The celesta is a small, square instrument that looks something like a parlor organ. It has a keyboard like the piano, with black and white keys running to four or five octaves. Moreover, it has dampers and a soft pedal like the piano; and the hammers are set in motion by a simplified piano action. The music is written like piano music for two hands in the Treble and Bass Clefs; but sounds an octave higher than it is written. The celesta is a new instrument. Tschaikowsky and Richard Strauss gave it popularity. The celesta’s silvery and resonant voice owes its charm to the fact that under each note, a little bar of steel, a resonator of wood is fastened. The celesta _never gets out of tune_. It is sweet, clear, fairy-like, fanciful, light and graceful. It is something like the little glass harmonica, which children play with. THE XYLOPHONE The xylophone (coming from two Greek words, wood and sound) is made on the principle of the toy harmonica. It is an old instrument still used by primitive and half-civilized tribes. A series of slabs of wood, graduated in size, are fastened to two “guides,” or supports, also of wood. The xylophone is played by two wooden “beaters,” which the performer holds in each hand. The way of playing it is much like the Hungarian cimbalon. It has a dry, hollow sound; and is only suited to grotesque music such as Saint-Saëns’s _Danse Macabre_, or Dance of Death, in which it represents the clattering of the bones of the dancing skeletons. THE WIND-MACHINE The wind-machine is very seldom used. Strauss calls for it in the Windmill adventure in the _Don Quixote Variations_. It is a curious _contrivance_ rather than a musical instrument. It is a sort of barrel with some of the staves missing and the empty spaces covered with black silk. The barrel is laid on its side in a “bearing,” supported by an open “cradle.” It is then turned round with a handle, so that the silk comes in contact with a “face” of wood, or cardboard, and makes a rushing noise like the sound of wind, blowing violently. THE RATTLE Occasionally the rattle is used,—the old Watchman’s Rattle, a wooden cogwheel, which is revolved against a hard, but flexible, spring of wood, or metal. Strauss employs it in _Till Eulenspiegel_. THE ANVILS A blacksmith’s anvil is never brought into the Orchestra when “anvils” are required. The effect is produced by means of steel bars. The player beats them with a hard metal “beater.” The famous Anvil Chorus in _Il Trovatore_ is played on such a substitute. Wagner calls for no less than eighteen “anvils” in _Das Rheingold_ to give an idea of the prodigious industry of the Nibelungs. They are of three sizes—small, medium and large—and the music for them is written in nine parts to get the effect that Wagner wanted. THE CUCKOO