Part 6 (1/2)
[Sidenote: _Vibrato._]
[Sidenote: _”Con sordino.”_]
The halo of sound which streams from the beginning and end of the ”Lohengrin” prelude is produced by this device. High and close harmonies from divided violins always sound ethereal. Besides their native tone quality (that resulting from a string stretched over a sounding sh.e.l.l set to vibrating by friction), the violins have a number of modified qualities resulting from changes in manipulation.
Sometimes the strings are plucked (_pizzicato_), when the result is a short tone something like that of a banjo with the metallic clang omitted; very dainty effects can thus be produced, and though it always seems like a degradation of the instrument so pre-eminently suited to a broad singing style, no less significant a symphonist than Tschaikowsky has written a Scherzo in which the violins are played _pizzicato_ throughout the movement. Ballet composers frequently resort to the piquant effect, but in the larger and more serious forms of composition, the device is sparingly used. Differences in quality and expressiveness of tone are also produced by varied methods of applying the bow to the strings: with stronger or lighter pressure; near the bridge, which renders the tone hard and brilliant, and over the end of the finger-board, which softens it; in a continuous manner (_legato_), or detached (_staccato_). Weird effects in dramatic music are sometimes produced by striking the strings with the wood of the bow, Wagner resorting to this means to delineate the wicked glee of his dwarf _Mime_, and Meyerbeer to heighten the uncanniness of _Nelusko's_ wild song in the third act of ”L'Africaine.” Another cla.s.s of effects results from the manner in which the strings are ”stopped”
by the fingers of the left hand. When they are not pressed firmly against the finger-board but touched lightly at certain places called nodes by the acousticians, so that the segments below the finger are permitted to vibrate along with the upper portion, those peculiar tones of a flute-like quality called harmonics or flageolet tones are produced. These are oftener heard in dramatic music than in symphonies; but Berlioz, desiring to put Shakespeare's description of Queen Mab,
”Her wagon-spokes made of long spinner's legs; The cover, of the wings of gra.s.shoppers; The traces, of the smallest spider's web; The collars, of the moons.h.i.+ne's watery beams--”
into music in his dramatic symphony, ”Romeo and Juliet,” achieved a marvellously filmy effect by dividing his violins, and permitting some of them to play harmonics. Yet so little was his ingenious purpose suspected when he first brought the symphony forward in Paris, that one of the critics spoke contemptuously of this effect as sounding ”like an ill-greased syringe.” A quivering motion imparted to the fingers of the left hand in stopping the strings produces a tremulousness of tone akin to the _vibrato_ of a singer; and, like the vocal _vibrato_, when not carried to excess, this effect is a potent expression of sentimental feeling. But it is much abused by solo players. Another modification of tone is caused by placing a tiny instrument called a sordino, or mute, upon the bridge. This clamps the bridge, makes it heavier, and checks the vibrations, so that the tone is muted or m.u.f.fled, and at times sounds mysterious.
[Sidenote: _Pizzicato on the ba.s.ses._]
[Sidenote: _Tremolo._]
These devices, though as a rule they have their maximum of effectiveness in the violins, are possible also on the violas, violoncellos, and double-ba.s.ses, which, as I have already intimated, are but violins of a larger growth. The _pizzicato_ is, indeed, oftenest heard from the double-ba.s.ses, where it has a much greater eloquence than on the violins. In music of a sombre cast, the short, deep tones given out by the plucked strings of the contra-ba.s.s sometimes have the awfulness of gigantic heart-throbs. The difficulty of producing the other effects grows with the increase of difficulty in handling the instruments, this being due to the growing thickness of the strings and the wideness of the points at which they must be stopped. One effect peculiar to them all--the most used of all effects, indeed, in dramatic music--is the _tremolo_, produced by dividing a tone into many quickly reiterated short tones by a rapid motion of the bow. This device came into use with one of the earliest pieces of dramatic music. It is two centuries old, and was first used to help in the musical delineation of a combat. With scarcely an exception, the varied means which I have described can be detected by those to whom they are not already familiar by watching the players while listening to the music.
[Sidenote: _The viola._]
The viola is next in size to the violin, and is tuned at the interval of a fifth lower. Its highest string is A, which is the second string of the violin, and its lowest C. Its tone, which sometimes contains a comical suggestion of a boy's voice in mutation, is lacking in incisiveness and brilliancy, but for this it compensates by a wonderful richness and filling quality, and a pathetic and inimitable mournfulness in melancholy music. It blends beautifully with the violoncello, and is often made to double that instrument's part for the sake of color effect--as, to cite a familiar instance, in the princ.i.p.al subject of the Andante in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
[Sidenote: _The violoncello._]
[Sidenote: _Violoncello effects._]
The strings of the violoncello (Plate II.) are tuned like those of the viola, but an octave lower. It is the knee-fiddle (_viola da gamba_) of the last century, as the viola is the arm-fiddle (_viola da braccio_), and got its old name from the position in which it is held by the player. The 'cello's voice is a ba.s.s--it might be called the barytone of the choir--and in the olden time of simple writing, little else was done with it than to double the ba.s.s part one octave higher.
