The World's Earliest Music: Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and SumerSmith, Hermann
History
The World's Earliest Music: Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and Sumer
Smith, Hermann
Music -- To 500 -- History and criticism
My experiments were made with arghool reeds and metal pipes, copies of
the originals as nearly as possible the same in bore. I obtained for
the ground tone of the pipes, B in the eight foot octave; and, in this
order, the tones following:—
1st pipe B———D—E—F♯—G♯.
2nd ” B—C—D—E.
The pipes being cylindrical in bore with a true transport of air
through them, are subject to the law displayed by the clarionet,
sounding an octave lower than like length open organ pipes or lip-blown
flutes.
Then for harmonics I obtained the double octaves, with sometimes a
slurred intervening single octave, passingly heard in the rise to the
double octave. This is curious, though not unexpected when one has been
accustomed to the seeming vagaries of reeds. Practically, nature does
not always proceed according to academic rules. When reeds are combined
with pipes, the resulting pitch is due to a compound of two forces
pulling in opposite directions; the reed drawing to high pitch, and
the pipe to low pitch, each acting upon the other. Some reeds will not
yield to the coercive effect of the pipe more than to about the extent
of a fourth, with preservation of real truth of intonation; and at
such limit the reed flies back to the starting pitch and recommences,
or plays false. A free reed will not bear to be drawn down by the pipe
associated with it to more than an octave; and if attempt is made to
cause it to respond lower in the scale (by a greater lengthening of
pipe), then it makes a jump back to its original pitch. After that
there are other curious relations, such as not responding beyond a
fourth, and so on; particulars of which need not here be gone into.
Therefore, discrepancies in experiment need not cause surprise.
Simultaneously Mr. T. L. Southgate and Mr. J. D. Blaikley, attracted
to the same pursuit, entered upon a course of experiment, the results
of which were set forth at a meeting of the Musical Association. Mr.
Blaikley is well known in connection with wind instruments, and his
judgment upon musical pitch may be absolutely relied upon; and Mr. T.
L. Southgate is also well known as a keen investigator in all musical
matters; and as an aid to his own knowledge and skill he was fortunate
in obtaining as an associate in these experimental researches, the
practical experience of Mr. Finn, who, accustomed to flutes and
hautboy reed instruments, could bring into use the little artifices in
producing sounds from the reeds which the amateur in wind instruments
lacks knowledge of.
The summary of the results arrived at, shows for the
1st pipe E♭———G—A♭—B♭—C♭
2nd ” E♭—F—G—A♭
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