"TH THE PIANO ON THE FRONTIER-OFFICERS' QUARTERS ON THE UPPER MISSOURI. "THE social importance of the piano," dramatic and orchestral compositions. This said Thalberg, in his remarks to the influence of the piano is not confined to musical jury of the London Exhibition of them, but extends to all classes; and while 1851, "is, beyond all question, far greater considerable towns have often no orchestra, than that of any other instrument of music. families possess the best possible substitute, One of the most marked changes in the making them familiar with the finest comhabits of society, as civilization advances, is positions. The study of snch compositions, with respect to the character of its amuse- and the application necessary for their propments. Formerly nearly all such amuse- er execution, may be and ought to be made ments were away from home and in public; the means of greatly improving the general now, with the more educated portion of soci-education, habits, and tastes of piano stuety, the greatest part is at home and within dents, and thus exerting an elevating influthe family circle, music on the piano consti-ence in addition to that refined and elegant tuting the greatest portion of it. In the pleasure which it directly dispenses." most fashionable circles of cities private This just tribute to the piano may be concerts increase year by year, and in them set against the torture inflicted by soulless the piano is the principal feature. Many a thrumming upon it by girls whose parents man engaged in commercial and other act-have selected it as what they shall "take," ive pursuits finds the chief charm of his in obedience to that dictum of fashion that drawing-room in the intellectual enjoyment no female child must reach the age of matafforded by the piano. In many parts of rimony without possessing an "accomplishEurope this instrument is the greatest sol- ment" wherewith to exhibit to the casual ace of the studious and the solitary. Even visitor. Accomplished executants are few; steam and sailing vessels for passengers on those who play "a little," but have expreslong voyages are now obliged, by the fixed sion and touch, are fewer; while the thrumhabits of society, to be furnished with piano-mers are a host. The usual course is unfortes, thus transferring to the ocean itself willing practice at boarding-school or at something of the character of home enjoy-home until marriage; then housekeeping ments. By the use of the piano many who closes the piano lid. Judged by any artistnever visit the opera or the concerts become ic standard, or by the hard rule of worldly thoroughly acquainted with the choicest sense, the waste in all this is enormous; yet pleasure and culture are relative, and out of "Bonnie Doon," "Money Musk," the "Virginia Reel," and others of" mother's tunes," people who can not distinguish a tuned from an untuned instrument may perhaps derive a satisfaction, unlike that of the ambitious mamina who is the business support of the piano-maker, which makes the investment profitable. The four largest cities of the United States have about 125 piano-makers, and the aggregate number of pianos annually produced is about 30,000; their price to the public ranges from $150 to $1500 each, aggregating, perhaps, ten or twelve millions of dollars. In 1852 the 180 English makers were producing 1500 grands, 1500 squares, and 20,000 uprights; but the English prices are lower than the American, the best grands costing $750, the squares $175 to $250, the ordinary uprights $225 to $350. These prices are less than one-half of those of first-class American instruments; but the American piano is heavier and more thorough in construction, better able to resist climatic changes, and is the best in the world. What becomes of all the pianos? Strangely enough, the makers all appear to thrive: failures among them are rare, and it is not uncommon for them in the dullest of times to report themselves unable to keep up with their orders. Every concert hall and steam-ship must have a piano; every hotel at least one; every public school must have several; the young ladies' "institute" of the day jingles with them, sometimes using as many as thirty; and the piano has come to be so established an article of furniture in private parlors that the lack of it attracts notice, and often elicits apology as well. The melodious life of the instrument is, perhaps, five to twenty years, according to quality and usage. Its sounding life may be twice that time, the piano of to-day greatly surpassing in tenacity its predecessor of twenty years age. From the first downward step, when it becomes "secondhand," it begins the secondary existence of going out on hire, the number constantly thus "out" in New York city alone being three or four thousand. Thus used, played tenderly by those whom hard poverty restricts to this imperfect gratification of their musical desires, or cruelly thumped by others whose earthy souls have no music in them, no vivid imagination is needed to see the unhappy wandering instrument—a victim to players, owners, and cartmen-bemoaning the memory of its earlier and more artistic days. Old pianos can not disappear in crevices, as pins and needles do; their natural destination is the lumber-room and garret, where dust and cobwebs and memories gather upon them, and dreamy children steal to them and softly play imaginary melodies. Possibly the time may come when the rage for the antique, now expending itself upon pottery, will bring out the old pianos and give them market value, their unlikeness to the instruments then in use being sufficient to give them novelty TRIANGULAR HARPS. 