Scan 71
The American history and encyclopedia of music, 1908
4 lines. Read by computer on 9 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1A year has not passed since a popular musical monthly, in answers to historical questions, stated that Handel favored the clavichord or spinet. It is true that he enjoyed the clavichord, but the names are by no means synonymous, and refer to entirely different instruments. In that oft-repeated story of the small keyboard instrument, surreptitiously carried to the garret and practised upon by the youthful Handel, the entire number of stringed instruments have been made to figure, although in reality a small clavichord was used. The case of mistaken identity has been assisted by the picture which looks down from the wall of many music rooms, and in which the future master of the oratorios is shown surrounded by nightcapped elders who have been awakened by his music, and have surprised him in his enjoyment of forbidden pleasures. He is seated at an instrument, in size resembling a small piano, which causes the beholder to reflect wonderingly on the means of its secret conveyance to the garret.
3The Egyptians are regarded as the most ancient of the civilized nations who have left to the world any knowledge of their music and its instruments. For many years after the discovery of traces of this ancient civilization, the Egyptians were considered a non-musical people. This supposition prevailed until a recent date, but has been disproved by the revelations of the last century. The Assyrians, of whom even less is known than of the Egyptians, show in their bas-reliefs that they also had instruments of considerable development. Students of ancient India assert that music, and in fact all of the arts, long ago existed there, and had assumed a highly developed state. Knowledge of music, as knowledge of all else, is claimed by China from time unknown. Greece acknowledged the more ancient musical skill of Egypt and borrowed ideas and instruments from the older land. The Greeks in turn instructed the Romans. From Egypt, Assyria, India and China, the knowledge naturally spread throughout Asia, and was brought by the Saracens to Turkey, and by the Moors to
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