Hautboy

“ Contending crowders shout the frequent damn,
And all is bustle, squeeze, row, jabbering, and jam. [67]
See to their desks Apollo's sons repair—
Swift rides the rosin o'er the horse's hair!
In unison their various tones to tune,
Murmurs the hautboy, growls the hoarse bassoon;
In soft vibration sighs the whispering lute,
Tang goes the harpsichord, too-too the flute,
Brays the loud trumpet, squeaks the fiddle sharp,
Winds the French-horn, and twangs the tingling harp ”

“ I seldom visited a cottage at Amboyna, in which I did not find instruments of music; and I met with one here, which I never saw any where else. It was a sort of hautboy, the lower extremity of which terminated in two diverging branches pierced with holes in the same order in each, and thus forming two flutes, both sounding the same notes. The natives love to play in unison, and apply one hand to each branch. ”

“ None the less it is the Alto Hautboy. The tenor and bass of the family have not survived. Hautboys in four parts were the backbone of the French regimental bands in Lully's time—i.e., about 1670. [Appendix.]
The spelling of the word in the old editions of [Pg 178] Shakespeare is 'hoeboy,' which is very like the modern German Hoboe.
Sennet. This is a rare direction, and is found only nine times in eight plays, as against sixty-eight 'Flourishes' and fifty-one 'Trumpets.' The notes of a sennet are unknown. ”

“ I ventured.
"The Hobo--" He fixed his eyes on my Spencer and ran along the titles while he cast his definition. "The Hobo, my dear fellow, is the name for that particular place of detention in city and county jails wherein are assembled tramps, drunks, beggars, and the riff-raff of petty offenders. The word itself is a pretty one, and it has a history. Hautbois--there's the French of it. Haut, meaning high, and bois, wood. In English it becomes hautboy, a wooden musical instrument of two-foot tone, I believe, played with a double reed, an oboe, in fact. ”

“ This is the instrument generally meant by the term “flute” in the ancient Greek authors. It is known in China and Thibet, and in its modern form as Hautboy (oboe) , English Horn or Bassoon, is an important member of the modern orchestra. The beating or single reed is so-called because it is made a little larger [Pg 150] than the orifice over which it is fixed, and therefore beats against this orifice at every vibration, closing it and causing the air to be emitted in puffs. ”

“ Not long after Shakespeare's time, orchestral music for the theatre consisted of stringed instruments only [Pg 176] (i.e., the violin family, violins, violas, violoncellos, and the sole surviving 'viol,' the double-bass) with harpsichord, for general use; while in the more important pieces, hautboys, and sometimes flutes as well, were added, playing, as a rule, with the 1st and 2nd violin parts. This, at any rate, is the case in Purcell's operas. (Purcell died 1695) . Thus the word Hautboys represented very nearly the climax of power to 17th century ears. ”

“ A carved chest, painted with bright colours, contained, as was generally the case in such habitations, the Sunday wardrobe of the inhabitants, and fine linen spun by themselves; around the dark wainscot of the walls was a shelf, upon which were ranged well polished cans, goblets, and smoothing irons, earthen utensils with mottos in verse painted on them, and all kinds of musical instruments, such as cymbals, hautboys, and a guitar, hung on the walls. At the further end of the room stood a bedstead, with cotton curtains, of a coarse texture, ornamented with figures of large flowers. ”

“ Before 1688 the French hoboy, made in four parts and having two keys, was known in England. [1] It is probable that in France, where the hautbois played such an important part in court music, the cor anglais, under the name of haute-contre de hautbois, was also provided with keys. ”

“ Helwyse is still lingering over his toilet, his neighbor the fiddler, whom he had meant to ask to breakfast, comes out of his room, violin-box in hand, walks along the passage-way, and is off down stairs. An odd-looking figure; those stylish clothes become him as little as they would a long-limbed, angular Egyptian statue. Fashion, in some men, is an eccentricity, or rather a violence done to their essential selves. A born fop would have looked as little at home in a toga and sandals, as did this swarthy musician, doctor, priest, or whatever he was, in his fashion-plate costume. ”

