Part 2

The Syrinx, or Pan's pipes, has been already referred to, and may be described as composed of a certain number of flute-pipes, the sounds being produced by directing the breath against the sharp edge of each pipe. Plato considered the use of the Syrinx lawful in rural life, but he condemned the more richly-toned flute. The shepherd's pipe belongs to the Oboe family, inasmuch as it is sounded by means of a reed, an artifice of great antiquity. We do not know anything about its early development, but Chaldean shepherds played upon similar instruments nearly 2000 years ago, while watching their flocks by night, and Neapolitan peasants still play, in memory of those shepherds, upon similar rustic reed pipes, the Zampogna or Cennamella, for nine days preceding the great Church festivals of the Madonna Immaculata and the Nativity. These primitive oboes must be of very great antiquity. It is probable, the shepherd's pipe was at first a smaller reed inserted in a larger one, or the larger one was slit for a reed vibrator, as boys cut them now. The lowland Scotch shepherd's pipe is made of horn, the cover for the reed being also horn. The principle of a reservoir of air to furnish a supply for pipes, the primitive conception of the organ, was known to the Romans and the original form of bagpipe was the Tibia Utricularis. In course of time no instrument was more popular throughout Europe than the bagpipe. Varieties of it (Plates IV. and V.), including specimens of the Cornemuse and Musette, show the modern forms of this now despised instrument. The principle of the drone-bass, common to the Bagpipe and Hurdy-gurdy (Plate XXX.), must have been of universal acceptance in Europe before the knowledge of counterpoint became general. The peculiar scale of intervals of the great Highland bagpipe adds much to what is characteristic in the tones of the instrument. Its divergence of intonation may be due to the incompetency of the instrument-maker to determine the true distances for boring the lateral holes. If so, we must be lenient with him, for even now, with our perfection of mechanical appliances, the boring is not above question. But, of course, accuracy is more nearly attained than it has been at any previous time, even the earlier years of the present century. Another and a more attractive hypothesis for the Highland bagpipe scale, derives its mean or neuter thirds, neither major nor minor, from a Syrian scale, still found at Damascus, and attributes its presence in Europe to the pipes having been brought, like rebecs, rebabs, and lutes, by returning Crusaders, whose wondering admiration for Saracenic Art is well known. It seems scarcely likely that the music would not also have touched them, possessed as it was of a special charm due to ages of Persian and Arabic cultivation. There is abundant evidence in the present day as to the favour shown in the East for those indefinite thirds, which may originate from an ideally equal scale of seven intervals of the same extent, such as the Siamese accept, instead of five of larger and two of smaller, such as obtains with us; or they may be due to an alteration in tuning the lute, attributed by the Arabian philosopher Al F[=a]r[=a]bi to a lutenist named Zalzal, who changed one of the frets of the lute to obtain it. It is not necessary to do more than refer to the peculiarities of these Eastern divisions of the scale or the possible survival of one in the Highland bagpipe; the inquirer will find information carried to the limits of our present knowledge in _Recherches sur l'Histoire de la Gamme Arabe_, _par_ J.P.N. Land (Leyden, 1884), and _On the Musical Scales of Various Nations_, by Alexander J. Ellis, a paper read before the London Society of Arts, and published in that Society's Journal, 27th March, 1885. It is sufficient to add that while the neuter third remains a favourite interval in some Eastern countries, as far as investigation has been possible it is known in Europe only among the mountains and in the bagpipe music of the Scottish Gael. The latest development of flute and reed pipes is to be found in the flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon of the modern orchestra. Plates XXXVIII. and XXXIX. represent instruments that have been the immediate precursors of or are identical with the instruments named. One, the Dolciano or Tenoroon with a clarinet reed, is of unusual importance as possibly anticipating the invention of the Saxophone. It would require a volume to describe the transformations wind instruments have undergone in the present century, particularly that of the Flute by the late Theobald Boehm. The clarinet and oboe have been less altered because the completely refashioned instruments that have been intended to replace them, the saxophone and the sarrusophone, have not retained those special qualities of tone colour required for the palette of the orchestral composer. But for the brass instruments there has been as yet no halting-place. Furnished early in this century with keys, that important revolution was succeeded by another no less complete--the introduction of the valve or piston system, the gain of which, now almost universally acknowledged, has been largely taken advantage of by Wagner and other recent composers.

