THE instrument, in Italian "Cetera," is in French called "Cistre,"
and in English "Cither," sometimes English Guitar. It belongs to the
guitar kind because it has a flat back, but all cithers are strung
with wire, and the sounds are elicited, like those of the lute-shaped
mandoline, by means of a plectrum. This exquisitely beautiful
instrument of the early sixteenth century is attributed to the
Brescian School. Formerly the property of the Biblioteca Estense at
Modena, it has since been acquired by Mr. George Donaldson, London.
It will be observed in the drawing that a carving of a woman's head
surmounts the peg-box and resolves itself into a lizard, which serves
as a handle wherewith to hold the instrument. A mermaid is seen below
the finger-board, and there are two in the carving of the back. The
ribs are also carved. To show this exquisite carving upon a larger
scale enlargements are given of the finger-board mermaid and the
rose in the sound-hole. The extreme length of the instrument is 3
feet; and that of the body measured to the neck, 19½ inches; the
number of strings is thirteen. Praetorius gives the tuning of such an
instrument as follows:
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the highest being the single melody string.
This Cetera should be compared with that of Mr. Alard in Plate XXVIII.—an instrument made by the famous violin-maker, Antonio Stradivari.
A FINE old Italian Lute, with the label "1600, In Padova Vvendelio Venere." It is not only rare, but a special interest is attached to it from its having been the favourite musical instrument of the late Carl Engel. When he disposed of his collection he reserved this instrument for his own use, and probably his last performance upon it was Handel's "Lascia ch'io pianga," which he played to the present writer, who now owns the instrument.
It is a large lute, being 42 inches in length. The greatest width of the body is 14½ inches, with an extreme depth of 8 inches. The body is 21 inches from the base to the shoulders; from thence to the nut is 10¾ inches, and it is 13½ inches from the nut to the extremity of the head, the angle of the peg-box being obtuse. The mean width of the finger-board is 4 inches. It is furnished with twenty strings, which are divided into six pairs of unisons, and eight single strings for basses. Engel tuned it in the D minor tuning, an accordance introduced according to Herr Oscar Fleischer in the first half of the seventeenth century, by the great French lutenist, Denis Gaultier. This accordance ultimately prevailed not only in France and England but in Germany; the same writer informs us that Joseph Haydn used it. This lute, when so tuned, is thus arranged—
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but the old Lute tuning was, in chamber pitch—
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Mersenne (Harmonie Universelle, Paris, 1636) places this finger-board scale a tone higher, with the Chanterelle on A. This change really infers the use of a lower pitch. By Gaultier's tuning the strain is taken off the highest note—a relief of much importance, when the high chamber pitch then customary, nearly a whole tone above the normal French pitch, is considered. By the twelve frets upon the finger-board for the highest notes, the melody strings could be raised chromatically one octave, thus making the extreme compass of the instrument four octaves and a note, from the third F below, to the second G above, middle C. Before the year 1600 the lute was played, as the old tablatures or lute notations show us, in single notes with occasional chords, a practice derived from lute-playing frequently found in modern pianoforte music. There were attempts at counterpoint, but these were limited, owing to one hand only being available for stopping. Certain graces were used, especially the vibrato, but there is reason to believe they were used for some time by the players before the composers thought fit to indicate them. With the growing favour for simple chords, which were developed into the Continuo or Thorough Bass accompaniment, the bass strings—diapasons, as they were called—were added beneath the finger-board accordance to be tuned for basses as the player required. At last they were attached by the contrivance of a double neck to a higher peg-box, by which the Lute became a Theorbo. Both varieties were superseded early in the eighteenth century by the guitar, which was easier to play, and the immensely popular spinet, which permitted the performance of a complete counterpoint, by the freedom it gave to use both hands upon the key-board. A reflection might here be made on the masterly way in which contemporary painters drew hands and lutes. I need only name those masters of the Dutch school, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, and Terburg, especially Steen, whose truthful precision compels admiration. Of another school, there is a lute-player drawn by Albrecht Dürer, that is a miracle of skill and accuracy of observation.