“ The child grew up into a sturdy, broad-shouldered boy, with brown eyes, dark complexion, and a tangle of black hair—keen and adventurous in character, ready to join in any sports that were afoot, and, as tradition still attests, well able to hold his own in conflict. From the first he was passionately fond of music—listening in eager enjoyment when his father played to him, or when, on some lucky day, a band of wandering musicians would come from Kralup or Prague or even Pressnitz, and earn itself a welcome at the inn door. ”

“ They can be made as effective as ordinary women altos, but they are as short-lived and need more attention than the boy trebles. Their chief drawback is a tendency to produce tone without the least attention to quality or effect save that of noise. Nevertheless, there is nothing to hinder boy altos doing all that is necessary, or, indeed, all that can be done by the adult male alto. I have trained boys to sing alto in Messiah, St. Paul, and equally trying music, during the past twenty years, and anyone else who keeps the girl's alto voice before him as a model can do the same. ”

“ Jacob, who had known the barber well in days gone by, crossed the road and entered his shop.
“Good-morning, Urban,” he said, “I have come to ask a favour of you. Will you be so good as to allow me a glance into your looking-glass?”
“With pleasure, there it stands,” he said laughing heartily, and the customer who was being shaved laughed also. “You are a handsome little fellow,” the barber went on, “tall and slim, a neck like a swan, hands as dainty as a queen’s, and as pretty a little nose as one could see anywhere. It is no wonder that you are conceited, and wish to take a glance at yourself. ”

“ From the handsome hat which, as he turned to his partner for the dance, he sent spinning toward a table beside the piano, the soft brown shirt and flowing tie, down to the small, high-heeled and spurred boots, he wore the distinctive 21 cowboy rig of the mountains, even to the heavy hip-holster, in which his revolver was slung. He was, in fact, rather too smartly dressed, too confident in manner to please de Spain, who was in no mood to be pleased anyway, and who could conceive a dislike for a man the instant he set eyes on him––and a liking as quickly. ”

“ The old man in the red dressing-gown would at length catch him by the leg, drag him down from a table, beat him black and blue, and choked him by twisting his cravat, whereupon he would become clever and decent again, and the dancing-exercise would continue without further interruption.
But when the Frenchman had advanced his pupil so far that music could be used during the lesson, there was a magical change in the nephew's behavior. A town musician was called in, and given a seat on the table in the salon of the desolate house. ”

“ Boy sopranos are plentiful, basses and tenors are easily obtained, but good male altos, men, not boys, are almost unknown outside of a few large cities. This state of affair has led, in many cases, to the employment of boys as altos, and they have of course sung with the thick or chest voice. ”

“ Look to those young men, sprinkled here and there in the groups—boys, they are almost sometimes—with their thin delicate mustaches, and their hair arranged with some coquetry of curl, even in the midst of their disorder, and in spite of the blouse with which their attire is covered. ”

“ But the fault was ever less in the Bells than in the Bell-ringers. Cracked were they not, nor were they cacophonous; let their clappers swing free, and keep their throats unrusted and unclogged, and in skilled, and loyal, and well-conducted hands, they would ever sound out strongly and sweetly, and send forth on and against the wildest and angriest of the winds aforesaid, most excellent and inspiring music.
Toby knew them well, those Bells, as did his great and genial Master. Toby was not a canine casuist. Being but a simple and loyal dog, he invested them with a strange and solemn character. ”

“ The taller of the two, the owner of the voice that had so unmusically and ruthlessly aroused us, was a man considerably over six feet in height, raw-boned, broad-shouldered, big-hatted, and roughly dressed, with a coarse red beard that evidently was much the worse for wear in regions where barbers are a scarce commodity. His eyes were of that cold steely grey color which makes one think twice before running counter to the wishes of the man to whom they belong. ”

“ MARK INTERVIEWED THE BARBER ABOUT HARRY THAW
During his last visit to London, Mark called me up one morning and said: “My arm aches and I can’t do it myself, so for God’s sake, take me to a barber who can scrape one’s face without taking half the hide off. I am getting mighty tired of being flayed alive in this here burg.”
Accordingly we drove down to the Cecil in the Strand.
“I understand you are the man who treats a delicate skin like an American beauty rose,” said Mark to the barber.
“I will treat yours, Mr. Clemens, as if it were a butterfly. ”

