Stop (musical instrument)

“ It sings and shouts and weeps as he wills. It is an orchestra or a flute or an Æolian harp, as the mood seizes him. The brilliancy, the incredible articulation, and the rapidity of his execution—upon one string or four strings—with all kinds of marvelous effects and whims, with the intensity and precision of his bowing, are in harmony with all the rest. They are called tricks, but they are only such tricks as the wind and clouds play; they are only such tricks as an artist of his organization, who loves the sounds and capacities of his instrument for their own sake, must necessarily display. ”

“ Sunday afternoon, an English aviator at the piano and a French officer with a violin have fallen into feud over a matter of musical precedence, and within a few feet of each other are playing at the same time entirely different tunes, and that with vehemence and vindictiveness. The pianist, firmly planted on the piano stool, where he has spent most of the day, passes without pause or punctuation from Chopin to ragtime and from ragtime to absolute incoherence. ”

“ Nothing but continuous use in professional hands in the orchestra will keep a musical instrument from going out of fashion: and it invariably happens that the disuse of instruments in the orchestra only shortly precedes their disuse in chamber music. The practical extinction of these instruments is to be regretted. Originally invented as a means of augmenting the tone of the Viol, they acquired a character entirely unique, and are undoubtedly capable of further development. ”

“ Thirdly, upon the valves, which, when pressed by the fingers, produce notes of lower and higher pitch.
The right hand of the player is always in the bell of his instrument to prevent harsh and loud sounds and to give the tone a smooth and veiled quality.
To play the horn bouché means to stop the horn with hand, or fist. To force its tone produces a loud, brassy and even wild effect. ”

“ As rhythm is the heart pulsation of music, [69] it naturally took hold of the first singers of in any measure formulated melody, leading to swaying of the body, clapping of the hands, stamping of the feet, and quickly suggested the employment of other resonant means for marking its progress. Our drums were at first only hollow pieces of wood, our cymbals, triangle, and gong may have had double duties,—musical and culinary,—and our harp and piano were anticipated by single strings stretched to yield a sonorous tone regardless of pitch. ”

“ The object of every one is to make as much noise as possible, and every kind of instrument for this purpose is sold at the booths. There are drums beating, tamburelli thumping and jingling, pipes squeaking, watchmen's-rattles clacking, penny-trumpets and tin horns shrilling, and the sharpest whistles shrieking everywhere. ”

“ The rollers are made of light wood and the bearings and pins which are made of metal, WILL NEVER WEAR OUT. This instrument is the Perfection of Musical ingenuity and PLAYS MARCHES, WALTZES, POLKAS, JIGS, Reels, Sacred music, selections from Operas, Popular Songs, etc., and is peculiarly arranged for playing DANCE MUSIC in perfect time. If you have purchased any other style of an Automatic Musical Instrument and have found it a disappointment and a nuisance YOU SHOULD SEND FOR ONE of the above described instruments. ”

“ So his friends assemble in haste, form a circle on the village green or plaza, strike up the wildest, most furiously rapid and exciting music possible, on any instrument that may be at hand, preferably the mandolin and tambourine, as the most rhythmic and inspiring, and take turns dancing with him, until each is exhausted and gives place to the next, and until the victim recovers or dies of fatigue. The faster the tempo, the more intoxicating the music, the better the purpose will be served, and the greater the hope of a successful cure. ”

“ The effect of those tremendous trumpet calls from the four corners of the orchestra is an overwhelming one, of crushing power and majesty, much of which is due to the rhythm.
To sum up. We may regard rhythm as the intellectual side of music, melody as its sensuous side. The pipe is the one instrument that seems to affect animals—hooded cobras, lizards, fish, etc. ”

“ It may be well to draw attention to the fact that hand-stopping was not possible so long as the tube of horn was folded in a circle wide enough to be worn round the body. The reduction of the diameter of the orchestral horn in order to allow the performer to hold the instrument in front of him, thus bringing the bell in front of the right arm in a convenient position for hand-stopping, must have preceded the discovery of hand-stopping. ”

“ The string then presses intermittently on the bridge, and this again turns, so to speak, round one foot as round a pivot, and presses intermittently on the elastic wooden belly. The belly takes up these vibrations, and the air in the interior is thrown into sympathetic vibration by resonance. The sound escapes by the ƒ-holes in the belly. The extraordinary thing about the violin is that the shape of the box permits it to take up vibrations lying between all the range of musical tones. The air-cavity does not merely resonate to one note, but to hundreds of different rates of vibration. ”

“ STOPPING is the term used for the action of the fingers of the left hand in playing instruments with strings stretched over a fingerboard, in order to produce the intermediate sounds lying between the notes sounded by the 'open' strings. When a higher note than the fundamental sound of the string is required, the vibrating part of the string must be shortened by stopping the vibration at a certain point between nut and bridge, i.e. by using one of the fingers of the left hand as an artificial nut or stopping-point. ”

“ With the musical sound given out by these vibrating strings must inevitably be mixed the dull and unmusical sound of the blow that set them vibrating. The trained ear will detect not only the thud of the hammer against the string, but that of the finger against the key, and that of the key itself upon its base. The study of touch and tone upon the piano is the study of the combination and the control of these two elements of sound, the one musical, the other unmusical. ”

“ The wind instruments comprise a whole battery of flutes, long and short trumpets, while cymbals, drums, and other objects of percussion are numerous. Ambassadors and other high officers at home, and when on duty to foreign countries, are accompanied by a band of musicians. Laborers on government works are summoned to begin and end work by music, but the full effect of a musical salvo is attained at the opening and closing of the city gates. ”

“ They first planted these sticks in the ground, then danced round the scaffolds, and finally took up the sticks again in their arms. Meanwhile old men beat drums and shook rattles as a musical accompaniment to the performance of the old women. ”

