classicized by another Italian, and debased by a German Jew. | This only enhances the significance of that French dramatic sense which stimulated foreign composers and widened their choice of subjects, as it also preserved all except the Italian forms of opera from falling into that elsewhere prevalent early 19th-century operatic style in which there was no means of guessing by the music whether any situation was tragic or comic. From the time of Meyerbeer onwards, trivial and vulgar opera has been as common in France as elsewhere; but there is a world of difference between, for example, a garish tune naïvely intended for a funeral march, and a similar tune used in a scrious situation with a dramatic sense of its association with other incidents in the opera, and of its contrast with the sympathics of spectators and actors The first case is as typical of 19th-century musical Italy as the second case is of musical France and all that has come under French influence. As Wagner slowly and painfully attained his maturity he learned to abhor the influence of Meyerbeer, and indeed it accounts for much of the inequality of his earlier work. But it can hardly have failed to stimulate his sense of effect; and without the help of Meyerbeer's outwardly successful novelties it is doubtful whether even Wagner's determination could have faced the task of his carly work, a task so negative and destructive in its first stages. We have elsewhere (see MUSIC, SONATA FORMS ad finem, and SYMPHONIC POEM) described how if music of any kind, instrumental or dramatic, was to advance beyond the range of the classical symphony, there was need to devise a kind of musical motion and proportion as different from that of the sonata or symphony as the sonata style is different from that of the suite. All the vexed questions of the function of vocal ensemble, of the structure of the libretto, and of instrumentation, are but aspects and results of this change in what is as much a primary category of music as extension is a primary category of matter. Wagnerian opera, a generation after Wagner's death, was still an unique phenomenon, the rational influence of which was not yet sifted from the concomitant confusions of thought prevalent among many composers of symphony, oratorio, and other forms of which Wagner's principles can be relevant only with incalculable modifications. With Wagner the history of classical opera ends and a new history begins, for in Wagner's hands opera first became a single art-form, a true and indivisible music-drama, instead of a kind of dramatic casket for a collection of objets d'art more or less aptly arranged in theatrical tableaux. Forms and Terminology of Opera. The history of pre-Wagnerian opera is not, like that of the sonata forms, a history in which the technical terminology has a clear relationship to the aesthetic development. In order to understand the progress of classical opera we must understand the whole progress of classical music; and this not merely for the general reason that the development of an art-form is inseparable from the development of the whole art, but because in the case of opera only the most external terminology and the most unreal and incoherent history of fashions and factions remain for consideration after the general development of musical art has been discussed. For completeness, however, the terminology must be included; and a commentary on it will complete our sketch in better historical perspective than any attempt to amplify details on the lines of a continuous history. 1. Secco-recitative is the delivery of ordinary operatic dialogue in prosaic recitative-formulas, accompanied by nothing but a harpsichord or pianoforte. In comic operas it was not so bad a method as some critics imagine; for the conductor (who sat at the harpsichord or pianoforte) would, if he had the wits expected of him by the composer, extemporize his accompaniments in an unobtrusively amusing manner, while the actors delivered their recitative rapidly in a conversational style known as parlante. In serious operas, however, the conductor dare not be frivolous; and accordingly secco-recitative outside comic opera is the dreariest of makeshifts, and is not tolerated by Gluck in his mature works. He accompanies his recitatives with the string band, introducing other instruments freely as the situation suggests. 2. Accompanied recitative was used in all kinds of opera, as introductory to important arias and other movements, and also in the course of finales. Magnificent examples abound in Idomeneo, Figaro and Don Giovanni; and one of the longest recitatives before Wagner is that near the beginning of the finale of the first act of Die Zauberflöte. Beethoven's two examples in Fidelio are short but of overwhelming pathos. 