THE PIANOFORTE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON MODERN MUSIC

Abstract

T is generally agreed that the English are an unmusical race, but they have at any rate enjoyed considerable reputation as inventors of labour-saving appliances. It is therefore not surprising that tradition which seems to be fairly generally accepted by musical historians ascribes to England the invention of the earliest musical instrument in which row of strings was caused to sound by mechanism actuated from keyboard. The exact date of this invention cannot be fixed, nor is it certain whether the strings were plucked, as in the harpsichord, or struck with tangents as in the clavichord; but it is generally ascribed to the beginning of the thirteenth century, if not earlier. It was probably in England also that special system of tablaturenotation for the organ was invented, of which specimen has come down to us belonging to the first half of the fourteenth century, hundred years before the first known specimens of organ music on the continent. A third point of interest is that among the instruments belonging to Henry VIII was a virginall that goethe with whele without playing uppon-presumably the earliest known ancestor of the pianola. These three landmarks in the early history of the pianoforte are characteristic, because they show at once the essentially mechanical nature of the instrument. Our ordinary staff notation is in its origin vocal, being derived by uninterrupted steps from the Greek accents. Sol-fa systems, whether we take Guido's or Miss Glover's, are merely mnemonic devices to assist the singer in