String instrument

“ About the tenth century a string for a fifth tone was added. The strings were made of silk neatly twisted. The neck of the instrument was provided with frets of string, which were carefully regulated according to the system of seventeen intervals in the compass of an octave before mentioned. Other favourite stringed instruments were the tamboura, a kind of lute with a long neck, and the quanūn, a kind of dulcimer strung with lamb’s gut strings (generally three in unison for each tone) and played upon with two little plectra which the performer had fastened to his fingers. ”

“ Raise the entire arm for a transfer from the E string to the G, the wrist leading slightly. Describe a curve, not an angular movement. Do not turn the violin far over to the E side. Hold it lightly with the chin and let the body of the instrument be nearly flat, that is, make the angle as small as possible. If the G string is high in the air, the E will be correspondingly low, the arm close, and all legato work or string-transfers correspondingly difficult. The rule of reading ahead and placing fingers on the strings at once always holds good. ”

“ To ensure equality of tone it is very important that the strings should be correctly guaged with regard to their relative thicknesses. If all the strings are too thick, the instrument will speak with difficulty in delicate passages, demanding a heavier pressure of the bow; if too thin, loss of power will be the result, though with a corresponding gain in sweetness and clearness, and if one string be much out of proportion to the others, the first finger when placed properly on that string and the adjacent one will not yield a perfect fifth, besides the inequality in power. ”

“ If, for instance, the tail-piece is so constructed that the portion of the A-string behind the bridge gives F, the other strings must also be correspondingly slackened, for the tension of a string reaches not only from the bridge to the nut as many suppose, but from the tail-piece to the peg. In consequence of this, the pressure of the strings on the instrument can be increased or lessened by means of a longer or shorter tail-piece, whereby the tone is correspondingly modified. ”

“ Gradually the number of its strings was increased; and, likewise the strength of the frame for resisting the tension of the strings. The front-bar of our harp is straight, or a front-pillar. Until the seventeenth century only the diatonic series of intervals was properly obtainable on the instrument. The performer had, however, a method of producing occasionally a semitone by pressing the finger against the string towards the end, much in the same manner in which the Burmese produce chromatic intervals on the soung. ”

“ The special fact appertaining to keyboard instruments is the mechanical action interposed between the player and the instrument itself. The strings, owing to the slender surface they present to the air, are, however powerfully excited, scarcely audible. To make them sufficiently audible, their pulsations have to be communicated to a wider elastic surface, the sound-board, which, by accumulated energy and broader contact with the air, re-enforces the strings' feeble sound. The properties of a string set in periodic vibration are the best known of the phenomena appertaining to acoustics. ”

“ The string may be a third or a fourth below its normal pitch when the violinist begins to tune his instrument, but by turning the peg and thus stretching the string tighter and tighter, the tone is raised by small degrees until the string gives forth the pitch that it is supposed to sound. But this same string may now be made to play higher and higher pitches by pressing it against the fingerboard, thus shortening the vibrating portion more and more. The tuning process may be said to compare roughly with the mechanism of the chest register of the human voice ”

“ The heavier instruments require more motion at the shoulder. String instruments are less popular than the piano because two fundamental techniques must be learned simultaneously; correct fingering and correct bowing. The vibration of the struck piano strings is relatively uniform with variable pressures [II.] , but the quality of the violin sound as produced by the beginner can be discouragingly unpleasant.
Plectrum Instruments. The plectrum instruments afford excellent exercise of the wrist of the right hand and the fingers of the left. ”

“ For wind instruments we have a prototype in the human voice, and one may reasonably suppose that the trumpet class were evolved by slow process from the simple action of placing the hands on either side of the mouth to augment a shout. The harp may have been suggested by the twanging of a bow-string as an arrow left the archer's hand, and a seventeenth century play writer fancifully attributed the invention of string instruments to the finding of a "dead horse head." ”

“ Before you, Fig. 31 (next page) , is an instrument employed to stretch strings, and to render their vibrations audible. From the pin p, to which one end of it is firmly attached, a string passes across the two bridges B and B′, being afterward carried over the wheel H, which moves with great freedom. The string is finally stretched by a weight W, of 28 lbs., attached to its extremity. The bridges B and B′, which constitute the real ends of the string, are fastened on to the long121 wooden box M N. The whole instrument is called a monochord, or sonometer. ”

“ In length it is about 37 inches, and has a resonance membrane of parchment stretched upon a nearly square wooden body that is 71⁄2 inches high, 61⁄2 wide, and 3 deep. There is a knob on the under side for a string holder, and the upper and under sides of it are covered with a selected part of a cat's skin, on which the bridge also rests. By the little black spots on this skin the value of the instrument is determined. Four give the highest value; two mark ordinary instruments; while those without spots are cheap. ”

“ When the finger pressed upon a key the tangent struck one of the strings, set it in vibration, and at the same time, by contact, created a node which lasted as long as the key was kept down and the tangent remained pressed against the string. To increase the utility of the instrument by adding more strings and more keys was the next obvious step, and gradually the monochord ceased to be a mere technical apparatus for the determining of pitch and became an instrument on which professionals and amateurs could play with pleasure to themselves and others. ”

“ Flutes are usually made from the barrels of long Arab guns, or occasionally from reeds, and string instruments, like primitive guitars, are manufactured from a bowl covered with skin, a wooden frame, and string made from wire or gut which can be tightened or slackened. ”

