Italian painting of the thirteenth century.

The body of the rebec was pear-shaped. It was contemporaneous with many other forms partaking of the shape of the guitar. From this came the family of viols, which were very popular in England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The viol differed from the violin family proper in having a flat back like a guitar, and rounded corners. The only individual of the viol family which attained to artistic development was the viol da Gamba, or bass viol, which was tuned like a lute, having six strings. This instrument was a favorite with many amateurs until late in the eighteenth century. (See p. 197.)

Still more curious was the form of viol known as the barytone, which, in addition to an outfit of six catgut strings upon the finger board, was furnished with twenty-four wire strings, stretched close under the sounding board, where they sounded by sympathetic vibration. This was the instrument which Prince Esterhazy, Haydn's patron, so much admired, and for which Haydn wrote more than 150 compositions. Its form is shown in Fig. 41.

It is not easy within present limits to apportion the various steps by which the violin reached its present form. The first eminent master of violins, as distinguished from small viols, was the celebrated Gaspar da Salo, who lived and worked at Brescia during the latter part of the sixteenth century. The model varies, and the sound holes are straight and flat. His violins are small and weak of tone, but his tenors and basses are much sought for. His model was followed some time later by Guarnerius. The real mastership in violin making was attained at Cremona, in Lombardy, where were many religious houses with elaborate services, and a surrounding population of wealth and artistic instinct afforded the mechanic an appreciative public. It was here early in the sixteenth century that we first find the Amati family in the person of the oldest known violin maker, Andrea, from whom Fétis quotes two instruments dated 1546 and 1551. One of them is a rebec with three strings; the other is a small violin. They are a distinct advance over the violins of the western school, but they stop very far short of the modern instrument. The tone of his instruments is clear and silvery, but not very powerful. The most eminent of the Amatis was Nicolo, 1596-1684, a son of Geronimo and grandson of Andrea. The outline is more graceful, the varnish deeper and richer, and the proportions of his instruments better calculated. His instruments have greater power and intensity of tone, and his tenors and 'cellos are very famous. But the Cremona school came to a culmination in the works of the pupil of Nicolo Amati--Antonio Stradivari, 1649-1737. This great master of the violin pursued the principles of the Amati construction down to about 1700, having then been making violins for upwards of thirty-three years. After 1700 he changed his principles of construction somewhat, and developed the grand style distinguishing his later works. He marks the culminating point of the art of violin making. It was he who perfected the model of the violin and its fittings. The bridge in its present form, and the sound holes, are cut exactly as he planned them, and no artist has discovered a possibility of improving them. His main improvements consisted (1) in lowering the height of the model--that is, the arch of the belly; (2) in making the four corner blocks more massive, and in giving greater curvature to the middle ribs; (3) in altering the setting of the sound holes, giving them a decided inclination to each other at the top; (4) in making the scroll more massive and permanent. Every violin of Stradivari was a special study, modified in various details according to the nature of the wood which he happened to have, sometimes a trifle smaller, a trifle thicker in this place or the other, or some other slight change accounted for not by pre-established theory, but by adaptation to the peculiarities of the wood in hand. According to Fétis, his wood was always selected with reference to its tone-producing qualities--the fir of the belly always giving a certain note, and the maple of the back a certain other note. These peculiarities are not regarded as fully established. The tone of the Stradivarius violin is full, musical and high-spirited. The small number now in existence are held at extremely high prices. The usual pattern is that represented in the following figure.

Stradivari established his own factory about 1680, and continued to make instruments up to 1730. The violin of 1708 weighs three-quarters of a pound. Besides making violins, this eminent artist also made guitars, lutes, 'cellos and tenors. It is wholly uncertain to what extent the peculiarities of the Stradivari instruments were matters of deduction and how far accidental. But there can be no question that the average excellence of his instruments, judging from the specimens still in existence, was much greater than that of any other violin maker.

Many other eminent artists made good violins in the century and a half from the time of Andrea Amati and Gaspar da Salo to Stradivari, among the most eminent being Maggini, of Brescia, whose violins are very highly esteemed. Still, inasmuch as the finishing touches were put to the instrument by Stradivarius, we need not linger to discuss the minor makers.

II.

Before 1600 the organ had attained its maturity, and had become furnished with its distinctive characteristics as we have it at the present time. As this instrument, from the nature of its tone qualities and its peculiar limitation to serious music of grave rhythm, is naturally suited to the service of the Church, it has remained till the present day in the province where it had already firmly established itself at the time now under consideration. The origin of the organ is very difficult to ascertain. There are traces of some sort of wind instrument before the Christian era. The so-called hydraulic organ was probably one in which water was used to perfect the air-holding qualities of the wind chest, in the same manner as now in gas holders. One of the earliest mediæval references to organs is to that sent King Pepin, of France, father of Charlemagne, in 742 by Constantine, emperor of Byzantium at that time. This instrument, says the old chronicler, had brass pipes, blown with bellows bags; it was struck with the hands and feet. It was the first of this kind seen in France.

Prætorius says that the organ which Vitellianus set in church 300 years before Pepin, must have been the small instrument of fifteen pipes, for which the wind was collected in twelve bellows bags.