3. Melodrama is the use of an orchestral accompaniment to spoken dialogue (see BENDA). It is wonderfully promising in theory, but generally disappointing in effect, unless the actors are successfully trained to speak without being dragged by the music into an out-of-tune sing-song. Classical examples are generally short and cautious, but very impressive; there is one in Fidelio in which the orchestra quotes two points from earlier movements in a thoroughly Wagnerian way (see Leitmotif below). But the device is more prominent in incidental music to plays, as in Beethoven's music for Goethe's Egmont. Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream contains the most brilliant and resourceful examples yet achieved in this art; but they are beyond the musical capacity of the English stage, which, however, has practised the worst forms of the method until it has become a disease, many modern performances of Shakespeare attaining an almost operatic continuity of bad music. 4. Opera buffa is classical Italian comic opera with seccorecitative. Its central classics are, of course, Figaro and Don Giovanni, while Cimarosa's Matrimonio Segreto and Rossini's Barbiere are the most important steps from the culmination to the fall. 5. Opera seria is classical Italian opera with secco-recitative; almost always (like the Handelian opera from which it is derived) on a Greek or Roman subject, and, at whatever cost to dramatic or historic propriety, with a happy ending. Gluck purposely avoids the term in his mature works. The only great classic in opera seria is Mozart's Idomeneo, and even that is dramatically too unequal to be more than occasionally revived, though it contains much of Mozart's finest music. 6. The Singspiel is German opera with spoken dialogue. In early stages it advanced from the farcical to the comic. With Beethoven it came under French influence and adopted thrilling" stories with happy endings; and from this stage it passed to specifically "Romantic" subjects. Its greatest classics are Mozart's Entführung and Zauberflöte, Beethoven's Fidelio, and Weber's Freischütz. 7. Opéra comique is the Sings piel of France, being French opera with spoken dialogue. It did not originate in farce but in the refusal of the Académie de Musique to allow rival companies to infringe its monopoly of Grand Opéra; and it is so far from being essentially comic that one of its most famous classics, Méhul's Joseph, is on a Biblical subject; while its highest achievement, Cherubini's Les Deux journées, is on a story almost as serious as that of Fidelio. All Cherubini's mature operas (except the ballet Anacréon, which is uninterrupted music from beginning to end) are opéras comiques in the sense of having spoken dialogue; though Medée, being, perhaps, the first genuine tragedy in the history of music-drama,' is simply called " opéra on the title-page. In the smaller French works, especially those in one act, there is so much spoken dialogue that they are almost like plays with incidental music. But they never sink to the condition of the so-called operas of the English composers since Handel. When Weber accepted the commission to write Oberon for the English stage in 1825, he found that he was compelled to set the musical numbers one by one as they were sent to him, without the slightest information as to the plot, the situation, or even the order of the pieces! And, to crown his disgust, he found that this really did not matter. 1 Even Gluck never contemplated any alternative to the absurd happy ending of Orfeo; and all his other operatic subjects include a deus ex machina. OPERA 8. Grand opera is French opera in which every word is sung, and generally all recitative accompanied by the orchestra. It originated in the Académie de Musique, which, from its foundation in 1669 to the proclamation of the liberté des théatres in 1791, claimed the monopoly of operas on the lines laid down by Lully, Rameau and Gluck. Rossini's Guillaume Tell, Spontini's Vestala and the works of Meyerbeer crown this theoretically promising art-form with what Sir Hubert Parry has justly if severely called a crown of no very precious metal. Weber's Euryanthe, Spohr's Jessonda, and others of his operas, are German parallel developments; and Wagner's first published work, Rienzi, is like an attempt to beat Meyerbeer on his own ground. 9. Opéra bouffe is not an equivalent of opera buffa, but is French light opera with a prominent strain of persiflage. Its chief representative is Offenbach. It seems to be as native to France as the austere opéra comique which it eclipsed. Sullivan assimilated its adroit orchestration as Gilbert purified its literary wit, and the result became a peculiarly English possession. 