II. A RONDO BY COUPERIN.
The primitive rondo was chiefly cultivated by the French harpsichord composers of the early eighteenth century, of whom Couperin (1668-1733) and Rameau (1683-1764) were the most distinguished. Reference has been made in our chapter on "The Suite" to the "Ordres" of these composers, and to the perfecting, at the end of the seventeenth century, of the instrument for which they were written, the harpsichord. The strings of the harpsichord were not struck by hammers, as in the modern pianoforte, but plucked by quills, as the strings of a banjo are plucked by the fingers of the player. It has been said of the harpsichord that it produced "a scratch with a tone at the end of it." The tone produced in this primitive way was weak and of brief duration, so that composers not only had to keep re-enforcing a tone by striking it again, as in the trills and other ornaments so characteristic of their music, but had to avoid altogether any long sustained passages such as are common in modern music. They had also to substitute for the polyphonic style, the entire effectiveness of which depends upon the sustainment of its melodies, a homophonic or one-voiced style which, while distinct from that usual in modern piano music, was historically an important factor in its development.