MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: THEIR CONSTRUCTION AND CAPABILITIES.

By A.J. HIPKINS, F.S.A.

LECTURE II.

I will now invite your attention to the wind instruments, which, in Handel's time, were chiefly used to double in unison the parts of stringed instruments. Their modern independent use dates from Haydn; it was extended and perfected by Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber; and the extraordinary changes and improvements which have been effected during the present century have given wind instruments an importance that is hardly exceeded by that of the stringed, in the formation of the modern orchestra. The military band, as it now exists, is a creation of the present century.

The so-called wood wind instruments are the flute, oboe, bassoon, and clarinet. It is as well to say at once that their particular qualities of tone do not absolutely depend upon the materials of which they are made. The form is the most important factor in determining the distinction of tone quality, so long as the sides of the tube are equally elastic, as has been submitted to proof by instruments made of various materials, including paper. I consider this has been sufficiently demonstrated by the independent experiments of Mr. Blaikley, of London, and Mr. Victor Mahillon, of Brussels. But we must still allow Mr. Richard Shepherd Rockstro's plea, clearly set forth in a recently published treatise on the flute, that the nature and the substance of the tube, by reciprocity of vibration, exercise some influence, although not so great as might have been expected, on the quality of the tone. But I consider this influence is already acknowledged in my reference to equality of elasticity in the sides of the tube.

The flute is an instrument of embouchure—that is to say, one in which a stream of air is driven from the player's lips against an edge of the blow hole to produce the sound. The oboe and bassoon have double reeds, and the clarinet a single reed, made of a species of cane, as intermediate agents of sound production. There are other flutes than that of embouchure—those with flageolet or whistle heads, which, having become obsolete, shall be reserved for later notice. There are no real tenor or bass flutes now, those in use being restricted to the upper part of the scale. The present flute dates from 1832, when Theobald Boehm, a Bavarian flute player, produced the instrument which is known by his name. He entirely remodeled the flute, being impelled to do so by suggestions from the performance of the English flautist, Charles Nicholson, who had increased the diameter of the lateral holes, and by some improvements that had been attempted in the flute by a Captain Gordon, of Charles the Tenth's Swiss Guard. Boehm has been sufficiently vindicated from having unfairly appropriated Gordon's ideas. The Boehm flute, since 1846, is a cylindrical tube for about three-fourths of its length from the lower end, after which it is continued in a curved conical prolongation to the cork stopper. The finger holes are disposed in a geometrical division, and the mechanism and position of the keys are entirely different from what had been before. The full compass of the Boehm flute is chromatic, from middle C to C, two octaves above the treble clef C, a range of three octaves, which is common to all concert flutes, and is not peculiar to the Boehm model. Of course this compass is partly produced by altering the pressure of blowing. Columns of air inclosed in pipes vibrate like strings in sections, but, unlike strings, the vibrations progress in the direction of length, not across the direction of length. In the flute, all notes below D, in the treble clef, are produced by the normal pressure of wind; by an increasing pressure of overblowing the harmonics, D in the treble clef, and A and B above it, are successively attained. The fingerholes and keys, by shortening the tube, fill up the required intervals of the scale. There are higher harmonics still, but flautists generally prefer to do without them when they can get the note required by a lower harmonic. In Boehm's flute, his ingenious mechanism allows the production of the eleven chromatic semitones intermediate between the fundamental note of the flute and its first harmonic, by holes so disposed that, in opening them successively, they shorten the column of air in exact proportion. It is, therefore, ideally, an equal temperament instrument and not a D major one, as the conical flute was considered to be. Perhaps the most important thing Boehm did for the flute was to enunciate the principle that, to insure purity of tone and correct intonation, the holes must be put in their correct theoretical positions; and at least the hole below the one giving he sound must be open, to insure perfect venting. Boehm's flute, however, has not remained as he left it. Improvements, applied by Clinton, Pratten, and Carte, have introduced certain modifications in the fingering, while retaining the best features of Boehm's system. But it seems to me that the reedy quality obtained from the adoption of the cylindrical bore which now prevails does away with the sweet and characteristic tone quality of the old conical German flute, and gives us in its place one that is not sufficiently distinct from that of the clarinet.

The flute is the most facile of all orchestral wind instruments; and the device of double tonguing, the quick repetition of notes by taking a staccato T-stop in blowing, is well known. The flute generally goes with the violins in the orchestra, or sustains long notes with the other wood wind instruments, or is used in those conversational passages with other instruments that lend such a charm to orchestral music. The lower notes are not powerful. Mr. Henry Carte has, however, designed an alto flute in A, descending to violin G, with excellent results. There is a flute which transposes a minor third higher than the ordinary flute; but it is not much used in the orchestra, although used in the army, as is also a flute one semitone higher than the concert flute. The piccolo, or octave flute, is more employed in the orchestra, and may double the melody in the highest octave, or accentuate brilliant points of effect in the score. It is very shrill and exciting in the overblown notes, and without great care may give a vulgar character to the music, and for this reason Sir Arthur Sullivan has replaced it in the score of "Ivanhoe" by a high G flute. The piccolo is exactly an octave higher than the flute, excepting the two lowest notes of which it is deficient. The old cylindrical ear-piercing fife is an obsolete instrument, being superseded by a small army flute, still, however, called a fife, used with the side drum in the drum and fife band.