The familiar Organ is shown in the Positive and Portable organs (l'orgue positif et portatif), small instruments representing reduced front portions of the Montre, the visible speaking pipes of the mediæval church organ, which was neither more nor less than a large mixture register; that is to say, each key when put down sounded the octave, twelfth, super-octave, and other notes simultaneously with the fundamental note. The movement of the Plain Song, or of any melody with this harmonic structure upon it, was in progressions that no modern musically trained ear could tolerate. Not more than one key of the large church organ could, however, be put down by either hand, as the keys were as broad as the palm, and to press one down required an attack with the player's fist. But the keys of the Portable organ, a processional instrument, were narrow--one hand manipulating the bellows while the player touched the keys with the other. The positive was a chapel or chamber organ, intended to be stationary, and also with narrow keys, admitting of the grasp of an octave. The key-board shown in the Van Eyck St. Cecilia panel of the famous altar-piece at Ghent--the Adoration of the Lamb--has already the complete arrangement of chromatic keys, exactly as in our modern key-board instruments. The date of this panel could not have been later than A.D. 1426. Among the numerous portable organs depicted in paintings of earlier date, the addition of the _ficti_, as the chromatic notes were called, excepting perhaps the B flat, or the B flat and E flat, does not appear. The B flat, however, was not a chromatic, but an essential note in the ecclesiastical scale. Another early instance in a painting by Hans Memling, preserved in the Hospital of St. John at Bruges, is subsequent in date to the Ghent altar-piece, but is still within the fifteenth century. The chromatic keys are here put farther back than in our usual key-boards, as they were also in the fourteenth-century Halberstadt organ. The fourteenth-century portable organ drawn in _Critical and Bibliographical Notes on Early Spanish Music_, by Don Juan F. Riaño (Quaritch, London), 1887, p. 127, shows the B flat only, and figured as an upper key, apparently not raised, but level with the natural keys, which agrees with contemporary representations of the instrument by Fra Angelico. The Portable Organ (Plate XIII.) here drawn is of comparatively late date, these small instruments having remained in use until after the Reformation. The Positive Organ (Plate XI.) is of earlier date, and is so far developed as to have registers and drawstops to govern them; in this example they are an octave apart, but an unimpeachable authority, Praetorius, speaks of a register in a positive organ a fifth from the fundamental one! Our ancestors were evidently not affected by a progression of fifths as we are.

The Regal (Plate XII., and as Bible Regal, Plate XIII.), was equally a part of the old church organ taken out and played by itself. It is the beating-reed register, so called because the reed overlaps its frame, and when vibrating produces a more or less jarring or strident quality of tone. As the free reed does not touch its frame it is less harsh in quality. But the latter variety of reed is of very recent introduction into Europe. Strangely enough, it has been taken from a Chinese mouth organ of great antiquity, the Shêng! This Chinese instrument has seventeen sounding pipes, each furnished with a small brass or copper free reed, and is usually sounded by drawing in the wind, not blowing, being in this respect followed by the present American organ. The adoption in Europe of the principle of the Shêng was due to an application of it at St. Petersburg by an organ-builder named Kirsnick, about 1780, and the enthusiastic advocacy of the Abbé Vogler. (Sir George Grove's _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_, Art. "Vogler," by the Rev. J.H. Mee.) From it are derived our accordion and concertinas, harmonium and American organ, as well as sundry musical toys. The Shêng is drawn in Plate XLIV. It is familiar in Japan, with some variation, as the Sho, and a larger instrument on the same principle used in the Lao States of Siam is there called Ph[=a]n. In nearly all instances it is retained as a solo instrument. The Siamese musicians, whom H.M. the King of Siam very generously sent at his own expense to the London Inventions Exhibition, and who performed there, in the music room and in the Royal Albert Hall, had among them a Ph[=a]n player, who always played alone.