A considerable literature of the lute exists belonging to the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Thomas Mace (1676) writes very amusingly about it. He accounts Venice lutes as commonly good, but gives the highest place to Laux Maler of Bologna. Evelyn, in his Diary, also quotes Bologna as famous for lutes, especially those of the old masters, Mollen, Hans Frey, and Nicholas Sconvelt (sic), who were Germans. The first-named is probably intended for Maler. In Evelyn's time, lutes by these makers were fetching extraordinary prices. The most interesting modern works of information about the lute, as well as of contemporary music generally, are La Musique aux Pays Bas, Edmond Vander Straeten (Brussels, 1867-85), from a future volume of which a monograph has been published in anticipation, entitled Jacques de Saint-Luc, Luthiste Athois du xviie siècle (Mayence, 1887); Musique et Musiciens au xviie siècle, a publication of the "Société pour l'Histoire Musicale des Pays-Bas," edited by W.J.A. Jonckbloet and J.P.N. Land, and containing the musical correspondence of the astronomer Constantin Huygens (Leyden, 1882); and a monograph upon the famous Parisian lutenist, Denis Gaultier, by Oscar Fleischer, published in the Vierteljahrschrift für Musikwissenschaft for January and April 1886 (Leipsic, Breitkopf and Härtel). The first three-quarters of the seventeenth century was a period remarkable for a refined amateur cultivation of instrumental music. Shakspeare's appreciation of the lute, and his graceful tribute of admiration for the performance of his friend, the lutenist Dowland, are well known.
THE instrument here drawn was made by Giovanni Krebar of Padua in 1629, and now belongs to Mr. George Donaldson, London.
The body of this instrument is built up of ivory; the back of the peg-box and neck is also of ivory, and is delicately engraved with a view of Venice, showing vessels engaged in firing, and spearmen advancing. Incised dancing and fencing figures adorn the lower neck; there is a garden scene with numerous figures upon the upper neck. By the pegs we find the instrument had eight bass notes or diapasons; a single string to each note, and that there were on the finger-board five double strings and one, the highest, single—the chanterelle or melody string. In the true theorbo, the Paduan according to Baron (Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten, Nuremberg, 1727, p. 131),—the diapasons were single strings. When the diapasons were in pairs of strings the instrument was, according to Mersenne (Harmonie Universelle, Paris, 1636), called (French) "Luth téorbé" or (Italian) "Liuto attiorbato," a theorboed lute. It must, however, be admitted that Mersenne's rule is not of strict application. The single strings introduced, in the first instance, for basses, at last became general throughout, and banished the double stringing in lutes, theorboes and guitars. The lutes were, however, by this time nearly out of use. The name Archlute is given by different authorities to both Theorbo and Chitarrone (Plate XXI.).
The early use of only one string for the highest or melody string may be seen in representations of lutes by Quattro Cento painters. The theorbo, however, was not introduced until nearly the end of the sixteenth century. A very accurate and beautiful painting of one may be observed in a picture by Terburg in the London National Gallery (formerly in the Peel Collection), which is erroneously named in the printed catalogue in use in 1887 "The Guitar Lesson."
Evelyn was well acquainted with the theorbo, and took lessons upon it in Rome and Padua. There is frequent mention of it in his Diary. It remained in use until nearly the end of the last century.
The extreme length of this specimen is 3 feet 5 inches; the body is 1 foot 3½ inches by nearly 11 inches.
WE derive "Dulcimer" from the Spanish "Dulcemele" as the only etymology to be offered with any show of certainty. The Provençal "Lai" was in the Latin of the period "Dulcis Cantus,"—"Dulcemele" (Lat. Dulce Melos) has a kindred ring, and by the change of a liquid "Dulcimer" has become an accepted name.
The dulcimer is a variety of the psaltery or qanūn, and bears the same relation to it that the modern pianoforte does to the older spinet or harpsichord. The psaltery was sounded by the fingers, either with their fleshy ends or by covering them with plectra adjusted like thimbles to produce a sharper sound; the dulcimer is a louder instrument, the sounds being produced by hammers held in the player's hands, and having elastic stems by which the necessary rebound from the strings is facilitated. The hammers have not unfrequently two coverings, a hard and a soft one, disposed upon the hammer head so that the player can, by turning the hammer, use either at will. The characteristic effect of the dulcimer, analogous to the mandoline, bandurria and other stringed instruments played with a plectrum, is the repetition of notes, producing by this artifice the impression of almost sustained sound. The Italians called the dulcimer "Salterio Tedesco," or German psaltery, but have now adopted Zimbalon; the Germans call it a "Hackbrett," or chopping board. It is generally an instrument popular among the humbler classes, and in modern times it assumes its most important rôle as the cimbalon in the Hungarian gipsy bands. The specimen here drawn belonged to Mr. Kendrick Pyne of Manchester, and is now in the possession of Mr. H. Boddington; it is elevated upon a stand, and is in a case, from which it can be removed for performance. There is a picture inside the lid of a sunset and figures habited in seventeenth-century costumes—soldiers advancing and met by ladies apparently bearing refreshments. On the front board, which is hinged so as to be let down, there is painted on the right of the spectator a man fishing in a pond and a woman near him; while in the centre is a clump of trees, and, on the left, a man and a woman meeting. The instrument itself is decorated with painted flowers in panels, between which are black and white chequers. It is probably Italian. The dimensions of it are—in the greatest width, 3 feet 4½ inches, in the least, 1 foot 11 inches. The angles of the sides measure 1 foot 1½ inch each. The depth of the instrument is 3½ inches. The height of the stand is 2 feet 2 inches.
