How To Listen To Music Part 6

[Sidenote: _Vibrato._]

[Sidenote: _"Con sordino."_]

The halo of sound which streams from the beginning and end of the "Lohengrin" prelude is produced by this device. High and close harmonies from divided violins always sound ethereal. Besides their native tone quality (that resulting from a string stretched over a sounding sh.e.l.l set to vibrating by friction), the violins have a number of modified qualities resulting from changes in manipulation.

Sometimes the strings are plucked (_pizzicato_), when the result is a short tone something like that of a banjo with the metallic clang omitted; very dainty effects can thus be produced, and though it always seems like a degradation of the instrument so pre-eminently suited to a broad singing style, no less significant a symphonist than Tschaikowsky has written a Scherzo in which the violins are played _pizzicato_ throughout the movement. Ballet composers frequently resort to the piquant effect, but in the larger and more serious forms of composition, the device is sparingly used. Differences in quality and expressiveness of tone are also produced by varied methods of applying the bow to the strings: with stronger or lighter pressure; near the bridge, which renders the tone hard and brilliant, and over the end of the finger-board, which softens it; in a continuous manner (_legato_), or detached (_staccato_). Weird effects in dramatic music are sometimes produced by striking the strings with the wood of the bow, Wagner resorting to this means to delineate the wicked glee of his dwarf _Mime_, and Meyerbeer to heighten the uncanniness of _Nelusko's_ wild song in the third act of "L'Africaine." Another cla.s.s of effects results from the manner in which the strings are "stopped"

by the fingers of the left hand. When they are not pressed firmly against the finger-board but touched lightly at certain places called nodes by the acousticians, so that the segments below the finger are permitted to vibrate along with the upper portion, those peculiar tones of a flute-like quality called harmonics or flageolet tones are produced. These are oftener heard in dramatic music than in symphonies; but Berlioz, desiring to put Shakespeare's description of Queen Mab,

"Her wagon-spokes made of long spinner's legs; The cover, of the wings of gra.s.shoppers; The traces, of the smallest spider's web; The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams--"

into music in his dramatic symphony, "Romeo and Juliet," achieved a marvellously filmy effect by dividing his violins, and permitting some of them to play harmonics. Yet so little was his ingenious purpose suspected when he first brought the symphony forward in Paris, that one of the critics spoke contemptuously of this effect as sounding "like an ill-greased syringe." A quivering motion imparted to the fingers of the left hand in stopping the strings produces a tremulousness of tone akin to the _vibrato_ of a singer; and, like the vocal _vibrato_, when not carried to excess, this effect is a potent expression of sentimental feeling. But it is much abused by solo players. Another modification of tone is caused by placing a tiny instrument called a sordino, or mute, upon the bridge. This clamps the bridge, makes it heavier, and checks the vibrations, so that the tone is muted or m.u.f.fled, and at times sounds mysterious.

[Sidenote: _Pizzicato on the ba.s.ses._]

[Sidenote: _Tremolo._]

These devices, though as a rule they have their maximum of effectiveness in the violins, are possible also on the violas, violoncellos, and double-ba.s.ses, which, as I have already intimated, are but violins of a larger growth. The _pizzicato_ is, indeed, oftenest heard from the double-ba.s.ses, where it has a much greater eloquence than on the violins. In music of a sombre cast, the short, deep tones given out by the plucked strings of the contra-ba.s.s sometimes have the awfulness of gigantic heart-throbs. The difficulty of producing the other effects grows with the increase of difficulty in handling the instruments, this being due to the growing thickness of the strings and the wideness of the points at which they must be stopped. One effect peculiar to them all--the most used of all effects, indeed, in dramatic music--is the _tremolo_, produced by dividing a tone into many quickly reiterated short tones by a rapid motion of the bow. This device came into use with one of the earliest pieces of dramatic music. It is two centuries old, and was first used to help in the musical delineation of a combat. With scarcely an exception, the varied means which I have described can be detected by those to whom they are not already familiar by watching the players while listening to the music.

