Part 7 (1/2)
The French horn (Plate IX.), as it is called in the orchestra, is the sweetest and mellowest of all the wind instruments. In Beethoven's time it was but little else than the old hunting-horn, which, for the convenience of the mounted hunter, was arranged in spiral convolutions that it might be slipped over the head and carried resting on one shoulder and under the opposite arm. The Germans still call it the _Waldhorn_, _i.e._, ”forest horn;” the old French name was _cor de cha.s.se_, the Italian _corno di caccia_. In this instrument formerly the tones which were not the natural resonances of the harmonic division of the tube were helped out by partly closing the bell with the right hand, it having been discovered accidentally that by putting the hand into the lower end of the tube--the flaring part called the bell--the pitch of a tone was raised. Players still make use of this method for convenience, and sometimes because a composer wishes to employ the slightly m.u.f.fled effect of these tones; but since valves have been added to the instrument, it is possible to play a chromatic scale in what are called the unstopped or open tones.
[Sidenote: _Kinds of horns._]
[Sidenote: _The trumpet._]
[Sidenote: _The cornet._]
Formerly it was necessary to use horns of different pitch, and composers still respect this tradition, and designate the key of the horns which they wish to have employed; but so skilful have the players become that, as a rule, they use horns whose fundamental tone is F for all keys, and achieve the old purpose by simply transposing the music as they read it. If these most graceful instruments were straightened out they would be seventeen feet long. The convolutions of the horn and the many turns of the trumpet are all the fruit of necessity; they could not be manipulated to produce the tones that are asked of them if they were not bent and curved. The trumpet, when its tube is lengthened by the addition of crooks for its lowest key, is eight feet long; the tuba, sixteen. In most orchestras (in all of those in the United States, in fact, except the Boston and Chicago Orchestras and the Symphony Society of New York) the word trumpet is merely a euphemism for cornet, the familiar leading instrument of the bra.s.s band, which, while it falls short of the trumpet in the quality of its tone, in the upper registers especially, is a more easily manipulated instrument than the trumpet, and is preferable in the lower tones.
[Sidenote: _The trombone._]
Mendelssohn is quoted as saying that the trombones (Plate X.) ”are too sacred to use often.” They have, indeed, a majesty and n.o.bility all their own, and the lowest use to which they can be put is to furnish a flaring and noisy harmony in an orchestral _tutti_. They are marvellously expressive instruments, and without a peer in the whole instrumental company when a solemn and spiritually uplifting effect is to be attained. They can also be made to sound menacing and lugubrious, devout and mocking, pompously heroic, majestic, and lofty.
They are often the heralds of the orchestra, and make sonorous proclamations.
[Sidenote: _Trombone effects._]
[Sidenote: _The tuba._]
The cla.s.sic composers always seemed to approach the trombones with marked respect, but nowadays it requires a very big blue pencil in the hands of a very uncompromising conservatory professor to prevent a student engaged on his _Opus 1_ from keeping his trombones going half the time at least. It is an old story how Mozart keeps the instruments silent through three-fourths of his immortal ”Don Giovanni,” so that they may enter with overwhelming impressiveness along with the ghostly visitor of the concluding scene. As a rule, there are three trombones in the modern orchestra--two tenors and a ba.s.s. Formerly there were four kinds, bearing the names of the voices to which they were supposed to be nearest in tone-quality and compa.s.s--soprano, alto, tenor, and ba.s.s. Full four-part harmony is now performed by the three trombones and the tuba (Plate XI.). The latter instrument, which, despite its gigantic size, is exceedingly tractable can ”roar you as gently as any sucking dove.” Far-away and strangely mysterious tones are got out of the bra.s.s instruments, chiefly the cornet and horn, by almost wholly closing the bell.
[Sidenote: _Instruments of percussion._]
[Sidenote: _The xylophone._]
[Sidenote: _Kettle-drums._]
[Sidenote: _Pfund's tuning device._]
[Sidenote: _Pitch of the drums._]
[Sidenote: _Qualifications of a drummer._]
The percussion apparatus of the modern orchestra includes a mult.i.tude of instruments scarcely deserving of description. Several varieties of drums, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, steel bars (_Glockenspiel_), gongs, bells, and many other things which we are now inclined to look upon as toys, rather than as musical instruments, are brought into play for reasons more or less fantastic. Saint-Saens has even utilized the barbarous xylophone, whose proper place is the variety hall, in his ”Danse Macabre.” There his purpose was a fantastic one, and the effect is capital. The pictorial conceit at the bottom of the poem which the music ill.u.s.trates is Death, as a skeleton, seated on a tombstone, playing the viol, and gleefully cracking his bony heels against the marble. To produce this effect, the composer uses the xylophone with capital results. But of all the ordinary instruments of percussion, the only one that is really musical and deserving of comment is the kettle-drum. This instrument is more musical than the others because it has pitch. Its voice is not mere noise, but musical noise. Kettle-drums, or tympani, are generally used in pairs, though the vast multiplication of effects by modern composers has resulted also in the extension of this department of the band. It is seldom that more than two pairs are used, a good player with a quick ear being able to accomplish all that Wagner asks of six drums by his deftness in changing the pitch of the instruments. This work of tuning is still performed generally in what seems a rudimentary way, though a German drum-builder named Pfund invented a contrivance by which the player, by simply pressing on a balanced pedal and watching an indicator affixed to the side of the drums, can change the pitch to any desired semitone within the range of an octave.
The tympani are hemispherical bra.s.s or copper vessels, kettles in short, covered with vellum heads. The pitch of the instrument depends on the tension of the head, which is applied generally by key-screws working through the iron ring which holds the vellum. There is a difference in the size of the drums to place at the command of the player the octave from F in the first s.p.a.ce below the ba.s.s staff to F on the fourth line of the same staff. Formerly the purpose of the drums was simply to give emphasis, and they were then uniformly tuned to the key-note and fifth of the key in which a composition was set.
Now they are tuned in many ways, not only to allow for the frequent change of keys, but also so that they may be used as harmony instruments. Berlioz did more to develop the drums than any composer who has ever lived, though Beethoven already manifested appreciation of their independent musical value. In the last movement of his Eighth Symphony and the scherzo of his Ninth, he tunes them in octaves, his purpose in the latter case being to give the opening figure, an octave leap, of the scherzo melody to the drums solo. The most extravagant use ever made of the drums, however, was by Berlioz in his ”Messe des Morts,” where he called in eight pairs of drums and ten players to help him to paint his tonal picture of the terrors of the last judgment. The post of drummer is one of the most difficult to fill in a symphonic orchestra. He is required to have not only a perfect sense of time and rhythm, but also a keen sense of pitch, for often the composer asks him to change the pitch of one or both of his drums in the s.p.a.ce of a very few seconds. He must then be able to shut all other sounds out of his mind, and bring his drums into a new key while the orchestra is playing--an extremely nice task.
[Sidenote: _The ba.s.s drum._]
The development of modern orchestral music has given dignity also to the ba.s.s drum, which, though definite pitch is denied to it, is now manipulated in a variety of ways productive of striking effects. Rolls are played on it with the sticks of the kettle-drums, and it has been emanc.i.p.ated measurably from the cymbals, which in vulgar bra.s.s-band music are its inseparable companions.
[Sidenote: _The conductor._]
[Sidenote: _Time-beaters and interpreters._]
[Sidenote: _The conductor a necessity._]
In the full sense of the term the orchestral conductor is a product of the latter half of the present century. Of course, ever since concerted music began, there has been a musical leader of some kind.