MUSIC. 



that part of the compass where the chest register 

 joins the throat register. This is called the 

 'break' of the voice, and one of the principal 

 cares of the voice-trainer is to teach the proper 

 management of it. 



MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 

 The Organ and Harmonium. 



' The Organ is in its essence nothing more than 

 an assemblage of many wind instruments.'* It is, 

 in fact, a vast collection of wooden and metai 

 pipes of lengths varying from 32 feet to I inch, 

 and differing also proportionately in diameter. 

 Each set of similarly shaped pipes is called a 

 stop, and extends two, three, or more octaves, as 

 the case may be. The pipes stand upon a wind- 

 chest, and mechanism is arranged so that any 

 stop (or any number of stpps) may, at the will of 

 the organist, be put into communication with the 

 main wind-chest in such a way that its pipes may 

 sound whenever the corresponding keys are 

 pressed down. The different stops not only differ 

 as to their pitch, but also vary very much in the 

 quality of their tone. Their pipes are of two 

 classes, flue and reed pipes. The former are plain 

 tubes of wood or metal, up which the air is blown 

 through an opening at the bottom, against the 

 thinned upper edge of an opening at one side. In 

 reed pipes, the sound is produced by the vibration 

 of a metal tongue or reed, and only qualified by 

 the pipe itself, which strengthens the fundamental 

 tone of the reed clang. There is also a class of 

 stops called mixtures, which, instead of sounding 

 the note corresponding to the key that is pressed 

 down, sound some of its over-tones. 



Large organs have three (sometimes four or five) 

 key-boards for the fingers, called manuals, and 

 one set of keys, called pedals, for the feet. The 

 latter are connected to the lowest pipes of the 

 organ, and commonly have a range of about two 

 octaves. The manuals are called respectively the 

 great, choir, and swell organs, the pipes belonging 

 to the latter being inclosed in a wooden box fitted 

 with movable shutters like Venetian blinds, which 

 can be opened and closed by the organist's foot 

 pressing upon a lever, and in this way a crescendo 

 or diminuendo given to the music. 



The Harmonium deserves mention here, if only 

 because, by its cheapness, it has found its way into 

 many places where even the pianoforte is not yet 

 used. In it the bellows are worked by the feet of 

 the performer, and the stops consist of rows of 

 reeds instead of rows of pipes. The clang of these 

 reeds contains very numerous and strongly de- 

 veloped over-tones, and in consequence of this, 

 the French harmoniums, hitherto most common 

 in this country, are very seldom pleasant instru- 

 ments to listen to; even the best of them have often 

 a rough, disagreeable tone. The American har- 

 moniums called cabinet organs, or American 

 organs are very much better in this respect, 

 although perhaps somewhat more expensive. In 

 them, the wind is drawn through the reeds, instead 

 of forced through them, and they contain many 

 improvements in voicing, which give their tone 

 a pleasant, even quality. 



The Pianoforte. 



The Pianoforte is probably the most popular of 



Marx, p. 53. 



all instruments at the present day ; and has cer- 

 tainly done more than any other instrument to 

 render good music familiar to the great mass of 

 the people. It passed through many stages before 

 it attained its present perfect condition ; Bach's 

 fugues were written for the clavichord, and Mozart's 

 sonatas for the harpsichord, both of them instru- 

 ments in which the strings were plucked instead 

 of struck, and the tone of which would seem to us 

 very weak, and indeed disagreeable. The modem 

 pianoforte has a compass of about seven octaves, 

 extending upwards from a C an octave below the 

 lowest note in fig. 6. Each note is represented by 

 an ivory key, those for the notes belonging to the 

 scale of C major being white, and the others black. 

 There are three (or in smaller instruments two) 

 'strings' of wire for each note, and a 'damper' of 

 cloth or leather rests on each of these groups of 

 strings. The mechanism of the instrument is 

 such that, when any key is pressed down, the 

 damper is immediately lifted from the correspond- 

 ing strings (so as to leave them free to vibrate), 

 and they are simultaneously struck by a little 

 leather-covered hammer. So long as the key is 

 held down, the note so originated continues to 

 sound (until the string at length ceases to vibrate) ; 

 but directly the key is released, it rises into its 

 place, and the damper falls upon the strings, and 

 stops their vibration. Pianos are always provided 

 with two pedals, called, popularly but erroneously, 

 the loud and the soft The former raises the 

 whole of the dampers of the strings, which has 

 two consequences : first, that the sounds do not 

 cease to vibrate when the fingers are lifted off the 

 keys ; and secondly, that many strings which have 

 not been touched at all (being now left free) vibrate 

 sympathetically. The latter will be found to 

 be the strings corresponding to the over-tones 

 of the strings already sounding. From the first 

 of these, it follows that all the notes struck while 

 the pedal is held down will be heard together, 

 from which it can be at once deduced that the 

 pedal must not be held down during a change 

 of harmony. For instance, if the pedal be held 

 down during the bar in fig. 24, the notes marked 

 A would all be heard distinctly at the end of it, 

 and as these contain no dissonances, the effect 

 would be an agreeable one. But if the pedal 



Fig. 24. 



Fig. 25. 



were held down during fig. 25, the effect, as shewn 

 at B, would be unendurable. There is no fault 

 commoner with young pianists than this putting 

 down of the pedal at wrong places. It should be 

 observed as an unalterable rule, that no pianist 

 who does not understand something of harmony 

 should ever touch the pedal, except when it is 

 distinctly marked in the music. The word Ped, 

 upon the music means that this pedal is to be 

 jressed and kept down until the mark is 

 cached, when it is to be raised again. 



The effect of the depression of the so-called 



soft' pedal is to move the hammers sideways, so 



that they strike only one of the wires belonging to 



each note. This pedal ought only to be used 