19. The finale is that part of a classical opera where, some way before the end of an act, the music gathers itself together and flows in an unbroken chain of concerted movements. The "invention" has been ascribed to this or that composer before Mozart, and it certainly must have taken some time in the growing; but Mozart is the first classic whose finales are famous. The finales to the second act of Figaro, the first act of Don Giovanni and the second of the Zauberflöte remained unequalled in scale and in dramatic and symphonic continuity, until Wagner, as it were, extended the finale backwards until it met the introduction (see below) so that the whole act became musically continuous. This step was foreshadowed by Weber, in whose Euryanthe the numbering of the later movements of each act is quite arbitrary. Great finales are less frequent in Singspiel than in opera buffa. They can hardly be said to exist in opera seria, climax at the end of an act being there (even in Gluck) attained only by a collection of ballet movements, whereas the essence of Mozart's finale is its capacity to deal with real turning-points of the action. A few finales of the first and second acts of opéras comiques (which are almost always in three acts) are on the great classical lines, e.g. that to the first act of Les Deux journées; but a French finale to a last act is, except in Cherubini's works, hardly ever more than a short chorus, often so perfunctory that, for instance, when Méhul's Joseph was first produced by Weber at Dresden in 1817, a three-movement finale by Fränzl of Munich was added; and Weber publicly explained the difference between French and German notions of finality, in excuse for a course so repugnant to his principles in the performance of other works. II. The introduction is sometimes merely an instrumental entr'acte in classical opera; but it is more especially an extension of continuous dramatic music at the beginning of an act, like the extension of the finale backwards towards the middle of the act, but much smaller. Beethoven, in his last version of Fidelio, used the term for the perfectly normal duet that begins the first act, and for the instrumental entr'acte which leads to the rise of the curtain on Florestan's great scene in the second act. The classical instances of the special meaning of "introduction" are the first number in Don Giovanni and, more typically, that in the Zauberflöte. 12. Leil-motif, or the association of musical themes with dramatic ideas and persons, is not only a natural means of progress in music drama, but is an absolute musical necessity as soon as the lines dividing an opera into separate formal pieces are broken down, unless the music is to become exclusively " atmospheric " and inarticulate. Without recurrence of themes a large piece of music could no more show coherent development than a drama in which the characters were never twice addressed by the same name nor twice allowed to appear in the same guise. Now the classical operatic forms, being mainly limited by the sonata style, were not such as could, when once worked out in appropriate designs of aria and ensemble, be worked out again in recognizable transformations without poverty and monotony of effect. And hence a system of Leit-motif was not appropriate to that ingenious compromise which classical opera made Mature Wagnerian Leit-motif is a very different thing from the crude system of musical labels to which some of Wagner's disciples have reduced it, and Wagner himself had no patience with the catalogue methods of modern operatic analysis. The Leit-motif system of Tristan, the Meistersinger, the Ring and Parsifal is a profoundly natural and subtle cross-current of musical thought, often sharply contrasted with the externals of a dramatic situation, since it is free to reflect not only these externals, not only the things which the audience know and the persons of the drama do not know, not only those workings of the dramatic character's mind which he is trying to conceal from the other characters, but even those which he conceals from himself. There was nothing new in any one of these possibilities taken singly (see, for example, Gluck's ironic treatment of "le calme rentre dans mon cœur "), but polyphonic Leit-motif made them all possible simultaneously. Wagner's mind was not concentrated on the merely literary and theatrical aspects of musicdrama; he fought his way to the topmost heights of the peculiar musical mastery necessary to his ideals; and so he realized that principle in which none but the very greatest musicians find freedom; the principle that, however constantly necessary and powerful homophonic music may be in passages of artificial simplicity, all harmonic music is by nature and origin polyphonic; and that in polyphony lies the normal and natural means of expressing a dramatic blending of emotions. Wagnerian Leil-motif has proved rather a giant's robe for later composers; and the most successful of recent operas have, while aiming less at the sublime, cultivated Wagner's musical and dramatic continuity more than his principles of musical texture. Certainly Wagnerian continuity is a permanent postulate in modern opera; but it shows itself to be a thing attainable quite independently of any purely musical style or merit, so long as the dramatic movement of the play is good. This condition was always necessary, even where opera was most symphonic. Mozart was incessantly disputing with his librettists; and all his criticisms and changes, though apparently of purely musical purport, had a brilliant effect on the movement of the play. In one desperate case, where the librettist was