Books › Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864 › scan 63
Scan 63
Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864
11 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 41. See the scan on archive.org.
1is presented to us by Mersenne, in his Harmonie universelle, in 1636*.
3However, if we turn again to Germany, in the first half of the seventeenth century, we there find differences in the viol which deserve to fix our attention for a moment. Michael Praetorius, a great musician, and a composer of rare skill, who also was learned both in the history and in the theory of his art, produced a great treatise on music, the second volume of which is entirely devoted to the instruments of his time and those of former periods†. Now, from this work we learn that the quartett of the viola di gamba (leg viol), as the Germans have called it since that time, or rather the quintett (for there are double bass viols),—from this work, I say, we learn that these instruments had larger proportions, and that they were tuned lower. We learn also that the violetta or soprano [viol], was mounted with three, four, five, or six strings, according to circumstances; that the alto had but three or four strings; the tenor, five or six; the bass, three, four, or six; and the double bass, five or six. In short, we learn that, when these instruments had six strings (with the exception of the alto), their tuning was as follows:
5Tuning of the Violetta. Do. of the Alto. Do. of the Tenor.
7Tuning of the Bass. Do. of the Double Bass.
9* Traité des Instruments à chordes, liv. iv, p. 194.
10† Syntagmatis musici, tomus secundus. De Organographia, p. 25.
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