The transverse or German flute, introduced into the orchestra by Lulli, came into general use in the time of Handel; before that the recorders, or flute douces, the flute à bec with beak or whistle head, were preferred. These instruments were used in a family, usually of eight members, viz., as many sizes from treble to bass; or in three, treble, alto or tenor, and bass. A fine original set of those now rare instruments, eight in number, was shown in 1890 in the music gallery of the Royal Military Exhibition, at Chelsea; a loan collection admirably arranged by Captain C.B. Day. They were obtained from Hesse Darmstadt, and had their outer case to preserve them exactly like the recorder case represented in the painting by Holbein of the ambassadors, or rather, the scholars, recently acquired for the National Gallery. The flageolet was the latest form of the treble, beak, or whistle head flute. The whistle head is furnished with a cavity containing air, which, shaped by a narrow groove, strikes against the sharp edge and excites vibration in the conical pipe, on the same principle that an organ pipe is made to sound, or of the action of the player's mouth and lips upon the blowhole of the flute. As it will interest the audience to hear the tone of Shakespeare's recorder, Mr. Henry Carte will play an air upon one.

The oboe takes the next place in the wood wind band. The principle of sound excitement, that of the double reed, originating in the flattening of the end of an oat or wheat straw, is of great antiquity, but it could only be applied by insertion in tubes of very narrow diameter, so that the column of air should not be wider than the tongue straw or reed acting upon it. The little reed bound round and contracted below the vibrating ends in this primitive form permitted the adjustment of the lower open end in the tube, it might be another longer reed or pipe which inclosed the air column; and thus a conical pipe that gradually narrows to the diameter of the tongue reed must have been early discovered, and was the original type of the pastoral and beautiful oboe of the modern orchestra. Like the flute, the oboe has only the soprano register, extending from B flat or natural below middle C to F above the treble clef, two octaves and a fifth, which a little exceeds the flute downward. The foundation of the scale is D major, the same as the flute was before Boehm altered it. Triebert, a skillful Parisian maker, tried to adapt Boehm's reform of the flute to the oboe, but so far as the geometrical division of the scale was concerned, he failed, because it altered the characteristic tone quality of the instrument, so desirable for the balance of orchestral coloration. But the fingering has been modified with considerable success, although it is true by a much greater complication of means than the more simple contrivances that preceded it, which are still preferred by the players. The oboe reed has been much altered since the earlier years of this century. It was formerly more like the reed of the shawm, an instrument from which the oboe has been derived; and that of the present bassoon. It is now made narrower, with much advantage in the refinement of the tone. As in the flute, the notes up to C sharp in the treble clef are produced by the normal blowing, and simply shortening the tube by opening the sound holes. Beyond that note, increased pressure, or overblowing, assisted by a harmonic "speaker" key, produces the first harmonic, that of the octave, and so on. The lowest notes are rough and the highest shrill; from A to D above the treble clef, the tone quality of the oboe is of a tender charm in melody. Although not loud, its tone is penetrating and prominent. Its staccato has an agreeable effect. The place of the oboe in the wood wind band between the flute and the clarinet, with the bassoon for a bass, is beyond the possibility of improvement by any change.

Like the flute, there was a complete family of oboes in the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century; the little schalmey, the discant schalmey, from which the present oboe is derived; the alto, tenor, pommer, and bass pommers, and the double quint or contrabass pommer.

In all these old finger hole instruments the scale begins with the first hole, a note in the bagpipe with which the drones agree, and not the entire tube. From the bass and double quint pommers came ultimately the bassoon and contra-bassoon, and from the alto pommer, an obsolete instrument for which Bach wrote, called the oboe di caccia, or hunting oboe, an appellation unexplained, unless it had originally a horn-like tone, and was, as it has been suggested to me by Mr. Blaikley, used by those who could not make a real hunting horn sound. It was bent to a knee shape to facilitate performance. It was not exactly the cor Anglais or English horn, a modern instrument of the same pitch which is bent like it, and of similar compass, a fifth below the usual oboe. The tenoroon, with which the oboe di caccia has been compared, was a high bassoon really on octave and a fifth below. It has been sometimes overlooked that there are two octaves in pitch between the oboe and bassoon, which has led to some confusion in recognizing these instruments. There was an intermediate instrument a third lower than the oboe, used by Bach, called the oboe d'amore, which was probably used with the cornemuse or bagpipe, and another, a third higher than the oboe, called musette (not the small bagpipe of that name). The cor Anglais is in present use. It is a melancholy, even mournful instrument, its sole use in the orchestra being very suitable for situations on the stage, the effect of which it helps by depressing the mind to sadness. Those who have heard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" will remember, when the faithful Kurwenal sweeps the horizon, and sees no help coming on the sea for the dying Tristan, how pathetically the reed pipe of a careless peasant near, played in the orchestra on a cor Anglais, colors the painful situation.

