[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.] |
| THREE CHITARRONI | [XXI.] |
| SPINET | [XXII.] |
| QUINTERNA AND MANDOLINE | [XXIII.] |
| WELSH CRWTH. RUSSIAN BALALÄIKA | [XXIV.] |
| VIOLIN—THE HELLIER STRADIVARIUS, and two old Bows noted for the Fluting | [XXV.] |
| VIOLINS—THE ALARD STRADIVARIUS, THE KING JOSEPH GUARNERIUS DEL GESÙ | [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 FLÛTES DOUCES | [XXXVIII.] |
| DOLCIANO. OBOE. BASSOON. OBOE DA CACCIA. BASSET HORN | [XXXIX.] |
| SITÁRS AND VÍNA | [XL.] |
| INDIAN DRUMS | [XLI.] |
| SAW DUANG AND BOW. SAW TAI AND BOW. SAW OO AND BOW. KLUI. PEE | [XLII.] |
| RANAT EK. KHONG YAI. TA'KHAY | [XLIII.] |
| HU-CH'IN AND BOW. SHÊNG. SAN-HSIEN. P'I-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] |
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.
[INTRODUCTION.]
IT is claimed for this book, intended to illustrate rare historical and beautiful Musical Instruments, that it is unique. Classical, Mediæval, 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, virginals, 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 æsthetic 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 can 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 everywhere and in every epoch when life is, for the time being, safe and the means of 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 a tendency to adorn them or to place them with decorative surroundings. The Egyptians, the Assyrians, the ancient Greeks supply a record that has been continued by the Persians and Saracens, in the Gothic age and the Renaissance, always repeating, as it were, in an ineffaceable script, 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 overwhelming power, what our predecessors so steadfastly continued, but 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 meritoriously carried out for pianos—the invention of Mr. Alma Tadema, Mr. Burne Jones, Mr. Fox, and Miss Kate Faulkner. Good decoration 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 used 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 persistence 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 inheritance 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 beginnings; those that may be discerned dimly in the glimmering of the historic dawn present a certain completeness that marks an intellectual 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 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.