We are seriously concerned lest the term be understood in an unworthy, outworn sense, and ideas attach to it which are applicable only to the primitive form of the instrument we have in mind, never to the elegant product evolved by a tireless application of technical means to the Muses’ own ends. My dear friends, we implore you to realize that the instrument we describe was not that paltry box with a handle to it, a disk and shaft atop and a shapeless brass funnel attached, which used to be set up on the table outside country inns, to gratify the ears of the rude with its nasal braying. This was a case finished in dull ebony, a little deeper than broad, attached by a cord to an electric switch in the wall, and standing chastely on its special table. With the antediluvian mechanism described above, it had nothing in common. You lifted the prettily bevelled lid, which was automatically supported by a brass rod attached on the inside, and there above a slightly depressed surface was the disk, covered with green cloth, with a nickelled rim, and nickelled peg upon which one fitted the hole in the centre of the hard-rubber record. At the right, in front, was a time-regulating device, with a dial and figures like a watch; at the left, the lever, which set the mechanism going or stopped it; and behind, also on the left, the hollow, curving, club-shaped, nickel-plated arm, with its flexible joints, carrying the flat round sound-box at the end, with a fitment into which the needle was screwed. If you opened the double doors at the front of the box, you saw a set of slanting shelves, rather like a blind, stained black like the case—and that was all.
“Newest model,” the Hofrat said. “Latest triumph of art, my children; A-1, copper-bottomed, superfinísimo, nothing better on the market in this line of goods”—he managed to give the words the twang of an eager and ignorant salesman. “This is not just a machine,” he went on, taking a needle out of one of the gay little metal boxes ranged on the table, and fitting it into the holder, “it’s a Stradivarius, a Guarneri; with a resonance, a vibration—dernier raffinemang, Polyhymnia patent, look here in the inside of the lid. German make, you know, we do them far and away better than anybody else. The truly musical, in modern, mechanical form, the German soul up to date. And here’s the libretto,” he said, and gestured with his head toward a little case on the wall, filled with broad-backed albums. “I turn it all over to you, it is yours. But take care of it; I commend it to the solicitude of the public. Shall we shoot it off once, just for fun?”
The patients implored him to do so. Behrens drew out a fat magic tome, turned over the heavy leaves, and chose a paper envelope, which showed a coloured title through a round hole on the front. He placed the record on the disk, set it in motion, waited until it was at full speed, and then carefully set the fine steel point upon the edge of the plate. There was a low, whetting sound. He let the lid sink, and at the same moment, from the open doors in front, from between the slats of the blind, or, rather, from the box as a whole, came a burst of music, with a hubbub of instruments, a lively, bustling, insistent melody: the first contagious bars of an Offenbach overture.
They listened, their lips parted in smiles. They could scarcely believe their ears at the purity and faithful reproduction of the colour of the woodwind. A solo violin preluded whimsically; the bowing, the pizzicato, the sweet gliding from one position to another, were all clearly audible. It struck into the melody of the waltz, “Ach, ich habe sie verloren”; the orchestral harmony lightly bore the flattering strain—enchanting it was to hear it taken up by the ensemble and repeated as a sounding tutti. Of course, it was scarcely like a real orchestra playing in the room. The volume of sound, though not to any extent distorted, had suffered a diminution of perspective. If we may draw a simile from the visual field, it was as though one were to look at a painting through the wrong end of an opera-glass, seeing it remote and diminutive, though with all its luminous precision of drawing and colour. The vivid, consummate piece of music was reproduced in all the richness of its lighthearted invention. The finish was abandon itself, a galop with a drolly hesitating beginning, a shameless cancan that called up a vision of top-hats waved in the air, flying skirts and tossing knees, and seemed never to come to the end of its triumphal jollification. But at length the mechanism stopped automatically. It was over. There was cordial applause.
They called for more, and it was forthcoming. A human voice welled out from the casket, a masculine voice at once soft and powerful, with orchestral accompaniment. It was a famous Italian baritone; the marvellous organ swelled out to the full extent of its natural register, there could be no talk here of any diminution or veiling of the sound. If one sat in an adjoining room and did not see the instrument, it seemed not otherwise than as though the artist stood in the salon in his own person, notes in hand, and sang. He sang an aria di bravura in his own tongue—Eh, U barbiere! “Di qualità, di qualità! Figaro qua, Figaro là, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro!” The listeners almost died of laughter at his falsetto parlando, at the contrast between the deep voice