There are seventeen notes of four wire strings tuned in unison for each note in this instrument. There may be more notes in a dulcimer and the number of strings may vary, groups of three, and even five unisons being found alternating with four in old dulcimers. The wire was brass in old instruments and is steel in modern ones. Owing to increase of tension due to the upward straining of the wire by the bridges on the sound-board, the places for the bridges cannot be determined by observing the simple ratios of partial tones, but have to be found empirically. As in all old stringed instruments there are sound-holes in the sound-board, in old Italian dulcimers decorated with beautiful arabesques or roses. In old Italian and also the Chinese dulcimers (Yang-ch'in, or foreign psaltery) the sound-board bridges are joined in two rows, the strings passing alternately over, and through openings made in them. They pass over brass wires on the summits of the bridges, and at the edges of the dulcimer over other brass wires that form, on either side, what may be called nuts. In Asiatic and modern European instruments the bridges are separate studs. The longest stretches of wire pass over the right-hand bridge and through the openings in the left-hand bridge. The shorter stretches are reversed, passing over the left-hand bridge. In European dulcimers the shorter stretches, struck to the right of the left-hand bridge, are an octave above the longer stretches struck to the left of the right-hand bridge. The shortest stretches are the remainder of the octave strings, which, carried over the left bridge to the left edge of the dulcimer, are so tuned as to be a fifth above the octave series. The right-hand remainder is not used. There are consequently three series of notes, a fundamental, an octave and a twelfth; thus expressed in notation, the perpendicular lines representing the nuts, and the circles the position of the bridges.
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These are the lowest notes of the three series. The scale usually ascends from them in diatonic succession, in the lowest series with F natural instead of F sharp. In the last century attempts were made to tune some part of the scale chromatically, but, as far as I have met with examples, on no ascertainable system. The Chinese substitute sixths, and in the two lowest sevenths, for the octave; by the sevenths the lowest semitone is missed, otherwise the scale continues, as in the European dulcimer, in heptatonic order. The brass wire upon the bridges is an old spinet contrivance. The dulcimer is tuned with a hammer or key like a pianoforte, but, unlike the piano and other key-board instruments, has no damping contrivance.
We may look for the precursor of both the European and Chinese dulcimers in an Assyrian ancestor of the Persian Santir, or, it may be, in a more remote Babylonian instrument. Dulcimers are represented on Assyrian monuments.
IN this interesting Virginal, which belongs to the Brussels Conservatoire, we have a Ruckers "Vierkante Clavisingel" in the original external decoration just as it left the hands of the younger Hans Ruckers, a master of the Saint Luke's Guild of Antwerp. The decoration is a covering of paper printed from blocks. The stand is also original. An untouched Ruckers virginal or harpsichord like this rarely comes under notice, and, at this moment, I can only recall one in England—a single key-board harpsichord in the possession of Miss Elizabeth Twining, at the Dial House, Twickenham, made by Andries, the brother of the younger Hans and, like him, a son of the elder Hans Ruckers.
