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An Encyclopedia of the Violin, 1925
13 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE VIOLIN
3CHAPTER I
4THE ORIGIN OF THE VIOLIN
6The origin of all stringed instruments is lost in the mists of time, and despite the most patient and laborious research on the part of famous savants, no positive information has as yet been furnished regarding this point. Knowledge of the subject is more or less conjectural, and all that has been definitely established is the existence of the predecessors of the violin—the English crewth, the rebec, the viol da Gamba, the Arabian rebab, the vielle played with the bow, the organistrum, and the vielle or chyphonie (Plates 2 and 3). Nor have I been able to discover, in spite of all my investigations, an exact definition of these two last-mentioned instruments. In his admirable work on stringed instruments, Antoine Vidal expresses himself as follows with regard to the origin of the violin and its development to the present form:
8"I shall say nothing anent the vielle (Plate 3), played with a bow, of the Middle Ages, nor of the viols of the Renaissance, a family whose numerous and diversified members almost exclusively supplied the instrumental music heard up to the middle of the seventeenth century; special works have been devoted to these purely historical subjects, to which the more restricted scope of my own book compels me to refer the reader.
10"Nevertheless, there is one instrument played with the bow which is no longer known in our day, and which is often designated as the three-stringed violin. I feel that I should give some account of this instrument, in order to establish its nature and restore its true character. It is the rebec, shaped like an elongated pear, often met with in old medieval sculpture, and in the miniatures which embellish the manuscripts of the Middle Ages.
12"The rebec (Plate 3) is an instrument which has in common with the violin no more than its bow and its three strings tuned in fifths: G, D and A. In other respects, such as form and character, the two are altogether different, the rebec having no ribs, a convex back, and an absolutely flat sound board. Its origin is very ancient, and it probably came from the Orient. The rebab (Plate 2) introduced by the Moors of Spain after the conquest, toward the beginning of the eighth century, is nothing more than a rebec. The word rebec
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