It is to be noted, further, that by a beautiful application of the doctrine of compensations, the factor which limits the capacity of the pianoforte as a melody instrument endows it with a merit which no other instrument has in the same degree, except the instruments of percussion, which, despite their usefulness, stand on the border line between savage and civilized music.  It is from its relationship to the drum that the pianoforte derives a peculiarity quite unique in the melodic and harmonic family.  Rhythm is, after all, the starting-point of music.  More than melody, more than harmony, it stirs the blood of the savage, and since the most vital forces within man are those which date back to his primitive state, so the sense of rhythm is the most universal of the musical senses among even the most cultured of peoples to-day.  By themselves the drums, triangles, and cymbals of an orchestra represent music but one remove from noise; but everybody knows how marvellously they can be utilized to glorify a climax.  Now, in a very refined degree, every melody on the pianoforte, be it played as delicately as it may, is a melody with drum-beats.  Manufacturers have done much toward eliminating the thump of the hammers against the strings, and familiarity with the tone of the instrument has closed our ears against it to a great extent as something intrusive, but the blow which excites the string to vibration, and thus generates sound, is yet a vital factor in determining the character of pianoforte music.  The recurrent pulsations, now energetic, incisive, resolute, now gentle and caressing, infuse life into the melody, and by emphasizing its rhythmical structure (without unduly exaggerating it), present the form of the melody in much sharper outline than is possible on any other instrument, and much more than one would expect in view of the evanescent character of the pianoforte’s tone.  It is this quality, combined with the mechanism which places all the gradations of tone, from loudest to softest, at the easy and instantaneous command of the player, which, I fancy, makes the pianoforte, in an astonishing degree, a substitute for all the other instruments.  Each instrument in the orchestra has an idiom, which sounds incomprehensible when uttered by some other of its fellows, but they can all be translated, with more or less success, into the language of the pianoforte—­not the quality of the tone, though even that can be suggested, but the character of the phrase.  The pianoforte can sentimentalize like the flute, make a martial proclamation like the trumpet, intone a prayer like the churchly trombone.

[Sidenote:  The instrument’s mechanism.]

[Sidenote:  Tone formation and production.]