The combination of white naturals and ebony sharps or flats is the oldest contrast between the lower and upper keys, with the qualification, that the oldest existing natural keys are not of ivory but of boxwood. As was customary in the Low Countries, Latin mottoes, sometimes more than one, were displayed on clavecins or key-board instruments. The one shown here reads OMNIS SPIRITVS LAVDET DOMINVM. These mottoes, so often occurring in Flemish instruments of that period, bear witness to the thoughtfulness and reverence of the men who made and possessed them. Besides the one quoted (Let all that breathe praise the Lord), we find LAVS DEO (Praise be to God), MVSICA DONVM DEI (Music is the gift of God), MVSICA MAGNORVM EST SOLAMEN DVLCE LABORVM (Music is the sweet solace to great labours), CONCORDIA RES PARVÆ CRESCVNT, DISCORDIA MAXIMÆ DILABVNTVR (By Concord small things grow, by Discord great things fall away), SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MVNDI (So passeth away the glory of the world), MVSICA LÆTITIÆ COMES MEDICINA DOLORVM (Music is the companion of joy and medicine of griefs), CONCORDIA MVSIS AMICA (Concord is the Muses' friend), ACTA VIRVM PROBANT (Deeds prove the man), SCIENTIA NON HABET INIMICVM NISI IGNORANTEM (Knowledge has no enemy but the ignorant), MVSICA PELLIT CVRAS (Music dispels cares), and SOLI DEO GLORIA (Glory be to God alone). The Italians preferred longer and more poetic quotations, as the often repeated "Viva fui in sylvis sum dura occisa securi; Dum vixi tacui mortua dulce cano" (I was alive in the woods, I was felled by a cruel axe; while I lived I was silent, now I am dead I sing sweetly); or that on the harpsichord which belonged to Tasso's sister, and is still in the possession of her descendants in the house she lived in at Sorrento: "Tales in altis sentiunt sonos beati spiritus opus" (Such sounds they hear in heaven, the blessed spirits' work).
To return to this Ruckers Virginal—the sound-board is painted with floral devices in Netherlandish fashion, the usual gilt rose appearing in the round opening of the sound-board, bearing the maker's trade mark, which contains his initials, I.R., and near it is written with ink, Anno 1622. Upon the rail above the jacks (plectra) is the inscription, JOANNES RVCKERS FECIT ANTVERPIÆ. There is a picture in the National Gallery in London, from the Peel Collection, painted by Metsu, wherein is depicted a precisely similar instrument, possibly his own, as he has it again in a picture belonging to the collection of Sir Francis Cook, at Richmond, in Surrey. At first sight it is difficult to believe it is not the same. Another occurs at Windsor Castle, in the collection of H.M. the Queen, painted by Ver Meer of Delft. Here, again, the first impression formed is that the painter has represented the instrument shown in the present drawing. Such Virginals must have been, at that time, favourite instruments in polite Dutch Society. Pepys, in his Diary, under date of September 2, 1666, has a well-known reference to the popularity of the virginal in London at the time of the Great Fire. "River full of lighters and boats taking in goods, and I observed that hardly one lighter or boat in three, that had the goods of a house in, but there was a pair of virginals in it." The word "virginals," here used, was evidently applied in a general sense, meaning any key-board plectrum instrument. The special virginal was an oblong spinet, and appears to have been the "spinetta," in the form invented by the Venetian Spinetti, about the year 1500. The Italian oblong spinet was furnished with a lid, the instrument being a fixture in the case. It presented to the eye the exact appearance of the cassone or wedding coffer, and was equally an object for decoration.
The rich sound of the Bass of the instrument here drawn, not soon to be forgotten, serves to show what the quality of tone throughout the scale must originally have been. It was this supreme excellence which raised the reputation of Hans Ruckers and his sons to a level to be rivalled only, later, by the great Cremona violin-makers; it lasted as long as the spinet and harpsichord remained in vogue.
This Virginal represents No. 15 of my Catalogue of existing Ruckers instruments in Sir George Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, article "Ruckers." London, 1883.
The woodcuts above the Contents to this work represent Sir Michael Mercator (1491-1544), a musical instrument maker, it is said virginal maker, to King Henry VIII. The portrait has been engraved from a medal in the British Museum executed by Mercator himself, for he was a goldsmith and medallist as well as instrument maker, by Mr. John Hipkins, who has also engraved the Jewish Shophar and the woodcut on the title-page. The legend upon the medal informs us that Mercator was the first knight created from Venloo by the King. He gained knighthood and other distinctions by his success in secret diplomatic services. The researches of Mr. W.H. James Weale, who called the attention of the present writer to Mercator, have determined his arrival in this country to have been in 1527, when he brought letters of introduction to Cardinal Wolsey from Floris d'Egmont, Count de Buren and Lord of Isselstein, and others, and two musical instruments—as he was an organ-builder, it is to be presumed virginals. The King engaged him at an annual salary. It will be observed in the portrait that Mercator wears, attached to his collar, the Tudor Rose. Mr. Weale has published his discoveries concerning him in Le Beffroi, an artistic and antiquarian periodical printed at Bruges. Mr. Weale's Descriptive Catalogue of the rare manuscripts and printed books in the Historical Music Loan Collection of 1885, for the publication of which we are indebted to Mr. Bernard Quaritch, may be appropriately mentioned in this connection.
