Books › A treatise on the structure and preservation of the violin and all other bow-instruments; together with an account of the most celebrated makers, and of the genuine characteristics of their instruments;, 1860 › scan 50
Scan 50
A treatise on the structure and preservation of the violin and all other bow-instruments; together with an account of the most celebrated makers, and of the genuine characteristics of their instruments;, 1860
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 28. See the scan on archive.org.
1than violins.* In my professional travels, I have had only six violoncellos to repair, and two Cremonese tenors and one of Steiner's, which belonged to the late chapel-master, Herr Stamitz. Of new violins after the Cremonese model, I have made but a few for the chapel at Weimar, and six, together with a tenor and a violoncello, for the Chapel Royal at Copenhagen. I was prevented making more, through the following circumstance: the late Duchess Amelia of Weimar having introduced the guitar into Weimar, in 1788, I was immediately obliged to make copies of this instrument for several of the nobility; and these soon becoming known in Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin, so great a demand arose for them, that, for the space of sixteen years, I had more orders than I could execute.
3I must here take the opportunity to observe that, originally, the guitar had only five strings. The late Herr Naumann, chapel-master at Dresden, ordered the first guitar with the sixth or low E-string, which I at once made for him. Since that time the instrument has always been made with six strings; for which improvement its admirers have to thank Herr Naumann.
5* According to Rochlitz, the older tenors had five strings, the fifth answering to the E-string of our violins. Hence it is that the Germans still call E-strings quints (i.e. fifths), although violins are only mounted with four strings. About the year 1840, Herr Hillmer invented a five-stringed instrument which he called Violalin—a sort of compound of the violin and tenor, from having the addition of the low C-string of the latter. It was intended as well for the performance of violin compositions, as for those written for the tenor (and even for the violoncello, only, in this case, an octave higher). But instead of being an invention, it appears rather, from what is stated above, to have been a return to early usage. Leipzig Allgem. Mus. Zeitung for 1840, p. 245.—Tr.
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