beating reeds. Biot insists on the importance of the regulating
wires (Fr. rasettes; Ger. Krücken) for determining the vibrating
length of the reed tongue and maintaining it invariable. These
are clearly shown in his diagram (see article Free Reed Vibrator,
fig. 1); they do not essentially differ from those used with the
beating-reed stops in his organ (fig. 76, pl. II.), or indeed from those
figured by Praetorius.
Isolated specimens of the cheng must have found their way to Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, for Mersenne[1] depicts part of one showing the free reed. It would seem that still earlier in the 17th century there was an organ in a monastery in Hesse with free reeds for the Posaune stop, for Praetorius gives a description of the “extraordinary” reed (p. 169); there is no record of the inventor in this case.
During the first half of the 19th century various tentative efforts in France and Germany, and subsequently in England, were made to produce new keyboard instruments with free reeds, the most notable of these being the physharmonica[2] of Anton Häckel, invented in Vienna in 1818, which, improved and enlarged, has retained its hold on the German people. The modern physharmonica is a harmonium without stops or percussion action; it does not therefore speak readily or clearly. It has a range of five to six octaves. Other instruments of similar type are the French melophone and the English seraphine, a keyboard harmonica with bellows but no channels for the tongues, for which a patent was granted to Myers and Storer in 1839; the aeoline or aelodicon[3] of Eschenbach; the melodicon[4] of Dietz; the melodica[5] of Rieffelson; the apollonicon;[6] the new cheng[7] of Reichstein; the terpodion[8] of Buschmann, &c. None of these has survived to the present day.
The inventor of the harmonium was indubitably Alexandre Debain, who took out a patent for it in Paris in 1840. He produced varied timbre registers by modifying reed channels, and brought these registers on to one keyboard. Unfortunately he patented too much, for he secured even the name harmonium, obliging contemporary and future experimenters to shelter their improvements under other names, and the venerable name of organ becoming impressed into connexion with an inferior instrument, we have now to distinguish between reed and pipe organs. The compromise of reed organ for the harmonium class of instruments must therefore be accepted. Debain’s harmonium was at first quite mechanical; it gained expression by the expression-stop already described. The Alexandres, well-known French makers, by the ingenuity of one of their workmen, P. A. Martin, added the percussion and the prolongement. The melody attachment was the invention of an English engineer; the introduction of the double touch, now used in the harmoniums of Mustel, Bauer and others—also in American organs—was due to Tamplin, an English professor.
The principle of the American organ originated with the Alexandres, whose earliest experiments are said to have been made with the view of constructing an instrument to exhaust air. The realization of the idea proving to be more in consonance with the genius of the American people, to whom what we may call the devotional tone of the instrument appealed, the introduction of it by Messrs Mason and Hamlin in 1861 was followed by remarkable success. They made it generally known in Europe by exhibiting it at Paris in 1867, and from that time instruments have been exported in large numbers by different makers. (A. J. H.; K. S.)
- ↑ Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636), livre v., prop. xxxv.
- ↑ Wien. musik. Ztg. Bd. v. Nos. 39 and 87.
- ↑ Allg. musik. Ztg. Bd. xxii. p. 505, and Bd. xxxv. p. 354.
- ↑ Id. Bd. viii. pp. 526 and 715.
- ↑ Id. Bd. xi. p. 625.
- ↑ Allg. musik. Ztg. Bd. ii. p. 767, and Wien. musik. Ztg. Bd. i. No. 501.
- ↑ Id. Bd. xxxi. p. 489.
- ↑ Id. Bd. xxxiv. pp. 856 and 858; and Cäcilia, Bd. xiv. p. 259.