[Sidenote: _The viola._]

The viola is next in size to the violin, and is tuned at the interval of a fifth lower. Its highest string is A, which is the second string of the violin, and its lowest C. Its tone, which sometimes contains a comical suggestion of a boy's voice in mutation, is lacking in incisiveness and brilliancy, but for this it compensates by a wonderful richness and filling quality, and a pathetic and inimitable mournfulness in melancholy music. It blends beautifully with the violoncello, and is often made to double that instrument's part for the sake of color effect--as, to cite a familiar instance, in the princ.i.p.al subject of the Andante in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

[Sidenote: _The violoncello._]

[Sidenote: _Violoncello effects._]

The strings of the violoncello (Plate II.) are tuned like those of the viola, but an octave lower. It is the knee-fiddle (_viola da gamba_) of the last century, as the viola is the arm-fiddle (_viola da braccio_), and got its old name from the position in which it is held by the player. The 'cello's voice is a ba.s.s--it might be called the barytone of the choir--and in the olden time of simple writing, little else was done with it than to double the ba.s.s part one octave higher.

But modern composers, appreciating its marvellous capacity for expression, which is next to that of the violin, have treated it with great freedom and independence as a solo instrument. Its tone is full of voluptuous languor. It is the sighing lover of the instrumental company, and can speak the language of tender pa.s.sion more feelingly than any of its fellows. The ravishing effect of a multiplication of its voice is tellingly exemplified in the opening of the overture to "William Tell," which is written for five solo 'celli, though it is oftenest heard in an arrangement which gives two of the middle parts to violas. When Beethoven wished to produce the emotional impression of a peacefully rippling brook in his "Pastoral" symphony, he gave a murmuring figure to the divided violoncellos, and Wagner uses the pa.s.sionate accents of four of these instruments playing in harmony to support _Siegmund_ when he is pouring out the ecstasy of his love in the first act of "Die Walkure." In the love scene of Berlioz's "Romeo and Juliet" symphony it is the violoncello which personifies the lover, and holds converse with the modest oboe.

[Sidenote: _The double-ba.s.s._]

The patriarchal double-ba.s.s is known to all, and also its mission of providing the foundation for the harmonic structure of orchestral music. It sounds an octave lower than the music written for it, being what is called a transposing instrument of sixteen-foot tone. Solos are seldom written for this instrument in orchestral music, though Beethoven, with his daring recitatives in the Ninth Symphony, makes it a mediator between the instrumental and vocal forces. Dragonetti and Bottesini, two Italians, the latter of whom is still alive, won great fame as solo players on the unwieldy instrument. The latter uses a small ba.s.s viol, and strings it with harp strings; but Dragonetti played a full double-ba.s.s, on which he could execute the most difficult pa.s.sages written for the violoncello.

[Sidenote: _The wood-winds._]

Since the instruments of the wood-wind choir are frequently used in solos, their acquaintance can easily be made by an observing amateur.

To this division of the orchestra belong the gentle accents in the instrumental language. Violent expression is not its province, and generally when the band is discoursing in heroic style or giving voice to brave or angry emotion the wood-winds are either silent or are used to give weight to the body of tone rather than color. Each of the instruments has a strongly characteristic voice, which adapts itself best to a certain style of music; but by use of different registers and by combinations among them, or with the instruments of the other choirs, a wide range of expression within the limits suggested has been won for the wood-winds.

[Sidenote: _The flute._]

[Sidenote: _The piccolo flute._]

[Sidenote: _Janizary music._]

[Sidenote: _The story of the flute._]

The flute, which requires no description, is, for instance, an essentially soulless instrument; but its marvellous agility and the effectiveness with which its tones can be blended with others make it one of the most useful instruments in the band. Its native character, heard in the compositions written for it as a solo instrument, has prevented it from being looked upon with dignity. As a rule, brilliancy is all that is expected from it. It is a sort of _soprano leggiero_ with a small range of superficial feelings. It can sentimentalize, and, as Dryden says, be "soft, complaining," but when we hear it pour forth a veritable ecstasy of jubilation, as it does in the dramatic climax of Beethoven's overture "Leonore No. 3," we marvel at the transformation effected by the composer. Advantage has also been taken of the difference between its high and low tones, and now in some romantic music, as in Raff's "Lenore" symphony, or the prayer of _Agathe_ in "Der Freischutz," the hollowness of the low tones produces a mysterious effect that is exceedingly striking. Still the fact remains that the native voice of the instrument, though sweet, is expressionless compared with that of the oboe or clarinet. Modern composers sometimes write for three flutes; but in the older writers, when a third flute is used, it is generally an octave flute, or piccolo flute (Plate III.)--a tiny instrument whose aggressiveness of voice is out of all proportion to its diminutiveness of body. This is the instrument which shrieks and whistles when the band is playing at storm-making, to imitate the noise of the wind. It sounds an octave higher than is indicated by the notes in its part, and so is what is called a transposing instrument of four-foot tone. It revels in military music, which is proper, for it is an own cousin to the ear-piercing fife, which annually makes up for its long silence in the noisy days before political elections. When you hear a composition in march time, with ba.s.s and snare drum, cymbals and triangle, such as the Germans call "Turkish" or "Janizary" music, you may be sure to hear also the piccolo flute. The flute is doubtless one of the oldest instruments in the world. The primitive cave-dwellers made flutes of the leg-bones of birds and other animals, an origin of which a record is preserved in the Latin name _tibia_. The first wooden flutes were doubtless the Pandean pipes, in which the tone was produced by blowing across the open ends of hollow reeds. The present method, already known to the ancient Egyptians, of closing the upper end, and creating the tone by blowing across a hole cut in the side, is only a modification of the method pursued, according to cla.s.sic tradition, by Pan when he breathed out his dejection at the loss of the nymph Syrinx, by blowing across the tuneful reeds which were that nymph in her metamorphosed state.

