The explorers of new musical intervals are hampered by having to deal with classical keyboards and other practical limitations. Perhaps they would do well to investigate Miss Schlesinger's pianoforte-tuning, already mentioned in connection with Greek music ; for, whether it be Greek or not, it is scientific and therefore more natural than most of the experiments that composers have yet tried in the way of quarter-tones. But new instruments can not be so readily produced as in the i8th century. Harpsichords and early pianofortes were made; but pianofortes are now manu factured. Emmanuel Moor's duplex-coupler pianoforte enor mously extends the resources of the instrument without com pelling the player to unlearn the classical technique. But its progress is impeded by the commercial difficulty of promoting an improvement that cannot be added as an extra apparatus to existing and standardized pianofortes, and its reputation it dam aged by the tendency to expound it as a device that makes existing feats of technique nugatory, a policy that infuriates the pianoforte virtuoso and ignores the great new possibilities of the invention.
Resonators have been invented for many instruments. The claim that by such devices one violin can sound like sixteen ignores the real effect of the choral multiplication of instruments, which consists far more essentially of a change in quality of tone than of a mere increase of volume. No resonators, phono graph discs or loud speakers for wireless transmitters will ever replace the quality of sounds that combine in the ear from the various directions of their dispersed orchestral sources. The listener need only put his hands around his ears while listening to an orchestra in a concert-room, and he will realize that a "gramophone effect" is little more than the result of cutting off the waves that reach the ear from other than the frontal direction.
The main importance of "wireless" lies in the fact that it appeals viva voce to millions without producing the phenomena of crowd psychology. Here and there it leads to a revived interest in intimate early pianoforte music that would never satisfy modern ears in the concert-room, and a new fact in musical aesthetics is the beauty of microphonically-magnified tones of very faint instruments such as the clavichord. Wireless is un doubtedly increasing the number of fireside music-lovers; but it needs careful administration to prevent it from a tendency to cut off orchestral music at the source; for many of the new music lovers prefer tinned music at the fireside to live music in the con cert-room. It is urgently necessary that the wealthy supporters of music should be made to see the folly of the notion that good, music should be expected to pay its way commercially.
Wireless music may prove less subversive than another revo. lution by means of the microscopic study of phonographic records There is nothing to prevent the eventual production of music directly in terms of the track of the phonograph-needle. That is to say, the composer, untrammelled by the technique of instru ments, will prescribe all producible timbres in whatever pitches and rhythms he pleases, and will have no more direct co-operation with the craftsman who models the phonographic wave-lines than the violinist may with Stradivarius. The crudest beginnings of
this new method of composition will be enormously important; but its highest development will still leave the handling of human voices and instruments supreme as the infinite source of inspired music. (D. F. T.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-See Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1878-89; 3rd ed., H. C. Colles, 5 vols., 1927) with very full bibli ography under heading Histories of Music; also R. Eitner, Quellen lexikon (1900-04) ; A. Proshiz, Compendium der Musikgeschichte (3 vols., 5889, 19o0-15) ; H. Riemann, Musiklexikon (5th. ed. 190o) ; M. Mersenne, Traite de l'harmonie universelle (1625) ; P. A. Kircher. Musurgia Universalis (165o) ; The Oxford History of Music (ed. W. H. Hadow, 6 vols. 1901-05) ; C. E. H. de Coussemaker, Histoire de l'har monie au moyen age (1852), and other works ; Carl Engel, Music of the most ancient nations (1864-70) ; F. J. Fetis, Histoire generale de la musique (1869-76) ; F. A. Gevaert, Histoire et theorie de la musique de l'antiquite (1875-81) ; R. Batka, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (Stuttgart, 1909, etc.) ; R. Wallaschek, Primitive Music (1893) ; H. P. Landorny, Histoire de la Musique (1910-II, trans. F. H. Marten, History of Music, 1923) ; K. Nef, Einfuhrung in die Musikgeschichte (192o) ; L. Laloy, Les origines de la musique (1913) ; F. Torrefranca Le origini della musica (1907) ; G. Adler, Handbuch der Musikge schichte (1924) • Aesthetics, Theory, etc.:—H. Ehrlich, Die Musik-Aesthetik in ihrer Entwickelung von Kant bis auf die Gegenwart (1882) ; E. Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music (1891) ; R. Wallaschek, Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1886) ; R. Pohl, Die Hohenziige der musikalischen Entwickelung (1888) ; A. Schnez, Die Geheimnisse der Tonkunst (1891) ; J. A. Zahm, Sound and Music (1892) ; C. Bellaique, Psychologie musicale (1893) W. Pole, Philosophy of Music (1895) ; L. Lacombe, Philosophie et musique (1896) ; Sir C. H. H. Parry, The Evolution of the Art of Music (London, 1897) ; H. Riemann, Praludien and Studien (1896) ; Geschichte der Musiktheorie im IX .-XIX. Jahrhundert (1898) ; B Widmann, Die strengen Formen der Musik (1882) ; S. Jadassohn, Die Formen in den Werken der Tonkunst (1885) ; M. Steinitzer, Psycho logische Wirkungen der musikalischen-Formen (1885) ; J. Combarieu, Theorie du rhythme dans la composition moderne d'apres la doctrine antique (1897) ; P. Goetschius, Homophonic Forms of Musical Compo sition (1898) ; E. Gurney, The Power of Sound; F. Busoni, Entwurf The musical history of America does not begin, properly speak ing, until the i9th century. To be sure, songs were sung and instru ments played upon during the 17th and i8th centuries ; but such performances were the casual pastime of the Southern and Middle Atlantic gentry, rather than the expression of a national art. New England, rigidly Puritan, sang psalm tunes, and but few of those. In 1737 Francis Hopkinson, of Philadelphia, published his first song, "My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free"—the first American secular composition.