The next class of wind instruments dealt with by the author is that of
which the oboe and bassoon are typical. Mr Galpin refers to a reed-pipe
with which I am very familiar; it is made from a dandelion stalk pinched
flat at one end. Its principle is that of the oboe. I well remember
admiring its tone as a child, and lamenting its very brief life, for it
soon got spoiled. The reed of serious musical instruments is made of two
pieces of cane which are flat at the free or upper end and terminate
below in a tube which fits on to the instrument. This is an ancient type
of instrument, for the Roman _tibia_ is believed to have been played with
the "double reed," _i.e._ of oboe-type. I may here be allowed to quote
from my _Rustic Sounds_, p. 5: "The most truly rustic instrument (and
here I mean an instrument of polite life--an orchestral instrument) is
undoubtedly the oboe. The bassoon runs it hard, but has a touch of
comedy and a strong flavour of necromancy, while the oboe is quite good
and simple in nature and is excessively in earnest; it seems to have in
it the ghost of a sun-burnt boy playing to himself under a tree, in a
ragged shirt unbuttoned at the throat." A figure is given (Galpin, p.
159) of a goat playing on a shawm {88} from a carving of the twelfth
century at Canterbury. The name is believed to be derived from
_calamaula_, a reed-pipe, which was corrupted to _chalem-elle_ and then
to _shawm_. Shawms were made of various sizes, from the small treble
instrument, one foot long, to the huge affair, six feet in length. The
name Howe-boie, _i.e._ probably Haut-bois, was applied to the treble
instrument as early as the reign of Elizabeth; while the deeper-toned
instruments retained the name shawm. The bassoon is only a bass oboe
rendered less cumbrous by the tube being bent sharply on itself. A tenor
bassoon, known as the oboe da caccia, or teneroon, also existed, and if
my memory serves me right, Mr Stone rescued one of these instruments from
the band of a London boys' school. A teneroon of Mr Galpin's is shown at
p. 168 of his book, where it appears to be about seven-tenths of the size
of the ordinary bassoon.
[Picture: Plate VII. Pibcorn or Horn-pipe]
The next class of wind-instrument is that of which the clarinet is the
modern representative. It has a rich but somewhat cloying tone, and, to
my thinking, none of the mysterious charm of the oboe. It is
characterised by a single vibrating plate or reed, and the current of air
from the performer's mouth passes between it and an immovable surface of
wood. In our country this type of reed was found in a most interesting
instrument, the horn-pipe {89a} or pibcorn, which is said to have existed
in Wales as late as the nineteenth century. One of these curious
instruments is in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, and is
shown in Plate VII. It was given to the Society by Daines Barrington,
who describes it in the Society's _Archaeologia_ for 1779. In a Saxon
vocabulary of the eighth century the word _Sambucus_ (_i.e._ elder-tree)
is translated _swegelhorn_. Now the word _swegel_ was applied to the
_tibia_ or leg-bone; it is therefore of remarkable interest to find that,
according to an old Welsh peasant, the tibia of a deer should be the best
tube for the pibcorn. {89b} This name, which means pipe-horn, is very
appropriate, since the tube of the instrument bears at either end a cow's
horn. To the upper one the performer applied his mouth. He had no means
of regulating the reed as a clarinet or oboe-player has; the reed was
left to its own sweet will, as is also the case with the reeds in another
ancient instrument--the bagpipe, to which a few words must be given.
Mr Henry Balfour believes that both these instruments came to us with the
Keltic migration from the East. Or, as Mr Galpin suggests, we may owe
the bagpipe to Roman soldiers, "for the _tibia utricularis_ was used in
the Imperial army." It is quite a mistake to suppose that the bagpipe is
in any special way connected with Scotland. Illuminated missals of the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries show how common the
bagpipe was in England. But the Scots must at least have a share of the
credit of preserving the bagpipe from extinction; and the same may be
said of another Keltic race, the Breton, in whose land I have heard the
bagpipe accompanied by a rough kind of oboe.
Mr Galpin tells me a pleasant story of a bagpipe hunt in Paris. He
discovered, in a shop, an old French musette (bagpipe), the chanter or
melody-pipe of which was missing. He did not buy it until in a two days'
hunt all over Paris he discovered the lost chanter, when he returned to
the first shop, triumphantly carried off the musette, and thus became the
owner of this rare and beautiful instrument.
The drone, which forms a continuous bass to the "chanter," was not an
original character of the bagpipe, but appeared soon after the year 1300.
A second drone "was added about the year 1400, for it is seen in the
ancient bagpipe belonging to Messrs Glen of Edinburgh," which bears the
date 1409.
The Horn and Cornett.
The horn takes its name from the cow's horn, out of which the instrument
was made. The resemblance includes the tapering bore of this instrument,
and also the fact that it is curved. {90} In the metal instruments, made
in imitation of the natural horn, we find a curvature of about a
semi-circle, as in the seventeenth century hunting horn (Galpin, p. 188).
While in the horn of the early seventeenth century shown on the same
plate, the tube is curved into many circular coils.
[Picture: PLATE VIII. I, 2, 3, 4, 5. Cornetts. 6. Serpent. 7. Bass Horn.
8. Ophicleide. 9. Keyed Bugle]
The cornett, {91} which was blown like a horn or trumpet, seems to have
been successful in mediaeval times, because a workable scale was so much
more easily attainable with it than in the ordinary trumpet. In Norway a
goat's horn pierced with four or five holes stopped by the fingers is
still in use as a rustic instrument. This is in fact a cornett which, as
early as the twelfth century, was made of wood or ivory, and had a
characteristic six-sided form. It seems to have been popular, and Henry
VIII. died possessed of many cornetts. We hear, too, of two _Cornetters_
attached to Canterbury Cathedral; and the translators of the Bible gave
it a place in Nebuchadnezzar's band. But the cornett was doomed to
destruction in the struggle for life. In 1662 Evelyn speaks of the
disappearance of the cornett "which gave life to the organ." Lord Keeper
North wrote, "Nothing comes so near, or rather imitates so much, an
excellent voice as a cornett pipe; but the labour of the lips is too
great and is seldom well-sounded." The cornett was given a place in the
chorales of Bach and the operas of Gluck after it had become extinct in
England.
