ascends from them in diatonic succession, in the lowest series with
F natural instead of F sharp. In the last century attempts were
made to tune some part of the scale chromatically, but, as far as
I have met with examples, on no ascertainable system. The Chinese
substitute sixths, and in the two lowest sevenths, for the octave;
by the sevenths the lowest semitone is missed, otherwise the scale
continues, as in the European dulcimer, in heptatonic order. The
brass wire upon the bridges is an old spinet contrivance. The
dulcimer is tuned with a hammer or key like a pianoforte, but, unlike
the piano and other key-board instruments, has no damping contrivance.
We may look for the precursor of both the European and Chinese
dulcimers in an Assyrian ancestor of the Persian Santir, or, it may
be, in a more remote Babylonian instrument. Dulcimers are represented
on Assyrian monuments.
[Illustration: XVIII]
PLATE XVIII.
VIRGINAL.
In this interesting Virginal, which belongs to the Brussels
Conservatoire, we have a Ruckers "Vierkante Clavisingel" in the
original external decoration just as it left the hands of the younger
Hans Ruckers, a master of the Saint Luke's Guild of Antwerp. The
decoration is a covering of paper printed from blocks. The stand is
also original. An untouched Ruckers virginal or harpsichord like this
rarely comes under notice, and, at this moment, I can only recall one
in England--a single key-board harpsichord in the possession of Miss
Elizabeth Twining, at the Dial House, Twickenham, made by Andries,
the brother of the younger Hans and, like him, a son of the elder
Hans Ruckers.
The combination of white naturals and ebony sharps or flats is
the oldest contrast between the lower and upper keys, with the
qualification, that the oldest existing natural keys are not of
ivory but of boxwood. As was customary in the Low Countries, Latin
mottoes, sometimes more than one, were displayed on clavecins or
key-board instruments. The one shown here reads OMNIS SPIRITVS LAVDET
DOMINVM. These mottoes, so often occurring in Flemish instruments
of that period, bear witness to the thoughtfulness and reverence of
the men who made and possessed them. Besides the one quoted (Let all
that breathe praise the Lord), we find LAVS DEO (Praise be to God),
MVSICA DONVM DEI (Music is the gift of God), MVSICA MAGNORVM EST
SOLAMEN DVLCE LABORVM (Music is the sweet solace to great labours),
CONCORDIA RES PARVÆ CRESCVNT, DISCORDIA MAXIMÆ DILABVNTVR (By Concord
small things grow, by Discord great things fall away), SIC TRANSIT
GLORIA MVNDI (So passeth away the glory of the world), MVSICA LÆTITIÆ
COMES MEDICINA DOLORVM (Music is the companion of joy and medicine
of griefs), CONCORDIA MVSIS AMICA (Concord is the Muses' friend),
ACTA VIRVM PROBANT (Deeds prove the man), SCIENTIA NON HABET INIMICVM
NISI IGNORANTEM (Knowledge has no enemy but the ignorant), MVSICA
PELLIT CVRAS (Music dispels cares), and SOLI DEO GLORIA (Glory be to
God alone). The Italians preferred longer and more poetic quotations,
as the often repeated "Viva fui in sylvis sum dura occisa securi;
Dum vixi tacui mortua dulce cano" (I was alive in the woods, I was
felled by a cruel axe; while I lived I was silent, now I am dead I
sing sweetly); or that on the harpsichord which belonged to Tasso's
sister, and is still in the possession of her descendants in the
house she lived in at Sorrento: "Tales in altis sentiunt sonos beati
spiritus opus" (Such sounds they hear in heaven, the blessed spirits'
work).
To return to this Ruckers Virginal--the sound-board is painted
with floral devices in Netherlandish fashion, the usual gilt rose
appearing in the round opening of the sound-board, bearing the
maker's trade mark, which contains his initials, I.R., and near
it is written with ink, _Anno_ 1622. Upon the rail above the
jacks (plectra) is the inscription, JOANNES RVCKERS FECIT
ANTVERPIÆ. There is a picture in the National Gallery in London,
from the Peel Collection, painted by Metsu, wherein is depicted a
precisely similar instrument, possibly his own, as he has it again
in a picture belonging to the collection of Sir Francis Cook, at
Richmond, in Surrey. At first sight it is difficult to believe it is
not the same. Another occurs at Windsor Castle, in the collection of
H.M. the Queen, painted by Ver Meer of Delft. Here, again, the first
impression formed is that the painter has represented the instrument
shown in the present drawing. Such Virginals must have been, at that
time, favourite instruments in polite Dutch Society. Pepys, in his
_Diary_, under date of September 2, 1666, has a well-known reference
to the popularity of the virginal in London at the time of the Great
Fire. "River full of lighters and boats taking in goods, and I
observed that hardly one lighter or boat in three, that had the goods
of a house in, but there was a pair of virginals in it." The word
"virginals," here used, was evidently applied in a general sense,
meaning any key-board plectrum instrument. The special virginal was
an oblong spinet, and appears to have been the "spinetta," in the
form invented by the Venetian Spinetti, about the year 1500. The
Italian oblong spinet was furnished with a lid, the instrument being
a fixture in the case. It presented to the eye the exact appearance
of the cassone or wedding coffer, and was equally an object for
decoration.