obstinate, Mozart abandoned a work (L'Oca del Cairo) to the first act of which he had already sketched a great finale embodying a grandiose farcical figure that promised to be unique in classical opera, Mozart's lesson of dramatic movement has been better learnt | definite themes (even in the shortest of figures) as Wagner uses than anything peculiar to either music or literature; for, while in ten minutes. his libretti show how little that quality has to do with poetic merit, the whole history of Italian opera from Rossini to Mascagni shows how little it has to do with good music. On the other hand, the musical coherence of the individual classical forms used in opera has caused many critics to miss the real dramatic ground of some of the most important operatic conventions. The chief instance of this is the repetition of words in arias and at climaxes, a convention which we are over-ready to explain as a device which prolongs situations and delays action for the sake of musical design. But in the best classical examples the case is almost the reverse, for the aria does not, as we are apt to suppose, represent a few words repeated so as to serve for a long piece of music. Without the music the drama would have required a long speech in its place; but the classical composer cannot fit intelligible music to a long string of different sentences, and so the librettist reduces the speech to mere headlines and the composer supplies the eloquence. Herein lies the meaning of Mozart's rapid progress from vocal concertos like "Fuor del mar" in Idomeneo and "Martern aller Arten" in Die Entführung to genuine musical speeches like "Non più andrai" in Figaro, in which the obvious capacity to deal with a greater number of words is far less important than the naturalness and freedom with which the pace of the declamation is varied-a freedom unsurpassed even in the Elektra of Richard Strauss. With Wagnerian polyphony and continuity music became capable of treating words as they occur in ordinary speech, and repetitions have accordingly become out of place except where they would be natural without music. But it is not here that the real gain in freedom of movement lies. That gain has been won, not by Wagner's negative reforms alone, but by his combination of negative reform with new depths of musical thought; and modern opera is not more exempt than classical opera from the dangers of artistic methods that have become facile and secure. If the libretto has the right dramatic movement, the modern composer need have no care beyond what is wanted to avoid interference with that movement. So long as the music arouses no obviously incompatible emotion and has no breach of continuity, it may find perfect safety in being meaningless. The necessary stagecraft is indeed not common, but neither is it musical. Critics and public will cheerfully agree in ascribing to the composer all the qualities of the dramatist; and three allusions in the music of one scene to that of another will suffice to pass for a marvellous development of Wagnerian Leil-motif. Modern opera of genuine artistic significance ranges from the light song-play type admirably represented by Bizet's Carmen to the exclusively "atmospheric "impressionism of Debussy's Pelleas et Mélisande. Both these extremes are equally natural in effect, though diametrically opposite in method; for both types eliminate everything that would be inadmissible in ordinary drama. If we examine the libretto of Carmen as an ordinary play we shall find it to consist mainly of actual songs and dances, so that more than half of the music would be necessary even if it were not an opera at all. Debussy's opera differs from Maeterlinck's play only in a few omissions such as would probably be made in ordinary non-musical performances. His musical method combines perfect Wagnerian continuity with so entire an absence of Leil-motif that there are hardly three musical phrases in the whole opera that could be recognized if they recurred in fresh contexts. The highest conceivable development of Wagnerian continuity has been attained by Strauss in Salome and Elektra; these operas being actually more perfect in dramatic movement than the original plays of Wilde and Hofmannsthal. But their use of Leil-motif, though obvious and impressive, is far less developed than in Wagner; and the polyphony, as distinguished from the brilliant instrumental technique, is, like that technique, devoted mainly to realistic and physically exciting effects that crown the impression in much the same way as skilful lighting of the stage. Certainly Strauss does not in his whole time-limit of an hour and three-quarters use as many It remains to be seen whether a further development of Wagnerian opera, in the sense of addition to Wagner's resources in musical architecture, is possible. The uncompromising realism of Strauss does not at first sight seem encouraging in this direction; yet his treatment of Elektra's first invocation of Agamemnon produces a powerful effect of musical form, dimly perceived, but on a