Books › A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments in the South Kensington museum, preceded by an essay on the history of musical instruments, 1874 › scan 279
Scan 279
A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments in the South Kensington museum, preceded by an essay on the history of musical instruments, 1874
14 lines. Read by computer on 14 September 2026. Printed page 259. See the scan on archive.org.
1wire, or of German silver, with which he strikes the melody strings; while the other fingers of his right hand strike the accompaniment strings. There are zithers with more and with fewer strings than the specimen thus described.
3Three kinds of the horizontal zither are at the present day constructed in Germany, the schlagzither, the liederzither, and the streichzither. The last-named is played with a bow; the others are intended for playing tunes, and for accompanying the voice.
5641. '69.
7STREICHZITHER and Bow, in Case. A small instrument, three-stringed, and played with a bow. The body is of rosewood, inlaid with ivory; the strings are of metal. It has three small feet with points of metal, and is placed on a table when it is played. Bavarian (Munich). Modern. By Max Amberger. L. 1 ft. 7 1/2 in., W. 10 1/8 in. (Bought, Paris Exhibition, 1867, 3l. 12s.)
9643. '69.
11VIOLIN. German. Modern. L. 2 ft. (Bought, Paris Exhibition, 1867, 16s.)
13Of the stringed instruments used in our orchestra, the violin is the one which has been longest preserved entirely unaltered. Its name (Italian, violino), a diminutive of viola, suggests that our tenor (viola di braccio) is the older instrument of the two. The viol, in use about three centuries ago, was however somewhat different in shape. As the oldest-known instruments played with a bow, which in European countries preceded the violin, may be mentioned:—The rebec, which, it appears, was first popular in Spain; the crwth of the Welsh; the fidla of the Norwegian, which, in shape somewhat resembled the crwth, and which, with some slight modifications, is still occasionally to be found in Iceland, where it is called langspiel; and the fithele of the Anglo-Saxons, derived originally from Germany. A representation of the Anglo-Saxon fithele, contained in a manuscript of the eleventh century, preserved in the British Museum, exhibits a four-stringed fiddle of a pear shape; or, to speak more exactly, resembling the half of a pear divided longitudinally. A still earlier representation of a fiddle,
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