The rich sound of the Bass of the instrument here drawn, not soon to
be forgotten, serves to show what the quality of tone throughout the
scale must originally have been. It was this supreme excellence which
raised the reputation of Hans Ruckers and his sons to a level to be
rivalled only, later, by the great Cremona violin-makers; it lasted
as long as the spinet and harpsichord remained in vogue.
This Virginal represents No. 15 of my Catalogue of existing
Ruckers instruments in Sir George Grove's _Dictionary of Music and
Musicians_, article "Ruckers." London, 1883.
The woodcuts above the Contents to this work represent Sir Michael
Mercator (1491-1544), a musical instrument maker, it is said
virginal maker, to King Henry VIII. The portrait has been engraved
from a medal in the British Museum executed by Mercator himself,
for he was a goldsmith and medallist as well as instrument maker,
by Mr. John Hipkins, who has also engraved the Jewish Shophar and
the woodcut on the title-page. The legend upon the medal informs
us that Mercator was the first knight created from Venloo by the
King. He gained knighthood and other distinctions by his success in
secret diplomatic services. The researches of Mr. W.H. James Weale,
who called the attention of the present writer to Mercator, have
determined his arrival in this country to have been in 1527, when
he brought letters of introduction to Cardinal Wolsey from Floris
d'Egmont, Count de Buren and Lord of Isselstein, and others, and two
musical instruments--as he was an organ-builder, it is to be presumed
virginals. The King engaged him at an annual salary. It will be
observed in the portrait that Mercator wears, attached to his collar,
the Tudor Rose. Mr. Weale has published his discoveries concerning
him in _Le Beffroi_, an artistic and antiquarian periodical printed
at Bruges. Mr. Weale's Descriptive Catalogue of the rare manuscripts
and printed books in the Historical Music Loan Collection of 1885,
for the publication of which we are indebted to Mr. Bernard Quaritch,
may be appropriately mentioned in this connection.
[Illustration: XIX]
PLATE XIX.
VIOLA DA GAMBA.
The old Bass Viol (French _Basse de Viole_) derives its name of Viola
da Gamba (leg viol) from its having been held between the knees of
the player, whence the German "Kniegeige." Shakspeare speaks of
it as "viol-de-gamboys" in _Twelfth Night_--where Sir Toby Belch
in his panegyric on Sir Andrew Aguecheek says, "He plays o' the
viol-de-gamboys, and speaks three or four languages word for word
without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature." Domenichino's
famous St. Cecilia is represented as playing upon a viola da gamba.
It was the bass of the chest (or family) of viols. A quotation from
the recently published autobiography of the Honourable Roger North,
who was born in 1653, aptly describes the domestic use of those
once admired instruments. He says his grandfather, Dudley, third
Lord North, when at his country seat in Norfolk, "would convoke
his musical family ... and for important regale of the company
the concerts were usually all viols to the organ or harpsichord.
The violin came in late and imperfectly. When the hands were well
supplied the whole chest went to work, that is six viols, music being
formed for it which would seem a strange sort of music now, being an
interwoven hum-drum." Roger North became himself a proficient upon
both treble and bass viols.
The splendid example here drawn is the work of Joachim Tielke, who
made it at Hamburg in 1701; it formerly belonged to the famous
violoncellist, F. Servais. In perfect preservation, it has a
beautifully carved ivory peg-box, which is surmounted by a woman's
head, with an incised finger-board beneath. There are no frets, which
is unusual with viols, as they were fretted instruments, but it would
be of course easy to attach them. The back is of rosewood alternated
with ivory; and the ivory tailpiece forms a caduceus. Two views are
given of the instrument, and a profile of the head and peg-box are
enlarged to half size. It has six strings, a favourite accordance
being--
[Music]
This was called the Harp-way sharp; when the fifth string was tuned
to B flat the tuning was called Harp-way flat--Harp-way, indicating
the facility thus afforded for arpeggios.
