Scan 23
The American History and Encyclopedia of Music, 1910
4 lines. Read by computer on 15 September 2026. Printed page 5. See the scan on archive.org.
1contemporary grand pianoforte has been a fixed type for a long period. This is not less true of other instruments as well. The organ is distinguished among musical instruments for its exceedingly long and unbroken history. It has not, however, been equally successful with some others in reaching a fixed and satisfactory type. From the beginning it has been the subject of unending experiment, and it cannot at all be said that the organ is in any such sense as the violin a perfected instrument. Older organs were usually of majestic, broad and rich tone, but were difficult to handle, and frequently without much variety of tone color. The best organs of today are easy to manage, of much variety of tone quality, sensitive and expressive, but not infrequently of a certain trifling effect when real grandeur and nobleness of tone is demanded. The ideal organ will not fail in either of the characteristics described.
3As is to be expected, the effort of the most progressive organ builders is towards greater variety and richness of tone, and constantly finer discriminations in the various shades of tone color, which would not be noticed nor appreciated but for the cultivated and highly trained ear of the modern hearer. Immense inventive skill is also being directed to the perfecting of delicate and responsive mechanisms whereby the utmost range of effective use of the tonal forces of the instrument shall be instantly obtained. The result is that a really perfect modern organ is a very grand musical instrument in the best sense of the word. To predict the exact line of future development of the organ, or, indeed, of other instruments, is a very difficult if not impossible task. Change and movement there will be beyond doubt, and as it has been in the past, toward greater perfection as the minds of men shall apprehend it. The temper of the time will affect the course of this forward movement, since all that men do is thus affected, almost without their being conscious of it. The demands of the composer of today upon the instruments which are to voice his musical thought are greater than ever before, and in contemporary music may
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