[Sidenote: _The nightingale._]

[Sidenote: _The cat._]

[Sidenote: _The cuckoo._]

The first of these divisions rests upon the employment of the lowest
form of conventional musical idiom. The material which the natural
world provides for imitation by the musician is exceedingly scant.
Unless we descend to mere noise, as in the descriptions of storms and
battles (the shrieking of the wind, the crashing of thunder, and the
roar of artillery--invaluable aids to the cheap descriptive writer),
we have little else than the calls of a few birds. Nearly thirty years
ago Wilhelm Tappert wrote an essay which he called "Zooplastik in
Tönen." He ransacked the musical literature of centuries, but in all
his examples the only animals the voices of which are unmistakable are
four fowls--the cuckoo, quail (that is the German bird, not the
American, which has a different call), the cock, and the hen. He has
many descriptive sounds which suggest other birds and beasts, but only
by association of idea; separated from title or text they suggest
merely what they are--musical phrases. A reiteration of the rhythmical
figure called the "Scotch snap," breaking gradually into a trill, is
the common symbol of the nightingale's song, but it is not a copy of
that song; three or four tones descending chromatically are given as
the cat's mew, but they are made to be such only by placing the
syllables _Mi-au_ (taken from the vocabulary of the German cat) under
them. Instances of this kind might be called characterization, or
description by suggestion, and some of the best composers have made
use of them, as will appear in these pages presently. The list being