Harp-like instruments, but with resonance bodies beneath the strings, appear in their oldest, but a yet highly developed form, in the Chinese Ch'in, or Scholar's Lute. The Japanese Sono Koto (Plate XLVI.) is derived from a modification of the Ch'in, known in China as the Sê, the difference being that while the Ch'in has fixed bridges and a system of stopping, the Sê, and consequently the Koto, have movable bridges and no stops. The Koto is tuned according to the five notes in the octave system that prevails in Japan and, with a difference in the division of the scale, in China, named, by the late Carl Engel, pentatonic. The player kneels upon the ground beside the instrument, and resting or sitting upon his heels, touches the shorter lengths of the strings, as divided by the bridges, with plectra on the thumb and first two fingers, but, at the same time, makes constant use of the longer lengths to press upon or relieve the strings so as to alter the tension and produce intermediate tones. The Koto drawn is one of great beauty. The four characteristic popular instruments of Japan are the Koto, the Siamisen, the Biwa, and the Kokiu (see Plates XLVI. and XLVII.) The Siamisen is allied to the Chinese San-hsien and the Biwa to the Chinese P'i-p'a (see Plate XLIV.). The very curious Siamese Ta'khay, or crocodile (Plate XLIII.), is of the same genus as the Koto and Ch'in, but has been changed into its present form by Siamese ingenuity, which has found a rich field for employment in the decoration of musical instruments, the Siamese, in this respect, bearing the palm in the East, as the Italians have done in the West.

As to the principle of the harp or rather of the psaltery embodied in these parallel strung instruments, it differs from the Egyptian and Assyrian conceptions, which placed the resonance bodies of their harps in a curved disposition, the one below, the other above the strings. Greek lyres had their sound bodies directly underneath the strings. The origin of the Greek lyre is unknown, the name not being Hellenic; it may possibly have been Asiatic, but was not originally Egyptian. It would solve an interesting problem could we know what was the Hebrew kinnor, the harp of the Authorised Version, the most prominent stringed instrument occurring in the richest collection of sacred poetry the world has known, the Hebrew Psalms. Dr. Stainer, who has made a complete analysis of the text, has not got beyond conjecture. It is only certain that the kinnor was a stringed instrument. It is recorded that it was made by Tubal Cain, played upon by Laban the Syrian and by the shepherd boy David. It is mentioned in the Book of Job, and the captive Hebrews in Babylon hung their kinnors on the trees. Whether with or without finger-board, whether a lyre, a trigonon, or a harp, its tones had power over the feelings to produce similar effects to those with which music touches us now, as surely as that the physical law of sympathetic vibration was as active then in Syria, or by the waters of Babylon, as it is to-day in Edinburgh or London.

