[Sidenote:  The trombone.]

Mendelssohn is quoted as saying that the trombones (Plate X.) “are too sacred to use often.”  They have, indeed, a majesty and nobility all their own, and the lowest use to which they can be put is to furnish a flaring and noisy harmony in an orchestral tutti.  They are marvellously expressive instruments, and without a peer in the whole instrumental company when a solemn and spiritually uplifting effect is to be attained.  They can also be made to sound menacing and lugubrious, devout and mocking, pompously heroic, majestic, and lofty.  They are often the heralds of the orchestra, and make sonorous proclamations.

[Sidenote:  Trombone effects.]

[Sidenote:  The tuba.]

The classic composers always seemed to approach the trombones with marked respect, but nowadays it requires a very big blue pencil in the hands of a very uncompromising conservatory professor to prevent a student engaged on his Opus 1 from keeping his trombones going half the time at least.  It is an old story how Mozart keeps the instruments silent through three-fourths of his immortal “Don Giovanni,” so that they may enter with overwhelming impressiveness along with the ghostly visitor of the concluding scene.  As a rule, there are three trombones in the modern orchestra—­two tenors and a bass.  Formerly there were four kinds, bearing the names of the voices to which they were supposed to be nearest in tone-quality and compass—­soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.  Full four-part harmony is now performed by the three trombones and the tuba (Plate XI.).  The latter instrument, which, despite its gigantic size, is exceedingly tractable can “roar you as gently as any sucking dove.”  Far-away and strangely mysterious tones are got out of the brass instruments, chiefly the cornet and horn, by almost wholly closing the bell.

[Sidenote:  Instruments of percussion.]

[Sidenote:  The xylophone.]

[Sidenote:  Kettle-drums.]

[Sidenote:  Pfund’s tuning device.]

[Sidenote:  Pitch of the drums.]

[Sidenote:  Qualifications of a drummer.]

The percussion apparatus of the modern orchestra includes a multitude of instruments scarcely deserving of description.  Several varieties of drums, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, steel bars (Glockenspiel), gongs, bells, and many other things which we are now inclined to look upon as toys, rather than as musical instruments, are brought into play for reasons more or less fantastic.  Saint-Saens has even utilized the barbarous xylophone, whose proper place is the variety hall, in his “Danse Macabre.”  There his purpose was a fantastic one, and the effect is capital.  The pictorial conceit at the bottom of the poem which the music illustrates is Death, as a skeleton, seated on a tombstone, playing the viol, and gleefully cracking his bony heels