Woodwind instrument

“ Another well-known characteristic of the violin is that a new instrument, or one that has been long in disuse, is found to be "sleepy," that is, it fails to speak readily in response to the bow, a defect which gradually disappears with use. Experiments made to test the effect of prolonged transverse vibrations upon strips of suitable wood have shown that such treatment increases the flexibility of the wood, which returns to its normal degree of rigidity after a period of rest. ”

“ Fashion a piece of wood so that it fits easily into the hole at the end of the violin in which, later, the end pin is inserted. It must have a rough sort of handle, because by it you will hold the instrument when you have occasion otherwise than by the neck; for you must on no account touch the wood before you varnish, nor afterwards, with your hands, nor must you allow others to do so, when, in your pardonable pride of heart, you show your creation to your friends. ”

“ Indeed, very few of the greatest singers could ever produce such velvety, sweet, poignant, vibrant and insinuating notes as we hear from a luscious Stradivari, a sweet Amati, or a rich Maggini under the bow of a master-violinist.
Everything about a violin appeals to us. There is something so mysterious and ingratiating about the little instrument, neat and trig and curved at the waist, with lines as clean as those of a high-bred race-horse and nerves as tense with excitement, ready to be set quivering at the touch of the bow. ”

“ Carrying Power.—Here we have that phase of tone which is most elusive. A violin seemingly loud, full and even brilliant, to the player, may, at a little distance, be thin and wailing. Such a violin is lacking in carrying power, and when played with a small orchestra, is rarely heard in the lower register by any save the player. The voice of a true-toned violin is rarely loud to the player, and, in the hands of many, such an instrument never has a chance to display its ability to lead the accompanying instruments. ”

“ After this he must study the characteristics of good wood, careful finish, and fine varnish. A knowledge of these is best acquired by examining the instruments of the great masters. To go fully into these also is not necessary here, having already commented on them under their respective heads. One remark is, however, necessary here. Many people foolishly imagine that any violin may be made to produce as sweet sounds in the hands of a skilful player as a high class instrument. ”

“ That no improvement has been made during the last two centuries in instruments of the violin class is a well-known fact. As to lutes and cithers the collection at South Kensington contains specimens so rich and mellow in tone as to cause musicians to regret that these instruments have entirely fallen into oblivion.
As regards beauty of appearance our earlier instruments were certainly superior to the modern. Indeed, we have now scarcely a musical instrument which can be called beautiful. ”

“ The rod is clasped by India-rubber bands, which entirely close the tin tube. The lower end of the rod rests upon the sound-board of the piano, its upper end being exposed before you. An artist is at this moment engaged at the instrument, but you hear no sound.116 When, however, a violin is placed upon the end of the rod, the instrument becomes instantly musical, not, however, with the vibrations of its own strings, but with those of the piano. When the violin is removed, the sound ceases; putting in its place a guitar, the music revives. ”

“ Having tested the violin with it in the manner before referred to, and there being no bad reports from the body of the instrument, the hurt, seat of injury, or lesion, may be in the neck, fingerboard, or even the scroll, any part being liable to give out its undesirable note, or interfere with the proper emission of musical tone from the strings. There is no portion of the violin that will not under certain provocations join too willingly in the production of unwelcome sounds if the exciting conditions are present—those of checked vibration, or vibration that should be checked. ”

“ So far as the elementary principles which govern its action are concerned, the violin follows familiar laws (see Sound) . The different notes of the scale are produced by vibrating strings differing in weight and tension, and varying in length under the hand of the player. The vibrations of the .strings are conveyed through the bridge to the body of the instrument, which fulfils the common function of a resonator in reinforcing the notes initiated by the strings. So far first principles carry us at once. ”

“ To string a violin correctly is a very difficult undertaking, and requires considerable patience. The first consideration should be the constitution of the Violin: the strings that please one instrument torture another. Neither Cremonese Violins nor old instruments in general require to be heavily strung: the mellowness of the wood and their delicate construction require the stringing to be such as will assist in bringing out that richness of tone which belongs to first-rate instruments. If the bridge and sound-board be heavily weighted with thick strings, vibration will surely be checked. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All, or several wind instruments in combination will absorb one department of added strings:
One department of strings added to the wood-wind in unison produces a sweet coherent quality, the wood-wind timbre still predominating; but the addition of one wind instrument to all or part of the strings in unison, only thickens the resonance of the latter, the wood-wind timbre being lost in the process:
Muted strings do not combine so well with wood-wind, as the two tone qualities remain distinct and separate. ”

“ In my opinion, the much praised American pine is too soft and resinous, and neither do I consider the American maple qualified for the construction of violins. The wood used by myself is obtained from Schoenbach, near Eger, in Bohemia, where large supplies for the needs of instrument [Pg 11] makers are always on hand to be selected from. The age of the wood I consider of only very small importance; if it has been laying by for five years, ready cut or split, as the case may be, for the construction of a violin, it will then be sufficiently dry and will need no further preparation. ”

“ It will be found, if a Violin be taken to pieces, that it is constructed of no less than fifty-eight separate parts, an astonishing number of factors for so small and simple-looking an instrument. The back is made of maple or sycamore, in one or two parts; the belly of the finest quality of Swiss pine, and from a piece usually divided; the sides, like the back, of maple, in six pieces, bent to the required form by means of a heated iron; the linings, which are used to secure the back and belly to the sides, are twelve in number, sometimes made of lime-tree, but also of pine. ”

