Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/535

 with these natural products, and misapplying certain mathematical laws, failed to obtain concords sufficiently true to satisfy their refined artistic perceptions, and therefore rejected them. The modern pagan nations, even those competent to produce perfect concords, refuse to adopt them; and therefore our modern harmony still remains either unknown or unappreciated outside Christendom. It may be that we are generally regarded in the East as Western barbarians. The Chinese, for instance, smile at the piano-forte as an ingeniously contrived arrangement for enabling the performer to produce many different sounds at once as required by Western harmony; but as a mere mechanical instrument, in which hammers are thrown against strings in an inartistic manner, illustrative of our insensibility. They formulate thirty-three ways of plucking a string with the finger, and therefore are more fastidious than ourselves respecting "touch" and the corresponding delicate variations of tone due to different modes of vibration.

It is quite evident that Eastern peoples have cultivated their perceptions in departments of musical art of which we are comparatively regardless, and it is fair to assume that they reject our harmony because of its inherent imperfections. The extremely sensitive ear of the ancient Hindoos, observed by all students of Sanskrit poetry, led them to make, in common with the Persians and modern Arabians, finer distinctions than we recognize in the musical scale. And it is certainly true that even our natural perceptions of perfect consonance are rendered less acute by habitually listening to and accepting as true harmonies that are systematically rendered untrue, and so far rough and discordant in conformity with our adopted scheme of slight deviations from strict accuracy.

Helmholtz directs us to remain satisfied no longer with this condition of things, and demands that our music be rendered in tune. Those writers who follow the lead of this great physicist take up this cry in common with others, and assume to teach musicians their art. Instrumentalists are advised to construct instruments having twenty-four, twenty-eight, thirty, forty, or more sounds within the octave, instead of allowing the ordinary twelve—the seven white and five black keys of the manual—to do duty for the whole. It is deliberately proposed that three rows of keys be provided, that a simple hymn-tune may be correctly rendered. Mr. Ellis thinks that a fourth or fifth organ or harmonium should be at hand to be used for exceptionally brilliant and novel combinations. Similar recommendations have often been made before. They are useless. For such instruments would be found too complicated for general artistic purposes, and yet would not be elaborate enough to obtain the desired perfection, because this is unattainable. It is unattainable, not on account of the incapacity of the musician, but from the nature of the case. It is impossible to unite melody and modern harmony, and retain for either its just proportions; nor can we set one or the other aside. No such