The Life of Thomas Hardy
"Schlangenrohr," and in a crudely constructed æolian harp, the mournful notes of which are fraught with suggestion.
The only modern concert-instrument for which Hardy seems to have a decided liking is the organ. His experience as a church-architect is probably largely responsible for his intimate acquaintance with its parts and with the effects that it can produce. He likens the wooden tones of the wheels and cogs of the flour-mill to the distinctive quality of the stopped diapason pipes of an organ; the mournful wind sounding through the chimney reminds him of its deep and hollow pedal tones; and a sensitive woman's quivering lip is to him like a tremolo-stop opened in her speech. With regard to organ-performers, we notice that in addition to Jude, the poorly equipped amateur, Manston, the well-trained amateur, and Christopher Julian, the professional, there is another most interesting "semi-professional" class, represented by Fancy Day, Elfride Swancourt, and Tabitha Lark. These rural young ladies figure as the supplanters of the ancient local string-choirs, of which Hardy was so enamoured.
Religious music, in general, was employed by him in preference to other kinds, for incidental use in heightening the effects he wished to achieve. That he had at least some knowledge of the history of church-music in England is shown by Somerset's ruminations over the tune "The New Sabbath," in the first chapter of A Laodicean. He recollects that the tune appertained to the old west-gallery period of church-music, anterior to the great choral reformation and rule of Monk—that old time when
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