String (music)

“ The string tone, in spite of stops named Violin-Diapason, Gamba-Violoncello, and others, has no equivalent in the organ. The wind is susceptible of closer imitation, but the attempt to produce with two hands and feet the independent life and movement of so many instruments is obviously absurd. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The String Quartet holds a position of peculiar significance in the art of music, and a composer, by selecting this form for the exercise of his powers, exposes them to the most unfailing test to which his calibre as a musician can possibly be submitted. He [Pg 123] must possess not only fertility in the production of purely musical concentrated ideas, and ideas capable of development; the power to develop them, which means many things, and the capacity for shaping them into clear structure; but he must be able to express them with the most bare and simple musical means, with four strings. ”

“ In string quartets, orchestral music, etc., a very fine effect is possible if all the players execute it in a proper manner. The bow should be drawn quite close to the bridge, with only medium pressure applied, the stroke should be performed more rapidly than ordinary bowing. This bowing executed by a number of strings gives a very weird effect, the only objection to its use being that if great skill is not used, the string, instead of vibrating as a whole, will vibrate in segments, thus giving out one or other of the natural harmonics. ”

“ The strings do not conform to their primary limit; some wise philosopher increased their number to seven.
The instrument which I possess has seven strings, and I have had it many years, as also had its former possessor; and the nacre studs are arranged, not in the formal relation here depicted, but at distances corresponding to the half of the string, to two thirds, to three fourths, to four fifths, and so on. Any division of the string can, however, be made at the pleasure of the performer, these studs serving only as guides ”

“ In all stringed instruments one of the strings is tuned to A; in the violin it is the second string, in the viola and violoncello the first, and in the contrabasso generally the third. A is also the key in which one of the clarinets in the orchestra is set. ”

“ 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 highest string of the violin (viola and cello also) is often called the chanterelle because it is most often used for playing the melody. The violin ordinarily produces but one tone at a time, but by stopping two strings simultaneously and so drawing the bow as to set both in vibration, two tones may be produced at the same time, while three and four tones can be sounded almost simultaneously. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The open string is ordinarily tuned to CC: and when sounded with the bow, it yields a powerful note, of harsh and nasal character, something like an ft. wooden organ reed-pipe. Played by stopping in the ordinary way, the marine trumpet produces tones far less melodious than the bray of an ass. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Twanging the strings by the fingers is the most primitive method, probably suggested by the feeble note given out by the tense string of the hunters' bow, which was the prototype of the harp. In this ancient instrument, popular in all ages and lands, the strings are stretched à vide between two supports of a frame, the lower of which acts as a soundboard from which the strings rise perpendicularly. The scale of all harp-like instruments is produced by means of one string for each note, difference in pitch being obtained by varying the length of the strings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has been shown that a piano string when struck by a hammer, or a violin string when bowed, or a mandolin string when plucked, vibrates not only as a whole, but also in segments, and as a result gives forth not a simple tone, as we are accustomed to think, but a very complex tone consisting of the fundamental and one or more overtones. ”

“ In examining an orchestral score, it will be noted at once that the string parts are always together at the bottom of the page, while the wood-wind material is at the top. Since the strings furnish the most important parts of the harmonic structure for so much of the time, our amateur will at first play only the string parts, with the possible addition of the flute, oboe, and certain other non-transposed voices a little later on. But as he gains facility he will gradually be able to take in all the parts and to include at least a sort of summary of them all in his playing. ”

“ Something, it is true, depends upon the string and upon the bowing, but we are here supposing the same string and the same player, our object being to show how the resonator, which, in this case, is the body of the violin, intensifies the tone of the string, and affects its quality. ”

“ Where Stringed Instruments Came From We have seen the stringed instrument developed from the bow when primitive man winged his arrow in the hunt, and heard its twang. Later desiring fuller tone, the sounding board grew, when early peoples sank bow-like instruments and reeds into a gourd which increased and reflected the sound as the metal reflector behind a light intensifies it.
308Strings to produce sound, must be rubbed, like the bow drawn across violin strings, plucked as the mandolin or the harp is plucked, or struck with a hammer as was the dulcimer. ”

