Part 6 (2/2)
[Sidenote: _The oboe._]
[Sidenote: _The English horn._]
The oboe (Plate IV.) is naturally a.s.sociated with music of a pastoral character. It is pre-eminently a melody instrument, and though its voice comes forth shrinkingly, its uniqueness of tone makes it easily heard. It is a most lovable instrument. ”Candor, artless grace, soft joy, or the grief of a fragile being suits the oboe's accents,” says Berlioz. The peculiarity of its mouth-piece gives its tone a reedy or vibrating quality totally unlike the clarinet's. Its natural alto is the English horn (Plate V.), which is an oboe of larger growth, with curved tube for convenience of manipulation. The tone of the English horn is fuller, n.o.bler, and is very attractive in melancholy or dreamy music. There are few players on the English horn in this country, and it might be set down as a rule that outside of New York, Boston, and Chicago, the English horn parts are played by the oboe in America. No melody displays the true character of the English horn better than the _Ranz des Vaches_ in the overture to Rossini's ”William Tell”--that lovely Alpine song which the flute embroiders with exquisite ornament.
One of the n.o.blest utterances of the oboe is the melody of the funeral march in Beethoven's ”Heroic” symphony, in which its tenderness has beautiful play. It is sometimes used effectively in imitative music.
In Haydn's ”Seasons,” and also in that grotesque tone poem by Saint-Saens, the ”Danse Macabre,” it gives the c.o.c.k crow. It is the timid oboe that sounds the A for the orchestra to tune by.
[Sidenote: _The ba.s.soon._]
[Sidenote: _An orchestral humorist._]
[Sidenote: _Supernatural effects._]
The grave voice of the oboe is heard from the ba.s.soon (Plate VI.), where, without becoming a.s.sertive, it gains a quality entirely unknown to the oboe and English horn. It is this quality that makes the ba.s.soon the humorist _par excellence_ of the orchestra. It is a reedy ba.s.s, very apt to recall to those who have had a country education the squalling tone of the homely instrument which the farmer's boy fas.h.i.+ons out of the stems of the pumpkin-vine. The humor of the ba.s.soon is an unconscious humor, and results from the use made of its abysmally solemn voice. This solemnity in quality is paired with astonis.h.i.+ng flexibility of utterance, so that its gambols are always grotesque. Brahms permits the ba.s.soon to intone the _Fuchslied_ of the German students in his ”Academic” overture. Beethoven achieves a decidedly comical effect by a stubborn reiteration of key-note, fifth, and octave by the ba.s.soon under a rustic dance intoned by the oboe in the scherzo of his ”Pastoral” symphony; and nearly every modern composer has taken advantage of the instrument's grotesqueness.
Mendelssohn introduces the clowns in his ”Midsummer-Night's-Dream”
music by a droll dance for two ba.s.soons over a sustained ba.s.s note from the violoncellos; but when Meyerbeer wanted a very different effect, a ghastly one indeed, in the scene of the resuscitation of the nuns in his ”Robert le Diable,” he got it by taking two ba.s.soons as solo instruments and using their weak middle tones, which, Berlioz says, have ”a pale, cold, cadaverous sound.” Singularly enough, Handel resorted to a similar device in his ”Saul,” to accompany the vision of the Witch of Endor.
[Sidenote: _The double ba.s.soon._]
In all these cases a great deal depends upon the relation between the character of the melody and the nature of the instrument to which it is set. A swelling martial fanfare may be made absurd by changing it from trumpets to a weak-voiced wood-wind. It is only the string quartet that speaks all the musical languages of pa.s.sion and emotion.
The double-ba.s.soon is so large an instrument that it has to be bent on itself to bring it under the control of the player. It sounds an octave lower than the written notes. It is not brought often into the orchestra, but speaks very much to the purpose in Brahms's beautiful variations on a theme by Haydn, and the glorious finale of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
[Sidenote: _The clarinet._]
[Sidenote: _The ba.s.s clarinet._]
The clarinet (Plate VII.) is the most eloquent member of the wood-wind choir, and, except some of its own modifications or the modifications of the oboe and ba.s.soon, the latest arrival in the harmonious company.
It is only a little more than a century old. It has the widest range of expression of the wood-winds, and its chief structural difference is in its mouth-piece. It has a single flat reed, which is much wider than that of the oboe or ba.s.soon, and is fastened by a metallic band and screw to the flattened side of the mouth-piece, whose other side is cut down, chisel shape, for convenience. Its voice is rich, mellow, less reedy, and much fuller and more limpid than the voice of the oboe, which Berlioz tries to describe by a.n.a.logy as ”sweet-sour.” It is very flexible, too, and has a range of over three and a half octaves. Its high tones are sometimes shrieky, however, and the full beauty of the instrument is only disclosed when it sings in the middle register. Every symphony and overture contains pa.s.sages for the clarinet which serve to display its characteristics. Clarinets are made of different sizes for different keys, the smallest being that in E-flat, with an unpleasantly piercing tone, whose use is confined to military bands. There is also an alto clarinet and a ba.s.s clarinet (Plate VIII.). The bell of the latter instrument is bent upward, pipe fas.h.i.+on, and its voice is peculiarly impressive and n.o.ble. It is a favorite solo instrument in Liszt's symphonic poems.
[Sidenote: _Lips and reeds._]
[Sidenote: _The bra.s.s instruments._]
[Sidenote: _Improvements in bra.s.s instruments._]
[Sidenote: _Valves and slides._]
The fundamental principle of the instruments last described is the production of tone by vibrating reeds. In the instruments of the bra.s.s choir, the duty of the reeds is performed by the lips of the player.
Variety of tone in respect of quality is produced by variations in size, shape, and modifications in parts like the bell and mouth-piece.
The _forte_ of the orchestra receives the bulk of its puissance from the bra.s.s instruments, which, nevertheless, can give voice to an extensive gamut of sentiments and feelings. There is nothing more cheery and jocund than the flourishes of the horns, but also nothing more mild and soothing than the songs which sometimes they sing. There is nothing more solemn and religious than the harmony of the trombones, while ”the trumpet's loud clangor” is the very voice of a war-like spirit. All of these instruments have undergone important changes within the last few score years. The cla.s.sical composers, almost down to our own time, were restricted in the use of them because they were merely natural tubes, and their notes were limited to the notes which inflexible tubes can produce. Within this century, however, they have all been transformed from imperfect diatonic instruments to perfect chromatic instruments; that is to say, every bra.s.s instrument which is in use now can give out all the semitones within its compa.s.s. This has been accomplished through the agency of valves, by means of which differing lengths of the sonorous tube are brought within the command of the players. In the case of the trombones an exceedingly venerable means of accomplis.h.i.+ng the same end is applied. The tube is in part made double, one part sliding over the other. By moving his arm, the player lengthens or shortens the tube, and thus changing the key of the instrument, acquires all the tones which can be obtained from so many tubes of different lengths. The mouth-pieces of the trumpet, trombone, and tuba are cup-shaped, and larger than the mouth-piece of the horn, which is little else than a flare of the slender tube, sufficiently wide to receive enough of the player's lips to form the embouchure, or human reed, as it might here be named.
[Sidenote: _The French horn._]
[Sidenote: _Manipulation of the French horn._]
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