larger scale than even the huge sequences of Wagner. In any case, the best thing that can happen in a period of musical transition is that the leading revolutionaries should inake a mark in opera. Musical revolutions are too easy to mean much by themselves; there is no purely musical means of testing the sanity of the revolutionaries or of the critics. But the stage, while boundlessly tolerant of bad music, will stand no nonsense in dramatic movement. (The case of Handelian opera is no exception, for in it the stage was a mere topographical term.) In every period of musical fermentation the art of opera has instantly sifted the men of real ideas from the aesthetes and doctrinaires; Monteverde from the prince of Venosa, Gluck from Gossec, and Wagner from Liszt. As the ferment subsides, opera tends to a complacent decadence; but it will always revive to put to the first and most crucial test every revolutionary principle that enters into music to destroy and expand. See also ARIA; OVERTURE; CHERUBINI; GLUCK; MOZART; VERDI; WAGNER; Weber. (D. F. T.) OPHICLEIDE (Fr. ophicleide, basse d'harmonie; Ger. Ophikleid; Ital. oficleide), a brass wind instrument having a cup-shaped mouthpiece and keys, in fact a bass keyed-bugle. The name (from Gr. opis, serpent, and kλeîdes, keys), applied to it by Halary, the patentee of the instrument, is hardly a happy one, for there is nothing of the serpent about the ophicleide, which has the bore of the bugle and also owes the chromatic arrangement of the keys to a principle evolved by Halliday for the bugle, to be explained later on. The ophicleide is almost perfect theoretically, for it combines the natural harmonic scale of the brass wind instruments having cup-shaped mouthpieces, such as the trumpet, with a system of keys, twelve in number, one for each chromatic semitone of the scale; it is capable of absolutely accurate intonation. It consists of a wooden, or oftener brass, tube with a conical bore having the same proportions as that of the bugle but not wide enough in proportion to its length to make the fundamental or first note of the harmonic series of much practical use. The tube, theoretically 8 ft. long, is doubled upon itself once, terminating at the narrow end in a tight coil, from which protrudes the straight piece known as the crook, which bears the cupshaped mouthpiece; the wide end of the tube terminates in a funnel-shaped bell pointing upwards. 1 The production of sound is effected in the ophicleide as in other instruments with cup- or funnel-shaped mouthpieces (see HORN). The lips stretched across the mouthpiece act as vibrating reeds or as the vocal chords in the larynx. The breath of the performer, compressed by being forced through the narrow opening between the lips, sets the latter in vibration. The stream of air, instead of proceeding into the cup in an even flow-in which case there would be no sound-is converted into a series of pulsations by the trembling of the lips. On being thrown into communication with the main stationary column of air at the bottom of the cup, the pulsating stream generates "sound waves," each consisting of a half wave of expansion and of a half wave of compression. On the frequency per second of the sound waves as they strike the drum of the ear depends the pitch of the note, the acuteness of the sound varying in direct proportion to the frequency. To ensure a higher frequency in the sound waves, their length must be decreased. Two things are necessary to bring this about without shortening the length of the tube: (1) the opening between the lips, fixed at each end by contact with the edges of in the length of the tubes of wind instruments, see Victor Mahillon. 1 For an explanation of the difference between theory and practice (Les instruments de musique au musée du conservatoire royal de musique de Bruxelles, pt. ii. Brussels and London, 1907). pp. 27-29. "Le cor the mouthpiece, must be made narrower by greater tension; | servatoire, but the patent bears the date 31st December 1810. The (2) the breath must be sent through the reduced aperture in a more compressed form and with greater force, so that the exciting current of air becomes more incisive. An exact proportion, not yet scientifically determined, evidently exists between the amount of pressure and the degree of tension, which is unconsciously regulated by the performer, excess of pressure in proportion to the tension of the lips producing a crescendo by causing amplitude of vibration instead of increased speed. When the fundamental note of a pipe is produced, the tension of the lips and pressure of breath proportionally combined are at their minimum for that instrument. If both be doubled, a node is formed half way up the pipe, and the column of air no longer vibrates as a whole, but as two separate parts, each half the length of the tube, and the frequency of the sound waves is doubled in consequence. The practical result is the production of the second harmonic of the series an octave above the fundamental. The formation of three nodes and therefore