Books › Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864 › scan 38
Scan 38
Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864
7 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 16. See the scan on archive.org.
1The instrument is known by the opening through which the hand passes for placing the fingers on the strings. Another representation of the crouth trithant is seen among the exterior ornaments of Melross Abbey, in Scotland, which was built at the commencement of the fourteenth century, in the reign of Edward the Second; consequently it was still in use at that period.
3On the 3rd of May, 1770, Daines Barrington, then judge of the counties of Caernarvon and Anglesey, in Wales, read, at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in London, of which he was a member, some remarks on two instruments used in that country—the crouth and the pib-corn; they were published in the third volume of the Archæologia*, with a plate representing the two instruments, on a very large scale, to render the details intelligible. Although a little too summary, the remarks of Daines Barrington are interesting, because he had not only seen the instruments of which he speaks, but had also heard the crouth played by John Morgan, who was born in the Isle of Anglesey, in 1711, and was then 59 years of age, and who appeared to be the last bard capable of playing this instrument, which had become excessively rare. The figure of the crouth given by Daines Barrington was drawn from the instrument itself. Bottée de Toulmont has had a bad copy made of it, for his Dissertation on the Musical Instruments used in the Middle Ages†, which gives false ideas of the construction
5* Archæologia, or Miscellaneous tracts relating to Antiquity; published by the Society of Antiquaries, of London. Vol. iii, p. 32. 1775.
6† Dissertation sur les instruments de musique employés au moyen âge, in vol. xvii of the Mémoires de la Société royale des Antiquaires de France.
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