But modern composers, appreciating its marvellous capacity for expression, which is next to that of the violin, have treated it with great freedom and independence as a solo instrument. Its tone is full of voluptuous languor. It is the sighing lover of the instrumental company, and can speak the language of tender pa.s.sion more feelingly than any of its fellows. The ravis.h.i.+ng effect of a multiplication of its voice is tellingly exemplified in the opening of the overture to ”William Tell,” which is written for five solo 'celli, though it is oftenest heard in an arrangement which gives two of the middle parts to violas. When Beethoven wished to produce the emotional impression of a peacefully rippling brook in his ”Pastoral” symphony, he gave a murmuring figure to the divided violoncellos, and Wagner uses the pa.s.sionate accents of four of these instruments playing in harmony to support _Siegmund_ when he is pouring out the ecstasy of his love in the first act of ”Die Walkure.” In the love scene of Berlioz's ”Romeo and Juliet” symphony it is the violoncello which personifies the lover, and holds converse with the modest oboe.
[Sidenote: _The double-ba.s.s._]
The patriarchal double-ba.s.s is known to all, and also its mission of providing the foundation for the harmonic structure of orchestral music. It sounds an octave lower than the music written for it, being what is called a transposing instrument of sixteen-foot tone. Solos are seldom written for this instrument in orchestral music, though Beethoven, with his daring recitatives in the Ninth Symphony, makes it a mediator between the instrumental and vocal forces. Dragonetti and Bottesini, two Italians, the latter of whom is still alive, won great fame as solo players on the unwieldy instrument. The latter uses a small ba.s.s viol, and strings it with harp strings; but Dragonetti played a full double-ba.s.s, on which he could execute the most difficult pa.s.sages written for the violoncello.
[Sidenote: _The wood-winds._]
Since the instruments of the wood-wind choir are frequently used in solos, their acquaintance can easily be made by an observing amateur.
To this division of the orchestra belong the gentle accents in the instrumental language. Violent expression is not its province, and generally when the band is discoursing in heroic style or giving voice to brave or angry emotion the wood-winds are either silent or are used to give weight to the body of tone rather than color. Each of the instruments has a strongly characteristic voice, which adapts itself best to a certain style of music; but by use of different registers and by combinations among them, or with the instruments of the other choirs, a wide range of expression within the limits suggested has been won for the wood-winds.
[Sidenote: _The flute._]
[Sidenote: _The piccolo flute._]
[Sidenote: _Janizary music._]
[Sidenote: _The story of the flute._]
The flute, which requires no description, is, for instance, an essentially soulless instrument; but its marvellous agility and the effectiveness with which its tones can be blended with others make it one of the most useful instruments in the band. Its native character, heard in the compositions written for it as a solo instrument, has prevented it from being looked upon with dignity. As a rule, brilliancy is all that is expected from it. It is a sort of _soprano leggiero_ with a small range of superficial feelings. It can sentimentalize, and, as Dryden says, be ”soft, complaining,” but when we hear it pour forth a veritable ecstasy of jubilation, as it does in the dramatic climax of Beethoven's overture ”Leonore No. 3,” we marvel at the transformation effected by the composer. Advantage has also been taken of the difference between its high and low tones, and now in some romantic music, as in Raff's ”Lenore” symphony, or the prayer of _Agathe_ in ”Der Freischutz,” the hollowness of the low tones produces a mysterious effect that is exceedingly striking. Still the fact remains that the native voice of the instrument, though sweet, is expressionless compared with that of the oboe or clarinet. Modern composers sometimes write for three flutes; but in the older writers, when a third flute is used, it is generally an octave flute, or piccolo flute (Plate III.)--a tiny instrument whose aggressiveness of voice is out of all proportion to its diminutiveness of body. This is the instrument which shrieks and whistles when the band is playing at storm-making, to imitate the noise of the wind. It sounds an octave higher than is indicated by the notes in its part, and so is what is called a transposing instrument of four-foot tone. It revels in military music, which is proper, for it is an own cousin to the ear-piercing fife, which annually makes up for its long silence in the noisy days before political elections. When you hear a composition in march time, with ba.s.s and snare drum, cymbals and triangle, such as the Germans call ”Turkish” or ”Janizary” music, you may be sure to hear also the piccolo flute. The flute is doubtless one of the oldest instruments in the world. The primitive cave-dwellers made flutes of the leg-bones of birds and other animals, an origin of which a record is preserved in the Latin name _tibia_. The first wooden flutes were doubtless the Pandean pipes, in which the tone was produced by blowing across the open ends of hollow reeds. The present method, already known to the ancient Egyptians, of closing the upper end, and creating the tone by blowing across a hole cut in the side, is only a modification of the method pursued, according to cla.s.sic tradition, by Pan when he breathed out his dejection at the loss of the nymph Syrinx, by blowing across the tuneful reeds which were that nymph in her metamorphosed state.
[Sidenote: _Reed instruments._]
[Sidenote: _Double reeds._]
The flute or pipe of the Greeks and Romans was only distantly related to the true flute, but was the ancestor of its orchestral companions, the oboe and clarinet. These instruments are sounded by being blown in at the end, and the tone is created by vibrating reeds, whereas in the flute it is the result of the impinging of the air on the edge of the hole called the embouchure, and the consequent stirring of the column of air in the flue of the instrument. The reeds are thin slips or blades of cane. The size and bore of the instruments and the difference between these reeds are the causes of the differences in tone quality between these relatives. The oboe or hautboy, English horn, and the ba.s.soon have what are called double reeds. Two narrow blades of cane are fitted closely together, and fastened with silk on a small metal tube extending from the upper end of the instrument in the case of the oboe and English horn, from the side in the case of the ba.s.soon. The reeds are pinched more or less tightly between the lips, and are set to vibrating by the breath.