Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/110

98 MUSIC [HISTORY. tion. phraseology, and, in those for the pianoforte, the treatment of the instrument are peculiar to the author in sweetness and elegance ; the eternal riddle of the beautiful is pro pounded in every cadence, and still defies analysis, still remains unsolved. As living writers in this department, Aguilar, Banister, J. F. Barnett, Cowen, Davenport, Wal ter Macfarren, Hubert Parry, Prout, Stanford, Stephens, and Sullivan must be named. Instru- To have spoken of orchestral music compels notice of menta- instrumentation as an element of the art that has high significance. It is analogous to colouring with the painter, being extra to the composition or plan of his work, but essential in vivifying and varying its effect. Its root is the appropriation of passages to the capabilities of instru ments for which they are designed, and this is planted in the earliest as much as the latest essays in composition. Its trunk and branches are the combinations of voices and instruments of the same or different qualities of tone, so as to give greatest prominence to the chiefest parts in a musical texture, so as to produce effects of sound which cannot be yielded by the means separately used, but are liable to infinite diversity from the manifold compounds in which they are clustered, and, most of all, so as to secure distinctness of every part in the complex woof which strikes the ear as onefold. Instrumentation may be styled the chemistry of sound, which by the synthesis of distinct tones produces new organisms ; it is the blending of any of the rays of the musical prism which produces previously unheard colours. Mozart was the first to evince the very fine sense which perceives the parity and disparity of qualities, how some sounds will mix with and some will penetrate through others, how some instruments by pour ing forth a stream of harmony may enrich or nourish a melody that floats on its surface in another quality of tone. Prior musicians had used instruments in alternation for variety of effect, or in combination for the sake of loud- ness ; but it was Mozart that both originated and perfected instrumentation as above described, and it has been prac tised with more or less success in so far as his principles have been fulfilled, with more or less failure in so far as his principles have been abandoned. In two centuries instruments have undergone large modification, and their treatment has been modified accordingly. Writing for the harpsichord is widely different from that for the pianoforte, which also has been changed in character from generation to generation of composers, not only because of improve ments in the manufacture of the instrument, but because of enlarged insight into its capabilities ; hence the music of Emanuel Bach, Mozart, Dussek, Beethoven, Clementi, Cramer, Hummel, Moscheles, John Field, C. M. von Weber, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Thalberg, Stern- dale Bennett, and Anton Rubinstein forms a continuous scale of development in aptitude and diversity. The transformation of the viol of various sizes into the violin, violoncello, and double bass of present use is a subject for special history, but its course is inseparably associated with the names of the great Cremonese manufacturers, Andrea Amati (1540), his two sons and his grandson, the family Guanarius, and Straduarius, who all practised their craft as an art more than as a trade, setting each the stamp of his own genius on the instruments he produced and leaving models that have never yet been equalled. The extended resources of bowed instruments have come wholly through extended skill of executants, especially of Viotti, Rudolphe Kreutzer, Rode, Baillot, Paganini, Spohr, De Beriot, Molique, Ernst, Blagrove, Sivori, Sainton, Vieuxtemps, Joachim, and Carrodus on the violin; of Crosdill, Cervetto, Lindley, and Piatti on the violoncello ; and of Dragonetti and Bot- tesini on the double bass. The entire construction of flutes and reed instruments was changed by Theobald Boehm (1794-1881), and all makers now work upon his principle. Facilities have been increased on each of these classes of instruments, but on horns and trumpets modern use has in some respects diminished them ; that is, employ ing only notes of the harmonic scale, players of the time of Purcell, Handel, and Bach practised so constantly in the upper register that they easily produced the 12th harmonic and above this sometimes notes up to the 18th, and these they executed with volubility akin to that displayed on fingered instruments ; it is now the custom to exercise the lips on the lower notes and on longer continued sounds, and hence the passages written by the elder masters are difficult to the verge of the impossible to present prac titioners, and a totally different character distinguishes modern from earlier music for brass instruments. On the other hand, Charles Joseph Sax (1791-1865), and far more his still living son Adolphe, have devised such systematic changes in the fabrication of all brass instruments as to give them an entirely new place in the orchestral category ; by means of the pistons of their sax-horns, cornets, and saxophones, these instruments yield the complete chromatic scale, which, superficially, appears to be an advantage ; but, save for military bands, the alteration is a serious evil and has an incalculably pernicious effect upon the orchestration of the day. This strong but careful statement is justified by the beautiful effects in music written earlier than the use of valves, from the characterization, firstly, of particular keys in a musical composition ; secondly, of certain chords in the keys ; and, thirdly, of special notes in each of these chords through appropriation to them of selected sounds from the limited harmonic series, whereas composers who apply Sax s invention to orchestral use reduce the band to a one-toned machine that has the same quality throughout its range. Let proof be drawn from example ; in the andante in A flat in Beethoven s symphony in C minor, the horns and trumpets are crooked in C, they can therefore be used but for peculiar notes in the primary key of the piece, but they give especial tone to the key of C, into which the music thrice modulates, that distinguishes it from the entire context ; in the finale of the same mas ter s symphony in F the return to the primary key from the remote tonality of F sharp minor is marked by the tone of the F trumpet, whose keynote is the enharmonic of the E sharp of the foregoing harmony ; and yet again, in the " dona nobis " of the same master s mass in D, the phrases for the trumpets in B flat are distinguished from what surrounds by the tone and the key, and thus give technical significance to the author s purpose, "a prayer for peace in the midst of war." Inability to resist the tempta tion of the semitonic scale, and so to use " sounding brass " as freely as instruments of more delicate tone and greater natural volubility, is exemplified in the writings of many a living musician, and regretted by many of his admirers. A class of opera, defined in French as opera comique, Opdra dates ostensibly from 1715. The definition is unsound, comiqnp, because, whatever the subjects of the first pieces so styled, ^f^ 1 lj it is often applied to works of a romantic, serious, or even O pera. tragic nature. The separation of this from the grand opera lies in the latter having music throughout, its rhythmical pieces being divided by accompanied recita tive, Avhile the opera comique consists of music inter spersed with spoken dialogue. The distinction arose from what was considered an infringement of the patent of the Parisian Opera House by a company who performed musical pieces at the Theatre de la Foire, and an agree ment between the two establishments was authorized at the date above cited to the effect that the assumed intruder must have speaking in every piece it presented. The name of Rameau is the earliest of note among composers of this class of work, and his success in L 1 Endriaque