of three separate sound waves produces a note a twelfth above the fundamental, known as the third harmonic, and so on in mathematical ratio. This harmonic series forms the natural scale of the instrument, and is for the ophicleide the following: (19) 2 3 Fundamental. "basse-trompette," which Frichot in his specification had at first, in imitation of the English basshorn, called "basse cor," was, like the English instrument, entirely of brass, and had, like it, six holes; it only differed in a more favourable disposition brought about by the curvings of the tube, and by the application of four crooks which permitted the instrument to be tuned "in C low pitch and C high pitch for military bands, in C# for churches, and in D for concert use." The close relationship between the two instruments suggests the question whether this was the Frichot who worked with Astor in London in 1800. The first idea of adding keys to instruments with cupped mouthpicces, unprovided with lateral holes, with the aim of filling up some of the gaps between the notes of the harmonic scale, goes back, according to Gerber (Lexicon of 1790), to Kölbel, a hornplayer in the Russian imperial band, about 1760. Anton Weidinger, trumpeter in the Austrian imperial band, improved upon this first attempt, Joseph Halliday, bandmaster of the Cavan militia, of being the first and applied it in 1800 to the trumpet. But the honour belongs to to conceive, in 1810, the disposition of a certain number of keys along the tube, setting out from its lower extremity, with the idea of producing by their successive or simultaneous opening a chromatic scale throughout the extent of the instrument. The bugle-horn was the object of his reform; the scale of which, he says, in the preamble of his patent, "until my invention contained but five tones, viz. My improvements on that instrument are five keys, to be used by the performer according to the annexed scale, which, with its five original notes, render it capable of producing twenty-five separate tones in regular progression." Fig. 1 represents the keyed In some cases the fundamental is difficult to obtain, and the bugle of Joseph Halliday." harmonics above the eighth are not used. The ophicleide has in addition to its natural scale eleven or twelve lateral holes covered by keys, each of which, when successively opened, raises the pitch of the harmonic series a semitone, with the exception of the first, an open key, which on being closed lowers the pitch a semitone. There were ophicleides in C and in Bb, the former being the more common; contrabass ophicleides were also occasionally made in F and Eb. The keys of the ophicleide, being placed in the lowest register, were intended to bind together by chromatic degrees the first and second harmonics. The compass is a little over three octaves, from with chromatic semitones throughout. It was not until 1815 that the use of the new instrument spread upon the Continent. We find in the account-books of a Belgian maker, Tuerlinckx of Mechlin, that his first supply of a buglemade "aen den Heer Muldener, lieutenant in horn bears the date of 25th March 1815, and it was het régiment duc d'York." The acoustic principle inaugurated by Halliday consisted in binding together by chromatic degrees the second and third harmonics, to He attained it, as we have just seen, f FIG. 1.-Keyed Bugle. by the help of five keys. The principle once discovered, it became easy to extend it to instruments of the largest size, of which the compass, as in the "basson russe," began with the fundamental The unsatisfactory timbre of the ophicleide led to its being sound. It was simply necessary to bind this fundamental superseded by the bass tuba; but it seems a pity that an E to the next harmonic sound instrument so powerful, so easy to learn and understand, and capable of such accurate intonation, should have to be discarded. The lower register is rough, but so powerful that it can easily sustain above it masses of brass harmonics; the medium is coarse in tone, and the upper wild and unmusical. Although a bass keyed-bugle, the ophicleide owes something of its, origin to the application of keys to the serpent (q.v.), a wind instrument, the invention of which is generally attributed to Edme Guillaume, canon of Auxerre, about 1590. The serpent remained in its primitive form for nearly two centuries, and then only it was attempted to improve it by adding keys. It was a musician named Régibo, belonging to the orchestra of the church of St Pierre at Lille, who, about 1780, first thought of giving it the shape of a bassoon. The merit of this innovation was rapidly recognized in England and Germany. Still, to follow Gerber, one Frichot, who was established in London, published in 1800 a description of an instrument, entirely of brass, manufactured by J. Astor, which he claimed as his invention, calling it the basshorn, but which was no other in principle than the new serpent of Régibo. It only made its way to France and Belgium after the passage of the allied armies in 1815. The English