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 1891); L. T. Morris, Famous Musical Composers (London, 1891); H. de Brémont, The World of Music (London, 1892); J. K. Paine, Famous Composers and their Works (Boston, 1892–1893); E. Polko, Meister der Tonkunst (Wiesbaden, 1897); R. F. Sharp, Makers of Music (London, 1898); L. Nohl, Mosaik Denksteine aus dem Leben berühmter Tonkünstler (Leipzig, 1899); T. Baker, A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (New York, 1900); M. Charles, Zeitgenössische Tondichter (Leipzig, 1888); A. Jullien, Musiciens d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1892).

MUSICAL-BOX, an instrument for producing by mechanical means tunes or pieces of music. The modern musical-box is an elaboration of the elegant toy musical snuff-box in vogue during the 18th century. The notes or musical sounds are produced by the vibration of steel teeth or springs cut in a comb or flat plate of steel, reinforced by the harmonics generated in the solid steel back of the comb. The teeth are graduated in length from end to end of the comb or plate, the longer teeth giving the deeper notes; and the individual teeth are accurately attuned, where necessary, by filing or loading with lead. Each tone and semitone in the scale is represented by three or four separate teeth in the comb, to permit of successive repetitions of the same note when required by the music. The teeth are acted upon and musical vibrations produced by the revolution of a brass cylinder studded with projecting pins, which, as they move round, raise and release the proper teeth at due intervals according to the nature of the music. A single revolution of the cylinder completes the performance of each of the several pieces of music for which the apparatus is set, but upon the same cylinder there may be inserted pins for performing as many as thirty-six separate airs. This is accomplished by making both the points of the teeth and the projecting pins which raise them very fine, so that a very small change in the position of the cylinder is sufficient to bring an entirely distinct set of pins in contact with the teeth. In the more elaborate musical-boxes the cylinders are removable, and may be replaced by others containing distinct sets of music. In these also there are combinations of bell, drum, cymbal and triangle effects, &c. The revolving motion of the cylinder is effected by a spring and clock-work which on some modern instruments will work continuously for an hour and a half without winding, and the rate of revolution is regulated by a fly regulator. The headquarters of the musical-box trade is Geneva, where the manufacture gives employment to thousands of persons.

MUSICAL NOTATION, a pictorial method of representing sounds to the ear through the medium of the eye. It is probable that the earliest attempts at notation were made by the Hindus and Chinese, from whom the legacy was transferred to Greece. The exact nature of the Greek notation is a subject of dispute, different explanations assigning 1680, 1620, 990, or 138 signals to their alphabetical method of delineation. To Boethius we owe the certainty that the Greek notation was not adopted by the Latins, although it is not certain whether he was the first to apply the fifteen letters of the Roman alphabet to the scale of sounds included within the two octaves, or whether he was only the first to make record of that application. The reduction of the scale to the octave is ascribed to St Gregory, as also the naming of the seven notes, but it is not safe to assume that such an ascription is accurate or final. Indications of a scheme of notation based, not on the alphabet, but on the use of dashes, hooks, curves, dots and strokes are found to exist as early as the 6th century, while specimens in illustration of this different method do not appear until the 8th. The origin of these signs, known as neumes (, or nods), is the full stop (punctus), the comma (virga), and the mound or undulating line (clivus), the first indicating a short sound, the second a long sound, and the third a group of two notes. The musical intervals were suggested by the distance of these signals from the words of the text. The variety of neumes employed at different times, and the fluctuations due to handwriting, have made them extremely difficult to decipher. In the 10th century a marked advance is shown by the use of a red line traced horizontally above the text to give the singer a fixed note (F＝fa), thus helping him to approximate the intervals. To this was added a second line in yellow (for C＝ut), and finally a staff arose from the further addition of two black lines over these. The difficulty of the subject is complicated for the student by the fact that an incredible variety of notations coexisted at one period, all more or less representing attempts in the direction of the modern system. A variety of experiments resulted in the assignment of the four-lined staff to sacred music and of the five-lined staff to secular music. The yellow and red colours were replaced by the use of the letters F and C (fa and ut) on the lines. This use of letters to indicate clef is forestalled in a manuscript of Guido of Arezzo’s Micrologus, dating from the 12th century, in which is the famous hymn to St John, printed with neumes on a staff of three lines (see ). The use of letters for indicating clefs has survived to the present day, our clef signatures being modified forms of the letters C, F and G, which have passed through a multitude of shapes. Before the 12th century there is no trace of a measured notation (i.e. of a numerical time division separating the component parts of a piece of music). It is at the time of Franco of Cologne that measured music takes its rise, together with the black notation in place of neumes, which disappeared altogether by the end of the 14th century. Writing four hundred years after St Gregory, Cottonius complains bitterly of the defects in the system of neumes: “The same marks which Master Trudo sang as thirds, were sung as fourths by Master Albinus; while Master Salomo asserts that fifths are the notes meant, so at last there were as many methods of singing as teachers of the art.” Possibly the reckless multiplication of lines in the staff may have contributed to the obscurity of which Cottonius complains. In the black notation, which led to the modern system, the square note with a tail is the long sound; the square note