[Sidenote:  Quilled instruments.]

[Sidenote:  Tone of the harpsichord and spinet.]

[Sidenote:  Bach’s “Music of the future."]

The spinet, virginal, and harpsichord were quilled instruments, the tone of which was produced by snapping the strings by means of plectra made of quill, or some other flexible substance, set in the upper end of a bit of wood called the jack, which rested on the farther end of the key and moved through a slot in the sounding-board.  When the key was pressed down, the jack moved upward past the string which was caught and twanged by the plectrum.  The blow of the clavichord tangent could be graduated like that of the pianoforte hammer, but the quills of the other instruments always plucked the strings with the same force, so that mechanical devices, such as a swell-box, similar in principle to that of the organ, coupling in octaves, doubling the strings, etc., had to be resorted to for variety of dynamic effects.  The character of tone thus produced determined the character of the music composed for these instruments to a great extent.  The brevity of the sound made sustained melodies ineffective, and encouraged the use of a great variety of embellishments and the spreading out of harmonies in the form of arpeggios.  It is obvious enough that Bach, being one of those monumental geniuses that cast their prescient vision far into the future, refused to be bound by such mechanical limitations.  Though he wrote Clavier, he thought organ, which was his true interpretative medium, and so it happens that the greatest sonority and the broadest style that have been developed in the pianoforte do not exhaust the contents of such a composition as the “Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue.”

[Sidenote:  Scarlatti’s sonatas.]

The earliest music written for these instruments—­music which does not enter into this study—­was but one remove from vocal music.  It came through compositions written for the organ.  Of Scarlatti’s music the pieces most familiar are a Capriccio and Pastorale which Tausig rewrote for the pianoforte.  They were called sonatas by their composer, but are not sonatas in the modern sense.  Sonata means “sound-piece,” and when the term came into music it signified only that the composition to which it was applied was written for instruments instead of voices.  Scarlatti did a great deal to develop the technique of the harpsichord and the style of composing for it.  His sonatas consist each of a single movement only, but in their structure they foreshadow the modern sonata form in having two contrasted themes, which are presented in a fixed key-relationship.  They are frequently full of grace and animation, but are as purely objective, formal, and soulless in their content as the other instrumental compositions of the epoch to which they belong.

[Sidenote:  The suite.]

[Sidenote:  Its history and form.]