Scan 22
The American history and encyclopedia of music, 1910
6 lines. Read by computer on 8 September 2026. Printed page 4. See the scan on archive.org.
1not, nevertheless, so fully realize the ideals of beauty and of effectiveness in the thought of those that used them that they ceased to make effort for their further development. Almost without exception they were found imperfect tonally and mechanically. A richer, fuller tone was demanded, together with wider possibilities of execution. Besides this, the imagination dreamed of other lovely tone qualities not yet heard, and of instruments with new and far greater capacities not as yet made actual, and thus the older inevitably gave way to the newer. Composers too could not be satisfied with the expression of their advancing thought and feeling upon the instruments which were fitted only for the presentation of the ideas of an earlier day. The musical composer and the musical instrument maker are both alike responsible for the unbroken movement onward in the development of musical instruments. Perhaps the composer's need for a more adequate, or at least a different expression, has been the stronger influence, but in any case this influence has been and remains mutual.
3As an immediate consequence of the sharpening of the intellectual and spiritual sense of men by inheritance from earlier generations, and by education and training, came the feeling after finer differences in the character, scope and effect of musical instruments. The broad distinctions furnished by instruments of wholly opposed types no longer satisfied the poetic need. Not stringed instruments simply, nor wind instruments, nor instruments of percussion were sufficient, but many kinds of each of these were called for, each possessed of its own especial quality of tone, range of pitch, and degree of power. It being required of musical art to give voice to a human life constantly finer in its discriminations, it could do nothing else than require musical instruments of greater, finer, and more complete capacities.
5It is manifest that musical instruments have remained fixed in certain defined types for very long periods of time. The violin as we have it today has been in its present perfect form, as we feel it to be, for many generations. Our
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