Books › Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864 › scan 62
Scan 62
Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864
12 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 40. See the scan on archive.org.
1with this difference, however, that the bass was mounted with six strings. They were tuned as follows:
3Tuning of the Treble. Do. of the Alto and Tenor. Do. of the Bass.
5But even at the time when bow-instruments of the viol species were classed, strung, and tuned, in Germany, in the manner described above, the viols of Italy presented remarkable differences, as we see in the valuable book of Ganassi del Fontego, on the art of playing these instruments. The Italian viols were mounted with six strings; they had seven frets on the finger-board, by means of which the neck of each viol was divided into a chromatic scale of two octaves and a half. Their tunings were as follow:
7Tuning of the Violetta or Treble Viol. Do. of the Alto and Tenor. Do. of the Bass.
9Sometimes the alto differed from the tenor, in that it was tuned a fifth above the bass. We must remark that this mode of tuning bow-instruments by two fourths in descending, followed by a third, and this again by two fourths, is precisely that of the lute and its varieties. It is evident that from that period—namely, from the first half of the sixteenth century—the art adapted itself to a regular system. We find the same tuning in 1601, in the musical treatise by Cerreto*; and still the same
11* Della Prattica musica vocale et strumentale, lib. iv, p. 331.
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