According to Julianus, a Spanish bishop who flourished in 450, the organ was in common use in churches at that time. In 822 an organ was sent to Charlemagne by the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, made by an Arabian maker. This instrument was placed in a church at Aix-la-Chapelle. There were good organ builders in Venice as early as 822, and before 900 there was an organ in the cathedral at Munich. In the ninth century organs had become common in England, and in the tenth the English prelate, St. Dunstan, erected one in Malmesbury Abbey, of which the pipes were of brass. The instruments of that time were extremely crude.

From this time on there are many authentic remains in the way of treatises on organ building and description of organs. The essential elements of this instrument consist of pipes for producing sound, of which a complete set, one pipe for each key of the keyboard, is called a stop; bellows and wind chest for holding the wind, sliders or valves for admitting it to the pipes, and keys for controlling the valves.

In his studies for a history of musical notation, Dr. Hugo Riemann quotes an extract from an anonymous manuscript of the tenth century, in which the author gives directions for a set of organ pipes. "Take first," he says, "ten pipes of a proper dimension and of equal length and size. Divide the first pipe into nine parts; eight of these will be the length of the second. Dividing the length of this again into nine parts, eight of these will be the proper length of the third; dividing the first pipe into four parts, three of them will be the length of the fourth; taking the first pipe as three parts, two of them will be the length of the fifth; eight-ninths of this again will give the proper length of the sixth; eight-ninths of this, the length of the seventh; one-half the first, the length of the eighth, or octave." This gives a major scale, with the Pythagorean third, consisting of two great steps, which was too sharp to be consonant. The semitone between the third and the fourth is too small, as is also that between the seventh and eighth. The modern way of making the pipes of smaller diameter as they become shorter, had evidently not been thought of. Nevertheless, these directions are very important, since they throw positive light upon the tuning of the various intervals, the pipe lengths and proportions affording accurate determinations of the musical relations intended.

The early organs were furnished with slides which the organist pulled out when he wished to make a pipe speak, and pushed back to check its utterance. The date of the invention of the valve is uncertain, but it must have been about as soon as the power of the instrument was increased by the addition of the second or third stop. Before this, however, and perhaps for some little time after, there were many organs in use, which were committed to the diaphony of Hucbald, having in place of the diapason three ranks of pipes, speaking an octave and the fifth between. Each of these combined sounds was treated in the same way as simple ones are on other instruments, and if chords were attempted upon them the effect must have been hideous indeed; but it is probable that at this time the notes were played singly, and not in chords, or at most in octaves. We do not know the date at which this style of organ building ceased, but it is probably before the thirteenth century. There is a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the Royal Library at Madrid, stating that the clavier at that epoch comprised as many as thirty-one keys, and that the larger pipes were placed on one side, and small pipes in the center, the same as now. The earliest chromatic keyboards known are those in the organ erected at Halberstadt cathedral in 1361. This instrument had twenty-two keys, fourteen diatonics and eight chromatics, extending from B natural up to A; and twenty bellows blown by ten men. Its larger pipe B stood in front, and was thirty-one Brunswick feet in length and three and a half feet in circumference. This note would now be marked as a semitone below the C of thirty-two feet. In this organ for the first time a provision was made for using the soft stop independently of the loud one. This result was obtained by means of three keyboards. The keys were very wide, those of the upper and middle keyboards measuring four inches from center to center. The sharps and flats were about two and a half inches above the diatonic keys, and had a fall of about one and a quarter inches. The mechanical features of the organ were very greatly improved during the next century, but it was not until the old organ in the Church of St. Ægidien in Brunswick that the sharps and naturals were combined in one keyboard in the same manner as at present. The keys were still very large, the naturals of the great manual being about one and three-quarters inches in width. It was to the organ at Halberstadt that pedals were added in 1495, but no pipes were assigned to them. They merely pulled down the lower keys of the manual.

Some time before the beginning of the seventeenth century the organ had acquired nearly the entire variety of tone that it has ever had. The mechanism was rude, no doubt, and the voicing perhaps imperfect. The tuning was by the unequal system, throwing the discords into remote keys as much as possible. In Michael Prætorius' "_Syntagma Musica_," the great source of information upon this part of the history (published at Wolfenbüttel, 1618), he describes a number of large organs. Among them he mentions the organ in the Church of St. Mary at Danzig, built in 1585, having three manuals and pedal; there were fifty-five stops. The balance must have been very bad, since there were in the great organ three stops of sixteen feet, and only three of eight feet. There was a mixture having twenty-four pipes to each key, besides a "zimbel" in the same manual, having three ranks.

Prætorius also gives many other specifications of large organs of three manuals, some with dates, some without. They belong mostly to the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the number indicates unmistakably the interest awakened in this part of the musical furnishing of the large churches. Many points in these organs were imperfect, but the foundation had been laid, and the general character of the subsequent building settled. There was also a beginning of virtuosity upon the organ, but this will come up for consideration at a later point in the narrative.

Book Third.

THE

Dawn of Modern Music.

THE BEGINNING OF FREE EXPRESSION IN SONG, OPERA, ORATORIO AND FREE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.