a melodrama. Handel remained a year and brought out his first opera, "Roderigo." Being in the same town, and having a common patron, it is impossible that he and Cristofori should not meet, or that, meeting, Handel should not try the new instrument. Unlike his great contemporary, J. S. Bach, he is, however, not known to have expressed any opinion on it. In addition to the instruments named by Maffei, Cristofori is known to have made a piano in 1720 and another in 1726, both of which are still in existence. Their compass is respectively four, and four and a half, octaves. Yet he does not seem to have made as many instruments as one would have expected of the inventor. He was, it must be remembered, nearer sixty than fifty years old when he made the invention. His instruments were marred by an imperfect "escapement," or means of meeting the rebound of the hammer. And in the land of its birth pianoforte manufac ture soon came to a standstill. The dulcimer had to undergo a second transplantation before it showed signs of the wonderful growth and perfection to which it has since attained. To Italy it owes its keyboard, but it is to England and Germany that it owes the zenith of its development. Indeed, it is only by a few years that Italy can claim priority of invention. Two men already alluded to, Marius, a French harpsichord maker, in 1716, and Christoph G. Schroeter, a German, between 1717 and 1721, invented instruments of the keyed-dulcimer type. That they did so independently of Cristofori is shown by the marked inferiority of the mechanism. Neither of them seems to have prosecuted his discovery to any extent. The first manufacturer after Cristofori to make any considerable number of instruments, indeed, "the first to manufacture pianofortes successfully," was Gottfried Silbermann, who settled in Frieberg as an organ-builder in 1712. No incident in musical history is better known than the visit of the venerable John Sebastian Bach and his eldest son to Frederick the Great, at the Palace at Potsdam in 1747. The King, a passionate lover of music, had acquired a number of Silbermann's pianofortes; "Old Bach," as his Majesty affectionately called him, had to try them, and it was doubtless by his marvellous extemporizations on these, as well as on the King's Silbermann organs, that he so astonished his royal host.1 Frederick does not appear to have accumulated such an absurd number of duplicate instruments as did some princely personages. But the difference in the distribution of musical wealth between our own day and his is striking. The student of political economy is not likely to turn to the life-story of the piano, for material wherewith to point the moral and adorn the tale he has to tell. But he might turn to many a less fruitful field. In the present day a palace contains no more pianos than are likely to be used, and the smallest houses are rarely without one. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries clavier instruments appear to have been looked upon much as a philatelist looks upon his stamps-as things to be collected rather than used. The ownership was vested in comparatively few persons. Thus, Duke Alphonso II, of Modena, already referred to, had at least fifty-two clavier instruments, including organs. Moreover, such a number is said to have been by no means unusual to one of his position 'It is somewhat strange that Carlyle makes no allusion to this incident in his lite of Frederick. He was quite aware of it and gave the exact date, April 7th, to Sir G. Grove. Was he not musical enough to be aware of Bach's true greatness? As the most ma sive and severely intellectual of musicians, one would have thought that Bach would have appealed to him. and period-1598. A century later the Prince Ferdinand de' Medici had at least forty. For fifty years after its invention the new instrument appeared almost to have been still-born. It lay dormant. Bach commended the mechanism of the Silbermann pianos, but condemned them for their weakness of tone, and declared that more expression could be produced from the clavichord-in which the strings were struck by tangents-than on either the harpsichord or piano; and though after Silbermann had removed this defect Bach declared the instrument "faultless," it still made little headway. Yet it only needed a man sufficiently gifted, and young enough to master the new touch-totally different from that of the harpsichord-to make the piano bound into a position with which rivalry was impossible. Such an exponent the instrument found in John Christian Bach, eleventh son of the "great" Bach, and popularly known as the "English" Bach from his long residence in London. It is from his arrival in London in 1759 that the rivalry between the piano and the harpsichord may be said to have begun. That, while highly gifted, he was of a much gayer disposition than his forbears and brothers, probably, in a financial sense, helped him. The elegance and brilliance of his compositions and playing did much to popularize his favorite instrument. Perhaps his being musicmaster to the Queen and Royal Family did so too. The manufacture of pianos in England to any considerable degree may be dated from his advent. And for a length of time London was the centre of piano-making activity, though the makers were largely Italians. The first public notice of a pianoforte in England was on a Covent Garden playbill of May 16, 1767, which announced that "Miss Brickler will sing a favorite song from Judith,' accom panied by Mr. Dibdin, on a new instrument