MUSIC. 



The Hautboy (Oboe) * has for its mouthpiece a 

 double reed, the end of which is held about half 

 an inch within the performer's lips. Its clang 

 contains a tolerably full series of over-tones. It 

 is best adapted for simple, graceful melodies, or 

 for music of a pastoral character ; but in tutti 

 passages the hautboys often play with the rest of 

 the band, in order to add to the richness of the 

 general orchestral tone. The compass of the 

 hautboy is about two and a half octaves above 

 bb (fig. 6), its natural key being C, but its best 

 notes lie in its lower two octaves. 



The Bassoon is the bass instrument of the class 

 with double reeds. Its tone as a solo instrument 

 can scarcely be said to be pleasant, it is indeed 

 almost grotesque, but it is an instrument of the 

 greatest use in combination with others. Its 

 natural key is Bb, and its compass about three 

 octaves below a (fig. 6). The contra-bassoon is an 

 octave below the ordinary bassoon. 



The Clarionet is the principal instrument of the 

 single-reed family. Its tone differs essentially 

 from that of the oboe, for it has a ' stopped ' tube, 

 and its clang contains only the second, fourth, and 

 sixth over-tones shewn in fig. 2. Although all the 

 chromatic semitones within its compass can be 

 played upon it, yet it cannot easily be played contin- 

 uously in any key far removed from its natural key ; 

 and for this reason every clarionet-player uses three 

 instruments, of which the natural keys are respec- 

 tively C, Bb, and A, and is thus able always to 

 choose an instrument tolerably near the key of 

 the music he has to play, by using the Bb clarionet 

 for flat keys, and the A clarionet for sharp ones. 



The music for the clarionet, however, is written 

 always as if C were the natural key, and the 

 particular instrument to be used is marked at the 

 beginning. Thus, the notes given at (a) in fig. 

 30 would sound as written if played on the C 

 clarionet ; but would sound as at (ff) if played on 

 the Bb ; and as at (c) if played on the A instru- 

 ment This necessarily causes a corresponding 

 change in the key signatures. As the signature 

 of C that is, the absence of either sharps or flats, 

 which indicates the key of C stands always for 

 the key of the instrument, whatever that may be, 

 it follows that the signature to be used for any 

 particular key must depend entirely on the relation 

 of that key to the key of the instrument. On 

 this account the clarionet is called a ' transposing' 

 instrument. The clarionet is the principal instru- 

 ment in most military bands, standing in much 

 the same relation to them that the violin does to 

 the orchestra. 



We now come to the brass instruments, of 

 which the principal are the horns, trumpets, and 

 trombones. These are all essentially tubes of 

 metal of a certain definite length. The various 

 bends and twistings which strike the eye in most 

 of them have nothing to do with their tone, but 

 are only matters of convenience, to avoid the 

 awkwardness of having one straight tube perhaps 

 many feet long. In all of them, the length of the 

 tube can be altered at pleasure in one of several 

 different ways. A brass instrument is named after 

 the musical note which is produced by blowing 

 through its tube when it is in its shortest con- 

 dition, so that horns in C or in Bb are respectively 



Fig. 3- 



Tiorns of which the fundamental note due to the 

 length of their tube, through all its convolutions, 

 is C or Bb. 



Of all the brass instruments the Horn is the 

 simplest in the form, at least, in which it has been 

 used in orchestras up to a comparatively recent 

 date. In this form it is called the French horn, 

 and consists simply of a long tube, increasing very 

 gradually in diameter throughout the greater por- 

 tion of its length, but curving out rapidly into a 

 large bell at the extreme end. By his manner 

 of blowing through his instrument, the performer 

 can sound a series of notes 

 which are the overtones of 

 the fundamental already men- 

 tioned, and which are the only 

 notes that can be produced 

 of full or satisfactory quality. 

 Other notes, limited in num- 

 ber, and very uneven in quality, 

 can be produced by blowing as 

 if to sound one of the 'open' 

 notes, and inserting the hand into the bell 

 of the instrument. These are called closed 

 tones. The open notes of the horn in C are 

 given in fig. 31. The fundamental note of the 



* The oboe was formerly called in this country the Wayte or 

 Waite, from which comes our word Wait*, originally the watch- 

 men who ' piped the night-hours ' upon this instrument. Banifitr, 

 V- 224- 



tube is of course an octave below the lowest 

 note marked it is, in fact, 16 foot C the tube 

 of the horn being 16 feet long. This note can be 

 sounded, but it is both difficult to sound, and 

 indistinct and disagreeable when sounded ; it is 

 therefore not included in the compass of the 

 instrument. This remark applies also to the 

 trumpet and cornet, but not to the trombone, of 

 which the lowest note has sometimes very great 

 sonorousness. The higher notes given in fig. 31 

 are seldom used. By taking out one particular 

 bend of the tube (purposely made movable), 

 and inserting another piece or crook of a different 

 length, the horn can be put in any key, and the 

 open notes in other keys bear the same relation 

 to their fundamental tone that the notes shewn 

 in fig. 31 do to C As regards its notation, the 

 horn is a 'transposing' instrument, like the 

 clarionet When any notes for the horn are 

 written in the G clef, they are written an octave 

 higher than they sound, but its lower notes are 

 generally noted in the F clef, and then sound as 

 written. 



Of late years, horns with pistons have been intro- 

 duced. The effect of this is, that the key of the 

 instrument can be instantaneously changed (by 

 the alteration of the length of its tube), and for 

 every alteration of length an entirely new scries of 

 notes can be played, each series being the over- 

 tones of the new fundamental tone of the tube. 



703 