THE old Bass Viol (French Basse de Viole) derives its name of Viola da Gamba (leg viol) from its having been held between the knees of the player, whence the German "Kniegeige." Shakspeare speaks of it as "viol-de-gamboys" in Twelfth Night—where Sir Toby Belch in his panegyric on Sir Andrew Aguecheek says, "He plays o' the viol-de-gamboys, and speaks three or four languages word for word without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature." Domenichino's famous St. Cecilia is represented as playing upon a viola da gamba. It was the bass of the chest (or family) of viols. A quotation from the recently published autobiography of the Honourable Roger North, who was born in 1653, aptly describes the domestic use of those once admired instruments. He says his grandfather, Dudley, third Lord North, when at his country seat in Norfolk, "would convoke his musical family ... and for important regale of the company the concerts were usually all viols to the organ or harpsichord. The violin came in late and imperfectly. When the hands were well supplied the whole chest went to work, that is six viols, music being formed for it which would seem a strange sort of music now, being an interwoven hum-drum." Roger North became himself a proficient upon both treble and bass viols.
The splendid example here drawn is the work of Joachim Tielke, who made it at Hamburg in 1701; it formerly belonged to the famous violoncellist, F. Servais. In perfect preservation, it has a beautifully carved ivory peg-box, which is surmounted by a woman's head, with an incised finger-board beneath. There are no frets, which is unusual with viols, as they were fretted instruments, but it would be of course easy to attach them. The back is of rosewood alternated with ivory; and the ivory tailpiece forms a caduceus. Two views are given of the instrument, and a profile of the head and peg-box are enlarged to half size. It has six strings, a favourite accordance being—
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This was called the Harp-way sharp; when the fifth string was tuned to B flat the tuning was called Harp-way flat—Harp-way, indicating the facility thus afforded for arpeggios.
Bach's solemn cantata, "Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit" (God's time is the best of all times), opens with the viola da gamba, but, early in the eighteenth century, composers replaced the Viola da Gamba with the violoncello. The last noted performer upon it was Carl Friedrich Abel, who died in 1787. Of late years it has been taken up again for its own special qualities, which should preserve it for at least occasional use. The late Henry Webb, at the suggestion of Professor Ernst Pauer in 1862, was perhaps the first to adopt it again. He had to obtain instruction in the fingering of the instrument from an old man of eighty-six. The fingering is practically that of the lute, and, as Mr. E.J. Payne has pointed out in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Art. "Violin"), it was the command of the six-stringed finger-board which the lutenists had attained by two centuries of incessant practice that was transferred by them to the Viola da Gamba, both instruments being thus common to the same players. Owing to this fact the bass viol remained in use much longer than the other members of the viol family. At the present time Mr. Payne, Herr Paul de Wit of Leipsic, and Mr. E. Jacobs of Brussels, have reintroduced the Viola da Gamba to the notice of the musical public. Mr. Jacobs played upon one furnished with sympathetic strings, with great success in the Historical Concerts given, under the direction of Mr. Victor Mahillon, in the Music Room of the London International Inventions Exhibition of 1885. The instrument here represented belongs to the Museum of the Brussels Conservatoire.
THIS uncommon instrument displays one of the expedients employed to gain a more brilliant effect by the addition of an octave string, before such a string was permanently attached to the sound-board of the harpsichord itself by means of an additional row of strings placed beneath the ordinary unison strings. Octave spinets were, as Mersenne (1636) describes, made independent of the ordinary spinet, and there are frequent examples to be met with. These little spinets were placed upon the larger ones for performance, as Praetorius (1619) says, like turrets on a tower. In this double spinet it is a removable part of the instrument, and constitutes the left-hand key-board, the right-hand key-board being a fixture. The maker, as is proved by his initials, HR, and his device in the rose of the sound-hole, is no other than the famous Hans Ruckers the elder, of Antwerp. This Spinet is numbered 9 of the sixty-six existing instruments by the Ruckers family catalogued by the present writer in Sir George Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. It can now be extended to sixty-eight. On the jack rails of both spinets may be read "Joannes Rvqvers me fecit." There is another double spinet at Nuremberg made in 1580 by Martin Vander Beest, which has been figured and is the frontispiece to Dr. August Reissmann's Illustrirte Geschichte der Deutschen Musik (Leipzig, 1881). The Ruckers double spinet can hardly be much later. The earliest examples known to me of the octave string attached, as above mentioned, in the harpsichord itself, are to be found in a double clavecin (French for harpsichord) by Hans Ruckers the elder, dated 1590, and preserved in the Museum of the Paris Conservatoire, and in a clavicembalo (Italian for harpsichord), made at Pesaro, and also in 1590,—lately brought to England by Messrs. Hill, the violin-makers, and now acquired by the South Kensington Museum. The latter is an instrument with only two strings to each note. The invention of the octave string, as well as of double key-board, has been attributed to Hans Ruckers. The latest evidence, however, does not favour these attributions, although both inventions most likely belong to the Netherlands. Ruckers and his sons, it may be said, made instruments that were never surpassed for quality of tone. To return to the Double Spinet—both key-boards are of four octaves, the fixed right-hand one being from the second C below, to the second above, middle C, and the removable left-hand one is an octave higher throughout. The complete instrument rests upon the original arcaded stand.
