📜 Bloomfield, Daniel. 1910. Games and puzzles for the musical: a collection of the best games, puzzles, etc., for musical clubs and the home. Philadelphia: Theodore Presser. https://archive.org/details/gamespuzzlesform00bloo/page/n3
The book consists of 51 items in the Games chapter and 26 under Puzzles, Charades, and other titles. The activities are described both for the purpose of education as well as entertainment (in the context of social meetings of that time), and the exact target audience seems to be mixed up from time to time as the book is a compilation of texts that appeared earlier in The Etude magazine.
Both the intended challenges and educational effects often revolve around the history of music. Unsurprisingly, the expected familiarity with biographies of classical composers is above the modern average. Most of the games don't involve music performance, sometimes their connection to music is nominal, like a game of "Professor's Piano", where you alphabetically find adjectives about the instrument… Other wordplays come up often as well as other old-school parlour mechanics like leaving the room, blind-folding, or paying forfeits. Puzzles, as usual, are one-time-only, like finding a musical proverb.
Games with music-making
| title | page | description |
|---|---|---|
| Game in Ear-training | 11 | (see an example below) |
| Musical Potpourri | 12 | Chaining compositions for others to guess |
| Magic Music | 14 | Volume as a guiding dimension, see below |
| Humming Birds | 21 | Everyone hums a song one by one while the rest tries to guess it |
| Table Tapping | 24 | tapping on a table, nothing more actually, but described in detail … |
| Captured Composers | 26 | Guess a played piece and grab a picture of a composer |
| Silent Music | 40 | Omit syllables together when singing a song |
| A Musical Pastime | 42 | Staves layered on the floor to play with, "aire" performed as a variant |
| A Musical Story Game | 45 | For recognizing the played tune (again…) |
| Improvisatore | 63 | Improvise and point to a person who takes over the improvisation |
| Who is the Singer? | 68 | Singing with disguised voices and guessing the performers |
| A Home-made Musical Instrument | 69 | Glassware tuned with water |
Forfeits that involve performing music
17. Laugh first, sing next, then cry and lastly whistle.
18. [Imitate your favorite instrument]
23. Imitate a donkey as best you can
26. Perform a laughing scale, without a pause or mistake. [plus the diagram of ascending and descending "ha"s]
27. Act the musical duck. The player must sing a tune correctly, using only the words, "quack, quack."
Please note: The broad understanding of "music" used in the title of this section is an anachronicism and the forfeits were without a doubt not intended as an occasion for musical performance.
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