“ You will find that the string tuned to the pitch of your voice will start vibrating while all the others remain quiet. You can even go farther and try the experiment of uttering several different pitches, if you want to, and the corresponding strings will give back your notes, each one singling out its own particular vibration from the air. Now the results reached in these experiments with the piano strings meant a great deal more to Alexander Graham Bell than they would have meant to you or to me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Performance scores show that these natural singers defy scales, but produce beautiful effects through their free and soaring pitch inflection. Stringed instruments have been hampered by accompaniment and by tradition and theory. We can anticipate significant developments outside of our diatonic scale which has come to be a sort of strait-jacket, at least theoretically. It has been shown, for example, that a quarter-tone instrument is not of much use unless music is written not only for these intervals but 68in modes, themes, and atmosphere adapted to such purpose. ”

“ It will be understood that these systems apply only to the six principal Strings of the Lute, which, alone, were governed by the Frets. The longer Strings, sympathetically tuned in pairs, by means of a separate neck, were entirely ignored, in nearly all systems of Tablature, and used only after the manner of a Drone, when they happened to coincide with the Tonic of the Key in which the Music was written. ”

“ Nobility, warmth, and equality of tone from one end of the scale to the other are qualities common to all stringed instruments, and render them essentially superior to instruments of other groups. Further, each string has a distinctive character of its own, difficult to define in words. ”

“ Some of the strings are naturally higher than others; the highest is a smaller, finer string than the lowest. When the violinist plays, he shortens the strings by holding them down with his fingers, and the shorter he makes them the higher the note. ”

“ A Gentleman of my Acquaintance, when he sounded a particular Tone on the Bass-Viol, very plainly heard the Noise of the Glass of the Clock in his Chamber, which Glass never moved, upon his sounding any other Tone.... It is a general Remark, that an Unison-String will receive the Motion, and so tremble, when another Unison is made to sound; and yet all other Strings of the same Instrument, that are not Unisons, shall remain silent and unmoved.
Musick does not only exert its Force on the Passions and Affections, and musical Instruments, but on the Parts of the human Body also. ”

“ Every violinist knows how much the tone is affected by the point at which the bow is placed across the string, and the reason is that the point where the bow touches the string must always be a ventral point, or anti-node, and it therefore determines the harmonics which shall occur. ”

“ Strings hale and strings broken, strings slack or tight, there are all kinds of them; the best we can do's to be taut and trembling for the gladness of God who loves fine music, and set the stars themselves to singing from the very day He put them birling in the void. ”

“ We cannot conjecture when it was discovered that more tones than one could be got from a single string by taking advantage of the expedient of a long neck or finger-board, or from a single pipe by boring lateral holes in it, and closing those holes to produce different notes with the fingers. ”

“ When three strings are used, the third does not add half as much again, a fourth string adds still less in proportion, and, judging from the quality of the tone produced, seems to require an entirely new design.
In the final adjustments of the piano-forte by men of extremely keen sensibilities, certain defects, limitations, and peculiarities of the human ear, have been discovered that are noteworthy. ”

“ Every tone which proceeds from a stringed instrument, as a violin, a harp, a piano-forte, or from a pipe, as a flute, or an organ, or from a bell, gives out at the same time other sounds which are not the same, but yet unite so as to form one whole in their effect. In a large bell this can easily be perceived when it is tolled slowly ; the note sounds, and immediately after we hear others, more particularly the twelfth, fifteenth, and seventeenth. A delicate ear will perceive the same in a piano-forte ”

“ If a violinist wants to produce a note of higher pitch, he presses his finger on the string, thereby shortening it, and by so doing increases the rapidity of vibration, and raises the pitch of the note. ”

“ In these different respects, or from their consideration, soul and body may not unaptly be compared with two stringed instruments tuned by the same hand, and placed alongside of one another. When a string of one of them is touched and a certain tone goes forth, the corresponding string of the other will sound of itself and give the same tone, only somewhat weaker. ”

“ Everybody will have observed that in the violin the note yielded by each open string is higher as the tension becomes greater by turning the peg to tighten it; that the same string will, without any change in its tension, yield higher notes as shorter lengths of it are employed. ”

“ Those placed at the ventral segments are thrown off, while those placed at the nodes retain their places.
The notes corresponding to the division of a string into its aliquot parts are called the harmonics of the string.
When a string vibrates as a whole, it usually divides at the same time into its aliquot parts. Smaller vibrations are superposed upon the larger; the tones corre164sponding to those smaller vibrations, and which we have agreed to call overtones, mingling at the same time with the fundamental tone of the string. ”