Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/259

music 247 its performance, and obtain a richer and purer fulness of tone. The first improvement was made in the organ, the noblest of all instruments. A German craftsman living in Venice, named Bernhard, hit upon the bold idea of tuning the manual of the organ an octave higher, and accompanying the more beautiful quality of sound thus produced by doubling the bass notes — i.e. repeating them in a lower octave ; his in- vention of the pedals 1 about 1470 transformed the instrument into a mighty fabric. In the year 1475 Conrad Eosenberg of Nuremberg built an organ with manual and pedals for the Bare- footed Friars, and one for the cathedral at Bamberg. The orsfan for the Church of St. Lawrence in Nurem- berg, said to have been built by Heinrich Traxdorf, and enlarged by the monk Leonhard Marca in the year 1479, was quite renowned for its magnificence. In the year 1483 Stephen Castendorfer from Breslau added the pedal to the cathedral organ at Erfurt. In 1499 Heinrich Kranz built the great organ of the church in Brunswick, and at the same time a fine instrument was built for Strasburg. At the beginning of the sixteenth century nearly all the principal cities in Germany possessed organs with pedals. The Humanist Eudol- phus Agricola is cited as the builder, or at least one of the builders, of the organ in St. Martin's in Gro- ningen. In proportion as the instrument itself was perfected the players of it became more skilful, and in the begin- ning of the fifteenth century several priests and monks 1 The pedal had been already invented in Germany, and the Italians gave Bernhard the credit of it because he had introduced the invention into Vienna. Arnold, pp. 68 69.