392 



♦ KNO^VLEDGE ♦ 



[Dec. 28, 1883. 



THE "VIBRATO."* 



SOME years ago an exhibition of various manufactured 

 articles was opened in London, one room being set 

 apart for selected specimens of the worst taste, and in- 

 tended to serve as a warning. In this chamber of horrors 

 a gentleman in the carpet trade espied a design with the 

 name of his own firm pilloried thereon. " Well," said he, 

 " it may be ugly, but they have hit upon the very pattern 

 we sell most of." It must be acknowledged that our 

 vocalists, male and female, native and foreign, with only a 

 few glorious exceptions, have adopted the system of the 

 carpet-maker, and submit to the public, not the best, but 

 the most saleable wares. There exists at present a great 

 demand for the execrable quality of tone called the 

 " Vibrato " or the " Tremolo " (thank Heaven there is no 

 English word for it), and most abundant in consequence is 

 the supply. Now, people are not generally aware that in 

 this intermittent charactpr of tone lies the very essence of 

 dissonance, and this admits of an easy illustration. 



Take two tuning-forks in unison, slightly alter the 

 pitch of one of them by loading its prongs with a small 

 pellet of wax, and sound the two together. If the forks 

 are mounted on what are called resonance boxes, the effect 

 is more striking, but it is sufficient to place the handle of 

 each on a wooden board or table. Then are heard what 

 are termed " beats," which imitate to perfection the 

 vibrato of our operatic singers. On further loading the 

 fork, by fixing a small coin, the beats succeed one another 

 more quickly, and, in fact, the greater the interval the 

 more rapid the beats. We may continue the process till 

 we can no longer count them, or even distinguish them as 

 separate strokes of sound. Still the intermittent character, 

 the unpleasant roughness, remains, attaining its maximum 

 when the forks are a semitone apart, and disappearing at 

 about a minor third, which is called the beating distance. 

 Now, every musical note is compounded of a fundamental 

 and several partial tones, the whole constituting what 

 is called a clang, and Helmholtz has shown that a dis- 

 sonance can arise only when the notes of one clang are 

 within beating distance of the notes of the other. It 

 amounts to this, that consonance is a continuous and dis- 

 sonance an intermittent sensation of tone, and that the 

 latter is due to alternate augmentation and diminution 

 of sound ; in fact, to the same causes which produce the 

 " vibrato." 



Is it not, then, monstrous that singers should introduce, 

 and that listeners should be found to tolerate, that which 

 is simply the foundation of discord 1 If it should happen 

 to be a consequence of failing powers, we must make the 

 best of it, in consideration of other compensating qualities, 

 supposing such to exist. But indulgence may be, and is, 

 carried too far. Thus we often hear what is called a high 

 chest note applauded, not for its quality, which is doubt- 

 ful, nor for its effect, which is generally misplaced, but as a 

 recompense for the evident and intense effort required to 

 produce it. 



There is in all this between the public and the singer a 

 mutual reaction fatal to the interest of art. Dramatic 

 efl'ects, utterly without novelty or refinement, are forced 

 upon the audience by the performer, who himself gives the 

 well-understood signal for applause. What wonder that 

 these tricks of the trade should be resorted to as a substi- 

 tute for the results of long and conscientious study 1 On 

 the other hand, people will not pretend to be wiser than 

 their neighbours, and they imagine that such popular and 

 highly-paid artists can do no wrong. 



* From the Choir. 



It is time to protest. Singing as an art is undoubtedly 

 on the decline. There is no lack of fine voices, but pure 

 and equal vocalisation is almost a thing of the past. It is 

 not to be expected that many people should trouble them- 

 selves with the physical reasons for a disagreeable sound, 

 but it is a great gain that science should come to our aid by 

 confirming and justifying our unfavourable impressions. — 

 Frederick Ricakdo. 



AN ANCIENT COMET. 



THE Greek writer Apollonius states that the Baby- 

 lonians regarded comets as wandering stars, and that 

 they were able to predict their appearance. There is 

 little doulit that the Greek astronomers derived much of 

 their early astronomical knowledge from Chaldea, and that 

 many of the curious omens and superstitions connected with 

 the stars, comets, and other celestial phenomena, which 

 survived until the middle ages, had their origin in the astro- 

 logical works of Chaldea. The great astronomical work, 

 consisting of seventy tablet-books, which formed the stan- 

 dard work of the Babylonians was called " Nannar BeU," 

 the " illumination of Bel," was by the Babylonians said 

 to have been drawn up by Sargon of Akkad, the 

 Romulus of Chaldea, who was the founder of the great 

 Semitic dynasty of North Babylonia. This dynasty might 

 be compared to the Ming dynasty of the Chinese, for it was 

 during, according to tradition, his reign that the great 

 consolidation of Babylonian literature took place, and the 

 various encycloptedic groups of tablet-books were drawn 

 up. The date of this king is now fixed by a passage in 

 a recently-discovered inscription as B.C. 3750, and con- 

 temporaneous inscriptions of Sargon and his son have 

 been found at Aboo Hubba by Mr. Rassam. There is 

 in the British Museum a copy, from the library at 

 Nineveh, of a chronicle of his reign, each chapter or 

 paragraph of which begins with a statement as to the 

 omens of the moon at the time the event took place. 

 Several tablets of the great astronomical work have been 

 published in the third volume of the " Cuneiform Inscriptions 

 of Western Asia," * and some have been translated by Pro- 

 fessor Sayce in his valuable paper on Babylonian Astro- 

 nomy ("Trans. Society Bibl. Arch." Vol. III., pt. ii.). The 

 more complete study of the ancient Akkadian dialects of 

 Babylonia, in which most of them are written, and the 

 great increase in the number of inscriptions enables 

 us now more fully to understand these very difficult 

 texts. The obscurity of the inscriptions of this class 

 is not a modern difficulty, for we frequently find the 

 scribe noting in the text phrases which could not be ex- 

 plained, or slavishly copying the archaic text of the Baby- 

 lonian version. It is this great work which must now 

 become our standard text-book for the study of the astro- 

 nomy and astrology of the ancient Babylonians. Turning 

 to it to see if there is any trace of the fact stated by 

 Apollonius, as to the Babylonion knowledge of comets and 

 the portents derived from them, we find in the opening 

 tablet, which is a sort of summary of the contents of the 

 work(W. A. I., Vol III., pi. 52, No. 3), the following passage. 

 " Omens (of the) heavens from the star which before it a 

 hairy crown and behind it a tail makes." In another frag- 

 ment (W.A. I., II., pi. 49,1. 13) we have a similar description 

 — " the star which after it a tail like a shadow makes." 

 These show that omens of the class referred to by Apol- 

 lonius were included in the work. We have, however, in 



* Throughout this communication, this title will be abbreviated 

 as W. A. I. 



