ment is _percussion_, producing, at the moment
of striking the note, a loud sound which almost immediately dies away
and leaves but a faint vibration.

The phonographic record of a pianoforte solo shows this very clearly
to the eye, because the impression made by a long note is a
deeply-marked indentation succeeded by the merest shallow
scratch--not unlike the impression made by a tadpole on mud--with a
big head and an attenuated body. Every note marked long in pianoforte
music is therefore essentially a _sforzando_ followed by a rapid
_diminuendo_. Anything in such music marked as a long note to be
sustained _crescendo_--the most thrilling effect of orchestral,
choral, and organ music--is necessarily a sham and a delusion.

The genius and skill which have enabled the masters of pianoforte
composition not only to cover up this defect in their instrument, but
even to make amends for it, by working out effects only suitable for a
percussion note, present one of the most remarkable features of
musical progress in the nineteenth century. So notable is that fact in
its relation to the pianoforte accompaniments of vocal music, that it
seems open to question whether, even in the presence of a thoroughly
satisfactory _sostenuto_ piano, much use would for many years be made
of it for this particular purpose. The effects of repeated notes
succeeding one another with increasing or decreasing force, and of
_arpeggio_ passages, have been so fully explored and made available in
standard music of every grade, that necessarily the public taste has
set itself to appreciate the pianoforte solo and the accompanied song
exactly as they are written and performed. These are, after all, the
highest forms of music which civilisation has yet enabled one or two
performers to produce.

Yet, in regard to solo instrumentalisation, there is no doubt that a
general hope exists for the discovery of a compromise between the
piano and the organ or between the piano and the string band. Some
inventors have aimed in the latter direction and others in the former;
but no one has succeeded in really recommending his ideas to the
public. Combined piano-violins and piano-organs have been shown at
each of the great Exhibitions from the middle of the nineteenth
century to its close. Several of these instruments have been devised
and constructed with great ingenuity; and yet practically all of them
have been received by the musical profession either with indif