Instruments like the horn, which had been used only
as signal-instruments for hunting and fighting, were remodelled
until they could reproduce sounds which were agreeable in the
dance-hall and in the banqueting room. A bow strung with
horse-hair was used to play the old-fashioned guitar and before
the end of the Middle Ages this six-stringed instrument
(the most ancient of all string-instruments which dates back
to Egypt and Assyria) had grown into our modern four-
stringed fiddle which Stradivarius and the other Italian violin-
makers of the eighteenth century brought to the height of perfection.
And finally the modern piano was invented, the most wide-
spread of all musical instruments, which has followed man into
the wilderness of the jungle and the ice-fields of Greenland.
The organ had been the first of all keyed instruments but the
performer always depended upon the co-operation of some one
who worked the bellows, a job which nowadays is done by electricity.
The musicians therefore looked for a handier and less
circumstantial instrument to assist them in training the pupils
of the many church choirs. During the great eleventh century,
Guido, a Benedictine monk of the town of Arezzo (the
birthplace of the poet Petrarch) gave us our modern system
of musical annotation. Some time during that century, when
there was a great deal of popular interest in music, the first
instrument with both keys and strings was built.
Pages:
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493