CHAPTER X.
Post-mediæval Musical Instruments.
Attention must now be drawn to some instruments which originated during the middle ages, but which attained their highest popularity at a somewhat later period.
Among the best known of these was the virginal, of which we give an engraving from a specimen of the time of Elizabeth at South Kensington. Another was the lute, which about three hundred years ago was almost as popular as is at the present day the pianoforte. Originally it had eight thin catgut strings arranged in four pairs, each pair being tuned in unison; so that its open strings produced four tones; but in the course of time more strings were added. Until the sixteenth century twelve was the largest number or, rather, six pairs. Eleven appear for some centuries to have been the most usual number of strings: these produced six tones, since they were arranged in five pairs and a single string. The latter, called the chanterelle, was the highest. According to Thomas Mace, the English lute in common use during the seventeenth century had twenty-four strings, arranged in twelve pairs, of which six pairs ran over the finger-board and the other six by the side of it. This lute was therefore, more properly speaking, a theorbo. The neck of the lute, and also of the theorbo, had frets consisting of catgut strings tightly fastened round it at the proper distances required for ensuring a chromatic succession of intervals. The illustration on the next page represents a lute-player of the sixteenth century. The frets are not indicated in the old engraving from which the illustration has been taken. The order of tones adopted for the open strings varied in different centuries and countries: and this was also the case with the notation of lute music. The most common practice was to write the music on six lines, the upper line representing the first string; the second line, the second string, &c., and to mark with letters on the lines the frets at which the fingers ought to be placed—a indicating the open string, b the first fret, c the second fret, and so on.
The lute was made of various sizes according to the purpose for which it was intended in performance. The treble-lute was of the smallest dimensions, and the bass-lute of the largest. The theorbo, or double-necked lute which appears to have come into use during the sixteenth century, had in addition to the strings situated over the finger-board a number of others running at the left side of the finger-board which could not be shortened by the fingers, and which produced the bass tones. The largest kinds of theorbo were the archlute and the chitarrone.
It is unnecessary to enter here into a detailed description of some other instruments which have been popular during the last three centuries, for the museum at Kensington contains specimens of many of them of which an account is given in the large catalogue of that collection. It must suffice to refer the reader to the illustrations there of the cither, virginal, spinet, clavichord, harpsichord, and other antiquated instruments much esteemed by our forefathers.
Students who examine these old relics will probably wish to know something about their quality of tone. “How do they sound? Might they still be made effective in our present state of the art?” are questions which naturally occur to the musical inquirer having such instruments brought before him. A few words bearing on these questions may therefore not be out of place here.
It is generally and justly admitted that in no other branch of the art of music has greater progress been made since the last century than in the construction of musical instruments. Nevertheless, there are people who think that we have also lost something here which might with advantage be restored. Our various instruments by being more and more perfected are becoming too much alike in quality of sound, or in that character of tone which the French call timbre, and the Germans Klangfarbe, and which professor Tyndall in his lectures on sound has translated clang-tint. Every musical composer knows how much more suitable one clang-tint is for the expression of a certain emotion than another. Our old instruments, imperfect though they were in many respects, possessed this variety of clang-tint to a high degree. Neither were they on this account less capable of expression than the modern ones. That no improvement has been made during the last two centuries in instruments of the violin class is a well-known fact. As to lutes and cithers the collection at Kensington contains specimens so rich and mellow in tone as to cause musicians to regret that these instruments have entirely fallen into oblivion.