The paintings are of later date than the instrument itself. The subjects are on the lid, and represent a contest before the gods between Apollo and Marsyas—the former divinity playing a viol, and the latter a pipe. The background is a hilly country with a lake and castle, and a man in a boat. Above and below the removable spinet are painted landscapes with figures, immediately above it children dancing; and at the fixed key-board men and women dancing in pairs. This pleasing instrument formerly belonged to Messrs. Chappell of London, but is now the property of Mr. George Donaldson.
There are seven pierced arches and columns in the stand, which is 2 feet 4 inches high. The dimensions are—extreme length, 5 feet 8½ inches; the length of the left-hand key-board, 2 feet 2½ inches, and of the right-hand one, 2 feet 1¼ inches. The width from back to front is 1 foot 7½ inches, and the depth is 11½ inches.
THE primary meaning of "Chitarrone" is a large guitar, but, in point of fact, this imposing yet graceful instrument is a theorbo or bass lute with a very long upper neck to give length for bass strings of deep pitch. The one to the left in the drawing, which belongs to Mr. Rudolf Lehmann, London, is Venetian, if we may judge from the beautiful decoration. It has three sound-holes with roses joined together in a fashion that is regarded as Roman, and is adorned with mother of pearl. It is strung with six pairs of strings upon the finger-board, each pair tuned in unison. Seven single diapason strings, or open basses, are stretched from the upper peg-box clear of the finger-board. It is 5 feet in extreme length, that of the neck being 3 feet 5 inches. The Chitarrone in the centre, which belongs to Mr. George Donaldson, and is richly inlaid with mother of pearl, has also three connected roses, six pairs of unisons upon the finger-board and eight diapasons clear of it. The length of it is 6 feet; the neck is 4 feet 1 inch. It is also Venetian, and dated 1608. The right-hand Chitarrone, shown at the Exhibition of 1885 by Mr. Edward Joseph of Bond Street, London, has six pairs of unisons and seven diapasons. The neck is ornamented with chequers, and the finger-board is bound with thirteen frets for the melody strings, giving the player a semitone more than the complete chromatic series.
The chitarrone is sometimes called the Roman theorbo. It is of greater length than the Paduan theorbo, with which it was introduced towards the end of the sixteenth century,—owing to a necessity having arisen for bass instruments of greater sonorousness than had been used before, in order to accompany the newly-invented recitative. About the same time there also came into use a larger instrument of the viol family, known as the violone, the precursor of the double bass. The heavier basses and simple harmonies, for which the Italians had shown a growing preference, replaced, to a great extent, the ingenious interweavings of counterpoint, and assisted the development of the latest offspring of the Renaissance, that of Monody—the recitativo and aria—introduced in Florence by Peri, Caccini, Cavalieri and Monteverde, the foundation of the modern Italian opera.
The chitarrone was used in the orchestra of Monteverde on the first production of his Orfeo in 1607. There is also mention of it in a band of instruments as early as 1589.
