Part 3

“My desire of hearing what the Persians considered as their best musick, could only be gratified it is said in the chief cities. Meanwhile a kind of violin called kemáncheh (or, as pronounced in the south of Persia, Kamoncheh) and found in almost every town, afforded me frequent entertainment. That which I saw first was in the hands of Mohammed Caraba’ghi, a poor fellow who sometimes visited our camps. His kemáncheh was of _tut_ or mulberry-tree wood; the body (about eight inches in diameter) globular except at the mouth, over which was stretched, and fixed by glue, a covering of parchment; it had three strings (of twisted sheep’s-gut) and a bridge placed obliquely. A straight piece of iron strengthened the whole instrument from the knob below, through the handle or fingerboard to the hollow which received the pegs. It was carried hanging from the shoulder by a leather strap; in length it was nearly three feet from the wooden ball at the top to the iron knob or button which rested upon the ground. The bow was a mere switch, about two feet and a half long, to which was fastened at one end some black horse-hair. At the other end this hair was connected by a brass ring with a piece of leather seven or eight inches long. The ring was managed with the second and third fingers of the performer’s hand and by its means he contracted or relaxed the bow, which was occasionally rubbed on a bit of wax or rosin stuck above the pegs....

“The performer generally combined his voice with the tones of his instrument. At the house of a person in Bushehr, I one day heard another minstrel sing to his kemáncheh a melancholy ditty, concerning the ill-fated Zend dynasty which became extinct on the murder of Luft Ali Kha’n in 1794, when the present King’s uncle, of the Kajar tribe, assumed imperial authority. The Zend princes were much beloved.... The elegy on their misfortunes abounded with pathetic passages, and the tune corresponding drew tears from some who listened.” Later the author informs us that the kemáncheh is made of various materials: “I have seen one of which the body was merely a hollow gourd; and another of which every part was richly inlaid and ornamented. Some,” says Abd-ul-cadir, “form the body of this instrument from the shell of a cocoanut, fixing on it hair strings; but many are made from wood over which they fasten silken strings.”[9]

But! ... but! ... but, surely it is lunch-time! The sight of the big double-bass and its Asiatic satellites is becoming very irksome, and--the American’s “silent sorrow” is overcoming us. In plain words: “We are hungry!”

Was it not Schopenhauer who said to a German officer, who watched the philosopher’s mighty appetite with astonishment: “I eat much, sir, because I have a great mind,” adding that thought required vigorous nourishment? Of course! Then let us enter the spacious restaurant, guarded by two of Flaxman’s _chefs-d’oeuvre_; seize a white-robed table; beckon to a black-robed waiter; and take the food of thought, _à la_ Schopenhauer.

A BASS-VIOL OF 1584

“WHILE cleaning the attic of the house of Dr John I. Orton yesterday, workmen found an old church bass-viol. Inside the viol is engraved the name of the maker and the date, ‘G. Billini-Onna, 1584.’ Experts place its value at at least $1000. The viol has been in the possession of the Orton family for three generations but for a number of years has been missing.”--_Newhaven Register_, 1902.

EXTRACTS FROM ANTHONY WOOD’S DIARY

“The 25th December 1656, Th. I paid young Mr Bishop 3s. for mending my base violl.

“February 18th, 1658, to Bishop for mending my viol 1s., to Rich for my shoes and spent 1s.

“25th, for violl strings, 7d.; the same, for my musick meeting, 9d.”

EPITAPH SAID TO BE ON JOHAN JENKINS’ GRAVESTONE

“Under this stone rare Jenkyns lye The Master of the Musick Art, Whom from the Earth, the God on high Called up to him to bear his part In Anno 78, he went to heaven.”

--John Jenkins was an extraordinary player on the Lyra viol in the time of Charles I.

