602 Original Articles. [Oct., 



reed. The clarinet has a cylindrical tube, which is practically 

 closed at the top, and it is subject to the same laws which regulate 

 vibrations in closed organ pipes ; that is, the upper tones of the even 

 numbers are wanting, so that by blowing strongly the pitch may be 

 raised a twelfth, but not an octave, as in the flute, because the octave 

 is a tone of the even numbers. The tube of the oboe is conical, and 

 conical tubes closed at the point have nearly the same peculiarities 

 as open pipes of the same length; accordingly we find in this in- 

 strument the whole series of upper tones. 



The older horns and trumpets consisted of long conical brass 

 tubes without valves of any kind. From such an instrument, it 

 was only 'possible to elicit the harmonic upper tones of its funda- 

 mental, but as the principal tone of so long a tube is very deep, the 

 upper tones in the middle of the scale would lie pretty near together, 

 and most of the notes in the scale can be obtained. The trumpet was 

 confined to these, such as they were, but in the trombone, by altering 

 the length of the tube, the wanting notes £an be supplied, and the 

 faulty ones improved. Of late years valves have been used for a 

 similar purpose, both in horns and trumpets, but at the cost of the 

 power and quality of the tone. In using these instruments, the form 

 and tension of the lips is only of importance to determine which of 

 the harmonic sounds of the column of air is to be produced, the 

 absolute pitch is quite independent of them. 



In the human larynx, however, the tension of the vocal chords 

 directly alters and determines the pitch. The hollow space of the 

 mouth is not fitted to fulfil this duty. Its walls are too yielding to 

 maintain a vibration of air sufficiently strong to carry with it the 

 reed as in the trumpet or clarinet, moreover it is too short to have 

 much influence on the pitch. Besides altering the tension of the 

 chords, there is probably a power of weighting them with the moist 

 unelastic tissue which lies immediately beneath them, so as to produce 

 the lower notes of the chest voice. 



The quality of the sound emitted by reeds unconnected with 

 resonance tubes is very sharp and harsh, due to a long series of 

 upper tones extending as high as the sixteenth or twentieth. The 

 harder the material of the reed the greater the number of dissonant 

 sounds produced, and it is probably due to the softness of the vocal 

 chords that a good human voice is the pleasantest of all the reed 

 instruments. Even in the voice we find very high upper tones, as 

 high as the fourth octave. The resonance tubes modify the sound 

 most essentially. They respond only to those sounds which are the 

 proper tones of the tube. The clarinet, which must be regarded 

 as a closed cylindrical pipe, gives only the upper tones of the uneven 

 numbers, while the oboe, the tube of which is conical, gives those of 

 the even numbers also. This is 4he cause of the difference in the 

 quality of the sound of these two instruments, in both of which the 

 sound is produced by the agency of a wooden reed. 



So far we have considered the case of resonance tubes which are 

 able to give the fundamental of the reed, and also a series of upper 

 tones, but it may happen that the lowest tone of the resonance tube is 