The bassoon is the legitimate bass to the oboe and to the wood wind in general. It was evolved in the sixteenth century from the pommers and bombards: the tenors and basses of the shawm or oboe family. With the older instruments, the reeds were not taken hold of immediately by the lips, but were held in a kind of cup, called pirouette, which only allowed a very small part of the reed to project. In the oboe and bassoon the player has the full control of the reed with the lips, which is of great importance, both in expression and intonation. The bassoon economizes length, by being turned back upon itself, and, from its appearance, obtains in Italy and Germany the satirical appellation of "fagotto" or "fagott." It is made of wood, and has not, owing to many difficulties as yet unsurmounted, undergone those changes of construction that have partly transformed other wood wind instruments. From this reason—and perhaps the necessity of a bassoon player becoming intimately familiar with his instrument—bassoons by some of the older makers—notably, Savory—are still sought after, in preference to more modern ones. The instrument, although with extraordinary advantages in tone, character, and adaptability, that render it valuable to the composer, is yet complicated and capricious for the performer; but its very imperfections remove it from the mechanical tendencies of the age, often damaging to art; and, as the player has to rely very much upon his ear for correct intonation, he gets, in reality, near to the manipulation of the stringed instruments. The bassoons play readily with the violoncellos, their united tone being often advantageous for effect. When not so used, it falls back into its natural relationship with the wood wind division of the orchestra. The compass of the bassoon is from B flat, an octave below that in the bass clef, to B flat in the treble clef, a range of three octaves, produced by normal pressure, as far as the bass clef F. The F below the bass clef is the true lowest note, the other seven semitones descending to the B flat being obtained by holes and keys in the long joint and bell. These extra notes are not overblown. The fundamental notes are extended as in the oboes and flutes by overflowing to another octave, and afterward to the twelfth. In modern instruments yet higher notes, by the contrivance of small harmonic holes and cross fingerings, can be secured. Long notes, scales, arpeggios, are all practicable on this serviceable instrument, and in full harmony with clarinets, or oboes and horns, it forms part of a rich and beautiful combination. There is a very telling quality in the upper notes of the bassoon of which composers have made use. Structurally, a bassoon consists of several pieces, the wing, butt, long joints, and bell, and when fitted together, they form a hollow cone of about eight feet long, the air column tapering in diameter from three-sixteenths of an inch at the reed to one and three-quarter inches at the bell end.

The bending back at the butt joint is pierced in one piece of wood, and the prolongation of the double tube is usually stopped by a flattened oval cork, but in some modern bassoons this is replaced by a properly curved tube. The height is thus reduced to a little over four feet, and the holes, assisted by the artifice of piercing them obliquely, are brought within reach of the fingers. The crook, in the end of which the reed is inserted, is about twelve inches long, and is adjusted to the shorter branch.

The contra-bassoon is an octave lower than the bassoon, which implies that it should go down to the double B flat, two octaves below that in the bass clef, but it is customary to do without the lowest as well as the highest notes of this instrument. It is rarely used, but should not be dispensed with. Messrs. Mahillon, of Brussels, produce a reed contra-bass of metal, intended to replace the contra-bassoon of wood, but probably more with the view of completing the military band than for orchestral use. It is a conical brass tube of large proportions, with seventeen lateral holes of wide diameter and in geometrical relation, so that for each sound one key only is required. The compass of this contra-bass lies between D in the double bass octave and the lower F of the treble clef.

The sarrusophones of French invention are a complete family, made in brass and with conical tubes pierced according to geometric relation, so that the sarrusophone is more equal than the oboe it copies and is intended, at least for military music, to replace. Being on a larger scale, the sarrusophones are louder than the corresponding instruments of the oboe family. There are six sarrusophones, from the sopranino in E flat to the contra-bass in B flat; and to replace the contra-bassoon in the orchestra there is a lower contrabass sarrusophone made in C, the compass of which is from the double bass octave B flat to the higher G in the bass clef.

Before leaving the double reed wind instruments, a few words should be said of a family of instruments in the sixteenth century as important as the schalmeys, pommers, and bombards, but long since extinct. This was the cromorne, a wooden instrument with cylindrical column of air; the name is considered to remain in the cremona stop of the organ. The lower end is turned up like a shepherd's crook reversed, from whence the French name "tournebout." Cromorne is the German "krummhorn;" there is no English equivalent known.

The tone, as in all the reed instruments of the period, was strong and often bleating. The double reed was inclosed in a pirouette, or cup, and the keys of the tenor or bass, just the same as with similar flutes and bombards, were hidden by a barrel-shaped cover, pierced with small openings, apparently intended to modify the too searching tone as well as to protect the touch pieces which moved the keys. The compass was limited to fundamental notes, and from the cylindrical tube and reed was an octave lower in pitch than the length would show. In all these instruments provision was made in the holes and keys for transposition of the hands according to the player's habit of placing the right or left hand above the other. The unused hole was stopped with wax. There is a fine and complete set of four cromornes in the museum of the Conservatoire at Brussels.