CHAT THE SECOND

Lunch, and the Emperor Albinus--The Crwth--The immature Bow Instruments which preceded the Fifteenth-century Viol--M. Coutagne and Gaspar Duiffoproucart

While under the shadow of the friendly double-bass, we were

## particularly favoured and aided by the punctuating poke of a finger at

the instruments mentioned. Now, however, isolated in that inartistic invention--a Restaurant--we have no such aid. There is no inspiration to be gained from knives and forks, plates and spoons, unless one be a cutler, a potter, a _chef_, or rejoices in the voracious appetite of the Emperor Albinus. This monarch--says our classical dictionary--thought nothing of devouring 500 figs, 100 peaches, twenty pounds of dry raisins, 10 melons, and 400 oysters for breakfast. What the heavier meals of the day were composed of is a matter upon which we are left to cogitate.

There is no necessity to dwell upon the many immature bow instruments which preceded the fifteenth-century viol, but, for the sake of context, they must be allowed a passing interest and a glance at these pictures of them, which we have here upon the table. The Welsh crwth we will not mention, for it has already been effectually cast out of the fiddle family’s ancestry by an eminent authority in such matters. Likewise, for the same reason, we will pass the rote or rotta, with a vacant stare.

[Illustration: Fig. 5.--REBEC]

The rebec,[10] however, we will welcome, for here we tread upon safe ground. Lying uppermost upon the table before us is a sketch (Fig. 5) of this little pear-shaped instrument which was the parent of the viol, and the darling of the minstrel’s heart. Its progenitor was the rabab of Arabia, and it derived its Frenchified title through the rabab’s Spanish equivalent “rabel,” or “arabel.” Owing to its commodious size, and consequent utility, this little instrument diffused itself rapidly over Europe. To sunny Provence; to France; to Normandy; and lastly to England it went in the hands of Troubadours and Crusaders, and so great was the charm of its coarse strings and rotund form, that mankind cherished it for many centuries. In England it became quite habitual to look upon the violin and the rebec as almost the same instrument; so much so, that the term fiddle became as synonymous with the rebec as with the violin. Thus we find Fletcher, in his “Knight of the Burning Pestle,” putting the following speech into the mouth of one of his characters: “They say ’tis present death for these fiddlers to tune their _rebecs_ before the Grand Turk,” while “Golding,” in Thomas Shadwell’s Comedy of “The Miser,” speaks of the Fiddler’s Violin.

The first instrument played with a bow in France, the rebec survived longest in that country, and in the first half of the sixteenth century we find woodcut representations of it in complete “sets”--_i.e._ _soprano_, _alto_, _tenor_, and _bass_--in Martin Agricola’s “Musica Instrumentalis Deudsch.”

[Illustration: Fig. 6.--SPANISH MINSTREL (Eleventh-century MS.)]

Underneath our rebec picture is quite an ornamental drawing of a man dancing upon stilts (Fig. 6), which comes from a Saracen’s pencil. This gentleman is a minstrel, and we ought to admire him, yet the cast of his countenance has been a severe shock to our cherished dreams of the romantic silky haired troubadours of the past. The picture is taken from a Spanish MS. of the eleventh century, one of the most valuable of its kind in that Aladdin’s cave--the British Museum--and is considered to be the work of a monk of the monastery of Silos in Bourgos (Old Castille). The instrument held in the minstrel’s left hand, while he nimbly trips upon a “light fantastic toe,” is curious and interesting, for it is in the nature of a freak. So equivocal is its appearance that as one looks one might easily be led into paraphrasing Shakespeare by exclaiming: “Is it a _rebec_ that I see before me?” Certainly the form resembles that instrument, yet it has none of its three-stringed simplicity. More properly speaking, it appears to be a combination of the guitar and viol system, for, while the fingers twang the string above, the bow rubs a drone accompaniment beneath. How much of this arrangement is due to the fancy of the artist, and how much to truth, it is impossible to surmise, but certain it is that this is not the only specimen of a combination musical instrument to be found amongst the Arabs. The learned and industrious Michael Prætorius, in his “Theatrum Instrumentorum” (Wolfenbüttel, 1620), gives two views of an Arabian instrument which he calls a Monocordum and pipe. In form it is identical with the rabab (Fig. 3) but the neck serves the double office of fingerboard and reed, so that the performer could play both instruments at one and the same time. One cannot help regretting that this invention has passed out of use, as it would surely be welcome to those weary hosts and hostesses of modern times who ceaselessly strive to “cut down” the expenses of the inevitable music at the inevitable “At Home.” The artist would play solos upon his combined flute and viol among the clattering tongues and tea-cups, and the fee for his services would work out in the following satisfactory manner:--One artist + two musical instruments = One Fee. Excellent!

