MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS ALL RIGHTS RESHRyED m^^ \ MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS Iftistodc IRare anb Unique THE SELECTION, INTRODUCTION AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES BY A. J. HIPKINS. F.S.A. Lond. AUTHOR OF THE ARTICLE "PIANOFORTE" IN THE ENCVCLOP^DIA BRITANNICA ILLUSTRATED BY A SERIES OF FORTY-EIGHT PLATES IN COLOURS DRAWN BY WILLIAM GIBB A. AND C. BLACK, LTD. 4, 5 AND 6 SOHO , SQUAR'E, LONDON. W. I 192 I First published in iS8S. ftiaUi '» -^i- -" irir^^ i y-1 H & : CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION Page vii. BURGMOTE HORNS Plate I. QUEEN MARY'S HARP . II, THE LAMONT HARP . III. CORNEMUSE. CALABRIAN BAGPIPE, MUSETTE IV. BAGPIPES V. CLAVICYTHERIUM OR UPRIGHT SPINET VI. OLIPHANT VII, QUEEN ELIZABETH'S VIRGINAL . VIII, QUEEN ELIZABETH'S LUTE IX, THE RIZZIO GUITAR . X. POSITIVE ORGAN ... XI, REGAL XII. PORTABLE ORGAN AND BIBLE REGAL XIII. CETERA XIV. LUTE XV. THEORBO . XVI. DULCIMER XVII, VIRGINAL . XVIII, VIOLA DA GAMBA XIX, DOUBLE SPINET OR VIRGINAL XX. The Woodcuts at the head of this page (from the British Museum) represent Sir Michael Mercator, of Venloo, Musical Instrument Maker to King Henry VIII. 196986 VI CONTENTS THREE CHITARRONI ... XXI. SPINET XXII. QUINTERNA AND MANDOLINE XXIII. WELSH CRWTH. RUSSIAN BALALAIKA XXIV. VIOLIN—THE HELLIER STRADIVARIUS, and two old Bows noted FOR THE Fluting XXV. VIOLINS—THE ALARD STRADIVARIUS, THE KING JOSEPH GUARNERIUS DEL GESU XXVI. VIOLA D'AMORE XXVII, CETERA, BY ANTONIUS STRADIVARIUS XXVIII, GUITAR, BY ANTONIUS STRADIVARIUS XXIX. BELL HARP AND HURDY-GURDY XXX, SORDINI .... XXXI, CLAVICHORD .... XXXII. THE EMPRESS HARPSICHORD XXXIII, PEDAL HARP .... XXXIV, STATE TRUMPET AND KETTLEDRUM XXXV, CAVALRY BUGLE. CAVALRY TRUMPET. TRUMPETS XXXVI. LITUUS AND BUCCINA. CORNET. TRUMPETS XXXVII, TWO DOUBLE FLAGEOLETS, A GERMAN FLUTE, AND TWO FLUTES DOUCES . XXXVIII, DOLCIANO. OBOE. BASSOON. OBOE DA CACCIA, BASSET HORN XXXIX, SITARS AND VI'nA XL, INDIAN DRUMS XLI, SAW DUANG AND BOW. SAW TAl AND BOW. SAW 00 AND BOW KLUI. PEE XLII. RANAT EK. KHONG YAI. TA'KHAY .... > XLIII. HU-CH'IN AND BOW. SHENG. SAN-HS IEN^. P'l-P'A XLIV. CHINESE TI-TZU, SO-NA, YUEH-CH'IN. JAPANESE HIJI-RIKI CHINESE LA-PA XLV. JAPANESE KOTO XLVI. SIAMISEN, KOKIU, BIWA XLVII. MARIMBA OF SOUTH AFRICA XLVIII, INDEX .... Page 117 INTRODUCTION. r is claimed for this book, intended to illustrate rare historical and beautiful Musical Instruments, that it is unique. Classical, Mediaeval, Japanese, and other varieties of Decorative Art, Weapons, and Costumes, have found worthy illustration and adequate description, but hitherto no attempt has been made to represent in a like manner the grace and external charm of fine lutes and harps, of viols, virg'inals, and other instruments. Engravings have been produced, in historical or technical works; but the greater number of these are mere repetitions continued from one to the other, and have no specially aesthetic interest. Beauty of form and fitness of decoration demand more than the commonplace homage paid to simple use, and while we should never lose sight of the purpose of a musical instrument, its capacity to produce agreeable and various sounds, we pan take advantage of its form and material, and, making it lovely 'to look upon, give pleasure to the eye as well as the ear. It is hardly necessary to say that the love of adornment or ornament is an attribute of the human race. It is to be found ever3^where and in isvery epoch when life is, for the time being, safe and the means 3f existence secure. Some favourite manner of decoration is the characteristic stamp of a people, a period, or a country. The earliest monuments we can point to that represent musical instruments, show 1 tendency to adorn them or to place them with decorative surround- ings. The Egyptians, the Assyrians, the ancient Greeks supply a -ecord that has been continued by the Persians and Saracens, in the 'Gothic age and the Renaissance, always repeating, as it were, in an ineffaceable scri|jt, the precept that the hand should minister to the gratification of the eye, and satisfy it by alternating excitement with repose. And so it was, until the marvellous mechanical advance in the present century has not only caused us to forget, by its over- whelming power, what our predecessors so steadfastly continued, but viii INTRODUCTION has induced us to regard the ugly as sufficient if the mere practical end is served. By thus chilling the appreciation and pursuit of decorative invention, that faculty has been numbed for the time being, and there is danger of its being lost altogether. It may be answered that real artistic work is occasionally done, and there are examples of it to be found in musical instruments ; a good organ case is sometimes made, sometimes a fine decoration for a piano case. If there is any hope of an