Musical Instruments [1876] — Context and Discussion

Voice and the Curator's Distance

Engel's narrative voice is that of a collector who has handled the objects he describes. He refers to specimens in the British Museum and South Kensington with possessive familiarity: 'The specimen which we engrave (p. 64) is ornamented with some simple designs in black.' The first-person plural 'we' includes the reader in the act of looking at woodcuts. Yet Engel also steps back to let other voices speak. He quotes Ovalle's description of war flutes without softening the horror: 'They make them likewise of bones of animals; but the warriors dance only to the flutes made of their enemies.' The shift from his own measured prose to Ovalle's direct speech creates a jarring change in pace—a technique Engel uses repeatedly to break the catalogue's monotony.

Structural Pacing: From Catalog to Anecdote

The book's structure alternates between dense lists of instruments and sudden narrative expansions. A typical passage begins with a classification—'The Mexicans and Peruvians obviously possessed a great variety of pipes and flutes'—then narrows to a single object: the chayna, described as 'a flute whose lugubrious and melancholy tones filled the heart with indescribable sadness.' Engel does not verify this claim; he simply reports it from a source. The pace quickens when he introduces human actions: the Araucanians 'thundered out their dreadful war-songs, accompanied by the mournful sounds of these horrid instruments.' The adjectives 'dreadful' and 'horrid' are rare in Engel's usual tone, marking moments where the curator's detachment gives way to moral reaction. These shifts in register are the book's most distinctive feature.

Recurring Details: Bone, Resin, and the Cross

Certain material details recur across Engel's descriptions, linking otherwise unrelated instruments. The Peruvian bone flute contains 'some remains of a hardened paste, or resinous substance' used to narrow the tube—a technique still used by Guiana Indians. The same practical concern appears in the huayra-puhura, a panpipe whose reeds are 'tied together in two rows by means of thread.' Engel notes that one set of pipes is closed at the bottom, producing octaves, and adds: 'The reader is probably aware that the closing of a pipe at the end raises its pitch an octave.' This pedagogical aside is typical of Engel's method: he explains acoustics while describing ornamentation, such as the Maltese crosses on a stone huayra-puhura. The cross, he cautions, 'is a figure which may readily be supposed to suggest itself very naturally'—a quiet correction to readers who might see Christian influence where none exists.

Engel's handbook rewards readers who attend to its shifts in pace and voice. The woodcuts—numbered and keyed to the text—anchor the descriptions, but the real interest lies in how Engel moves between object and story. A bone flute is never just a bone flute; it carries the resin of Guiana, the war-songs of Araucanians, and the Victorian curator's effort to hold it all in a single sentence. Reading for these transitions reveals the book's quiet argument: that musical instruments are never merely technical artifacts.

I remember my grandfather’s worn hymnbook, its pages soft with use, each tune a small vessel for something larger. That same sensation returns here, reading Engel’s careful cataloguing of bone flutes and organs. It’s the tenderness of preservation, the hope that sound might outlast its makers. Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early America Two Hundred and Fifty Tunes and Texts, with an Introduction and Notes — Text and Context holds that same quiet reverence for voices now gone.