Scan 341
the american history and encyclopedia of music, 1910
8 lines. Read by computer on 10 September 2026. Printed page 295. See the scan on archive.org.
1The violin like the piano affords excellent opportunity for the display of technical gymnastics, but unless the soul of the player speaks through this intricacy of sound the tones produced are not music but rather an acrobatic performance, disappointing of course, because when you come to a concert you come to hear the music and not so much to see the manner of its creation. And like the human voice, capable of touching the heart of the listener only when the heart of the singer has lived and loved, the violin in the hands of a master becomes divine.
3THE ORGAN.
5The organ has been called the king of instruments, and it justly deserves this title. Large and majestic in form, complicated in construction, its very presence inspires awe. The peculiar pitch and quality of its tones thrill you through and through, and its voice predominates over that of all other instruments, and in its full strength it overtones even the largest full orchestra. Its tones are clear, and it produces a fulness of chords and purity of harmony such as no other instrument is capable of. The full organ is overpowering in its grandeur, and gives a totally different effect from the full orchestra, which is richer in tone-color but which lacks the vastness of tone expressed by the organ.
7The organ is a glorious instrument when it responds to music that is composed for it, but it is a big mistake to expect from it the human quality of tone that can be expressed on a violin, piano or flute. The stop called the orchestral flute is a perfect imitation of the tone of a flute, but this stop is utterly incapable of giving the effect of a flute solo when played by human lips and directed by the intelligent touch of the fingers; the same is true of all the other orchestral stops. The beautiful oboe solo in Bach's Christmas Oratorio, intended to be played on the instrument itself, becomes cold and powerless when produced on the organ. Neither can the peculiar quality of the tone of
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