We must also place among double-reed instruments the various bagpipes, cornemuses, and musettes, which are shawm or oboe instruments with reservoirs of air, and furnished with drones inclosing single reeds. I shall have more to say about the drone in the third lecture. In restricting our attention to the Highland bagpipe, with which we are more or less familiar, it is surprising to find the peculiar scale of the chaunter, or finger pipe, in an old Arabic scale, still prevailing in Syria and Egypt. Dr. A.J. Ellis' lecture on "The Musical Scales of Various Nations," read before the Society of Arts, and printed in the Journal of the Society, March 27, 1885, No. 1688, vol. xxxiii., and in an appendix, October 30, 1885, in the same volume, should be consulted by any one who wishes to know more about this curious similarity.

We have now arrived at the clarinet. Although embodying a very ancient principle—the "squeaker" reed which our little children still make, and continued in the Egyptian arghool—the clarinet is the most recent member of the wood wind band. The reed initiating the tone by the player's breath is a broad, single, striking or beating reed, so called because the vibrating tongue touches the edges of the body of the cutting or framing. A cylindrical pipe, as that of the clarinet, drops, approximately, an octave in pitch when the column of air it contains is set up in vibration by such a reed, because the reed virtually closes the pipe at the end where it is inserted, and like a stopped organ pipe sets up a node of maximum condensation or rarefaction at that end. This peculiarity interferes with the resonance of the even-numbered partials of the harmonic scale, and permits only the odd-numbered partials, 1, 3, 5, and so on, to sound. The first harmonic, as we find in the clarinet, is therefore the third partial, or twelfth of the fundamental note, and not the octave, as in the oboe and flute.

In the oboe the shifting of the nodes in a conical tube open at its base, and narrowing to its apex, permits the resonance of the complete series of the harmonic scale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and upward. The flute has likewise the complete series, because through the blowhole it is a pipe open at both ends. But while stating the law which governs the pitch and harmonic scale of the clarinet, affirmed equally by observation and demonstration, we are left at present with only the former when regarding two very slender, almost cylindrical reed pipes, discovered in 1889 by Mr. Flinders Petrie while excavating at Fayoum the tomb of an Egyptian lady named Maket. Mr. Petrie dates these pipes about 1100 B.C., and they were the principal subject of Mr. Southgate's recent lectures upon the Egyptian scale.

Now Mr. J. Finn, who made these ancient pipes sound at these lectures with an arghool reed of straw, was able upon the pipe which had, by finger holes, a tetrachord, to repeat that tetrachord a fifth higher by increased pressure of blowing, and thus form an octave scale, comprising eight notes. "Against the laws of nature," says a friend of mine, for the pipe having dropped more than an octave through the reed, was at its fundamental pitch, and should have overblown a twelfth.

But Mr. Finn allows me to say with reference to those reeds, perhaps the oldest sounding musical instruments known to exist, that his experiments with straw reeds seem to indicate low, medium, and high octave registers. The first and last difficult to obtain with reeds as made by us. He seeks the fundamental tones of the Maket pipes in the first or low register, an octave below the normal pitch. By this the fifths revert to twelfths. I offer no opinion, but will leave this curious phenomenon to the consideration of my friends, Mr. Blaikley, Mr. Victor Mahillon, and Mr. Hermann Smith, acousticians intimate with wind instruments.

The clarinet was invented about A.D. 1700, by Christopher Denner, of Nuremberg. By his invention, an older and smaller instrument, the chalumeau, of eleven notes, without producible harmonics, was, by an artifice of raising a key to give access to the air column at a certain point, endowed with a harmonic series of eleven notes a twelfth higher. The chalumeau being a cylindrical pipe, the upper partials could only be in an odd series, and when Denner made them speak, they were consequently not an octave, but a twelfth above the fundamental notes. Thus, an instrument which ranged, with the help of eight finger holes and two keys, from F in the bass clef to B flat in the treble had an addition given to it at once of a second register from C in the treble clef to E flat above it. The scale of the original instrument is still called chalumeau by the clarinet player; about the middle of the last century it was extended down to E. The second register of notes, which by this lengthening of pipe started from B natural, received the name of clarinet, or clarionet, from the clarino or clarion, the high solo trumpet of the time it was expected that this bright harmonic series would replace.

This name of clarinet, or clarionet, became accepted for the entire instrument, including the chalumeau register. It is the communication between the external air and the upper part of the air column in the instrument which, initiating a ventral segment or loop of vibration, forces the air column to divide for the next possible partial, the twelfth, that Denner has the merit of having made practicable. At the same time the manipulation of it presents a difficulty in learning the instrument. It is in the nature of things that there should be a difference of tone quality between the lower and upper registers thus obtained; and that the highest fundamental notes, G sharp, A and B flat, should be colorless compared with the first notes of the overblown series. This is a difficulty the player has to contend with, as well as the complexity of fingering, due to there being no less than eighteen sound holes. Much has been done to graft Boehm's system of fingering upon the clarinet, but the thirteen key system, invented early in this century by Iwan Muller, is still most employed. The increased complication of mechanism is against a change, and there is even a stronger reason, which I cannot do better than translate, in the appropriate words of M. Lavoix fils, the author of a well-known and admirable work upon instrumentation:

"Many things have still to be done, but inventors must not lose the point in view, that no tone quality is more necessary to the composer than that of the clarinet in its full extent; that it is very necessary especially to avoid melting together the two registers of chalumeau and clarinet, so distinct from each other. If absolute justness for these instruments is to be acquired at the price of those inestimable qualities, it would be better a hundred times to leave it to virtuosi, thanks to their ability, to palliate the defects of their instrument, rather than sacrifice one of the most beautiful and intensely colored voices of our orchestra."

