Books › Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864 › scan 50
Scan 50
Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864
17 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 28. See the scan on archive.org.
1proves that it was an instrument of the same class. As well might we believe that the harp was like the viol or the hurdy-gurdy, because we find in some old poets passages of the following kind:
3 Harpes sonnent et vielles,
4 Qui font les mélodies belles.
5 (Romance of Renard, of the 13th century.)
7The text of St. Boniface [Cuthbert] is positive: the rote was a cithara, an instrument whose strings were pulled [by the fingers]. We see also, from a work of a Provençal poet of the twelfth century, that the number of its strings might be increased to seventeen:
9 E faits la rota
10 A xvii cordas garnir.
12Nor can I admit the opinion of the erudite M. Georges Kastner, that the name of rote was applied to two instruments of different sorts, one of which was played with the bow, and the other by pulling the strings.* I know not a single text which supports this conjecture.
14Let us now return to consider the influence which the crouth trithant, or three-stringed crouth, has had in the formation of bow-instruments which were in use on the continent of Europe. M. Hersart de La Ville-marqué thought he had traced it in the hands of the Barzou, the mendicant bards of Brittany; for he says: "They accompany themselves with sounds scarcely harmonious, drawn from a musical instrument with three strings, named rebek, which is touched with a bow, and
16* Les Danses des Morts, dissertations et recherches historiques, philosophiques, littéraires et musicales, p. 241.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.