Bach's solemn cantata, "Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit" (God's
time is the best of all times), opens with the viola da gamba,
but, early in the eighteenth century, composers replaced the Viola
da Gamba with the violoncello. The last noted performer upon it
was Carl Friedrich Abel, who died in 1787. Of late years it has
been taken up again for its own special qualities, which should
preserve it for at least occasional use. The late Henry Webb, at the
suggestion of Professor Ernst Pauer in 1862, was perhaps the first
to adopt it again. He had to obtain instruction in the fingering
of the instrument from an old man of eighty-six. The fingering is
practically that of the lute, and, as Mr. E.J. Payne has pointed
out in Grove's _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_ (Art. "Violin"),
it was the command of the six-stringed finger-board which the
lutenists had attained by two centuries of incessant practice that
was transferred by them to the Viola da Gamba, both instruments
being thus common to the same players. Owing to this fact the bass
viol remained in use much longer than the other members of the
viol family. At the present time Mr. Payne, Herr Paul de Wit of
Leipsic, and Mr. E. Jacobs of Brussels, have reintroduced the Viola
da Gamba to the notice of the musical public. Mr. Jacobs played
upon one furnished with sympathetic strings, with great success in
the Historical Concerts given, under the direction of Mr. Victor
Mahillon, in the Music Room of the London International Inventions
Exhibition of 1885. The instrument here represented belongs to the
Museum of the Brussels Conservatoire.
[Illustration: XX]
PLATE XX.
DOUBLE SPINET OR VIRGINAL.
This uncommon instrument displays one of the expedients employed to
gain a more brilliant effect by the addition of an octave string,
before such a string was permanently attached to the sound-board
of the harpsichord itself by means of an additional row of strings
placed beneath the ordinary unison strings. Octave spinets were, as
Mersenne (1636) describes, made independent of the ordinary spinet,
and there are frequent examples to be met with. These little spinets
were placed upon the larger ones for performance, as Praetorius
(1619) says, like turrets on a tower. In this double spinet it is
a removable part of the instrument, and constitutes the left-hand
key-board, the right-hand key-board being a fixture. The maker, as
is proved by his initials, HR, and his device in the rose of the
sound-hole, is no other than the famous Hans Ruckers the elder,
of Antwerp. This Spinet is numbered 9 of the sixty-six existing
instruments by the Ruckers family catalogued by the present writer in
Sir George Grove's _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_. It can now
be extended to sixty-eight. On the jack rails of both spinets may be
read "Joannes Rvqvers me fecit." There is another double spinet at
Nuremberg made in 1580 by Martin Vander Beest, which has been figured
and is the frontispiece to Dr. August Reissmann's _Illustrirte
Geschichte der Deutschen Musik_ (Leipzig, 1881). The Ruckers double
spinet can hardly be much later. The earliest examples known to me of
the octave string attached, as above mentioned, in the harpsichord
itself, are to be found in a double clavecin (French for harpsichord)
by Hans Ruckers the elder, dated 1590, and preserved in the Museum
of the Paris Conservatoire, and in a clavicembalo (Italian for
harpsichord), made at Pesaro, and also in 1590,--lately brought to
England by Messrs. Hill, the violin-makers, and now acquired by the
South Kensington Museum. The latter is an instrument with only two
strings to each note. The invention of the octave string, as well as
of double key-board, has been attributed to Hans Ruckers. The latest
evidence, however, does not favour these attributions, although both
inventions most likely belong to the Netherlands. Ruckers and his
sons, it may be said, made instruments that were never surpassed for
quality of tone. To return to the Double Spinet--both key-boards are
of four octaves, the fixed right-hand one being from the second C
below, to the second above, middle C, and the removable left-hand one
is an octave higher throughout. The complete instrument rests upon
the original arcaded stand.
The paintings are of later date than the instrument itself. The
subjects are on the lid, and represent a contest before the gods
between Apollo and Marsyas--the former divinity playing a viol, and
the latter a pipe. The background is a hilly country with a lake and
castle, and a man in a boat. Above and below the removable spinet
are painted landscapes with figures, immediately above it children
dancing; and at the fixed key-board men and women dancing in pairs.
This pleasing instrument formerly belonged to Messrs. Chappell of
London, but is now the property of Mr. George Donaldson.