THIS "Spinet," with its original six-legged stand, was made in London about the end of the seventeenth century. "Stephanus Keene Londini Fecit," is inscribed upon the name-board, which is characteristically inlaid with birds and foliage. It is a transverse Spinet, the Italian "Spinetta traversa," an adaptation of the longer bichord or trichord harpsichord within the limitations of size of this instrument, which, like the trapeze-shaped and oblong spinets, had one string only to each note. The tail is extended on the right-hand side; the key-board is placed somewhat obliquely, and the wrest-plank, with the tuning-pins, is immediately above the key-board, instead of being, as in the older spinets, at the right-hand side. The compass of the key-board is from the second B below, to the second D above, the middle C,—in all four octaves and two notes, being one note more in the treble than occurs in the key-board diagram to Henry Purcell's Lessons for the Harpsichord or Spinnet. The lowest key would, however, be tuned down to the lowest pianoforte G, the object being to secure a dominant bass for the lowest C. Purcell's diagram for the spinet gives the lowest key as "B B," but, in the lessons, he here and there writes down to G G, also to A A, for which the lowest C♯ key would be similarly accommodated. The two lowest sharps of the spinet here drawn present the peculiarity of being cut or divided, each division being an independent key. These were not quarter-tones as has been supposed; the front halves were tuned A and B for dominant basses like the G, and the back halves C♯ and D♯, chromatic semitones to the adjacent natural notes, thus combining the "Short Octave" principle, indispensable for the performance of contemporary music, with the chromatic system then beginning to be recognised.
Stephen Keene was a well-known maker of spinets, equal in reputation to his great rivals, Charles Haward, and Thomas and John Hitchcock, The earliest notice known of Keene occurs in an advertisement at the end of the sixth edition of Playford's Introduction (London, 1671), which announces that "Mr. George Dalham, that excellent organ-maker, dwelleth now in Purple-Lane, next door to the Crooked Billet, where such as desire to have new organs, or old mended, may be well accommodated."
"And Mr. Stephen Keene, Maker of Harpsycons and Virginals, dwelleth now in Threadneedle-Street, at the sign of the Virginal, who maketh them exactly good, both for sound and substance."
It is proved that Keene was long in business by a name-board which is in my possession dated 1719. Indeed, longer than the period occupied by Thomas Hitchcock, whose autograph occurs in spinets from 1664 and 1703. The principal dimensions of the instrument drawn, which belongs to Mr. H.J. Dale, Cheltenham, are—extreme width, 5 feet 6 inches, extreme depth, without the projection of the key-board, 1 foot 9¼ inches. The key-board is 2 feet 4¼ inches wide, and 37/8 inches deep.
THE Quinterna or Chiterna, the Italian guitar, was formerly used by the humbler order of musicians. According to Engel, it had three pairs of catgut strings and two single strings covered with wire, and was played guitar-lute fashion with the fingers, and not with a plectrum. But the instrument here drawn, with its ten wire strings, must have been played with a plectrum in cither fashion. It was exhibited by Mr. George Donaldson in the Music Loan Collection at the Royal Albert Hall as a Giterna, an obvious variant of the name. Two views of it are here given. It is of tortoiseshell with arabesques of ivory and a carved ebony head, the back being of ebony and ivory. In length it is 24½ inches, and the neck, measured from the body, is 14 inches. The words, "Joachim Tielke Hamburg fecit, 1676," are inscribed on the back of the instrument; the date, however, suggests a considerable discrepancy when compared with the Quinterna in South Kensington Museum, by Joachim Tielke, 1539. Engel supposes that this famous maker's name was continued through several generations, to account for the difference in dates. Evelyn, visiting Pozzuoli in 1645, says, "The country-people so jovial and addicted to musiq, that the very husbandmen almost universaly play on the guitarr, singing and composing songs in praise of their sweet-heartes." This guitar would be the Quinterna. The Mandoline drawn, also Mr. Donaldson's, is by Domenico Vinaccia, dated Napoli, 1780, and is of tortoiseshell and mother of pearl, with a beautiful pear-shaped back or shell. It is 22 inches long, the neck and head being 11 inches.
The Mandoline (Italian Mandolino) is smaller than the Mandora, a kind of alto lute. It is strung with catgut and wire, the bass strings being of catgut covered with silver wire, and is played with a plectrum. Of several kinds, including the Mandore, Mandurina, and Pandurina, that have been used in Italy, the Milanese and Neapolitan Mandolines are the best known. The Milanese Mandoline, with five or six pairs of strings, preserves old cither tunings; the Neapolitan Mandoline, which is really an eighteenth-century instrument, is evidently of later introduction, as it is tuned in fifths similar to a violin, which makes performance upon it easily attainable by violin players. Mozart wrote the serenade in Don Giovanni with an accompaniment for it, but beautiful as this composition is, the accompaniment appears scarcely characteristic of the Mandoline or of the Bandurria either—a small kind of Spanish guitar of deeper pitch than the Mandoline, which, for local colour, would have been the right instrument. These instruments, like the Dulcimer, make their characteristic effects by means of the reiteration of notes, analogous to what is called "repetition" on a pianoforte, the intention being to convey an impression of sustained sound, and make the melody prominent when several other instruments are being played.
