CHAPTER XIV 



THE HOMEMADE ORCHESTRA 



The man that hath no music in himself 



Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds 



Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. 



SHAKESPEARE, Merchant of Venice. 



A modern orchestra is a very wonderful thing, with its 

 aggregation of varied instruments gathered from the four quarters 

 of the globe. I half close my eyes, sometimes, as I sit listening, 

 and let my imagination change the stage setting. The immacu- 

 late gentleman who is rolling sonorous sounds from his kettle 

 drum becomes a painted savage, his instrument a skin stretched 

 over a hollow log; and as he pounds his war drum, his fellows 

 brandish their cruel spears and leap in a frenzy of ecstasy in 

 anticipation of the coming battle. The gentleman in evening 

 attire who presides at the great organ changes to a Greek shep- 

 herd, clothed in a draped skin, who blows on his pipes, the primi- 

 tive ancestor of the organ, while his sheep graze on the sun-flecked 

 hills about him. The clarinet player I see as a squatting Indian 

 snake-charmer who, in his gaudy robes, sways in unison with the 

 hooded serpent before him, as he draws strange melody from 

 his reed, the precursor of the present instrument. The French 

 horn is the horn of a hunter who goes dashing by on his splendid 

 horse, after a pack of dogs that are close on the heels of the 

 fox. What a strange history each of the orchestral instruments 

 has had ! They have come down to us from the inventive genius 

 of peoples scattered from pole to pole. Yet, while they are 

 so very different in present form and in their evolution from many 

 primitive types, the principles of sound on which their perform- 

 ance depends are few and simple. Vibrating strings or vibrating 

 columns of air originate all the notes that are strengthened and 



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