“ As “a little learning is dangerous,” the barber of the olden times generally contrived to make himself more or less ridiculous. Steele says:—“The particularity of this man [Don Saltero, see p. 95] put me into a deep thought whence it should proceed that of all the lower orders barbers should go further in hitting the ridiculous than any other set of men. Watermen brawl, cobblers sing: but why must a barber be for ever a politician, a musician, an anatomist, a poet, and a physician?” This love of music was at all times an idiosyncrasy of the knights of the brass basin. ”

“ His men did as they were bid, and in a twinkling Hortense and Andy and Highboy and Lowboy found themselves with bound hands, marching forward, surrounded by the armed Little People.
"We are bound to have a trying time," said Lowboy, joking as usual. "The King will try us."
Hortense and Andy were too depressed to enjoy jokes, and Highboy, with tears streaming down his cheeks, was composing a poem bidding a sad farewell to home and friends. Hortense could hear him trying rhymes to find one which would fit—"home, moan, bone, lone." ”

“ In the outer room, also, began to be heard the boisterous laugh of men, and the rattling of glasses on the counter, mingled with the harsh sounds of a violin, scraped by a negro, who had grown grey in the service, attending upon all the orgies of the country round. Little did Hettie, until that moment, ever think that there could be grouped within a few miles of her mother's dwelling a scene so nearly allied in her mind to the doings of the bottomless pit ”

“ How gay they look in their long-tailed coats, knee-breeches, and faces beaming with smiles beneath their broad silken hats! And they wear their beards and moustachios in precisely the same style as that which seems now becoming fashionable, that is, nowhere at all. ”

“ We have so far here been looking at Donald’s humour on its least favourable side; having been viewing it, so to speak, in the garb of the Sassenach only. Let us now glance at a few examples in full Highland costume. And here at once is an instance showing rare shrewdness and wit combined. A Highland piper having a pupil placed in his hands by his chief, and not knowing the notes of music—the semibreves, minims, crotchets, and quavers, etc.—by the proper designations, although he knew each one by head mark, and its musical value very well, set to work in this way. ”

“ On his arrival from the other world, he had merely found it necessary to spend a quarter of an hour at a barber's, who had trimmed down the Puritan's full beard into a pair of grizzled whiskers, then, patronizing a ready-made clothing establishment, he had exchanged his velvet doublet and sable cloak, with the richly worked band under his chin, for a white collar and cravat, coat, vest, and pantaloons; and lastly, putting aside his steel-hilted broadsword to take up a gold-headed cane, the Colonel Pyncheon of two centuries ago steps forward as the Judge of the passing moment! ”

“ Had it been otherwise, the figure’s remarkable costume, no less than its many eccentricities, would have drawn a great crowd in a few moments. It was a tall fantastic apparition, clad in a black velvet cloak and [150] doublet, silk hose, and high-heeled shoes. On its head was a broad-brimmed hat, with heavy plumes; there were lace ruffles at its wrists and round its throat. A long rapier dangled by its side; its beard was gray and peaked, but a copious powdered wig flowed out beneath the hat and rested on the shoulders. ”

“ She observed the little boy's love of music.
In the Handel home there was a big roomy attic; the ceiling was low, and the windows had thick panes; the walls and floors were built of heavy timber, and silence reigned there.
THE CHILD HANDEL PRACTICING IN THE ATTIC.
"Here," said Mother Handel, "my little boy can play the harpsichord to his heart's content and no [Pg 5] one will be the wiser." You can imagine the surprise when the stern barber-surgeon stalked into the attic, followed by the family, holding high the lantern. ”

“ The boy stared at him, slowly taking in the facts of his costume, with eyes that climbed from the heavy shoes up the legs of his thick-ribbed stockings and his knickerbockers, past the pleats and belt of his Norfolk jacket, to the red neckcloth tied under the loose collar of his flannel outing-shirt, and so by his face, with its soft, young beard and its quiet eyes, to the top of his braidless, bandless slouch hat of soft felt. It was one of the earliest costumes of the kind that had shown itself in the hill country, and it was altogether new to the boy. ”