The accordance of the Neapolitan Mandoline is—
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of the Milanese Mandoline of five notes—
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of the Milanese Mandoline of six notes—
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and of the Bandurria—
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the three higher notes being here of catgut—the lower of silk overspun with metal. The Bandurria, like the Mandolines, is played with a plectrum, called in Spanish "Pua," which is prevented from defacing the wood by the presence of a tortoiseshell plate, let into the sound-board. The plectrum is usually a small piece of tortoiseshell or quill.
THE Crwth is a rare Welsh instrument, supposed to have been the "Chrotta Brittanna" mentioned in one of the odes of Venantius Fortunatus, written about A.D. 617, and published under the title of "Venantii Fortunati Poemata"; but following the analogy of the Gaelic "cruith," and the phonetic "crot" of the Book of the Dean of Lismore (a sixteenth-century collection of Ossianic fragments), the British Chrotta was more likely to have been an early form of the Celtic Harp. Of original Welsh Crwths known there are three—one from the Engel collection in the South Kensington Museum, another less perfect in the Warrington Museum, and the one here drawn, which belongs to Colonel Wynne-Finch of Voelas, Bettws-y-Coed, North Wales. They have been hollowed out of single pieces of wood, the sound-board being glued on—a very primitive manner of structure akin to the old Celtic Harps. The dimensions of Colonel Wynne-Finch's Crwth are—length, 22½ inches; width, between 10½ and 9 inches; depth, 2 inches. This instrument has six strings, although nearer examination shows that it had originally only five; four are on a finger-board played with a bow, and two are off the finger-board, intended to be twanged by the player's thumb. These open strings are a comparatively late fancy, adopted in the theorbo, lyra, and baryton viols. It is said there was a three-stringed crwth (Crwth thrithant) probably bowed, and tuned as the first, fifth, and octave, but I am disposed to agree with the late Carl Engel (Researches into the Early History of the Violin Family: London, 1883) that this could be no other than the mediæval Rebec. From observations made, more than a hundred years ago, by the Hon. Daines Barrington (published in the Archæologia of the Society of Antiquaries, London, Vol. III. p. 20), who had the advantage of hearing a performer claiming to be the last upon the instrument, the accordance of the six-stringed crwth was—
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The strings were of catgut. Another authority, Bingley, heard the crwth played at Carnarvon as late as 1801. He gives a different accordance, in which, however, the octave arrangement remains:—
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It would appear as if the notes forming octaves upon the finger-board were bowed together but not all four strings at once, as has been sometimes supposed. To effect this there must have been a peculiar knack in using the bow. From the large openings on either side of the finger-board it is possible to trace, through the intermediate mediæval Rotta or Rote, a descent from the Græco-Roman Cythara or Lyre. There are two sound-holes in the belly, and the bridge, which is placed obliquely, has the right foot resting upon the belly, while the left foot, as in the tromba marina, passes through the left sound-hole to rest upon the back. The left foot then acts as a sound-post, and sets the whole instrument in vibration. Colonel Wynne-Finch's Crwth was found in the Island of Anglesey. It has the following inscription upon a label inside:—
Maid in the paris of
anirhengel by Richard
Evans Instruments maker
In the year 1742.
But it is supposed to be older, and only to have been repaired or reconstructed by Richard Evans. It was restored very carefully by Mr. George Chanot before being shown at South Kensington in the Loan Collection of 1872.
The Balaläika is the Russian peasant's guitar. This example
was drawn because of the ornament, but the common instrument is
usually quite plain. It came from Moscow tuned
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but another in my possession, sent to me at the same time from St. Petersburg, was tuned
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.
The Balaläika has three frets attached to the
neck, for stopping the semitone, whole tone, and minor third on
each string. The strings are of catgut. The quality of tone is very
sympathetic, almost sad.
The dimensions of the specimen drawn are—extreme height from the base, 30 inches; the finger-board, 13 inches; the width at base is 11½ inches. The depth of the sound-chest, which is the half of a duodecagon, 5¾ inches. The corresponding measures of the simple peasant's instruments are—26¾, 13¾, 13, and 3½ inches.
The peculiar triangular shape of the Balaläika is of very primitive character, the curved form in lutes and guitars being an artistic development. In a delightfully realistic Russian bronze shown at the Health Exhibition, South Kensington, 1884, the performer simultaneously holds the neck of the instrument and stops the strings with his left hand, while he touches them, guitar fashion, with his right hand, the instrument being free from any other support whatever.