brass basshorn was designated on the Continent the English or the Russian basshorn, the "serpent anglais or the "basson russe." Under this last name all instruments of the form, whether of wood or brass, were later on confounded in France and Belgium. The "basson russe remained in great vogue until the appearance of the ophicleide, to disappear with it in the complete revolution brought about by the invention of pistons. " " The invention of the ophicleide is generally but falsely attributed to Alexandre Frichot, a professor of music at Lisieux, department of Calvados,, France. The instrument, which the inventor called "basse-trompette," was approved of as early as 13th November 1806 by a commission composed of professors of the Paris Con 'Gerber, Lexicon der Tonkünstler (Leipzig, 1790). Q by a larger number of keys. This ophicleide." The ophicleide (fig. 2) had the The announcement of Weidinger's invention of a Klappentrompete, or trumpet with keys, appears in the Allg. musik. Zig. (Leipzig, November 1802), p. 158; and further accounts are given in January 1803, p. 245, and 1815, p. 844. The report of the Académie des Beaux-Arts on the subject of this invention shows a strange misconception of it, which it is interesting to recall. "As to the two instruments which M. Halary designs It is certain that from the point of view of invention Halary's | labours had only secondary importance; but, if the principle of keyed chromatic instruments with cupped mouthpiece1 goes back to Halliday, it was Halary's merit to know how to take advantage of the principle in extending it to instruments of diverse tonalities, in grouping them in one single family, that of the bugles, in so complete a manner that the improvements of modern manufacture have not widened its limits either in the grave or the acute direction. Keyed chromatic wind instruments made their way rapidly; to their introduction into military full or brass bands we can date the regeneration of military music. After pistons had been invented some forty years, instruments with keys could still reckon their partisans. Now these have utterly disappeared, and pistons or rotary cylinders remain absolute masters of the situation." (V. M.; K. S.) OPHIR, a region celebrated in antiquity for its gold, which was proverbially fine (Job xxii. 24, xxviii. 16; Psalms xlv. 9; Isa. xiii. 12). Thence Solomon's Phoenician sailors brought gold for their master (1 Kings ix. 28, x. 11; 2 Chron. viii. 18, ix. 10); Ophir gold was stored up among the materials for the Temple (1 Chron. xxix. 4). Jehoshaphat, attempting to follow his ancestors' example, was foiled by the shipwreck of his navy (1 Kings xxii. 48). The situation of the place has been the subject of much controversy. The only indications whereby it can be identified are its connexion, in the geographical table (Gen. x. 29), with Sheba and Havilah, the latter also an auriferous country (Gen. ii. 11), and the fact that ships sailing thither started from Ezion-Geber at the head of the Red Sea. It must, therefore, have been somewhere south or east of Sucz; and must be known to be a gold-bearing region. The suggested identification with the Egyptian Punt is in itself disputable, and it would be more helpful if we knew exactly where Punt was (see EGYPT). (1) East Africa.--This has, perhaps, been the favourite theory in recent years, and it has been widely popularized by the sensational works of Theodore Bent and others, to say nothing of one of Rider Haggard's novels. The centre of speculation is a group of extensive ruins at Zimbabwe, in Mashonaland, about 200 m. inland from Sofala. Many and wild words have been written on these imposing remains. But the results of the saner researches of Randall MacIver, announced first at the South Africa meeting of the British Association (1905) and later communicated to the Royal Geographical Society, have robbed these structures of much of their glamour; from being the centres of Phoenician and Hebrew industry they have sunk to be mere magnified kraals, not more than three or four hundred years old. (2) The Far East.-Various writers, following Josephus and the Greek version, have placed Ophir in different parts of the Far East. A chief argument in favour of this view is the length of the voyages of Solomon's vessels (three years were occupied in the double voyage, going and returning, 1 Kings x. 22) and the nature of the other imports that they brought-" almugtrees " (i.c. probably sandal-wood), ivory, apes and peacocks. This, however, proves nothing. It is nowhere said that these various imports all came from one place; and the voyages must have been somewhat analogous to those of modern "coasting tramps," which would necessarily consume a considerable time over comparatively short journeys. It has been sought at under the names of quinti-clave 'and' ophicleide, 'they bear a great resemblance to those submitted to the Academy in the sitting of the 11th of March 1811 by M. Dumas, which he designed under the names of basse et contrebasse guerrières.' The opinion of our