Scan 20
Musical instruments, historic, rare and unique;, 1921
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1violin are in themselves so beautiful that it seems scarcely possible to enhance their effect by adding any kind of decoration, but in Plate XXV. it will be seen that Antonio Stradivari, with whom the instrument reached perfection, has successfully inlaid one of his masterpieces with an appropriate design. Another violin by the same illustrious master, in this instance without adornment, is drawn in Plate XXVI. The particular characteristics of another famous Cremona maker, Giuseppe Guarneri, who signed himself "Del Gesù," and is accounted Stradivari's only rival, are also illustrated in this plate. With forty-eight plates, however, to which this work is limited, no complete scheme can be offered of the rich varieties of musical instruments that exist, but the pictorially interesting Viola d'Amore (Plate XXVII.) and the Viola da Gamba (Plate XIX.) have not been overlooked.
3Wind instruments, although they may be of earlier invention in their rudimentary forms than those with strings, as in the old-world fable of Apollo and Marsyas, are always placed second. But they have an equal interest intrinsically and historically, and like drums and gongs, have an especial connection with the sacred rites of various nations. The Jewish Shophar, a simple ram's horn, a woodcut of which, drawn from an interesting example preserved at the great Synagogue, Aldgate, London, figures at the end of this Introduction, is the oldest wind instrument in present use in the world. It is first named in the Bible as sounding when the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, and there seems to be little doubt that it has been continuously used in the Mosaic Service from the time it was established until now. It is sounded in the synagogues at the New Year and on the Fast of the Day of Atonement. The Talmud gives ten reasons for sounding the Shophar at the New Year, which may be summed up as reminding those who hear it of the Creation, Penitence, and the Law, of the Prophets, who were as watchmen blowing trumpets, of the Temple and the Binding of Isaac, of Humility, the gathering together of Israel, the Resurrection, and the day of Judgment, when the trumpet shall sound for all. The embouchure of the Shophar is very difficult, and but three proper tones are usually obtained from it, although in some instances
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