osers think they are remaining "behind the
times" if they do not immediately introduce these new high treble tones
into their next work, and when the wind instruments have been enriched
by several new valves and regulators the scores immediately grow in
proportion to these keys and pistons. But does art feel no shame at
having thus fallen under the dominion of trade!

The ear of the eighteenth century preferred human voices whose _timbre_
approached closest to the violin, the oboe or the 'cello, and considered
that such were peculiarly fitted for lyric and dramatic expression. The
eunuch sings as if he had an oboe in his throat; it is much too harsh
and lacking in brilliancy for our ear, which values incomparably higher
the more brilliant, clearer _timbre_, corresponding to the tone of the
flute, clarinet, or horn. The favorite _timbre_ of the eighteenth
century compares with that of the nineteenth as dull oxidized gold does
with that brightly polished. The period of the Romanticists marks here
too the turning-point of taste; Beethoven completed the emancipation of
the above-mentioned wind instruments in the symphony. The modern
treatment of the piano with the introduction of the perfect chord
accelerated its victory at the same time. It worked favorably for the
external brilliancy of tone of this instrument, while gradually closing
the ears of the dilettante and the musician to the charms of a simple
but characteristic management of the voice in accordance with the rules
of counterpoint. Thus the layman nowadays has seldom an ear for the
subtleties of the string quartet, whereas, on the other hand, our
great-grandfathers would indubitably have run away from the sound of our
brass bands and military music. The earlier symphonies, since they were
essentially intended to bring out the effects of the stringed
instruments, now seem like darkened pictures. Yet the symphonies have
certainly remained unchanged; only our ear has grown dull so far as
comprehension of the tone-color of the string quartet is concerned. The
same full orchestra, which in those works sounded so overpoweringly
imposing seventy years ago, now sounds to us simply powerful. In such
symphonies, in order to sharpen our ears, which have become dulled in
this respect, we have arrived at the strange necessity of doubling the
parts of the stringed instruments in a simple wind instrument
_ensemble_, so as to attain the same effect which old masters attained
wit