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Updated: June 29, 2025
As regards its interior, it was dusty; it was blocked up with high-backed ugly pews; the gallery in which the children sat at the end of the church, and in which two ancient musicians blew their bassoons, was all awry, and looked as though it would fall; the pulpit was an ugly useless edifice, as high nearly as the roof would allow, and the reading-desk under it hardly permitted the parson to keep his head free from the dangling tassels of the cushion above him.
The festival begins with the entry of the temple musicians. They carry copper bassoons ten feet long, so heavy that their bells have to rest on the shoulder of an acolyte. With deep, long-drawn blasts the monks proclaim the New Year, just as long ago the priests of Israel announced with trumpet notes the commencement of the year of jubilee.
The works are full of the gnawing of bassoons and the bleakness of the English horn, full of shattering trombones and screaming violins, full of the sinister rolling of drums, the menacing reverberation of cymbals, the icy glittering of harps.
That was the age before organs were thought of in Methodist places of worship; other musical instruments obtained in those good old times: fiddles and bass viols, clarionets, flutes, hautboys, cornets, trombones, bassoons and serpents, delighted the ears and stirred the souls of our forefathers with their sacred harmony.
To such depths of rebellion were stirred the Puritan instincts of these religious souls. Many a minister said openly that he would like to walk out of his pulpit when the obnoxious and hated flutes, violins, bass-viols, and bassoons were played upon in the singing gallery. One clergyman contemptuously announced "We will now sing and fiddle the forty-fifth Psalm."
And after wiping his enormous boots very, very carefully on the mat, the great man passed into the house. INSIDE we found my father busy practising on the flute beside the fire. This he always did, every evening, after his work was over. The Doctor immediately began talking to him about flutes and piccolos and bassoons; and presently my father said,
The paddles have oval blades, and are about three feet in length, cut out of single pieces. A somewhat complicated musical instrument, consisting of twelve pipes or trumpets, made of bamboos fastened together, with trumpet-shaped mouthpieces of bark, is used by one tribe of Indians. The sounds are not disagreeable, resembling somewhat clarionets and bassoons.
While the party were thus engaged, two lads, with zebra manes tied over their heads, and two bark tubes, formed like huge bassoons, in their hands, leaped into the centre of the dancers, twisting and turning and blowing their horns in the most extraordinary manner. The men, women, and children, inspired by the sound of the music, on this began to sing and clap their hands in time.
Every hearer must be struck with its mysterious beauty, and it has been the subject of many theoretical discussions. There is, however, one thing to be noticed in this melody. This instrument therefore has a distinct melody of its own, consisting only of two notes, but still heard as a kind of sigh, and quite different from the merely filling-in part of the clarinets and bassoons. V' celli. Eng.
There was a regular army of blue flags, some with one handle, and some with two, exhibiting appropriate devices, in golden characters four feet high, and stout in proportion. There was a grand band of trumpets, bassoons, and drums, marshalled four abreast, and earning their money, if ever men did, especially the drum-beaters, who were very muscular.
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