There are several clarinets of various pitches, and formerly more than are used now, owing to the difficulty of playing except in handy keys. In the modern orchestra the A and B flat clarinets are the most used; in the military band, B flat and E flat. The C clarinet is not much used now. All differ in tone and quality; the A one is softer than the B flat; the C is shrill. The B flat is the virtuoso instrument. In military bands the clarinet takes the place which would be that of the violin in the orchestra, but the tone of it is always characteristically different. Although introduced in the time of Handel and Bach those composers made no use of it. With Mozart it first became a leading orchestral instrument.

The Basset horn, which has become the sensuously beautiful alto clarinet in E flat, is related to the clarinet in the same way that the cor Anglais is to the oboe. Basset is equivalent to Baryton (there is a Basset flute figured in Prætorius), and this instrument appears to have been invented by one Horn, living at Passau, in Bavaria, about 1770. His name given to the instrument has been mistranslated into Italian as Corno di Bassetto. There is a bass clarinet employed with effect by Meyerbeer in the "Huguenots," but the characteristic clarinet tone is less noticeable; it is, however, largely used in military bands. The Basset horn had the deep compass of the bass clarinet which separates it from the present alto clarinet, although it was more like the alto in caliber. The alto clarinet is also used in military bands; and probably what the Basset horn would have been written for is divided between the present bass and alto clarinets.

Preceding the invention of the sarrusophone, by which a perfected oboe was contrived in a brass instrument, a modified brass instrument, the saxophone, bearing a similar relation to the clarinet, was invented in 1846 by Sax, whose name will occur again and again in connection with important inventions in military band instruments. The saxophone is played like the clarinet with the intervention of a beating reed, but is not cylindrical; it has a conical tube like the oboe. The different shape of the column of air changes the first available harmonic obtained by overblowing to the octave instead of the twelfth; and also in consequence of the greater strength of the even harmonics, distinctly changing the tone quality. The sarrusophone may fairly be regarded as an oboe or bassoon; but the saxophone is not so closely related to the clarinet. There are four sizes of saxophone now made between high soprano and bass. Starting from the fourth fundamental note, each key can be employed in the next higher octave, by the help of other two keys, which, being opened successively, set up a vibrating loop. The saxophones, although difficult to play, fill an important place in the military music of France and Belgium, and have been employed with advantage in the French orchestra. The fingering of all saxophones is that attributed to Boehm.

The cup shaped mouthpiece must now take the place of the reed in our attention. Here the lips fit against a hollow cup shaped reservoir, and, acting as vibrating membranes, may be compared with the vocal chords of the larynx. They have been described as acting as true reeds. Each instrument in which such a mouthpiece is employed requires a slightly different form of it. The French horn is the most important brass instrument in modern music. It consists of a body of conical shape about seven feet long, without the crooks, ending in a large bell, which spreads out to a diameter of fifteen inches. The crooks are fitted between the body and the mouthpiece; they are a series of smaller interchangeable tubings, which extend in length as they descend in pitch, and set the instrument in different keys. The mouthpiece is a funnel shaped tube of metal, by preference silver; and, in the horn, is exceptionally not cup shaped, but the reverse: it tapers, as a cone, from three-quarters of an inch diameter to about a minimum of three-sixteenths of an inch, and is a quarter of an inch where the smaller end of the mouthpiece is inserted in the upper opening of the crook. The first horn has a mouthpiece of rather less diameter than the second. The peculiar mouthpiece and narrow tubing have very much to do with the soft voice-like tone quality of the horn. For convenience of holding, the tubing is bent in a spiral form. There is a tuning slide attached to the body, and, of late years, valves have been added to the horn, similar to those applied to the cornet and other wind instruments. They have, to a considerable extent, superseded hand stopping, by which expedient the intonation could be altered a semitone or whole tone, by depression of the natural notes of the instrument. In brass, or other instruments, the natural harmonics depend on the pressure of blowing; and the brass differs entirely from the wood wind, in this respect, that it is rare, or with poor effect, the lowest or fundamental note can be made to sound. Stopping the horn is done by extending the open hand some way up the bore; there is half stopping and whole stopping, according to the interval, the half tone or whole tone required. As may be imagined, the stopped notes are weak and dull compared with the open. On the other hand, the tubing introduced for valves not being quite conformable in curve with the instrument, and hampered with indispensable joins, unless in the best form of modern valve, affects the smoothness of tone. No doubt there has been of late years a great improvement in the manufacture of valves. Many horns are still made with crooks covering an octave from B flat to B flat, 8 feet 6 inches to 17 feet; but most players now use only the F crook, and trust to the valves, rather than to change the crooks, so that we lose the fullness of sound of those below F. The natural horn was originally in D, but was not always restricted to that key; there have been horns for F, G, high A, and B flat. This may, however, be said for the valve horn, that it does not limit or restrict composers in writing for the open or natural notes, which are always more beautiful in effect.