call'd Piano Forte." The first use of it as a solo instrument appears to have been a performance by John Christian Bach at the Thatched House on June 2, 1768. A few years later, in 1771, it was introduced at Drury Lane, Mr. Burney, a nephew of the celebrated Dr. Burney, being appointed to play it. Anyone loking at a pianoforte action might pardonably wonder why so elaborate a mechanism should be necessary to enable a hammer to strike a string. The reason is that inventors of string instruments with a hammer action are beset with two difficulties. The first is to devise a means whereby the hammer, after striking the string, shall rebound, and leave the string free even though the key remains depressed: otherwise there could be no sustained tone. The other is to ensure that the hammer, though leaving the string absolutely free, and not liable to unintentional rebounding, shall be capable of rapid repetitions of a note. The history of the evolution of the pianoforte is the history of the overcoming of these difficulties. Cristofori only partially overcame them. The perfecting did not take place till after the instrument had celebrated its jubilee, and was the work of others, chiefly of the Dutchman, Americus Backus, with the assistance, it is said, of the Scotsman, John Broadwood, and his apprentice, presumably English, Robert Stodart. "Perfecting" is no rhetorical figure. For just as no improvement has been made in the violin since the time of Antonio Stradivarius, in the early eighteenth century, SO no material change in pianoforte "escapement," as it is called, has been made since the invention of what, from the scene of the discovery being London, came to be known as the "English action." This action was preferred by so exacting a critic as Chopin to any other, and today, nearly a century and a half after its invention, in its essentials is still in use. Ten years after the perfecting of the escapement, namely, in 1782, John Broadwood invented the device popularly known as the "loud," but more correctly as the "sustaining" pedal, and also one form of "soft" pedal. Despite its constant misuse, the former invention has enormously enhanced the power of the instrument, and it would be difficult to exaggerate its value under the foot of a skilful player. In shape the piano has gone through the "wing" "pig-head," or "grand" form; the "square," "oblong," or "table" form; and finally returned to its original form, that of the present "grand." About the year 1800 the "upright," "cabinet," or "cottage" piano was invented, the first examples coming from the workshop of Isaac Hawkins. Upright pianos had been made before this, but they were simply "grand" or horizontal pianos turned upwards; the strings did not go below the level of the keyboard. But not even with a perfected escapement and the sustaining and soft pedals had pianoforte manufacture reached its climax. There was yet to come a device which should not only admit of a largely extended compass but also of the treble strings being made stronger than the bass ones originally were, and of an immensely increased volume of tone. This was the introduction of iron and steel in the construction of the frames. Like many other innovations of incalculable value, the experiment was at first a failure. Foreshadowed by Joseph Smith in 1799, and tried by James Shudi Broadwood in 1804, it was not till 1818 that metal was permanently substituted for wood in the framework of the piano. A modern grand pianoforte-taking a "Broadwood" concert grand as an example passes in the process of manufacture through some eighty pairs of hands; it contains 10,700 pieces of wood, metal and felt (Messrs. Broadwood spend £2,000 a year on glue alone!), and the tension on the strings is estimated at thirty-two tons! (When iron frames were first introduced it was ten tons; a quarter of a century ago it was sixteen tons.) And the difference between the sweet but tinkling instruments known to Haydn and Mozart and the veritable "chamber orchestra," as the concert piano of today has aptly been called, has mainly come about because iron has entered into the soul of the instrument. "Unmusical England" may not unreasonably be proud of her part in the evolution of the most popular of instruments. True, that, as already stated, during the earlier stages of pianoforte manufacture most of the workmen in British factories were foreigners, chiefly Italians, but they were soon replaced by English workmen. The British firms of Broadwood, Stodart, Wornum, and Collard sprang into being. London was the centre of the pianoforte manufacturing industry, and till the establishment of Erard's factory at Paris in 1777, or, rather, its re-establishment in 1796, France, if not Germany, drew her supplies therefrom. The triumph of the piano may be considered as achieved in 1796 when it superseded the harpsichord in that most conservative of institutions, the British "King's Band." Thus its life story divides naturally into three periods: fifty years during which it lay dormant; fifty years of rivalry with the harpsichord; and a hundred years during which its development has been a romance. In a little under a century-1797-1889-one firm alone, Messrs. Pleyel, Wolff and Co., turned out 100,000 instruments; and in a little over a century-1780-1894Messrs. Broadwood manufactured almost double the number: 195,000; and Messrs. Collard and Collard nearly as many. If the keys of Messrs. Broadwood's pianos alone were placed end The Dublin Review. to end they would extend more than 3,987 