Page:Anecdotes of Great Musicians.djvu/223

Rh the muscle of a Sandow for manipulation, the swell slamming like a window blind, the tremulant rattling like a wheezy horse, and the balance of pedal and manual registers such as to make the word "balance" a misnomer, to say nothing of the pipes being generally out of tune.

True, these various ills may not often coexist in the same organ; but frequently we find several of them dwelling in—discord together.

The cause of this state of affairs is anxiety, when purchasing, to get quantity rather than quality, and afterward allowing the instrument to go for months and years without proper attention. An organ should be regulated, adjusted, and tuned at least once a year, by a competent man, and not by the "tramp" tuners that leave an instrument in worse condition than they found it.

It is poor economy to try and rebuild or restore an organ. After it reaches a certain age it is best to replace the instrument with a new one, having used in it as many of the old pipes as the builder sees fit. Improvements are constantly being made in mechanism, and the latest and best action should be secured rather than patch up an old one.

Snetzler, an English organ builder, but originally from Germany, once reported to a committee concerning the restoration of an old organ in these words:—

"Gentlemen, your organ be vort von hundert pound just now. Ven you spend von hundert pounds on him to fix him up he will den be vort fifty!"  

Madame Malibran was a woman of delicate and responsive nervous organization, but with a fiery spirit and an indomitable will. On the occasion of her second marriage, after the ceremony had taken place and the guests assembled at her home, she asked the great pianist Thalberg to play. He did so, but only on 