There are seven pierced arches and columns in the stand, which is 2
feet 4 inches high. The dimensions are--extreme length, 5 feet 8-1/2
inches; the length of the left-hand key-board, 2 feet 2-1/2 inches,
and of the right-hand one, 2 feet 1-1/4 inches. The width from back
to front is 1 foot 7-1/2 inches, and the depth is 11-1/2 inches.
[Illustration: XXI]
PLATE XXI.
THREE CHITARRONI.
The primary meaning of "Chitarrone" is a large guitar, but, in point
of fact, this imposing yet graceful instrument is a theorbo or bass
lute with a very long upper neck to give length for bass strings of
deep pitch. The one to the left in the drawing, which belongs to
Mr. Rudolf Lehmann, London, is Venetian, if we may judge from the
beautiful decoration. It has three sound-holes with roses joined
together in a fashion that is regarded as Roman, and is adorned
with mother of pearl. It is strung with six pairs of strings upon
the finger-board, each pair tuned in unison. Seven single diapason
strings, or open basses, are stretched from the upper peg-box clear
of the finger-board. It is 5 feet in extreme length, that of the
neck being 3 feet 5 inches. The Chitarrone in the centre, which
belongs to Mr. George Donaldson, and is richly inlaid with mother
of pearl, has also three connected roses, six pairs of unisons upon
the finger-board and eight diapasons clear of it. The length of it
is 6 feet; the neck is 4 feet 1 inch. It is also Venetian, and dated
1608. The right-hand Chitarrone, shown at the Exhibition of 1885 by
Mr. Edward Joseph of Bond Street, London, has six pairs of unisons
and seven diapasons. The neck is ornamented with chequers, and the
finger-board is bound with thirteen frets for the melody strings,
giving the player a semitone more than the complete chromatic series.
The chitarrone is sometimes called the Roman theorbo. It is of
greater length than the Paduan theorbo, with which it was introduced
towards the end of the sixteenth century,--owing to a necessity
having arisen for bass instruments of greater sonorousness than
had been used before, in order to accompany the newly-invented
recitative. About the same time there also came into use a larger
instrument of the viol family, known as the violone, the precursor of
the double bass. The heavier basses and simple harmonies, for which
the Italians had shown a growing preference, replaced, to a great
extent, the ingenious interweavings of counterpoint, and assisted
the development of the latest offspring of the Renaissance, that of
Monody--the recitativo and aria--introduced in Florence by Peri,
Caccini, Cavalieri and Monteverde, the foundation of the modern
Italian opera.
The chitarrone was used in the orchestra of Monteverde on the first
production of his _Orfeo_ in 1607. There is also mention of it in a
band of instruments as early as 1589.
[Illustration: XXII]
PLATE XXII.
SPINET.
This "Spinet," with its original six-legged stand, was made in London
about the end of the seventeenth century. "Stephanus Keene Londini
Fecit," is inscribed upon the name-board, which is characteristically
inlaid with birds and foliage. It is a transverse Spinet, the Italian
"Spinetta traversa," an adaptation of the longer bichord or trichord
harpsichord within the limitations of size of this instrument,
which, like the trapeze-shaped and oblong spinets, had one string
only to each note. The tail is extended on the right-hand side; the
key-board is placed somewhat obliquely, and the wrest-plank, with
the tuning-pins, is immediately above the key-board, instead of
being, as in the older spinets, at the right-hand side. The compass
of the key-board is from the second B below, to the second D above,
the middle C,--in all four octaves and two notes, being one note
more in the treble than occurs in the key-board diagram to Henry
Purcell's _Lessons for the Harpsichord or Spinnet_. The lowest key
would, however, be tuned down to the lowest pianoforte G, the object
being to secure a dominant bass for the lowest C. Purcell's diagram
for the spinet gives the lowest key as "B B," but, in the lessons,
he here and there writes down to G G, also to A A, for which the
lowest C[sharp] key would be similarly accommodated. The two lowest
sharps of the spinet here drawn present the peculiarity of being cut
or divided, each division being an independent key. These were not
quarter-tones as has been supposed; the front halves were tuned A
and B for dominant basses like the G, and the back halves C[sharp]
and D[sharp], chromatic semitones to the adjacent natural notes,
thus combining the "Short Octave" principle, indispensable for the
performance of contemporary music, with the chromatic system then
beginning to be recognised.