miles, or further than from London to Chicago! And the wire in them would go upwards of thirteen times around the world! Clement Antrobus Harris. KINGSHIP AND POETRY. Set occasions seldom move the fine frenzy of the poet. The sudden stir of personal feeling that sets in motion those rare forces which lie behind all supreme poetry is, somehow or another, absent from anticipated great events. This is inexplicable on any analysis, for a great poem is, in most cases, the result of prolonged meditation, and one might think that such an event as the Coronation of a King would move the heart more deeply than the crowning of a singer. Yet the bays have moved more singers than the Crown. Wordsworth indeed wrote a very fine sonnet on the death of King George III., but not one word on the Accession or Coronation of Queen Victoria. Among his Ecclesiastical Sonnets are sonnets addressed to King Alfred, to Richard I., Edward VI., Queen Elizabeth, Charles II., William III., all of them extraordinarily poor sonnets, though written when the author was still scarcely past his prime, as the forty-fifth sonnet of this series (on Westminster Abbey) shows. Wordsworth's last poem, the "Ode on the Installation of his Royal Highness Prince Albert as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, July, 1847," is hardly a subject for criticism, but it has some echoes of past greatness, and the quartet describing Queen Victoria's childhood has a touch of the ancient magic:— Time, in his mantle's sunniest fold, And, while the fearless Infant smiled, Her happier destiny foretold:Infancy, by Wisdom mild, Trained to health and artless beauty; Youth by pleasure unbeguiled From the love of lofty duty; Womanhood is pure renown, Seated on her lineal throne: Leaves of myrtle in her Crown, Fresh from lustre all their own. Love, the treasure worth possessing More than all the world beside, This shall be her choicest blessing, Oft to royal hearts denied. But there are glorious exceptions to the dulness of laureate poems. Tennyson was a Laureate indeed. Sixteen years after Wordsworth's last ode came the splendid "Welcome to Alexandra." There was a movement and a vigor in it that few Royal odes have possessed, and we re-read it to-day with a pathetic interest, and are still moved with its music and its thrill: Sea Kings' daughter from over the sea, Alexandra! Saxon and Norman and Dane are we, But all of us Danes in our welcome of thee, Alexandra! Welcome her, thunders of fort and of fleet! Welcome her, thundering cheer of the street! Welcome her, all things youthful and sweet, Scatter the blossoms under her feet! Then, again, the welcome to the Duchess of Edinburgh was not less fine: The golden news along the steppes is blown, And at thy name the Tartar tents are stirr'd; Elburz and all the Caucasus have heard: And all the sultry palms of India known, Alexandrovna. The voices of our universal sea On capes of Afric as on cliffs of Kent, The Maoris and that Isle of Continent, And loyal pines of Canada murmur thee, Marie Alexandrovna. The fact that England and Russia share between them the greater part of the earth has not elsewhere been so strikingly set forth. Again, the Dedication of the "Idylls of the King" is in itself a superb poem, and the same, of course, is true of the famous stanzas. "To the Queen": And statesmen at her Council met Few poets have ever so entirely recog nized the dignity of kingship, the necessity of freedom and the ultimate oneness of kingship and freedom. When we turn to earlier poets of great rank who have written Royal puems to order, so to speak, we naturally think of Shakespeare's concluding lines of King Henry VIII., spoken by Cranmer. Spenser probably thought that in the Faerie Queene he had outbidden all poetic comers in the art of Royal compliments addressed to the divine Elizabeth, in the person of Gloriana, or Belphoebe, or Britomart. In her own person he addresses the Queen in the prologue to the First Book. After invoking the Nine, Cupid and Mars, he calls for help to Elizabeth: And with them eke, O goddesse heavenly bright, Mirror of grace and majestie divine, Great Ladie of the greatest Isle, whose light Like Phoebus' lampe throughout the world doth shine, Shed thy faire beames into my feeble eyne, And rase my thoughtes, too humble and too vile, To thinke of that true glorious type of thine, The argument of mine afflicted stile: The which to heare vouchsafe, O dearest dread, awhile. This "afflicted stile" is great nonsense. but probably no one will say it is bad poetry. The whole range of the Elizabethan literary expansion is there, and one is almost afraid to laugh when Spenser treats Elizabeth as a supergoddess. But one can understand why Elizabeth liked Spenser and Burleigh detested him. But Shakespeare was not the man to be outdone even by the astounding performance of the sweetest, if the least lucid, of English poets. The Bard of Avon was a Bard indeed when he wrote his belated anticipation of the career of Gloriana. It is, indeed, great poetry: Saba was never More covetous of wisdom and fair vir tue Than this pure soul shall be: all princely graces, That mould up such a mighty piece as this is, With all the virtues that attend the good. Shall still be doubled on her: Truth shall nurse her, Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her: She shall be lov'd and fear'd; her own shall bless her; Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn. And hang their heads with sorrow: good grows with her: In her days every man shall eat in safety, |