“ The nut must then be filed and sandpapered nicely down to the cuts, so as to leave only a shallow passage, as one too deep retards free action of the string and somewhat of vibration, besides making the fingering less satisfactory. The ends or sides must be made beautifully even with the neck and rounded and papered off so that not an atom of friction worries the player, who has often worry enough in all conscience in the work of correct manipulation before him, without the hindrance of bad work on his instrument. ”

“ Some neighbouring tribes, however, possess a musical instrument very similar in appearance to the bow, to which they attach a gourd, hollowed and open at the top, which serves as a sound-board. Again, other African tribes have a similar instrument, superior in construction only inasmuch as it contains more than one string, and is provided with a sound-board consisting of a suitable piece of sonorous wood. In short, the more improved we find these contrivances the closer they approach our harp. ”

“ Owing to the dissimilarity between the quality of string and brass tone, the combination of these two groups in unison can never yield such a perfect blend as that produced by the union of strings and wood-wind. When a brass and a stringed instrument progress in unison, each can be heard separately, but the instruments in each group which can be combined with the greatest amount of success are those whose respective registers correspond the most nearly ”

“ The strings are twanged with the fingers or with a piece of wood, horn, metal, or any other suitable substance serving as a plectrum; or are made to vibrate by being beaten with a hammer, as our dulcimer. Stringed instruments provided with a finger-board on which different tones are producible on one string by the performer shortening it more or less—​as on the guitar and violin—​are met with almost exclusively among nations in a somewhat advanced stage of musical progress. Such as are played with a bow are the least common ”

“ Instruments of percussion of definite sonorousness are chiefly met with in China, Japan, Burmah, Siam, and Java. They not infrequently contain a series of tones produced by slabs of wood or metal, which are beaten with a sort of hammer, as our harmonicon is played.
Stringed instruments without a finger board, or any similar contrivance which enables the performer to produce a number of different tones on one string, are generally found among nations whose musical accomplishments have emerged from the earliest state of infancy. ”

“ Many volumes have been written concerning the varying excellence of instruments of the string family, but it does not seem to have been recognized that both woodwind and brass instruments vary greatly in quality of tone, accuracy of intonation, ease of blowing, and perfection of mechanism—all of which depend upon the skill of the makers. ”

“ In the modern pedal harp with double action the strings can be shortened sufficiently to raise the pitch a semitone or a tone by means of an ingenious system of levers set in motion by the pedals, which cause disks, each furnished with two studs, to turn and grasp the string, thus shortening the vibrating length. ”

“ Stringed instruments possess more ways of producing sound than any other orchestral group. They can pass, better than other instruments from one shade of expression to another, the varieties being of an infinite number. Species of bowing such as legato, detached, staccato, spiccato, portamento, martellato, light staccato, saltando, attack at the nut and at the point, and (down bow and up bow) , in every degree of tone, fortissimo, pianissimo, crescendo, diminuendo, sforzando, morendo—all this belongs to the natural realm of the string quartet. ”

“ Earliest among stringed instruments are the various forms of Harp or Lyre, in which each string gives a single sound, and is put in motion by being plucked by the finger or struck by a rod or flat strip of wood, ivory, etc., called a plectrum. In the next class are included those instruments that are furnished with a neck or fingerboard, with or without frets. In this class the strings are comparatively few in number, as many sounds may be obtained from [Pg 151] each string by altering its length by the pressure of the fingers on the neck. ”

“ Instruments of concussion and percussion, like drums and cymbals, and also wind instruments of shell or horn, and rude forms of bagpipes, are inventions of most savage races; but the production of even the most elementary form of stringed instrument is a distinct advance, showing an understanding, however faint, of the use of vibration in developing and strengthening an original note. ”

“ The instruments used are chiefly of the percussion type and are powerful sound producers. Amongst them are drums, cymbals, tom-toms, gongs and bamboo dulcimers. Stringed instruments are represented by a few squeaky one-stringed fiddles and an instrument that resembles a zither. A terrible wind instrument is sometimes employed when it is desirable to produce a sound that can be calculated to rival that of the bagpipes when played by a zealous but unmusical amateur. ”

“ On stringed instruments that have fingerboards, like the lute or guitar, the small pieces of wood or other material fixed transversely on the fingerboard at regular intervals are called frets. The object they serve is to mark off the length of string required to produce a given note. Pressure upon a string immediately above a fret makes at the point of contact of string and fret a temporary 'nut,' and the string, set in motion as far as the bridge on the soundboard by plucking with plectrum or finger, or bowing, gives a higher note in proportion to the shortening of the string. ”

“ Of the wind instruments it has often been said that the slide trombone excels all others in accuracy of intonation, and in this respect is unique in being the equal of the stringed instruments. This statement must not be taken too literally. An artist possessing a fine instrument—be it woodwind or brass with valves—can play perfectly in tune by delicate regulation of lip tension and manner of blowing. Thus all good instruments are susceptible of being played in tune if the player is skilled and his ear is perfect. ”

“ It had, as this name indicates, ten strings, which were of wire, to be tuned in five pairs of unisons, and played with a plectrum.
The carving is surpassingly lovely, and bears comparison with contemporary Italian work. The jewelled centre of the rose in the sound-hole is so beautiful that an enlarged drawing of it has been made to show it to advantage. The shell at the back is a characteristic feature deserving attention.
The extreme length of this instrument is 2 feet 11 inches. The length of the body is 1 foot 4 inches. ”