1, Ancient Egyptian Harp, from instrument in Egyptian Museum, Florence. 2, Ancient Egyptian Harp (Wilkinson). 3. Ancient Egyptian Harp (Wilkinson). 4. Persian Chang (from Persian MS. 410 years old). Lane's 'Arabian Nights,' EGYPTIAN LYRE. 오오오오 Բ not across the oval part, tuned by pegs at the left. The psalterium differed little from this except in its shape, which was either square or triangular. In manuscripts dating from the ninth to the eleventh centuries David is always figured as playing on the square psalterium, but later than the twelfth century as playing on the harp. The psaltery, very popular during the Middle Ages, was a box having the strings stretched across it, and as it contained the principle of the sounding-board, it was a decided ad vance. The dulcimer was similar, but lar for novelty is ger, both instruments being played with the newness plectra. These ancient instruments are still but unfamil-perpetuated in the little toy for children, iarity. sometimes made with a key-board in imiThe germ of the piano, as of all other tation of the piano, in which strips of glass stringed instruments, was the first use of a or sonorous metal are struck with little hamstretched string to produce a sonorous vi- mers, producing a very melodious note. In bration, and all that essentially distinguish- "The Squire of Lowe Degre"-a romaunt of es one from another the members of the the fifteenth century-we are told that family of stringed instruments is the method of setting the string in vibration. One legend relates that the god Mercury, walking along the Nile after its subsidence, discovered the musical string by hitting his foot against the shell of a dead tortoise across which several filaments of cartilage had dried and stretched in the sun. Another legend refers the invention to the bow of Apollo, and this seems more probable, for whoever first drew the bow could not have failed to notice the twang of the string. The ancients had a variety of simple stringed instruments. Mural paintings in a Theban sepulchre, supposed to be that of Rameses III., show elaborate harps, which differ in shape from those of to-day chiefly in lacking the front pillar; and harps have been found whose catgut strings were still capable of producing sound after three thousand years of darkness and silence. The early lyre is supposed to have differed from the harp in having its strings carried over a bridge-a mode of construction still followed. These instruments were played either with the fingers "a-pickin' on de string," or with the plectrum; this was sometimes a small piece of bone, held in the fingers, and used to snap the string, and sometimes a short stick like a diminutive drumstick, with which the strings were struck. The cithara was a small instrument shaped like a large P, with ten strings "There was myrth and melody, With harp, getron, and sautry, With rote, ribible, and clokarde, With pypes, organs, and bumbarde, With other minstrels them amonge, With sytolphe and with sautry songe, With fydle, recorde, and dowcemere, With trompette, and with claryon clere, With dulcet pypes of many cordes." Next came the class of key-board instruments which preceded the piano. The clavicitherium, or keyed cithara, appearing about the year 1300, was a box with a cover. It had catgut strings, and keys which simply lifted the plectra for striking the strings. The clavichord, also called monochord and clarichord, had brass strings, which were struck by a brass wedge called a tangent; this wedge partly lifted the string, thus forming practically a second bridge so long as the key was held down. Staccato passages were well rendered by it; and by further depressing the key after the blow had been struck the tangent could be DULCIMER. made to further lift the string, thus tightening it and raising its pitch, so as to give greater prominence to the melody. Mozart carried a clavichord as part of his baggage, and Bach-whose "welltempered clavichord" is a familiar title-preferred it to the piano, which he did not live to see developed. One biographer says that "he found it the most convenient for the expression of his most refined thoughts." Next came immediately preceding the piano-the virginal, the spinet, and the harpsichord. They had brass strings, but the plectra were | Elizabeth's virginal book, and an instruquills fastened in pieces of wood called jacks, this latter name being still retained in the piano "action." The movement of the quill was a nibbing of the string; it rose up past the string, freeing it, and there remained until taking the finger from the key allowed it to drop. The spinet differed little