Valves were invented and first introduced in Prussia about A.D. 1815. At first there were two, but there are now generally three. In this country and France they are worked by pistons, which, when pressed down, give access for the air into channels or supplementary tubings on one side of the main bore, thus lengthening it by a tone for the first valve, a semitone for the second, and a tone and a semitone for the third. When released by the finger, the piston returns by the action of a spring. In large bass and contralto instruments, a fourth piston is added, which lowers the pitch two tones and a semitone. By combining the use of three valves, lower notes are obtained—thus, for a major third, the second is depressed with the third; for a fourth, the first and third; and for the tritone, the first, second, and third. But the intonation becomes imperfect when valves are used together, because the lengths of additional tubing being calculated for the single depressions, when added to each other, they are too short for the deeper notes required. By an ingenious invention of compensating pistons, Mr. Blaikley, of Messrs. Boosey's, has practically rectified this error without extra moving parts or altered fingering. In the valve section, each altered note becomes a fundamental for another harmonic scale. In Germany a rotary valve, a kind of stop cock, is preferred to the piston. It is said to give greater freedom of execution, the closeness of the shake being its best point, but is more expensive and liable to derangement. The invention of M. Adolphe Sax, of a single ascending piston in place of a group of descending ones, by which the tube is shortened instead of lengthened, met, for a time, with influential support. It is suitable for both conical and cylindrical instruments, and has six valves, which are always used independently. However, practical difficulties have interfered with its success. With any valve system, however, a difficulty with the French horn is its great variation in length by crooks, inimical to the principle of the valve system, which relies upon an adjustment by aliquot parts. It will, however, be seen that the invention of valves has, by transforming and extending wind instruments, so as to become chromatic, given many advantages to the composer. Yet it must, at the same time, be conceded, in spite of the increasing favor shown for valve instruments, that the tone must issue more freely, and with more purity and beauty, from a simple tube than from tubes with joinings and other complications, that interfere with the regularity and smoothness of vibration, and, by mechanical facilities, tend to promote a dull uniformity of tone quality.

Owing to the changes of pitch by crooks, it is not easy to define the compass of the French horn. Between C in the bass clef and G above the treble will represent its serviceable notes. It is better that the first horn should not descend below middle C, or the second rise above the higher E of the treble clef. Four are generally used in modern scores. The place of the horn is with the wood wind band. From Handel, every composer has written for it, and what is known as the small orchestra of string and wood wind bands combined is completed by this beautiful instrument.

The most prominent instruments that add to the splendor of the full orchestra are trumpets and trombones. They are really members of one family, as the name trombone—big trumpet—implies, and blend well together. The trumpet is an instrument of court and state functions, and, as the soprano instrument, comes first. It is what is known as an eight foot instrument in pitch, and gives the different harmonics from the third to the twelfth, and even to the sixteenth. It is made of brass, mixed metal, or silver, and is about five feet seven inches in real length, when intended for the key of F without a slide; but is twice turned back upon itself, the first and third lengths lying contiguous, and the second about two inches from them. The diameter is three-eighths of an inch along the cylindrical length; it then widens out for about fifteen inches, to form the bell.

When fitted with a slide for transposition—an invention for the trumpet in the last century—this double tubing, about five inches in length on each side, is connected with the second length. It is worked from the center with the second and third fingers of the right band, and, when pulled back, returns to its original position by a spring. There are five crooks. The mouthpiece is hemispherical and convex, and the exact shape of it is of great importance. It has a rim with slightly rounded surface. The diameter of the mouthpiece varies according to the player and the pitch required. With the first crook, or rather shank, and mouthpiece, the length of the trumpet is increased to six feet, and the instrument is then in the key of F. The second shank transposes it to E, the third to E flat, and the fourth to D. The fifth, and largest—two feet one and a half inches long—extends the instrument to eight feet, and lowers the key to C. The slide is used for transposition by a semitone or a whole tone, thus making new fundamentals, and correcting certain notes of the natural harmonic scale, as the seventh, eleventh, and thirteenth, which do not agree with our musical scale. Mr. W. Wyatt has recently taken out a patent for a double-slide trumpet, which possesses a complete chromatic scale. In the required length of slide the ear has always to assist. It is clear that the very short shifts of a double slide demand great nicety of manipulation. It is, of course, different with the valve trumpet. The natural trumpets are not limited to one or two keys, but those in F, E, E flat, D, B flat, and even A have been employed; but, usually, the valve trumpets are in F, and the higher B flat, with a growing inclination, but an unfortunate one, to be restricted to the latter, it being easier for cornet players. The tone of the high B flat trumpet cannot, however, compare with the F one, and with it the lowest notes are lost. Of course, when there are two or three trumpets, the high B flat one finds a place. However, the valve system applied to the trumpet is not regarded with satisfaction, as it makes the tone dull. For grand heroic effect, valve trumpets cannot replace the natural trumpets with slides, which are now only to be heard in this country.

