Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/220

* MUSICAL FESTIVAL. 184 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. tli£ Lower Kliiiu- l)i:-tiiit. Ilic Lnitcd States luis not been lidiiiid in follmvinj,' the example of England and Ueruiany, and many festivals are held almost yearly in several of the larj^er cities. On such occasions it is nothing unusual to find a chorus nunil>ering from one to two thousand voices and an orchestra of from one to two hundred per- formers. These musical festivals have also ])ow- erfully afTected the mode of conducting and have done very much toward estahlishing the universal custom of conducting hy means of the baton. Whereas formerly the conductor always presided at the piano, the handling of large bodies of sing- ers and players necessitated the undivided atten- tion of the conductor upon those whom he di- rected; and the singers, in turn, became likewise more dependent upon signs and gestures from the conductor. (See CoXDfOTOR. ) For an account of the principal nnisical festivals, see BAYRErxii MfsiCAL Festiv.l; Bethlehem Musical Fes- tival: Cl.NCIXNATI, illSKAL Fe.stival; Oe- sellschaft deb Ostebreichischen JIusik- frel'nde: gew, nhau.scoxcerte; leeds musi- CAL Festival: Loweb Rhenish Musical Fes- tival: Sacred Harmonic Society; Salzburg Festival: Soci^Tf: des Concerts du Conserva- toire: Sons of the Clergy; Tonkunstleb-So- ciET.vT; Musical Society of London; Three Choirs Festival; Worcester Festival. MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. The origin of many musical instruments dates back to the earliest times. Not a few of these ancient in- struments arc the prototypes of some of our modern ones. Jlonuments recently unearthed at Thebes and in the upper valley of the Nile con- tain representations of harjis and flutes: and the relation of our modern instruments to the old Egyptian models is not diHicnlt to jierccive. In the case of other instnunents the rehitinnship is not so easy to trace, owing to the considerable modifications which they underwent in the course of centuries and in passing from one nation to another. Even so recent an instnuncnt as our grand pianoforte can be traced through its many and vital changes to the dulcimer (q.v.) known to the .rabs and Persians. Hand in band with the evolution of the art of music went the inven- tion and perfection of nmsical instruments. Jlany of these were extensively used and admired in their day, but soon were superseded, so that to-day our nuiseimis arc filled with various in- struments of all times and nations preserved only as curiosities. Thus the large family of lutes is now entirely obsolete: and yet at one time these instruments enjoyed the same popu- larity as the pianoforte does today, and no orchestra was complete without them. If we except the stringed instruments, it may safely be asserted that no insfrumcnt found in the modern orchestra is the same as it was a century ago. .Ml the instruments of the wood- wind family have been vastly improved: the natural horns and trumpets have given way to the improved valve horns and trumpets; the serpents and ophiclcides have been entirely su- perseded by the trombones and tubas. It may he said that the modern orchestra comprises the best and most ciricient instruments now known, and the test for admi-sion into this select family is sonority and beauty of soimd. -Musical instruments are generally divided into four large groups, according to the manner in which the sound is produced, viz.: (1) stringed instruments, (2) wind instruments, (3) instru- ments of percussion, (4) keyed instruments. This latter group embraces the organ and iiiano- forte, the former being really a wind, the latter a stringed instrument. Both differ from the other instruments of those groups in the use of a keyboard. Stringed Instruments. Stringed instruments are divided into two principal classes: (A) Those in which the tone is produced by drawing a bow made of horse-hair across the strings. (B) Those in which the tone is |)roduced by plucking the string either with the fingers or a small instrument called pled rum. The instru- ments of class A have but few strings (gen- erally four), and depend for the i)roduction of their complete range upon stopping, i.e. short- ening the vibrating portion of the string by means of the fingers. To this class belong (1) the violin. (2) the viola, (31 the violoncello, (4) the double bass. (See the separate articles.) Some of the instruments of class B have few strings like those of class A : others have a .«:eparate string for each note. Those having few strings are: (1) the mandolin, (2) the guitar. (3) the banjo. Those having many separate strings: (1) the zither, (2) the harp. (Seethe separate articles.) Formerly there were in use instruments that were played with a bow, which also had additional strings to be plucked with the fingers. (See Theorbo. ) Among the stringed instruments by far the most important are those constituting the viol family (class A). The present perfection of these instruments is the result of a slow evolution of possibly a thousand years. But so far we have no evidence whatever that any instruments of the viol family were known in antiquity. Because Arabic authors of the fourteenth century mention stringcil instru- ments, it was supposed for some time that viols originated in tlic Orient. This has been dis|)roved by Gerbert. who in the second volume of his Ma- sica (SVicTO published a representation of a Euro- pean stringed li/ra of the ninth century very sim- ilar in shape to the later 'ligu. Even earlier, however, the crowd (q.v.) was known in Wales. For several centuries viols were built in two shapes, either with a flat body like the vi(din or with a pear-shaped body like file mandolin. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries stringed instruments of all possible varieties of shapes were built. These, however, were nil superseded in the course of the fidlowing two centuries, when the art of violin-making reached its height. After the violin had been perfected the same attention was also bestowed >ipon the instruments of lower pitch of this family, such as the bratsche. viola da gamba, viola d'amore, etc. (See Violin; Violoncello.) A full ac- count of how the viol family came to be the foiuidation of the modern orchestra will be found uider Orchestra. Wind Instru.ments. Under this heading are included all instruments on which the tone is produced by setting a eolunni of air in motion. .ccording to the material from which they are made, they are subdivided into: (A) Wood- wind instruments. (B) brass instruments. Many of the wind class are transposini; instruments, i.e. the tones actually produccil upon them are not the same as those written for thcin. Let U8 take the clarinet family as an cxaiiiple. The