Scan 263
A dictionary of old English music & musical instruments 1923, 1923
4 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. Printed page 233. See the scan on archive.org.
1the fact is especially noted as something unusual. On March 14, 1637/8 a "Treble Violin bought… for his Majesty's service" was paid for with the sum of twelve pounds (Lord Chamberlain's Records of that date), and on January 31 of the same year a similar amount was paid for "a Cremona Violin to play to the Organ." Here, clearly, treble viols are not meant, and this reference is probably the first in which the celebrated products of Cremona are mentioned. These entries occur more than eight decades later than the first mention of "Violins" in the State Papers. Had violins been used in England for so long a time, we should certainly not have had to wait until the mid-Stuart period for famous English performers on it to appear; especially when we remember the state of technical excellence shown by the native violists. How can the fact be explained away that we have to wait until Playford's Introduction to the Skill of Musick appeared before we find a picture of the true violin? The confusion, I suggest, was caused by the musicians of Tudor England modifying the Italian diminutive Violino for the purpose of naming the "small viol." The Italians themselves used the word Violino when referring to true Viols. An Italian chap-book of c. 1550 has on its title-page a picture of an old viol and the name La Violina, etc. The circumstance that the early players on the Viols at the court of Henry VIII were Italians, would help to explain the use of the Italian term. Furthermore, before the Restoration the violin was considered to be a far more inferior instrument, socially, than the Viol. Anthony Wood tells us that the gentlemen who attended music parties played on Viols, "for they esteemed a violin to be an instrument only belonging to a common fiddler, and could not endure that it should come among them, for feare of making their meetings to be vaine and fiddling." This being so, would so artistic a pair of sovereigns as Henry VIII and Elizabeth have employed them in their bands? It was necessary for a Charles II with his French tastes to make this innovation, and his imitation of the French king's band of violins was really the first sanction given the newer instrument. And even then many of the more orthodox among the older musicians complained bitterly at the change.
3To return to the history of the Viols. The succession of the house of Stuart marked the beginning of the greatest period
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