The simple or field trumpet appears to exist now in one representative only, the E flat cavalry trumpet. Bach wrote for trumpets up to the twentieth harmonic—but for this the trumpet had to be divided into a principal, which ended at the tenth harmonic—and the clarino in two divisions, the first of which went from the eighth harmonic up to as high as the player could reach, and the second clarino, from the sixth to the twelfth. The use of the clarinet by composers about the middle of the last century seems to have abolished these very high trumpets. So completely had they gone, by the time of Mozart, that he had to change Handel's trumpet parts, to accommodate them to performers of his own time, and transfer the high notes to the oboes and clarinets.

Having alluded to the cornet à piston, it may be introduced here, particularly as from being between a trumpet and a bugle, and of four foot tone, it is often made to do duty for the more noble trumpet. But the distinctive feature of this, as of nearly all brass instruments since the invention of valves, tends to a compromise instrument, which owes its origin to the bugle. The cornet à piston is now not very different from the valve bugle in B flat on the one hand and from the small valve trumpet in the same key on the other. It is a hybrid between this high pitch trumpet and the bugle, but compared with the latter it has a much smaller bell. By the use of valves and pistons, with which it was the first to be endowed, the cornet can easily execute passages of consecutive notes that in the natural trumpet can only be got an octave higher. It is a facile instrument, and double tonguing, which is also possible with the horn and trumpet, is one of its popular means for display. It has a harmonic compass from middle C to C above the treble clef, and can go higher, but with difficulty. A few lower notes, however, are easily taken with the valves.

We now come to the trombones, grand, sonorous tubes, which, existing in three or four sizes since the sixteenth century, are among the most potent additions on occasion to the full orchestra. Their treble can be regarded as the English slide trumpet, but it is not exactly so. There appears to have been as late as Bach a soprano trombone, and it is figured by Virdung, A.D. 1511, as no larger than the field trumpet. The trumpet is not on so large a caliber, and in the seventeenth century had its own family of two clarinos and three tubas. The old English name of the trombone is sackbut. The old wooden cornet, or German zinke, an obsolete, cupped mouthpiece instrument, the real bass of which, according to family, is the now obsolete serpent, was used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the treble instrument in combination with alto, tenor, and bass trombones. The leading features of the trumpet are also found, as already inferred, in the trombone; there is the cupped mouthpiece, the cylindrical tubing, and, finally, a gradual increase in diameter to the bell. The slide used for the trumpet appears for four centuries, and probably longer, in the well known construction of the trombone. In this instrument it consists of two cylindrical tubes parallel with each other, upon which two other tubes communicating by a pipe at their lower ends curved in a half circle glide without loss of air. The mouthpiece is fitted to an upper end, and a bell to a lower end of the slide. When the slide is closed, the instrument is at its highest pitch, and as the column of air is lengthened by drawing the slide out, the pitch is lowered. By this contrivance a complete chromatic scale can be obtained, and as the determination of the notes it produces is by ear, we have in it the only wind instrument that can compare in accuracy with stringed instruments. The player holds a cross bar between the two lengths of the instrument, which enables him to lengthen or shorten the slide at pleasure, and in the bass trombone, as the stretch would be too great for the length of a man's arm, a jointed handle is attached to the cross bar. The player has seven positions, each a semitone apart for elongation, and each note has its own system of harmonics, but in practice he only occasionally goes beyond the fifth. The present trombones are the alto in E flat descending to A in the seventh position; the tenor in B flat descending to E; the bass in F descending to B, and a higher bass in G descending to C sharp. Wagner, who has made several important innovations in writing for bass brass instruments, requires an octave bass trombone in B flat; an octave lower than the tenor one, in the "Nibelungen." The fundamental tones of the trombone are called "pedal" notes. They are difficult to get and less valuable than harmonics because, in all wind instruments, notes produced by overblowing are richer than the fundamental notes in tone quality. Valve trombones do not, however, find favor, the defects of intonation being more prominent than in shorter instruments. But playing with wide bore tubas and their kindred is not advantageous to this noble instrument.

The serpent has been already mentioned as the bass of the obsolete zinken or wooden cornets, straight or curved, with cupped mouthpiece. It gained its serpentine form from the facility given thereby to the player to cover the six holes with his fingers. In course of time keys were added to it, and when changed into a bassoon shape its name changed to the Russian bass horn or basson Russe. A Parisian instrument maker, Halary, in 1817, made this a complete instrument, after the manner of the keyed bugle of Halliday, and producing it in brass called it the ophicleide, from two Greek words meaning serpent and keys—keyed serpent—although it was more like a keyed bass bugle. The wooden serpent has gone out of use in military bands within recollection, the ophicleide from orchestras only recently. It has been superseded by the development of the valved tubas. The euphonium and bombardon, the basses of the important family of saxhorns, now completely cover the ground of bass wind instrument music. The keyed bugle, invented by Joseph Halliday, bandmaster of the Cavan militia, in 1810, may be regarded as the prototype of all these instruments, excepting that the keys have been entirely replaced by the valve system, an almost contemporary invention by Stölzel and Blumel, in Prussia, in 1815. The valve instruments began to prevail as early as 1850. The sound tube of all bugles, saxhorns, and tubas is conical, with a much wider curve than the horn. The quality of tone produced is a general kind of tone, not possessing the individuality of any of the older instruments. All these valve instruments may be comprehended under the French name of saxhorn. There is a division between them of the higher instruments or bugles, which do not sound the fundamental note, and of the lower, or tubas, which sound it readily. Properly military band instruments, the second or bass division, has been taken over to the orchestra; and Wagner has made great use of it in his great scores. The soprano cornets, bugles, or flugelhorns and saxhorns are in E flat; the corresponding alto instruments in B flat, which is also the pitch of the ordinary cornet. The tenor, baryton, and bass instruments follow in similar relation; the bass horns are, as I have said, called tubas; and that with four valves, the euphonium. The bombardon, or E flat tuba, has much richer lower notes.