Beneath the minstrel in his elaborate stockings lies a picture of a comfortable, pleasant-looking old gentleman wearing a crown upon his head, and scraping what looks uncommonly like an attempt at the Stradivarius model. This figure (Fig. 7) taken from a bas-relief which was once in the Chapel of St Georges de Boscerville, Normandy--built in 1066--and now preserved in the museum at Rouen, is perhaps the oldest known representation of such a shaped viol extant. Monsieur Fetis, speaking of this figure in his “Histoire General de la Musique,” describes it as a “two-stringed rubebe held between the knees of the person who plays upon it with a bow.”

[Illustration: Fig. 7 FIGURE FROM ST GEORGES DE BOSCERVILLE (11th century)]

Now the archæologist who seeks for truth among the relics of ancient musical instruments is greeted with serious difficulties. He finds on one side of him a “mountain of names,” and on the other side of him a “mountain of musical instruments.” In his hand he grasps bewildering allusions to these in poetry and prose, while sculptural representations, pictures, and drawings flit before his eyes. He holds a bit here, in his endeavour to unite the mountains, snatches a fragment there, and thus it is that we find so many contradictory assertions among authorities on the subject.

[Illustration: Fig. 8 BAS-RELIEF FROM COLOGNE MUSEUM (12th century)]

Monsieur Laurent Grillét asserts that this Boscerville instrument is not a rubebe, as Monsieur Fetis says, but a rote, while the latter’s theory that the rote was a direct descendant of the lyre, and was played by plucking the strings, has been borne out by Mr Heron Allen. An authority of the period, Jerome of Moravia, who wrote his “De cæntiâ Artes Musiciea” in 1274, and dedicated it to Gregory X., speaks of the rubebe as a two-stringed instrument played with a bow and tuned thus:

[Illustration]

Unfortunately he does not illustrate his text, but the depth of pitch given by him would indicate an instrument of larger proportions than the one held by the Boscerville figure. In any case, whether this be the instrument indicated by Jerome or not, he has distinctly described the existence of a bass species of viol at that date, and our next picture might certainly be taken as an illustration of his description, giving licence of course, to the third string. This bas-relief in marble (Fig. 8) is preserved in the museum at Cologne, and, looked at with a twentieth-century eye, is wonderfully replete with omens. Observe the bridge and its position: the sound holes in their approved place: the manner in which the sounding-board joins the neck: the excellent fingerboard and tailpiece. All these items, combined with its size, might easily allow it to be the rubebe of Jerome de Moravia and if one supposes this to be so, it is not amiss to suggest that the Boscerville instrument is also a rubebe, which experience enlarged in the following century to the size before us.

