which was erected in Constantinople under Theodosius the Great towards the end of the fourth century. The bellows were pressed by men standing on them. This interesting monument also exhibits performers on the double flute. The hydraulic organ, which is recorded to have been already known about two hundred years before the Christian era, was according to some statements occasionally employed in churches during the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages. Probably it was more frequently heard in secular entertainments, for which it was more suitable; and at the beginning of the fourteenth century it appears to have been entirely supplanted by the pneumatic organ. The earliest organs had only about a dozen pipes. The largest, which were made about nine hundred years ago, had only three octaves, in which the chromatic intervals did not occur. Some progress in the construction of the organ is shewn in a psalter of Eadwine, in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge ([Fig. 33]). The instrument has ten pipes, or perhaps fourteen, as four of them appear to be double pipes.
It required four men exerting all their power to produce the necessary wind, and two men to play the instrument. Moreover, both players seem also to be busily engaged in directing the blowers about the proper supply of wind. Six men and only fourteen pipes!
Another illustration is given of an organ of the 14th century ([Fig. 34]).
Fig. 34.—Organ (Grand Orgue), after an engraving in N. X. Willemin’s Monuments Français Inédits, Vol. I., pl. 133, taken from a psalter of the 14th century.
The pedal is generally believed to have been invented by Bernhard, a German, who lived in Venice about the year 1470. There are, however, indications extant pointing to an earlier date of its invention. Perhaps Bernhard was the first who, by adopting a more practicable construction, made the pedal more generally known. On the earliest organs the keys of the finger-board were of enormous size, compared with those of the present day; so that a finger-board with only nine keys had a breadth of from four to five feet. The organist struck the keys down with his fist, as is done in playing the carillon still in use on the Continent, of which presently some account will be given.
Of the little portable organ, known as the regal or regals, often tastefully shaped and embellished, some interesting sculptured representations are still extant in the old ecclesiastical edifices of England and Scotland. There is, for instance,
in Beverley Minster a figure of a man playing on a single regal, or a regal provided with only one set of pipes; and in Melrose Abbey the figure of an angel holding in his arms a double regal, the pipes of which are in two sets. The regal generally had keys like those of the organ but smaller. A painting in the National Gallery, attributed to Melozzo da Forlì (1438-1494) contains a regal which has keys of a peculiar shape, rather resembling the pistons of certain brass instruments. ([Fig. 1], Frontispiece.) To avoid misapprehension, it is necessary to mention that the name regal (or regals, rigols) was also applied to an instrument of percussion with sonorous slabs of wood. This contrivance was, in short, a kind of harmonica, resembling in shape as well as in the principle of its construction the little glass harmonica, a mere toy, in which slips of glass are arranged according to our musical scale. In England it appears to have been still known in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Grassineau describes the “Rigols” as “a kind of musical instrument consisting of several sticks bound together, only separated by beads. It makes a tolerable harmony, being well struck with a ball at the end of a stick.” In the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages there appear to have been some instruments of percussion in favour, to which Grassineau’s expression “a tolerable harmony” would scarcely have been applicable. Drums, of course, were known; and their rhythmical noise must have been soft music, compared with the shrill sounds of the cymbalum (a contrivance consisting of a number of metal plates suspended on cords, so that they would be clashed together simultaneously) or with the clangour of the cymbalum constructed with bells instead of plates; or with the piercing noise of the bunibulum, or bombulom; an instrument which consisted of an angular frame to which were loosely attached metal plates of various shapes and sizes. The lower part of the frame constituted the
handle; and to produce the noise it evidently was shaken somewhat like the sistrum of the ancient Egyptians.[7]