Books › Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864 › scan 48
Scan 48
Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864
10 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 26. See the scan on archive.org.
1eighth century, and perished in accomplishing his apostolic mission, June 5th, 755. "I rejoice," said he, "to have a citharist who can play on the cithara, which we call rotta*." The rotta, rota, rote, or rothe, then, was a cithara; not the ancient cithara, which was a lyre played while resting it on the upper part of the breast (κιθαρα), but the Teutonic cithara, formed on modifications introduced into the shape of the psalterion and the number of its strings. These modifications consisted in rounding the angles of the delta; from which very circumstance arose its name, rota (instrumentum rotundum—a round instrument). We have no need to make conjectures either on the instrument itself, or on the manner of playing it; for a manuscript of the commencement of the seventh century†, which formerly existed in the library of the Abbey of St. Blaise, contained a figure of a female in the act of pulling the five strings of a Teutonic cithara or rotta, which are fastened to an elongated tail-piece, and rest on a bridge.‡. The Abbot, Martin Gerbert, has published this figure.§ Another rotta, of a similar form to the latter, except the bridge, is mounted with seven strings; it is drawn from another manuscript
3* "Delectat me quoque cytharistam habere, qui possit cytharisare in cithara, quam nos appellamus Rottae (sic)."—Epist. 89, ex edit. Serarii. [This 89th Letter, it seems, was written by St. Cuthbert.—Tr.]
5† Gerbert refers this manuscript to the sixth century, thus: Ex Msc. San-Blas. ann. DC.—Tr.
7‡ M. Fétis appears to have mistaken a portion of the performer's sleeve, shown in perspective, for the "elongated tail-piece" here mentioned.—Tr.
9§ De Cantu et Musica, vol. ii, Tab. xxvi, fig. 3.
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