spiritual appeal it makes," says Dr. Hiram Corson. It is the same with a
true musical composition. We must take something to it, in order to
receive something from it. Beyond knowledge comes the intuitive feeling
which is enriched by knowledge. Through it we may feel the breath of
life, the spiritual appeal, which belongs to every great work of art and
which must forever remain inexplicable.




VI

The Piano and Piano Players


When Pythagoras, Father of Musical Science, some six centuries before
our era, marked and sounded musical intervals by mathematical division
on a string stretched across a board, he was unconsciously laying the
foundation for our modern pianoforte. How soon keys were added to the
monochord, as this measuring instrument was named, cannot positively be
ascertained. We may safely assume it was not slow in adopting the rude
keyboard ascribed by tradition to Pan pipes, and applied to the portable
organ of early Christian communities.

After the tenth century the development of the monochord seems to have
begun in earnest. Two or more strings of equal length are now divided
and set in motion by flat metal wedges, attached to the key levers, and
called tangents, because they touched the strings. In response to the
demand for increased range, as many as twenty keys were brought to act
on a few strings, commanding often three octaves. Guido d'Arezzo, the