awakening of the love for musical instruments that finds expression in their adornment, its promise lies in the beautiful designs that have been, of late years, so meri- toriously carried out for pianos—the invention of Mr. Alma Tadema, Mr. Burne Jones, Mr. Fox, and Miss Kate Faulkner. Good decora- tion need not be a privilege of the rich ; the old Antwerp clavecin- makers, who were all members of the guild of St. Luke, the artists' guild, knew how to worthily decorate their instruments at little cost, as may be seen in the Ruckers Virginal, Plate XVIII. They painted their sound-boards with appropriate ornamentation, and vised bright colour to heighten the effect of their instruments when open. The Italians went even farther in richer details, and beautified other' stringed instruments besides those with key-boards. The persist- ence of noble traditions is shown in the exquisite ornament of the Siamese instruments (Plates XLII. and XLIII.) and of the Japanese Koto (Plate XLVI.). It would be grievous if this Eastern inherit- ance were lost through the engrafting of Western ideas and reception of our material civilisation. The incentive to all such work is the pleasure found in it, and without pleasure in work the life of the worker is aimless and sad. In describing musical instruments we can refer to no begin- in nings ; those that may be discerned dimly the glimmering of the historic dawn present a certain completeness that marks an intel- lectual advance already accomplished. The well-known Egyptian Nefer, a spade-like guitar, or rather tamboura, invited by its long neck the stopping of various notes upon its strings. As early as the Third Dynasty, it had already been so long in use as to have become incorporated in the pictorial language of the Hieroglyphics, in which its representation presented the concept or symbol of the INTRODUCTION ix attribute good. This stringed instrument, thus complex in its playing, must have been already grey with age when it was cut in stone in the monument of the beautiful Princess Nefer-t, now in the museum at Bulaq. We cannot conjecture when it was discovered that more tones than one could be got from a single string by taking advantage of the expedient of a long neck or finger-board, or from a single pipe by boring lateral holes in it, and closing those holes to produce different notes with the fingers. Even these remote inventions, certainly prehistoric, seem to require that there should be yet older inventions—those which placed pipes or strings of different lengths, or strings of the same length but of different thicknesses and tension, side by side, as in the syrinx or Pan's pipes, or the harp and lyre. The late Carl Engel, Mtisic of the Most Ancient Nations (London, 1864), has formed a kind of Development theory for musical instruments, giving the earliest place to the drum, and the latest to the stringed instruments ; those of the latter with key- boards having been invented almost in our own time. This theor}^ has lately been reconstructed upon a more scientific basis by Mr. Rowbotham {Histoyy of Music, vol. i., London, 1885). The drum and tambourine, and other clashing and mere time-marking instruments, as sistrums, cymbals, castagnettes, and triangles, are on the limit of musical sound and noise, inclining-, for the most part, to the latter. The drum is widely used in religious services in different parts of the world, and to play the sistrum was in ancient Egypt the prerogative of a high order of priesthood. The various Buddhist gongs resemble the kettledrums in this respect, that they have a more definable musical element in them, and we find these sonorous metal instruments widely used in China and the Indo-Chinese countries, in Java, and the Indian Archipelago. The Indian drums (Plate XLL), according to the theory just mentioned, should be aboriginal, but the most ancient, the M'ridang, is attributed to the god S'iva, and is therefore Aryan. Her Majesty the Queen's State Kettledrum (Plate XXXV.) here adorned with a richly embroidered silk banneret, serves to show the highest point the drum has yet attained in estimation and use. On amuch higher b INTRODUCTION level is that arrangement of wooden or metal bars in those instru- ments classed generally as Harmonicons, which are especially at home in Java, Siam, and Burma, and are known to be used from the Hill country of India in the one direction, to Africa in the other. The beautiful Siamese Ranat and Khong (Plate XLIII.) and the Zulu Marimba (Plate XLVIII.) are examples of this wide distribution, and in the latter the gourd resonators attached to the bars show the simplest form of sound reinforcers, which, perfected in various Eastern instruments, such as the Indian Vinas and Sitars (Plate XL.) has in Europe attained its crowning artistic development in the beautiful pear-shaped Resonance bodies of the Lute and Mandoline.