Musical Devices: Historic, Uncommon and Distinctive

IT is claimed for this ebook, meant for example uncommon historic and delightful Musical Devices, that it’s distinctive. Classical, Mediæval, Japanese, and different styles of Ornamental Artwork, Weapons, and Costumes, have discovered worthy illustration and ample description, however hitherto no try has been made to characterize in a like method the grace and exterior appeal of positive lutes and harps, of viols, virginals, and different devices. Engravings have been produced, in historic or technical works; however the larger variety of these are mere repetitions continued from one to the opposite, and don’t have any specifically æsthetic curiosity. Great thing about kind and health of ornament demand greater than the commonplace homage paid to easy use, and whereas we should always by no means lose sight of the aim of a musical instrument, its capability to supply agreeable and varied sounds, we are able to benefit from its kind and materials, and, making it pretty to look upon, give pleasure to the attention in addition to the ear. It’s hardly essential to say that the love of decoration or decoration is an attribute of the human race. It’s to be discovered in every single place and in each epoch when life is, in the intervening time, protected and the technique of existence safe. Some favorite method of ornament is the attribute stamp of a folks, a interval, or a rustic. The earliest monuments we are able to level to that characterize musical devices, present an inclination to adorn them or to position them with ornamental environment. The Egyptians, the Assyrians, the traditional Greeks provide a file that has been continued by the Persians and Saracens, within the Gothic age and the Renaissance, all the time repeating, because it had been, in an ineffaceable script, the principle that the hand ought to minister to the gratification of the attention, and fulfill it by alternating pleasure with repose. And so it was, till the marvellous mechanical advance within the current century has not solely precipitated us to neglect, by its overwhelming energy, what our predecessors so steadfastly continued, however has induced us to treat the ugly as enough if the mere sensible finish is served. By thus chilling the appreciation and pursuit of ornamental invention, that school has been numbed in the intervening time, and there may be hazard of its being misplaced altogether. It could be answered that actual creative work is sometimes executed, and there are examples of it to be present in musical devices; organ case is typically made, generally a positive ornament for a piano case. If there may be any hope of an awakening of the love for musical devices that finds expression of their adornment, its promise lies within the stunning designs which were, of late years, so meritoriously carried out for pianos—the invention of Mr. Alma Tadema, Mr. Burne Jones, Mr. Fox, and Miss Kate Faulkner. Good ornament needn’t be a privilege of the wealthy; the outdated Antwerp clavecin-makers, who had been all members of the guild of St. Luke, the artists’ guild, knew learn how to worthily embellish their devices at little price, as could also be seen within the Ruckers Virginal.