from the virginal. The harpsichord was of larger size, and sometimes CLAVICHORD. ment alleged to have been her virginal, are still preserved. A poem descriptive of the public entry of Queen Anne, wife of James VI., into Edinburgh, May 19, 1590, mentions that "viols and virginalls were their." Spenser speaks of his beloved as "playing alone careless on her heavenlie virginalls;" and Shakspeare, in a sonnet, mentions "those jacks that nimble leap to kiss the tender inward of thy hand," and of "those dancing chips o'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait." In appearance the virginal resembled a very small piano; sometimes it was made without legs, and a few small specimens resemble a large music box. Both the virginal and the spinet were often richly adorned with gold, paintings, and jewels. A story is told that Salvator Rosa, for a wager, made his old harpsichord, not worth a scudo, worth a thousand by had two key-boards. The name virginal | painting a landscape with figures on its lid. is associated by some with hymus to the Virgin, by others it is supposed to have been given in compliment to Queen Elizabeth. At least the instrument was very popular in England. Henry VIII. delighted in playing it. His daughters Mary and Elizabeth, as well as Mary of Scotland, were players of it, and items for repairing virginals and giving instruction on them appeared frequently in the memoranda of royal expenses. A book alleged to have been The virginal said to have belonged to Mary of Scotland, still preserved, is of oak, inlaid with cedar, and ornamented with gold and paintings. The virginal continued in use until the eighteenth century, and one of the latest notices of it is found in the Loudon Post of July 20, 1701, that "this week a most curious pair of virginals, reckoned the finest in England, were shipped off for the Grand Seigneur's seraglio." So common did the instrument become that old Pepys, ITALIAN SPINET, ORNAMENTED WITH PRECIOUS STONES, MADE BY ANNIBALE DEI ROSSI, 1577. gossiping about the great fire in London in 1666, says: "River full of lighters and boats taking in goods, and good goods swimming in the water; and only I observed that hardly one lighter or boat in three that had the goods of a house in it but that there were a pair of virginals in it," the word "pair" having here no more meaning than "a pair of scissors." The progress of keyed instruments was resisted by some whose love for handling the string survived. Among them was Thomas Mace," one of the clerks of Trinity College in the University of Cambridge," who, in a thin folio called Musick's Monument, London, 1676, warmly defended the lute and the viol. He explained that the reason why the lute was once hard to play was that it had too few strings-ten to fourteen-whereas it had then sixteen to twenty-six; he never spent more than five sbillings a quarter to provide strings, although he conld imagine that those who would be extravagant could spend as much as would keep several horses, with riders. He told thus how to preserve the lute, and discoursed about changes of fashions: "And that you may know how to shelter your lute in the worst of Ill weathers (which is moist), you shall do well, ever when you Lay it by in the daytime, to put It into a Bed that is constantly used, between the HARPSICHORT). Rug and Blank et; but never between the Sheets, be VIRGINAL... cause they may be moist with Sweat, etc. This is the most absolute and best place to keep it in always, by which doing you will find many Great Conveniences...... Therefore, a Bed will secure from all These Inconveniences, and keep your Glew as Hard as Glass and all safe and sure; only to be excepted, that no Person be so inconsiderate as to Tumble down upon the Bed whilst the Lute is there, for I have known several Good Lutes spoiled with such a Trick. "I can not understand how Arts and Sciences should be subject unto any such Phantastical, Giddy, or Inconsiderate Toyish Conceits as ever to be said to be in Fashion or out of Fashion. I remember there was a Fashion not many years since for Women in their Apparel to be so Pent up by the Straitness and Stiffness of their Gown-Shoulder-Sleeves that they could not so much as Scratch their Heads for the Necessary Remove of a Biting Lonse, nor Elevate their Arms scarcely to feed Handsomely, nor Carve a Dish of Meat at a Table, but their whole Body must needs Bend toward the Dish. This must needs be concluded by Reason a most Unreasonable and Inconvenient Fashion." The leading instrument in the last century was the harpsichord. Its compass was extended to five octaves. Its shape was almost exactly that of the grand piano. Many ingenious makers devoted themselves to it, adding sets of wires, sets of quills, duplicate key-boards, complicated devices for imitating orchestral instruments. It reached the utmost development possible, while missing the discovery of a better implement than the crow quill and jack. Frederick the Great had one made for him in London at a cost of two hundred guineas; its bridges, pedals, and frame were silver, its front was tortoise-shell, and its case was inlaid. A |