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HOW THE PIANO CAME TO BE


[Illustration: UPRIGHT HARPSICHORD

(_From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City_)]





      HOW THE PIANO
       CAME TO BE

           BY

   ELLYE HOWELL GLOVER


       ILLUSTRATED


         CHICAGO
 BROWNE & HOWELL COMPANY
          1913




  COPYRIGHT, 1913
  BY BROWNE & HOWELL COMPANY

  PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, 1913


  THE.PLIMPTON.PRESS
  NORWOOD.MASS.U.S.A




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


 Upright Harpsichord                          _Frontispiece_

 Clavicytherium or Upright Spinet           _Facing page_ 12

 Clavichord                                               12

 Spinet                                                   16

 Queen Elizabeth's Virginal                               16

 Double Spinet or Virginal made by Ludovicus
 Grovvelus                                                20

 Clavichord made by John Christopher Jesse                24

 Dulcimer                                                 28

 Christofori Piano                                        32

 Piano made by Matthaeus Andreas Stein                     40

 Piano made by Benjamin Crehore                           48

 Piano made by Charles Albrecht                           50

 Piano, Primitive German Action                           52

 A Stodart Piano                                          56




HOW THE PIANO CAME TO BE




How the Piano Came To Be


From the dried sinews stretched across the shell of a dead tortoise to
the concert-grand piano of the present day is a far flight. Yet to this
primitive source, it is said, may be traced the evolution of the
stringed instrument which reached its culmination in the piano. The
latter has been aptly called "the household orchestra," and in tracing
its origin one must go far back into the annals of the past. If we
accept the Bible as history, and it is the greatest of all histories,
the stringed instrument is of very ancient date. It is recorded that the
ambassadors who came to the court of Saul played upon their _nebels_,
and that David, the sweet singer of Israel, wooed the king from his
sadness by singing to his harp. We must go back to the civilization of
ancient Egypt, more than five hundred years before that morning nearly
two thousand years ago when, it is written, the angelic choir chanted
above the historic manger the glorious message, "Peace on earth, good
will to men," and the morning stars sang together.

In the olden times the Greeks laid claim to everything which bespoke
culture and progress. The pages of ancient history record no other one
thing so persistently as "the glory that was Greece." And so they tell
of the time when--

    "Music, heavenly maid, was young,
    And yet in ancient Greece she sung!"

It is now generally conceded, however, that it was not in Greece but in
ancient Egypt that art, music, and the sciences in general were born.
That the Egyptians had stringed instruments is unquestionable. Away back
in the year 525 B.C. Cambyses subdued the land. He overthrew the temples
in the ruins of which have been found the records of musical instruments
dating from the very earliest times. But the priests who guarded the
temples were slain, and every vestige of what might have helped to
determine the origin of the stringed instrument, out of which, later,
the piano was evolved, as well as the names of those who wrought and
endeavored to construct instruments which would give forth music, was
forever lost.

[Illustration: Clavicytherium or Upright Spinet]

[Illustration: Clavichord]

For lack of written authority, then, one must turn back to tradition for
light upon the origin of the piano. Tradition says that Ham, or one of
his sons, led the first colony into Egypt. In fact there is a legend
that Noah himself once dwelt there and some historians have identified
him with the great deity of the Egyptians, Osiris. To Hermes, or
Mercury, the secretary of Osiris, is ascribed the invention of the first
stringed instrument. The story is that Hermes was walking one day along
the banks of the Nile. It was just after one of the great inundations.
The Nile had overflowed its banks and the land had been submerged.
But now the water had subsided, and as Hermes walked along the shore,
his foot struck accidentally against the shell of a dead tortoise.
Across the inside of the shell the dried sinews were tightly stretched.
Hermes picked it up and touched the sinews with his fingers. He was
amazed to hear the sweet tones which the picking of the strings
produced. He set to work to make a musical instrument, using the shell
of a tortoise for the body and placing strings across it. In
substantiation of this legend we find in examining the lyre of the
ancient Greeks that almost every one was ornamented with a tortoise. We
find also in the records of the Hindus, the Chinese, the Persians, and
the Hebrews that these people had stringed musical instruments at a
very early date and that the most common among them was the lyre in its
various modifications.

The famous sepulcher of Rameses III is elaborately ornamented with
harps. Specimens of this instrument have been found also in excavations
made in comparatively recent years. In 1823 Sir J. G. Wilkinson
discovered in an old Egyptian tomb a harp which, despite the