Stephen Keene was a well-known maker of spinets, equal in reputation
to his great rivals, Charles Haward, and Thomas and John Hitchcock,
The earliest notice known of Keene occurs in an advertisement at the
end of the sixth edition of Playford's Introduction (London, 1671),
which announces that "Mr. George Dalham, that excellent organ-maker,
dwelleth now in Purple-Lane, next door to the Crooked Billet, where
such as desire to have new organs, or old mended, may be well
accommodated."
"And Mr. Stephen Keene, Maker of Harpsycons and Virginals, dwelleth
now in Threadneedle-Street, at the sign of the Virginal, who maketh
them exactly good, both for sound and substance."
It is proved that Keene was long in business by a name-board which is
in my possession dated 1719. Indeed, longer than the period occupied
by Thomas Hitchcock, whose autograph occurs in spinets from 1664 and
1703. The principal dimensions of the instrument drawn, which belongs
to Mr. H.J. Dale, Cheltenham, are--extreme width, 5 feet 6 inches,
extreme depth, without the projection of the key-board, 1 foot 9-1/4
inches. The key-board is 2 feet 4-1/4 inches wide, and 3-7/8 inches
deep.
[Illustration: XXIII]
PLATE XXIII.
QUINTERNA AND MANDOLINE.
The Quinterna or Chiterna, the Italian guitar, was formerly used by
the humbler order of musicians. According to Engel, it had three
pairs of catgut strings and two single strings covered with wire,
and was played guitar-lute fashion with the fingers, and not with a
plectrum. But the instrument here drawn, with its ten wire strings,
must have been played with a plectrum in cither fashion. It was
exhibited by Mr. George Donaldson in the Music Loan Collection at the
Royal Albert Hall as a Giterna, an obvious variant of the name. Two
views of it are here given. It is of tortoiseshell with arabesques
of ivory and a carved ebony head, the back being of ebony and ivory.
In length it is 24-1/2 inches, and the neck, measured from the body,
is 14 inches. The words, "Joachim Tielke Hamburg fecit, 1676," are
inscribed on the back of the instrument; the date, however, suggests
a considerable discrepancy when compared with the Quinterna in South
Kensington Museum, by Joachim Tielke, 1539. Engel supposes that this
famous maker's name was continued through several generations, to
account for the difference in dates. Evelyn, visiting Pozzuoli in
1645, says, "The country-people so jovial and addicted to musiq, that
the very husbandmen almost universaly play on the guitarr, singing
and composing songs in praise of their sweet-heartes." This guitar
would be the Quinterna. The Mandoline drawn, also Mr. Donaldson's, is
by Domenico Vinaccia, dated Napoli, 1780, and is of tortoiseshell and
mother of pearl, with a beautiful pear-shaped back or shell. It is 22
inches long, the neck and head being 11 inches.
The Mandoline (Italian Mandolino) is smaller than the Mandora, a
kind of alto lute. It is strung with catgut and wire, the bass
strings being of catgut covered with silver wire, and is played with
a plectrum. Of several kinds, including the Mandore, Mandurina, and
Pandurina, that have been used in Italy, the Milanese and Neapolitan
Mandolines are the best known. The Milanese Mandoline, with five or
six pairs of strings, preserves old cither tunings; the Neapolitan
Mandoline, which is really an eighteenth-century instrument, is
evidently of later introduction, as it is tuned in fifths similar
to a violin, which makes performance upon it easily attainable by
violin players. Mozart wrote the serenade in _Don Giovanni_ with
an accompaniment for it, but beautiful as this composition is, the
accompaniment appears scarcely characteristic of the Mandoline or
of the Bandurria either--a small kind of Spanish guitar of deeper
pitch than the Mandoline, which, for local colour, would have been
the right instrument. These instruments, like the Dulcimer, make
their characteristic effects by means of the reiteration of notes,
analogous to what is called "repetition" on a pianoforte, the
intention being to convey an impression of sustained sound, and make
the melody prominent when several other instruments are being played.
The accordance of the Neapolitan Mandoline is--
[Music]
of the Milanese Mandoline of five notes--
[Music]
of the Milanese Mandoline of six notes--
[Music]
and of the Bandurria--
[Music]
the three higher notes being here of catgut--the lower of silk
overspun with metal. The Bandurria, like the Mandolines, is played
with a plectrum, called in Spanish "Pua," which is prevented from
defacing the wood by the presence of a tortoiseshell plate, let
into the sound-board. The plectrum is usually a small piece of
tortoiseshell or quill.
[Illustration: XXIV]
PLATE XXIV.
WELSH CRWTH. RUSSIAN BALALÄIKA.