USEFUL INVENTIONS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XI, 10 March 1894, Page 224

USEFUL INVENTIONS.

For a long time past M. de Vlaminck, a distinguished professor of music, has been endeavouring to perfect an instrument which should combine the sonority and power of expression of the violin with the mathematical precision of the piano. After numerous experiments M. de Vlaminck has at last produced such a combined instrument, and claims for it that it is in every way a completely satisfactory invention. It is an apparatus which can ba applied to stringed instruments, substituting the action of the player’s left hand by mechanism brought into action by touching the keys of a small clavier-de-piano. It is an invention that will probably have its uses, but it will do away with those fine gradations of tone of which the violin is capable in the hands of a master, and so necessarily reduce its power of expression. It should be useful, however, to the student, if not to the finished player.