“ A good old violin should be kept in a wooden case, lined with cloth or flannel, as the too great heat in summer, as well as the sudden transitions from cold to warmth in winter, are injurious. Too great a heat renders the wood brittle, which gives the instrument a harshness of tone, besides drying and parching the strings. In winter the too great warmth of a room produces the same effects.... Much greater damage is done to the instrument in summer by the flies when it is left out of its case. ”

“ Their beauty of tone is not so easily reached as in the violins of many other makers. Their vibrations increase in warmth the more the player, discovering their richness and variety, seeks from the instrument a sympathetic echo of his own emotions: so much so that these violins seem to be living beings and become, as it were, the player’s familiars—as if Stradivari had breathed a soul into them in a manner achieved by no other master. ”

“ Another invention has been produced recently by Herr Christopher Scheinert in Berlin. It consists of a vibrating hammer or tongue for stringed instruments. This is a little instrument placed under the bridge of the violin, so that, (it being furnished with a slender hammer) , elastic metal tongues vibrate freely between the upper table and the strings. The vibrating hammer is set in motion through the strings by the bow, through which simultaneous movement the power of the instrument is increased, and the tone colour elicited. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It possesses no less than four registers, perfectly defined; the chalumeau, which contains the deepest notes and recalls the old rustic instrument of that name; the medium, warm and expressive; the high, brilliant and energetic; and the very high, biting and strident. All these registers, thanks to the progress of manufacture, are able to melt into one another in the happiest manner possible and furnish a perfectly homogeneous scale. Almost as agile as the flute, as tender as, and more passionate than, the oboe, the clarinet is infinitely more energetic and richer in color. ”

“ One foot is fixed over a short rod, the “sound post,” which runs from belly to back through the interior of the violin. This foot of the bridge is thereby rendered rigid, and it is mainly through the other foot, which is not thus supported, that the vibrations are conveyed to the wood of the instrument, and thence to the air within and without. The sonorous quality of the wood of a violin is mellowed by age. The very act of playing also has a beneficial influence, apparently constraining the molecules Fig. ”

“ They appear to have worked these woods with but few exceptions for their Tenors, Violoncellos, and Double Basses, while they adopted the harder woods for their Violins, all which facts tend to show that these rare old makers did not consider soft wood eligible for the back and sides of the leading instrument ”

“ The tapping or sounding can be done in the way usual with dealers and repairers, that is, by the knuckle joints of the hand rapping round the instrument, but this is sometimes deceptive, the tendons over the bones of the hand interfering and occasionally causing a double sound, and so defeating the efforts at discovery. A more delicate and therefore better means of testing is by the use of a felted hammer of the kind and size acting on the bass string of a grand pianoforte ”

“ Besides one string of thick catgut upon the instrument, there [Pg 71] are in the inside forty-one sympathetic strings of thin steel-wire. A nyckel-harpa, a curious instrument of the Swedish peasantry, which may be briefly described as a combination of a fiddle and a hurdy-gurdy. A crwth, an antiquated Welsh instrument of the fiddle class. The body is cut out of a single block of wood, the belly only being glued to it. Two specimens of the nail-violin, one of which has sympathetic strings of thin brass-wire running over the sound-board. ”

“ This Guitar had ten strings, forming five notes, in pairs of unisons, instead of six single strings, as in the modern guitar, giving six notes. It is the lowest note E that is here wanting. The instrument is 3 feet 1 inch in extreme length; the body being 183⁄4 inches in length, and 10 inches across. The ribs are 33⁄4 inches deep. ”

“ The Woodwind; the reed; the flute; the piccolo; the oboe; the cor anglais; the bassoon; the double-bassoon; the clarinet; the basset-horn; the bass-clarinet.
The Woodwind Family consists of instruments that may be described as wooden tubes, or pipes, through which the performer blows, stopping the holes in these pipes with his fingers in order to get various notes. Some of these are furnished with reeds and some are without. It is easy for us to tell the difference when we look at the Orchestra. The flutes are held horizontally and have no reeds. ”

“ This instrument is of a much more advantageous form than the triangular Grecian harp. It has thirteen strings, but wants the forepiece of the frame opposite to the longest string. The back part is the sounding-board, composed of four thin pieces of wood, joined together in form of a cone, that is, growing wider towards the bottom; so that, as the length of the string increases, the square of the corresponding space in the sounding-board, in which the sound was to undulate, always increases in proportion. ”

“ The ou, of which we give a woodcut, likewise an ancient Chinese instrument of percussion and still in use, is made of wood in the shape of a crouching tiger. It is hollow, and along its back are about twenty small pieces of metal, pointed, and in appearance 43 not unlike the teeth of a saw. The performer strikes them with a sort of plectrum resembling a brush, or with a small stick called tchen. Occasionally the ou is made with pieces of metal shaped like reeds. ”

“ It is an epic instrument, like horns, trumpets and trombones. The voice is like that of heroic love. This beautiful soprano instrument, so ringing, so rich in penetrating accents, when employed in masses, gains, when employed as a solo instrument, in delicacy, evanescent shadowings and mysterious tenderness what it loses in force and powerful brilliancy. Nothing so virginal, so pure as the tint imparted to certain melodies by the tone of a clarinet, played in the medium by a skilful performer. It is the one of all the wind instruments which can best breathe forth, swell, diminish and die away. ”