It is hardly necessary to add further examples, as these three give a fairly broad idea of the progressive attempts at a definite form, from about the eleventh to the end of the fourteenth century. During this period there were doubtless no hard and fast rules for tuning. The minstrel adapted the pitch of his instrument according to whim, or the compass of his voice. He danced and sang to his own improvised accompaniments. Thus we hear in 1391 of: “Un nommeé Isembart jouait d’une rubèbe, et, en jouant, un nommé Le Bastard se print à danser,” and again in 1395, “Roussel et Gaygnat preurent à jouer, l’un d’une fluste l’autre d’une rubèbe, et ainsi que les aulcuns dansoient.”[11] The minstrel’s person and attainments were undoubtedly of a genial character, yet with all due deference to his merry ways, and the good service he rendered to poetry and music, one cannot help observing that his dancing and warbling were the means of retarding the development of musical instruments to a certain extent. If you roam the country with your musical equipment upon your back you naturally require something of a portable size. “A fiddle under my cloak?” says the indignant Sir Roger l’Estrange in defending himself against Mr Bagshawe’s insinuations that he frequently solicited private conferences from Oliver Cromwell with a fiddle under his cloak; “Truly my fiddle is a bass-viol, and that’s somewhat a troublesome instrument under a cloak.” The minstrel of the Middle Ages was certainly of the same opinion, and was careful that his fiddle should not assume alarming proportions. He was content so long as he could carry it about with ease like “Gervais de Nevers” who:

--“donned a garment old And round his neck a viol hung For cunningly he played and sung.”

Another obstacle to the progress of stringed instruments was placed in their way by the early contrapuntists who expended their genius entirely upon vocal music. Thus it was that no one appeared to realise that a resonant bass-viol, answering to the pitch of the bass voice, could be constructed by enlarging the rebecs and embryo viols then in use. Not until the middle of the fifteenth century did anything of the sort appear, and when it did, it came at the imperative call of the part-songs then coming into vogue. The singers of these compositions demanded to be kept in tune just as much as the warblers of sweet melodies had required, and it was the desire to do this to the best advantage that led eventually to the construction of complete sets of stringed instruments played with a bow and answering in pitch to the treble, alto, tenor, and bass voices.

And now, if you have finished your coffee, shall we return to our case of Asiatic instruments? There is to be found amongst them a mongrel species of bass instrument, which certainly acted in no mean way as a factor in the development of low-pitched instruments played with a bow. We allude to the _trummelscheit_, known in England under the ambiguous title of marine trumpet. It carries one short gut string tuned to CC, and when correctly played--_i.e._ harmonically--gives out a scale corresponding in pitch to that of the high soprano voice.

This _trummelscheit_ before us is rather undersized. Its form and construction are of an advanced type, for besides the short gut string it has the additional sympathetic wire strings piercing the body like a delicate bundle of nerves. Broadly speaking, this instrument was probably made in France in the days when aristocracy prospered, and danced stately minuets at the court of “Le Grand Monarch”: when that cultured son of _tapisier_, Molière, wrote his immortal _comedies_ for the amusement of the _haute monde_, and Jean Baptiste Lully’s impudence and genius placed him upon the highest pinnacle of fame. The intriguing Jean Baptiste--whom Boileau denounced as a _coquin tenebreaux_, a _coeur bas_, and a _bouffon odieux_--was possessed of talents which quite equalled his gifts as a composer of operas. He could write such divine inspirations as “Bois Epais”: could revolutionise the “_ballet de la cour_” by the introduction of the pirouette and sprightly allegro: could play the fiddle to perfection, and conduct his band of “_Petits Violons_” in a manner to make them quickly famous. He could pen mischievous verse; take advantage of court squabbles and turn them to good account, and used his histrionic gifts to the most satisfactory ends. Many a time did Lully’s impersonations of the exquisitely comic situations in which Molière delighted to place his characters, obtain for him the King’s pardon when his Majesty had been fairly exasperated by the unscrupulous actions of his “_Surintendant de la Musique_.” The polygamy scene in _M. de Pourceaugnac_ was one of Maître Lully’s most effective parts for this purpose, and it is easy to imagine how the ludicrous perplexities of M. Jourdain in _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_[12] must have been interpreted by a man who had himself risen from obscurity to wealth and fame. It is in the latter witty comedy that we hear of the trumpet marine and its position at that time. Bewildered M. Jourdain’s music-master is advising him to give concerts twice a week at his house.

LE MAÎTRE DE MUSIQUE

Au reste, monsieur, ce n’est pas assez; il faut qu’une personne comme vous, qui êtes magnifique et qui avez de l’inclination pour les belles choses, ait un concert de musique chez soi tous les Mercredis ou tous les Jeudis.

