November 28, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



863 



One, Stringed Instruments,' I. without a key- 

 board; II. with a keyboard; and under each 

 (A) plucked, (B) struck, (C) bowed strings; 

 III. with automatic mechanism. ' Class Two, 

 Wind Instruments,' without and with a key- 

 board and with automatic mechanism, each 

 divided into whistles and reeds. The instru- 

 ments of these classes fill four fifths of the 

 book. The come ' Vibrating Membranes,' 

 ' Sonorous Substances ' and ' Musical Acces- 

 sories.' A long list of portraits of musicians 

 follows, and the volume is closed by two full 

 indexes, one by classes, the other alphabetical. 



A striking feature of the catalogue is its 

 copious illustration. Over fifty half-tone 

 plates furnish a wealth of illustration unpar- 

 alleled in musical literature escept in a very 

 few sumptuous books covering narrow fields. 

 Of these plates twenty-four show each one 

 family of instruments, from the smallest to 

 the largest, as guitars, viols, recorders, clari- 

 nets, saxophones, saxhorns, etc.; generally 

 these plates of families include also a meas- 

 uring rod divided into inches and centi- 

 meters, by which the actual sizes of the in- 

 struments may be scaled off. The reduced 

 copy of a chart in the Germanic Museum at 

 Nuremberg shows, in a remarkably interest- 

 ing way, the forms of the string and percus- 

 sive instruments in use in successive centuries 

 from the eleventh to the seventeenth; while 

 the plate of the striking ' Egyptian Type 

 Case ' shows that the ancestors of most of 

 our modern instruments were known on the 

 banks of the Nile long before the date of the 

 Pythagorean legend. 



To secure examples of all these complete 

 families, some of which are exceedingly rare, 

 many reproductions have been obtained from 

 European museums, as acknowledgments ac- 

 companying more than forty items make evi- 

 dent. And since the special aim of the col- 

 lection is educational, many details of instru- 

 ments are shown by dissections or models. 



The descriptions of the several instruments 

 vary in length from a couple of lines for 

 some items up to three pages for the Cristo- 

 fori piano, averaging, for the principal kinds 

 of instruments, about a quarter of a page. 

 The data are arranged in a systematic way. 



the parts of the instrument being taken up 

 in a uniform order, and then follow the de- 

 tails of place, date and size, with occasional 

 notes. 



To keep the voluminous matter within the 

 bounds of a ' handbook,' obviously pretty 

 rigorous limitations must be observed; so 

 only the most important historical and acous- 

 tical facts are added to the description, and 

 these are put in very condensed form. For 

 chatty historical matter one must still go to 

 Engel, and for technical details to Mahillon. 

 The region and period covered by this book, 

 unlike those of the former catalogue, which 

 dealt with Oriental instruments, make un- 

 necessary any discussion of questions of the 

 scale; for the diatonic or chromatic scale was 

 here the universally accepted norm, and the 

 few instances of enharmonic scales and sim- 

 ilar deviations are of small importance. 



These statements show more clearly than 

 any mere words of praise could do what an 

 admirable piece of work this book is : the full- 

 ness of the collection, the clearness of the 

 classification, the care and system in descrip- 

 tion, the discriminating notes, the sense of 

 expert knowledge, the freedom from trivial 

 confusing details, the references to allied in- 

 struments from other countries, the cross- 

 referencing and full indexing, the liberal illus- 

 tration and the good typography, all conspire 

 to make it almost as useful away from the 

 museum as in the presence of the instruments. 

 It should prove a valuable supplement to any 

 dictionary of music, to any discussion of in- 

 struments from either the physical or the 

 musical side, to such books as Lavignac's 

 ' Music and Musicians,' and to any of the his- 

 tories of music in use by clubs and students. 



A book capable of such wide usefulness 

 ought not to remain a local guide-book; the 

 fact that it is not copyrighted may be an 

 additional indication of liberality on the part 

 of the donor and editor, but also suggests the 

 doubt whether proper means are being taken, 

 as by advertising or listing in the Puhlishers' 

 Weekly or otherwise, to let librarians and 

 students know of its existence. 



Chaeles K. Wead. 



Washington, D. C. 