The bass cornett was known as the serpent from its curved form, and this
character was in fact necessary in order that the performer's hands might
be nearer together. Mr Galpin writes:--"If not overblown it yields a
peculiarly soft _woody_ tone which no longer has its counterpart in the
orchestra." He quotes from Thomas Hardy's _Under the Greenwood Tree_,
where the village shoemaker remarks, "There's worse things than
serpents." Dr Stone (_Dictionary of Music_, 1883) wrote:--"There were
till a few years ago two serpents in the band of the Sacred Harmonic
Society, played by Mr Standen and Mr Pimlett." The serpent {92} was
driven out of the orchestra by the Ophicleide, which again has been
extinguished by the valved Tubas of Adolphe Sax.
Trumpet and Sackbut.
"The story of the trumpet is the story of panoply and pomp," says Mr
Galpin, and goes on to explain how the trumpeters with drummers formed an
exclusive guild. Trumpets served as war-like instruments, but also for
domestic pomp. Thus twelve trumpets and two kettle-drums sounded while
Queen Elizabeth's dinner was being brought in. That monarch had
certainly no excuse for being late for her meals.
The trumpet was originally a long straight cylindrical tube, but as early
as 1300 the tube was bent into a loop, thus combining length with
handiness. This form of the instrument was known as a clarion, a word
which has degenerated in our day into a picturesque word for a trumpet.
It was for the clarion that Bach and Handel wrote trumpet parts which, I
gather, are almost unplayable on the modern instrument. The clarion
seems to have been soon beaten in the struggle for life by the clarinet,
"which, as its name implies, was considered an effective substitute for
the high clarion notes."
The sackbut, _i.e._ trombone, is an important offshoot from the trumpet.
The essential feature of this splendid instrument is that the length of
the tube can be altered at will. Thus the performer is not--like the
trumpeter--confined to one series of harmonics, but can take advantage of
a whole series of these accessory notes.
The Organ.
This is one of the most ancient of instruments. Thus in the second
century before our era Ctesibius of Alexandria had a simple type of
organ, in which the wind from the bellows was admitted at will into
whistle-like tube by keys which the performer depressed with his fingers.
It is a remarkable fact that keys should afterwards have been replaced by
cumbersome _sliders_ which had to be pushed in and out to produce the
desired note. But so it was, and the keyboard had to be rediscovered in
the twelfth century. The keys were first applied to the little
portatives, {94a} one of which is figured by Galpin, p. 221, where the
organist works the wind supply with one hand and manipulates the keys
with the other. In Galpin, p. 222, a monk is shown playing a simple
organ of apparently two octave compass, while another tonsured person is
blowing a pair of bellows, one with the left and the other with the right
hand. Another artist is shown by Galpin, p. 226, from a thirteenth
century Psalter, who is accompanying a player of the symphony
(hurdy-gurdy). The bellows are blown by the feet of an assistant.
The regal, figured by Galpin at p. 230, was a simple form of organ in
which the pipes were not of the whistle-type, but consisted principally
of reed-pipes.
Tabors and Nakers.
In my essay on war music {94b} I wrote of the band of a French regiment
at the beginning of the war: "When the buglers were out of breath, the
drums thundered on with magnificent fire, until once more the simple and
spirited fanfare came in with its brave out-of-doors flavour--a romantic
dash of the hunting-song, and yet with something of the seriousness of
battle. . . . As I watched these men, so soon to fight for their
country, I was reminded of that white-faced boy pictured by Stevenson,
striding over his dead comrades, the roll of his drum leading the living
to victory or death." I have ventured to quote the above passage in
illustration of Mr Galpin's striking remark that the drum has probably
entered more largely than any other instrument into the destinies of the
human race.
The historian of musical instruments in the far north has an easy task,
since it appears that the Eskimoes confine themselves to the drum, which
they sound on all possible occasions, from prosperous huntings to the
death of a comrade.
The instruments of the class here dealt with are divided into three
types:--
(i.) The timbrel or tambourine, which is characterised by having only
one membrane stretched on a shallow wooden frame.
(ii.) The drum with two membranes, one at each end of a barrel-shaped
frame.
(iii.) The naker or kettle-drum, with a single membrane stretched over
the opening of a hemispherical frame. The tambourine is an extremely
ancient instrument since it was known in Assyria and Egypt as well as
in Greece and Rome, and it is especially interesting to learn that the
Roman tambourine had the metal discs which make so exciting a jingle in
the modern instrument. The mediaeval tambourine also had what, in the
case of the drum, is called the _snare_, which is a cord tightly
stretched across the membrane, and gives a certain sting to instruments
of this class, but now only exists in the drum proper.
Drum.
An ancient Egyptian drum was discovered at Thebes. It was a true drum
having a membrane at each end of the hollow cylinder which made the
frame, and, what is more remarkable, it had the braces or system of cords
by which we still tighten the drum-membranes.
The drum "suspended at the side of the player and beaten on one head
only" became, with the accompaniment of the fife, the earliest type of
military music. {96a} Mr Galpin concludes {96b} by quoting what Virdung
(1511) had to say of drums: "I verily believe that the devil must have
had the devising and making of them, for there is no pleasure nor
anything good about them. If the noise of the drum-stick be music, then
the coopers who make barrels must be musicians."