commission on the quinti-clave and ophicleide is that M. Halary can only claim the merit of an improvement and not that of an entire invention; still, for an equitable judgment on this point, we should compare the one with the other, and this our commission cannot do, not having the instruments of M. Dumas at our disposal." This is what the commission ought to have had, but it would have sufficed had they referred to the report of the sittings of 6th and 8th April, in which it is clearly explained that the instruments presented by M. Dumas were bass clarinets (Moniteur Universel of 19th April 1811). We designedly omit the use of the word "brass" to qualify these instruments. The substance which determines the form of a column of air is demonstrably indifferent for the timbre or quality of tone so long as the sides of the tubes are equally elastic and rigid. Abhira, at the mouth of the Indus (where, however, there is no gold); at Supara, in Goa; and at a certain Mount Ophir in Johore. (3) Arabia.-On the whole the most satisfactory theory is that Ophir was in some part of Arabia-whether south or east is disputed, and (with the indications at our disposal) probably cannot be settled. Arabia was known as a gold-producing country to the Phoenicians (Ezek. xxvii. 22); Sheba certainly, and Havilah probably, are regions of Arabia, and these are coupled with Ophir in Genesis x.; and the account of the arrival of the navy in 1 Kings x. 11, is strangely interpolated into the story of the visit of the queen of Sheba, perhaps because there is a closer connexion between the two events than appears at first sight. Historians have been at a loss to know what Solomon could give in exchange for the gold of Ophir and the costly gifts of the queen of Sheba. Mr K. T. Frost (Expos. Times, Jan. 1905) shows that by his command of the trade routes Solomon was able to balance Phoenicians and Sabacans against each other, and that his Ophir gold would be paid for by trade facilities and protection of caravans. (R. A. S. M.) OPHITES, or OPHIANS (Gr. öpis, Heb. v, “snake "), known also as NAASENES, an early sect of Gnostics described by Hippolytus (Philosoph. v.), Irenaeus (adv. Haer. i. 11), Origen (Contra Celsum, vi. 25 seq. and Epiphanius (Haer. xxvi.). The account given by Irenaeus may be taken as representative of these descriptions which vary partly as referring to different groups, partly to different dates. The honour paid by them to the serpent is connected with the old mythologies of Babylon and Egypt as well as with the popular cults of Greece and the Orient. It was particularly offensive to Christians as tending to dishonour the Creator who is set over against the serpent as bad against good. The Ophite system had its Trinity: (1) the Universal God, the First Man, (2) his conception (evvoia), the Second Man, (3) a female Holy Spirit. From her the Third Man (Christ) was begotten by the First and Second. Christ flew upward with his mother, and in their ascent a spark of light fell on the waters as Sophia. From this contact came Ialdabaoth the Demiurgos, who in turn produced six powers and with them created the seven heavens and from the dregs of matter the Nous of serpent form, from whom are spirit and soul, evil and death. Ialdabaoth then announced himself as the Supreme, and when man (created by the six powers) gave thanks for life not to Ialdabaoth but to the First Man, Ialdabaoth created a woman (Eve) to destroy him. Then Sophia or Prunikos sent the serpent (as a benefactor) to persuade Adam and Eve to eat the tree of knowledge and so break the commandment of Ialdabaoth, who banished them from paradise to earth. After a long war between mankind aided by Prunikos against Ialdabaoth (this is the inner story of the Old Testament), the Holy Spirit sends Christ to the earth to enter (united with his sister Prunikos) the pure vessel, the virgin-born Jesus. Jesus Christ worked miracles and declared himself the Son of the First Man. Ialdabaoth instigated the Jews to kill him, but only Jesus died on the cross, for Christ and Prunikos had departed from him. Christ then raised the spiritual body of Jesus which remained on earth for eighteen months, initiating a small circle of elect disciples. Christ, received into heaven, sits at the right hand of Ialdabaoth, whom he deprives of glory and receives the souls that are his own. In some circles the serpent was identified with Prunikos. There are some resemblances to the Valentinian system, but whereas the great Archon sins in ignorance, Ialdabaoth sins against knowledge; there is also less of Greek philosophy in the Ophite system. See King, The Gnostics and their Remains (London, 1887); G. Salmon, art. "Ophites" in Dict. Chr. Biog. OPHTHALMOLOGY (Gr. ¿øðaλuós, eye), the science of the anatomy, physiology and pathology of the eye (see EYE and VISION). From the same Greek word come numerous other derivatives: e.g. ophthalmia, the general name for conjunctival inflammations (see Eye diseases, under EYE); and the instruments ophthalmometer and ophthalmoscope (see VISION). |