Books › Grove's dictionary of music and musicians;, 1904 › scan 332
Scan 332
Grove's dictionary of music and musicians;, 1904
17 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN FAMILY
3who only slowly relinquished them. The pure school of concerted viol-playing seems to have held its ground longest in England: the 'Fantasies' of Gibbons,1 and those of many other composers, which repose in manuscript in the libraries, sufficiently indicate the extent to which the art was cultivated. In performance, the parts were usually doubled, i.e. there were six players, two to each part, who all played in the fortés: the piano passages were played by three only. To accompany voices, theorboes were added in the bass, and violins in the treble; but the English violists of the 17th century long regarded the instruments of the Violin family proper, and especially the Violoncello, as unwelcome intruders. Their comparatively harsh tone offended their ear by destroying the delicate balance of the viol concert: Mace refers to 'the scolding violin,' and complains that it out-tops everything.2 When the 'sharp violin,' as Dryden calls it, was making its way into music in England, it had already been nearly a century in use on the continent. The model had been developed in Italy: the treble violin had first come into general use in France. [See the article VIOLONCELLO.]
5Of the viol family the most important seems originally to have been the Tenor. This agrees with the general plan of mediæval music, in which the tenor sustains the cantus or melody, the trebles and basses being merely accompaniments. The violin apparently originated in the desire to produce a more manageable and powerful instrument for the leading part. The Geige and Rebec were yet in use: perhaps the contrast between their harsher tone and the softness of the discant viol may have suggested the construction of a viol with a convex back modelled like the belly. But the extreme un-handiness of the tenor viol is probably the true key to the change. It was impossible to play artistically when supported on the knee, and too large to be held under the chin. At first, it would appear that violin-makers made it handier in the latter respect by cutting away the bottom, exactly as the top was sloped away to the neck; and viols thus sloped at the bottom are still extant. The more effective expedient of assimilating the back to the belly not only reduced the depth at the edges but rendered it easier to retain in position. The first instrument to which we find the name Violino applied was the tenor, and the common violin, as a diminutive of this, was the 'Violino piccolo.' [See VIOLA.]
7However the idea of assimilating the model of the back to that of the belly may have originated, it must have been quickly discovered that its effect was to double the tone. The result of making the instrument with a back correlative to the belly, and connected with the latter by the sides and sound-post, was to produce a repetition of the vibrations in the back, partly by transmission through the ribs, blocks, and sound-post, but probably in a greater degree by the concussion of the air enclosed in the instrument. The force which on the viol produced the higher and dissonant harmonics expended itself in the violin in reproducing the lower and consonant harmonics by means of the back. [See HARMONICS.]
9It may properly be mentioned in this place that the late Mr. E. J. Payne, to whom we primarily owe this article, was probably the greatest authority upon the Viols that musical history has known. He was not only a student of the subject but an accomplished performer upon the instruments themselves. [See PAYNE.]
11The invention of the Violin is commonly assigned to Gaspar Duiffoprugcar or TIEFFENBRÜCKER of Bologna, and is placed early in the 16th century: and it has been stated that there still exist three genuine violins of Duiffoprugcar's work, dated before 1520.3 The name is obviously a corruption. There existed in the 16th century in Italy several lute-makers of the Tyrolese name Tieffenbrücker;4 and as some of them lived into the following century it is possible that they may have made violins. But the authenticity of any date in a violin before 1520 is questionable. No instrument of the violin pattern that can be fairly assigned to a date earlier than the middle of the 16th century is in existence, and it is scarcely credible that the violin could have been common between 1511 and 1519, seeing that we find no mention of it in contemporary musical handbooks which minutely describe the stringed instruments of the period. In default of any better evidence, the writer agrees with Mr. Charles Reade (quoted in Mr. Hart's book, The Violin, p. 68) that no true violin was made anterior to the second half of the 16th century, the period of Gasparo da Salo and Andreas Amati. The mystery that from the earliest days of Musical Historiography surrounded the personality of Gasparo da Salo has been largely dissipated by the recent researches instituted by the Messrs. Hill of New Bond Street. Some of these have been prematurely published by their agent Signor Livi in a pamphlet entitled I liutai Bresciani (Milan, 1896), but their work on the subject is now in course of completion, and will shortly be published. The earliest date in any instrument of the violin pattern which the writer has seen, is in a tenor by Peregrino Zanetto (the younger) of Brescia, 1580. It is, however, certain that tenors and violins were common about this time, and they were chiefly made in the large towns of Lombardy,
131 Edited by Rimbault for the Musical Antiquarian Society. The Preface is full of interesting information as to viol music.
142 Musick's Monument, p. 233.
153 Wasielewski, Die Violine im xvii. Jahrhundert, p. 3. The dates are given as 1511, 1517, and 1519.
164 Besides Gaspar we hear of Magnus, Wendelin, Leonhard, Leopold and Uldrich Tieffenbrücker. Magnus was a lute-maker at Venice, 1607. Wasielewski, Geschichte, etc., p. 31,
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.