For military purposes, this and the contrabass—the helicon—are circular. Finally, the contrabass tubas in B flat, and in C, for Wagner, have immense depth and potentiality of tone; all these instruments are capable of pianissimo.

There are many varieties now of these brass instruments, nearer particulars of which may be found in Gevaert, and other eminent musicians' works on instrumentation. One fact I will not pass by, which is that, from the use of brass instruments (which rise in pitch so rapidly under increase of temperature, as Mr. Blaikley has shown, almost to the coefficient of the sharpening under heat in organ pipes) has come about that rise in pitch which, from 1816 to 1846—until repressed by the authority of the late Sir Michael Costa, and, more recently, by the action of the Royal Military College at Kneller Hall—is an extraordinary feature in musical history. All previous variations in pitch—and they have comprised as much as a fourth in the extremes—having been due either to transposition, owing to the requirements of the human voice, or to national or provincial measurements. The manufacture of brass instruments is a distinct craft, although some of the processes are similar to those used by silversmiths, coppersmiths, and braziers.

I have only time to add a few words about the percussion instruments which the military band permits to connect with the wind. Drums are, with the exception of kettle drums, indeterminate instruments, hardly, in themselves, to be regarded as musical, and yet important factors of musical and especially rhythmic effect. The kettle drum is a caldron, usually of brass or copper, covered with a vellum head bound at the edge round an iron ring, which fits the circle formed by the upper part of the metal body. Screws working on this ring tune the vellum head, or vibrating membrane as we may call it, by tightening or slackening it, so as to obtain any note of the scale within its compass. The tonic and dominant are generally required, but other notes are, in some compositions, used; even octaves have been employed. The use Beethoven made of kettle drums may be regarded among the particular manifestations of his genius. Two kettle drums may be considered among the regular constituents of the orchestra, but this number has been extended; in one remarkable instance, that of Berlioz in his Requiem, to eight pairs. According to Mr. Victor de Pontigny, whose article I am much indebted to (in Sir George Grove's dictionary) upon the drum, the relative diameters, theoretically, for a pair of kettle drums are in the proportion of 30 to 26, bass and tenor; practically the diameter of the drums at the French opera is 29 and 25¼ inches, and of the Crystal Palace band, 28 and 24¼ inches. In cavalry regiments the drums are slung so as to hang on each side of the drummers horse's neck. The best drum sticks are of whalebone, each terminating in a small wooden button covered with sponge. For the bass drum and side drum I must be content to refer to Mr. Victor de Pontigny's article, and also for the tambourine, but the Provencal tambourines I have met with have long, narrow sound bodies, and are strung with a few very coarse strings which the player sounds with a hammer. This instrument is the rhythmic bass and support to the simple galoubet, a cylindrical pipe with two holes in front and one behind, sounded by the same performer. The English pipe and tabor is a similar combination, also with one player, of such a pipe and a small drum-head tambourine. Lastly, to conclude percussion instruments, cymbals are round metal plates, consisting of an alloy of copper and tin—say 80 parts to 20—with sunk hollow centers, from which the Greek name. They are not exactly clashed together to elicit their sound, but rubbed across each other in a sliding fashion. Like the triangle, a steel rod, bent into the form indicated by the name, but open at one corner so as to make it an elastic rod, free at both ends; the object is to add to the orchestral matter luminous crashes, as it were, and dazzling points of light, when extreme brilliancy is required.

In conclusion, I must be allowed to express my obligations to Dr. W.H. Stone and Mr. Victor Mahillon, to Mr. Ebenezer Prout, Mr. Richard Shepherd Rockstro, Mr. Lavoix fils, and Dr. H. Riemann, whose writings concerning wind instruments have materially helped me; to Messrs. Boosey & Co., and to Messrs. Rudall, Carte & Co., for the loan of the instruments used in the illustrations; and also to Mr. D.J. Blaikley and Mr. Henry Carte, for valuable personal aid on the present occasion. Their kindness in reading through my manuscript—Mr. Blaikley throughout—and in offering friendly and generous criticisms; also their presence and assistance by trial of the various instruments, I cannot adequately thank them for, or sufficiently extol.

(In the course of this lecture, Mr. Henry Carte played upon a concert flute, also a B flat and a G flute, an eight-keyed flute, and a recorder. Mr. D.J. Blaikley continued the illustrations upon the oboe, bassoon, clarinet, French horn, slide trumpet, valve tenor horn, cornet à piston, B flat tenor slide trombone, B flat euphonium, B flat contrabass tuba, and B flat contrabass double slide trombone.)