Scan 101
Musical instruments in the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851, 1851
6 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1ORCHESTRAL INSTRUMENTS.
3The Exhibition contains many examples of the violin tribe, viz., violins, violas, violoncellos, and double basses, of both English and foreign manufacture; but, as these instruments appear to have arrived at their highest grade of perfection under the hands of the celebrated Cremonese artists of the seventeenth century, and as modern makers have aimed at little beyond copying the works they left behind them, the Exhibition has afforded us no opportunity for enlarging on this class of instruments. We notice, however, two novelties. The first is a monster double bass by M. Vuillaume, of Paris, about eleven or twelve feet high, the strings of which are stopped by machinery connected with a series of levers or handles, placed immediately above the shoulder of the instrument, and within reach of the left hand of the player. It has three strings, on the Italian plan; but the depth of its pitch, or what have been the results of its trial in the orchestra, we could not learn. The other violin novelty we only mention to give it unqualified condemnation; it is an American attempt to make the violin playable with a clavier,—an attempt which, if successful, could only have the effect of depriving this noble instrument of every one of its best and most characteristic qualities, and reducing it to a nondescript noise-making apparatus of the lowest grade.
5Orchestral wind instruments are well represented at the Exhibition; there are bassoons, clarionets, oboes, &c., by many makers; and flutes of various materials, such as wood, glass, and metal, with all sorts of improvements in the way of keys. The brass instruments are very numerous, and well exemplify the rapid improvements, and the many important novelties, which have appeared in this department of musical manufacture during the last few years. We may particularize one large case of military instruments by Messrs. Adolphe Sax and Co., of Paris. Among its contents are a new kind of instrument, called the Saxophone, speaking with a mouth-reed, like the clarionet and bassoon, but having a metal body, and a somewhat different form: it is made in
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