The forms of Harp drawn in this work (Plates II., III., and XXXIV.) differ from the ancient harps which had no forearm or front pillar, and could therefore have endured but little strain. Yet an old Celtic monument represents a harp-like instrument with this Eastern peculiarity. The extremely interesting Celtic harps here drawn, the Queen Mary and the Lamont harps, have forearms or bows of a constructive strength that would, with the rest of the framing, bear a considerable draught of wire. The Celts and Germanic nations appear to have long cultivated the harp. The word itself is German, but the Celtic people of these islands have different names for it, according to whether they are of the Gaelic or Cymric branch. The common Gaelic name was Cruit (Crot), which comes from a root meaning vibration, but this name has been superseded by Clarsach, which is derived from the resounding board. The Welsh name, Telyn, implies strain or tension. It must be remembered that the triple-strung Welsh Harp is a comparatively modern instrument, and so also is the Welsh Crwth (Plate XXIV.), in the only form in which it has come down to us, as a bowed instrument with extra strings off the finger-board, a peculiarity belonging to the theorbo and lyra-viol. The origin of the Crwth would appear to have been the classical lyre submitted to changes that had come with time, and, as the Continental Rote or Rotta, it was a very common form of instrument in the Middle Ages. It had to give way before Eastern stringed instruments, such as the rebec and lute. The Vína (Plate XL.) is the characteristic Hindu stringed instrument, and has a great antiquity attributed to it. The string is theoretically said to be divided into twenty-two small intervals in the octave, of equal extent, called _s'ruti_, by which the tones and semitones are determined; but recent observation shows that the Hindus are satisfied with a division of twelve semitones in the octave--in fact, our chromatic scale. Smaller intervals are only used for grace notes, and are produced by deflecting the string. Gourd resonators have been mentioned as of probably very ancient use, and the employment of sympathetic strings, in vogue in Europe only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, may be added as also of remote origin in India. The Hindus and Persians have both used gourds attached to the Vínas and Sitárs (Plate XL.) for resonance. In Southern India, where the use of the original Hindu Vína prevails, although the scale now used is at least heptatonic, there is still a leaning towards pentatonic forms of melody. The accordances are in fourths or fifths and octaves. The Sitár of Northern India and greater use of the interval of the third may be attributed to Persian introduction; but throughout India, and more intensely in the south, music is felt as a poetic art, and has a development in its own way, that still remains unrecognised in Europe, although we now have scholars from whose researches and zeal this ignorance may be in time, at least partially, dispelled. Music is acutely felt as a means of expression in India unknown in China or among the Indo-Chinese races.

The vexed question of the introduction of the bow to stringed instruments, upon which the most eminent authorities are not yet disposed to agree, is one that needs only to be mentioned here. Whether of Asiatic or European introduction, it would appear at first to have been only one of the ways by which sounds could be drawn from strings, and that it gradually became victorious over the plectrum, with instruments of the viol kind, which thereby gained a great development. It is even now permitted to use the fingers to a bowed instrument in the _pizzicato_ of the violin and violoncello.

The Psaltery was a plectrum instrument derived from the Arab Qan[=u]n; it is rarely absent in paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries where musical instruments are represented. The same instrument, increased in the weight of stringing to resist the impact of hammers, is the familiar dulcimer, which, like the hurdy-gurdy and the bagpipe, has seen better days. What was once thought of the dulcimer is shown by the painting that adorns the one drawn in Plate XVII. It seems almost vexatious that we do not know who first adjusted a key-board to a psaltery, and thus constructed a spinet. It was not earlier than the fifteenth century, but the name of the meritorious inventor has not come down to us, or where he lived. It seems most likely from the earliest name, clavicymbalum, being Latin, that the instrument was first contrived in a monastery. But we have, fortunately, in Plate VI., in an upright Spinet or Clavicytherium, one of the earliest existing specimens of the kind. It is a question not yet decided whether this rare instrument is of South German or North Italian origin. The reason is given for the former attribution in the description accompanying the drawing. Yet the Mantegnesque feeling is so strong in the decoration of the interior that we pause before accepting the Swabian origin as conclusively settled.

Queen Elizabeth's Virginal (Plate VIII.), which has at last found a resting-place in the splendid collection of old musical instruments in South Kensington Museum, is not a virginal proper, but apparently an Italian spinet. It has been gloriously decorated, and it awakens an intense feeling of interest to reflect upon who may have played upon it and who may have stood by and heard the pleasing tones of an instrument once so much cared for. The Spinet was at that time beginning to gain upon the Lute. The power to perform part music with two hands, which the lute-player, having only one hand to stop with, could but imperfectly approach, was an endowment there was no gainsaying. We may see the contemporary prosperity of the great Venetian republic in the lutes, theorboes, and spinets that are now dispersed throughout Europe; and almost at the same time such instruments as the Ruckers Virginal (Plate XVIII.) and the Ruckers double Spinet (Plate XX.) bear witness for Antwerp as to the favour successful commerce has ever shown the Arts. The great English spinet-makers belong to the second half of the seventeenth century, and the first quarter of the eighteenth. Among them, Stephen Keene was in the foremost rank, and his work will still bear examination in the spinet drawn in Plate XXII. The eighteenth century was marked by a great advance in making the expressive Clavichord, which although perhaps the oldest key-board stringed instrument, had always had to give way before the louder and more graceful-looking spinet. Plate XXXII. displays the clavichord at its culmination, and the Chinese Lac decoration shows that, in this specimen at least, its intimate charm of tone, capable, as no other key-board instrument was, of the _vibrato_, was deemed worthy of an elaborate setting.