M. JOURDAIN

Est-ce que les gens de qualité en out?

LE MAÎTRE DE MUSIQUE

Sans doute. Il vous faudra trois voix: un dessus, une haute-contre et une basse, qui seront accompagnés d’une basse de viole, d’un téorbe et d’un clavecin pour les basses continues, avec deux dessus de violon pour jouer les retournelles.

M. JOURDAIN

Il faudra mettre aussi une trompette marine. La trompette marine est un instrument qui me plaît, et qui est très harmonieux.

LE MAÎTRE DE MUSIQUE

Laissez-nous gouverner les choses.

In spite of Molière’s just, or unjust ridicule, the marine trumpet figured in the royal band of Louis XV. Several names of artists who played this instrument at the French court are recorded in the _État de la France_ for 1702, and among them we find Danican Philidor, a favourite musician of Louis, “le bien aimé” (?) and as rampant a chess player as was his contemporary Diderot. Whether from motives of economy or because the marine trumpet was looked upon as “no great shakes” (as our Yankee cousins say), all players of that instrument at the French court were also performers on a species of hautbois--now obsolete--called the Cremorne. How these virtuosi managed to juggle notes out of both instruments at the same time, history does not relate, but in the face of such a feat as that achieved by Don Jumpedo, who nightly jumped down his own throat at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket some hundred years ago, all things seem possible.

England was not behind France in her use of the marine trumpet. Gay King Charles would have all things at court in accordance with the French fashion, and the marine trumpet doubtless found its way to the British coast in the company of truffles, perruques, pirouettes, and long-ear’d puppy dogs. Whether it was bundled in with the Cremorne, as was its fate in France, or ignored, as in Italy, is not recorded, but its advent was apparently announced in the following stirring advertisement published in _The London Gazette_ for 4th February 1674:--“A rare concert of Trumpets Marine, never before heard of in England. If any persons desire to come and hear it they may repair to the Fleece Tavern near St James’ about two of the clock in the afternoon every day in the week except Sundays. Every concert shall continue one hour and so begin again. The best places are one shilling and the other sixpence.” The marine trumpet was not only a means of drawing the public, but it apparently had a market value of its own, for we find in Thomas Shadwell’s play, _The Miser_, of that period, that a certain loan includes a “Bolona lute, a roman Arch lute, 2 gittars, a Cremona Violin, a Lyra Viol, 1 Viol da Gambo, and a Trumpet-Marine, very fit for you if you be a lover of musick.”

[Illustration: Fig. 9.--MARINE TRUMPET]

But it was in Germany--the scene of the trumpet marine’s birth--that it found its real vocation. In that land of sausages and romance, beer and love sonnets, it was known under the double title of “Trummelscheit”--from its resemblance to a sword sheath--and “Nonnen-Trompett,” for the reason that the nuns themselves employed it in their convents. The delicate lips of the fair _religeuses_ were unable to cope with the mouth-distorting horn; yet they required an instrument of that type to add vigour to their heaven-sent praises. Their difficulty was in reality not unlike that of the German bassoon player, Schubert, when Baumgarten commanded him at rehearsal to sustain a certain note. “It is very easy for you, Mister Baumgarten, to say, hold out that note,” replied he quietly, “but who is to find the vind?” The wind instruments must have their human bellows, but these being weak, the marine trumpet became a substitute for the horn, and every German cloister was furnished with, and employed, a nonnen-trompett or nonnen geige. Until almost the end of the eighteenth century, this quaint custom continued, after which the nuns apparently grew bolder and fearlessly attacked double-basses and violoncellos and whole orchestras of instruments. Kastner, writing at the beginning of the nineteenth century, says: “All who go to Lichtenthal near Baden can hear the nuns of the convent of this name sing divine service with an orchestral accompaniment in which many of them took part,” which proves that even at that date the custom of supplying their own music had not been excluded from convent life.