Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/515

Rh HARMONIUM. Perhaps no musical instrument ever became in a few years so widely known and used as the harmonium. The reasons for this may at once be found in the facilities it offers for playing easy music, and, when simply constructed, its comparatively low price, which renders the purchase of a tulerable harmonium possible when the cheapest pianoforte fairly playable would be un- attainable, and the real organ, although of chamber size, quite out of the question. Besides being a convenient wnakeshift for an organ, the harmonium can also be used in domestic concerted music, to play all or any of the wind band parts of the orchestra; it may even Le employed as a substitute for the violin, and in such vicarious uses it is past all question one of the handiest of deputies. mal note of the key. It is true the tone of the harmonium is not in itself beautiful ; the prominence in sounds from reeds of certain overtones is irreconcilable with pleasure to the ear unless by convention of habit, and the necessity of tuning ac- cordiug to equal temperament all major thirds too sharp leads through this harmonic peculiarity in the chords to an abnormally disagreeable quality, from which those whose nerves are very sensitive or weak are not unfre- quently painfully affected. The American organ, a kind of harmonium of late years much in vogue, owes its popularity to its being less pronounced and reedy in timbre (its softer tone being nearer to that we are familiar with in the church organ), and to its being easier to play for simple domestic use. Yet the real harmonium has more in- dependent character as an instrument, and is capable of higher treatment in performance than the American organ. Both are known as “ free-reed ” instruments, the musical tones being produced by tongues of brass, technically “vibrators,” set in oblong frames; the sides of these they do not quite touch, but pass, when in movement, freely downwards,—the “beating reeds” used in church organs covering the entire orifice. A reed or vibrator, set in periodic motion by impact of a current of air, produces a corresponding succession of air puffs, the rapidity of which determines the pitch of the musical note. There is an essential difference between the harmonium and the American organ in the direction of this current; in the former the wind apparatus forces the current upwards, and in the latter sucks it downwards, whence it becomes desirable to separate in description these varieties of free- reed instruments.

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