The latest improvements of which the Spinet genus was capable, including the Venetian Swell, are founded in the Double Harpsichord (Plate XXXIII.) made by Burkat Shudi (Burkhard Tschudi) and John Broadwood in 1773, for the Empress Maria Theresa. It is a question whether some musical instruments of special character should not be retained for use or be made again when that character cannot be expressed by any existing instrument. If this were done the Viola d'Amore, the Viola da Gamba, the Harpsichord, the Clavichord, and the old German flute, in the last instance with some concession to defective intonation, would find their places and be sometimes heard with pleasure.

With regard to the selection and drawing of the subjects represented in the following Plates, it may be mentioned that the present writer had the important advantage of a free use of the remarkable Loan Collection of Musical Instruments exhibited at the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington, in 1885. Extraordinary facilities for drawing the selected subject were obtained through his official connection with the Music Division of the Exhibition, and through the gracious permission of the respective owners of the instruments, including H.M. the Queen, H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, H.R.H. the Siamese Minister, and the Japanese Commission. He has also utilised some sketches of instruments selected and drawn by Mr. Robert Glen of Edinburgh, to whom belongs the credit of originating the idea of this publication.

The pictorial representation of the subjects was undertaken by Mr. William Gibb, and the plates in this volume have been successfully reproduced from his admirable drawings. The book gains, moreover, a special and unexpected value from the fact that no illustrated Catalogue Raisonné was compiled of the Music Loan Collection of 1885, which combined the most beautiful and valuable Manuscripts, Books, Paintings, etc., as well as Musical Instruments, which were ever brought together. There were no funds available, nor was there time to permit of such a work being carried out before the Collection was dispersed. By those who deplore the loss of that opportunity, the illustrations of this work may be regarded as a valuable memento of that unrivalled Collection.

A.J.H.

PLATE I.

BURGMOTE HORNS.

Beautiful horns of hammered and embossed bronze belonging to the Corporations of Canterbury and Dover. The right-hand one is from Dover, where it was formerly used for the calling together of the Corporation at the order of the mayor. The minutes of the town proceedings were constantly headed "At a common Horn blowing" (comyne Horne Blowying). This practice continued until the year 1670, and is not yet entirely done away with, as it is still blown on the occasion of certain Municipal ceremonies. The motto on this horn is:--

JOHANNES DE · ALLEMAINE · ME · FECIT ·

preceded by the talismanic letters A·G·L·A, which stand for the Hebrew [Hebrew: atah gibor l'olam Adonai] and mean, "Thou art mighty for ever, O Lord!" The horn, which is 31-3/4 inches long, with a circumference at the larger end of 15-1/2 inches, is of brass, and is deeply chased with a spiral scrollwork of foliage chiefly on a hatched ground. The inscription is on a band that starts four inches from the mouth and continues spirally. The maker's name is now nearly effaced, but the inscription shows that he was a German, and the date is assigned to the thirteenth century. A paper in the _Antiquary_ (vol. 1. pp. 253-55), written by the late Llewellyn Jewitt, F.S.A., of which some use has here been made, states that there are on the obverse of the oldest Seal of Dover, said to have been made in 1305, two horn-blowers in the stern of a ship, each blowing a horn similar to this example.

The left-hand Burgmote Horn belongs to the Corporation of Canterbury, and records of its use for calling meetings of the Corporation are extant from 1376, down to the year 1835. The chord measurement of the arc of this Horn is 36 inches.