[Sidenote: _Reed instruments._]

[Sidenote: _Double reeds._]

The flute or pipe of the Greeks and Romans was only distantly related to the true flute, but was the ancestor of its orchestral companions, the oboe and clarinet. These instruments are sounded by being blown in at the end, and the tone is created by vibrating reeds, whereas in the flute it is the result of the impinging of the air on the edge of the hole called the embouchure, and the consequent stirring of the column of air in the flue of the instrument. The reeds are thin slips or blades of cane. The size and bore of the instruments and the difference between these reeds are the causes of the differences in tone quality between these relatives. The oboe or hautboy, English horn, and the ba.s.soon have what are called double reeds. Two narrow blades of cane are fitted closely together, and fastened with silk on a small metal tube extending from the upper end of the instrument in the case of the oboe and English horn, from the side in the case of the ba.s.soon. The reeds are pinched more or less tightly between the lips, and are set to vibrating by the breath.

[Sidenote: _The oboe._]

[Sidenote: _The English horn._]

The oboe (Plate IV.) is naturally a.s.sociated with music of a pastoral character. It is pre-eminently a melody instrument, and though its voice comes forth shrinkingly, its uniqueness of tone makes it easily heard. It is a most lovable instrument. "Candor, artless grace, soft joy, or the grief of a fragile being suits the oboe's accents," says Berlioz. The peculiarity of its mouth-piece gives its tone a reedy or vibrating quality totally unlike the clarinet's. Its natural alto is the English horn (Plate V.), which is an oboe of larger growth, with curved tube for convenience of manipulation. The tone of the English horn is fuller, n.o.bler, and is very attractive in melancholy or dreamy music. There are few players on the English horn in this country, and it might be set down as a rule that outside of New York, Boston, and Chicago, the English horn parts are played by the oboe in America. No melody displays the true character of the English horn better than the _Ranz des Vaches_ in the overture to Rossini's "William Tell"--that lovely Alpine song which the flute embroiders with exquisite ornament.

One of the n.o.blest utterances of the oboe is the melody of the funeral march in Beethoven's "Heroic" symphony, in which its tenderness has beautiful play. It is sometimes used effectively in imitative music.

In Haydn's "Seasons," and also in that grotesque tone poem by Saint-Saens, the "Danse Macabre," it gives the c.o.c.k crow. It is the timid oboe that sounds the A for the orchestra to tune by.

[Sidenote: _The ba.s.soon._]

[Sidenote: _An orchestral humorist._]

[Sidenote: _Supernatural effects._]

The grave voice of the oboe is heard from the ba.s.soon (Plate VI.), where, without becoming a.s.sertive, it gains a quality entirely unknown to the oboe and English horn. It is this quality that makes the ba.s.soon the humorist _par excellence_ of the orchestra. It is a reedy ba.s.s, very apt to recall to those who have had a country education the squalling tone of the homely instrument which the farmer's boy fashions out of the stems of the pumpkin-vine. The humor of the ba.s.soon is an unconscious humor, and results from the use made of its abysmally solemn voice. This solemnity in quality is paired with astonishing flexibility of utterance, so that its gambols are always grotesque. Brahms permits the ba.s.soon to intone the _Fuchslied_ of the German students in his "Academic" overture. Beethoven achieves a decidedly comical effect by a stubborn reiteration of key-note, fifth, and octave by the ba.s.soon under a rustic dance intoned by the oboe in the scherzo of his "Pastoral" symphony; and nearly every modern composer has taken advantage of the instrument's grotesqueness.