“ No sooner did the music cease, than the snake darted forward with such fury that it required great agility on the part of the man to avoid him, and immediately made off as fast as he could go. The sound of the pipe, however, invariably made him stop, and obliged him to remain in an upright position as long as the man continued to play. ”

“ A guitar will give vibrations of its tones to the concussions of the air, caused by the conversation of persons present; and a stranger to the fact might possibly interpret these vibrations as something quite mysterious, and suppose the instrument, as it stood alone, to be touched by some spirit hand. When people's minds, or their imaginations, get wrought up to a certain pitch, the most trifling things are looked upon as wonderful phenomena. Every thing is new, and strange, and appalling. ”

“ This is an invariable rule for two syllables. It is NOT advisable to mind stops in the ordinary way. A slight stress on words, as in reading, suffices to give point. * = breath-sign; and although minding of stops is often advocated, on no account must one be noticed after the accented note, or the "two-beat rhythm" will be destroyed.
Hymns. In hymn-singing a different view of phrasing comes to light. So many hymns without any stops at the ends of lines almost compel a stop, by reason of the cadence in the music, but in these cases no stop must be made. ”

“ Manufacturers have done much toward eliminating the thump of the hammers against the strings, and familiarity with the tone of the instrument has closed our ears against it to a great extent as something intrusive, but the blow which excites the string to vibration, and thus generates sound, is yet a vital factor in determining the character of pianoforte music. ”

“ At the end of this useful tube may also be fixed a reed trumpet or whistle, and by blowing through the tube sound can be evolved, and when the instrument is worked about in different directions a large but discordant band of spiritual musicians appear, to the materially and physically benighted listeners, to be in the room. To play the guitar, while floating in the air, seems a more difficult problem, but the reader will easily see how this is achieved. ”

“ Strictly speaking, the term 'double-stopping' ought only to be applied to the simultaneous sounding of two 'stopped' notes; it is, however, indiscriminately used for any double sounds, whether produced with or without the aid of the open strings. The playing of double stops is one of the most difficult parts of the technique of the violin. ”

“ As the rhythm advanced to and included the first violins the least musical soul in the house was looking expectantly toward the silent side of the orchestra, wondering what would happen when the spark of melody should leap across the gap and set a blaze on the other side. ”

“ From far away, as from another world, he hears the murmur of a large body of people, the rolling of the drum, the throbbing of the double-bass, the wail of the fiddles, sometimes the thud of the wooden-shoe dancer, and sometimes a sudden silence as the music dims away to rubbish for the big stunt of the trapeze performer. ”

“ The dancing-girls are accompanied by men with musical instruments who form the orchestra, and among the instruments is the inevitable tom-tom or drum, which is played by being struck with the fingers or the hand, and not with drumsticks. ”

“ Soon, a hollow drumming, rattling, and grating, is heard, varied by the occasional twang of an exceedingly light guitar making vain efforts to promote harmony. A shuffling of slippered feet, and voices singing, signify that a dance is pending. Everybody—meaning myself and my neighbours—moves towards the scene. Everybody passes up the perilous steps, and endeavours to squeeze into the spare apartment. ”

“ Everybody is in evening dress; the ladies very gay, and the party very quiet—a still, drawing-room sort of air presides over the whole. Many of the ladies are young—quite girls; and a good many of the gentlemen are solemn old foggies, who appear strongly inclined to go to sleep, and, in fact, sometimes do. Meantime, the music goes on. A long, long sonata or concerto—piano and violin, or piano, violin, and violoncello—is listened to in profound silence, with a low murmur of applause at the end of each movement. ”

“ It is the music which accelerates or moderates the movement, which heightens with [Pg 31] an accent more acute the discourse of the actor, or which, surging up behind him, brings to his ears clamor and rumor. There are guitars, bits of wood that are beaten like tympans, that are clashed like castanets; a sort of monochord violin which, like a fountain in a solitary court, by the thread of its plaintive melody, carries the development of the elegy; and finally, in the heroic movements, the trumpet. ”

“ During the dance this drum rhythm speeds up to a felt time, and at moments of great stress, as when an avenging ghost swims on with a spear, a third drum, played with sticks, comes in with rapid regular beats, louder and softer. Sometimes when the beats are not so followable, but anyway quicker in succession, I seem to make out that they must be involving themselves in some business of syncopation, or the catching up and outstripping of a slow beat by a quicker one. ”

“ The pianist can acquire but relatively little control over the musical sounds of his instrument. He can make them soft and loud, but he cannot, as the violinist can, make a single tone grow from soft to loud and die away to soft again. The violinist or the singer both makes and controls tone, the one by his bow, the other by his breath; the pianist, in comparison with them, but makes tone. Having caused a string to vibrate by striking it through a key, he cannot even sustain these vibrations. They begin at once to weaken; the sound at once grows fainter. ”

“ A revolver shot from above cut short his words. Came then the sound of a struggle, oaths, the shuffling tread of feet—but in the dance hall the piano still rattled on, the mandolin twanged, voices sang and applauded, and beer mugs thumped time. ”

“ The use of stopped notes and mutes alters the character of brass tone. Stopped notes can only be employed on trumpets, cornets and horns; the shape of trombones and tubas prevents the hand from being inserted into the bell. Though mutes are applied indiscriminately to all brass instruments in the orchestra, tubas rarely possess them. Stopped and muted notes are similar in quality. On the trumpet, muting a note produces a better tone than stopping it. ”

“ The music pounds with the rhythm of engines, whirls and spirals like screws and fly-wheels, grinds and shrieks like laboring metal. The orchestra is transmuted to steel. Each movement of the ballet correlates the rhythms of machinery with the human rhythms which they prolong and repeat. ”