Mendelssohn introduces the clowns in his "Midsummer-Night's-Dream"

music by a droll dance for two ba.s.soons over a sustained ba.s.s note from the violoncellos; but when Meyerbeer wanted a very different effect, a ghastly one indeed, in the scene of the resuscitation of the nuns in his "Robert le Diable," he got it by taking two ba.s.soons as solo instruments and using their weak middle tones, which, Berlioz says, have "a pale, cold, cadaverous sound." Singularly enough, Handel resorted to a similar device in his "Saul," to accompany the vision of the Witch of Endor.

[Sidenote: _The double ba.s.soon._]

In all these cases a great deal depends upon the relation between the character of the melody and the nature of the instrument to which it is set. A swelling martial fanfare may be made absurd by changing it from trumpets to a weak-voiced wood-wind. It is only the string quartet that speaks all the musical languages of pa.s.sion and emotion.

The double-ba.s.soon is so large an instrument that it has to be bent on itself to bring it under the control of the player. It sounds an octave lower than the written notes. It is not brought often into the orchestra, but speaks very much to the purpose in Brahms's beautiful variations on a theme by Haydn, and the glorious finale of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

[Sidenote: _The clarinet._]

[Sidenote: _The ba.s.s clarinet._]

The clarinet (Plate VII.) is the most eloquent member of the wood-wind choir, and, except some of its own modifications or the modifications of the oboe and ba.s.soon, the latest arrival in the harmonious company.

It is only a little more than a century old. It has the widest range of expression of the wood-winds, and its chief structural difference is in its mouth-piece. It has a single flat reed, which is much wider than that of the oboe or ba.s.soon, and is fastened by a metallic band and screw to the flattened side of the mouth-piece, whose other side is cut down, chisel shape, for convenience. Its voice is rich, mellow, less reedy, and much fuller and more limpid than the voice of the oboe, which Berlioz tries to describe by a.n.a.logy as "sweet-sour." It is very flexible, too, and has a range of over three and a half octaves. Its high tones are sometimes shrieky, however, and the full beauty of the instrument is only disclosed when it sings in the middle register. Every symphony and overture contains pa.s.sages for the clarinet which serve to display its characteristics. Clarinets are made of different sizes for different keys, the smallest being that in E-flat, with an unpleasantly piercing tone, whose use is confined to military bands. There is also an alto clarinet and a ba.s.s clarinet (Plate VIII.). The bell of the latter instrument is bent upward, pipe fashion, and its voice is peculiarly impressive and n.o.ble. It is a favorite solo instrument in Liszt's symphonic poems.

[Sidenote: _Lips and reeds._]

[Sidenote: _The bra.s.s instruments._]

[Sidenote: _Improvements in bra.s.s instruments._]

[Sidenote: _Valves and slides._]

The fundamental principle of the instruments last described is the production of tone by vibrating reeds. In the instruments of the bra.s.s choir, the duty of the reeds is performed by the lips of the player.

Variety of tone in respect of quality is produced by variations in size, shape, and modifications in parts like the bell and mouth-piece.

The _forte_ of the orchestra receives the bulk of its puissance from the bra.s.s instruments, which, nevertheless, can give voice to an extensive gamut of sentiments and feelings. There is nothing more cheery and jocund than the flourishes of the horns, but also nothing more mild and soothing than the songs which sometimes they sing. There is nothing more solemn and religious than the harmony of the trombones, while "the trumpet's loud clangor" is the very voice of a war-like spirit. All of these instruments have undergone important changes within the last few score years. The cla.s.sical composers, almost down to our own time, were restricted in the use of them because they were merely natural tubes, and their notes were limited to the notes which inflexible tubes can produce. Within this century, however, they have all been transformed from imperfect diatonic instruments to perfect chromatic instruments; that is to say, every bra.s.s instrument which is in use now can give out all the semitones within its compa.s.s. This has been accomplished through the agency of valves, by means of which differing lengths of the sonorous tube are brought within the command of the players. In the case of the trombones an exceedingly venerable means of accomplishing the same end is applied. The tube is in part made double, one part sliding over the other. By moving his arm, the player lengthens or shortens the tube, and thus changing the key of the instrument, acquires all the tones which can be obtained from so many tubes of different lengths. The mouth-pieces of the trumpet, trombone, and tuba are cup-shaped, and larger than the mouth-piece of the horn, which is little else than a flare of the slender tube, sufficiently wide to receive enough of the player's lips to form the embouchure, or human reed, as it might here be named.

[Sidenote: _The French horn._]

[Sidenote: _Manipulation of the French horn._]