Books › Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883 › scan 105
Scan 105
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 91. See the scan on archive.org.
1tained. This Lucas Maler, according to the South Kensington Catalogue, compiled by the learned Carl Engel, was a German who lived in Bologna in 1415, and is called by the same distinguished authority the Amati of lutes. The third of these three lutes displays, in similar characters, the name of 'Marx Unverdorben a Venetia.' He also, therefore, is a German, although the above catalogue does not mention this. The workmanship of this lute is not less fine, nor less elegant, and according to all appearances, not later than that of the other two. Having regard to the affinity of the two industries, it certainly is not hazarding too much to attribute to the Germans at least as great merit in the manufacture of violins—which then began to appear—as they had already gained in the construction of lutes. To this conclusion it may be opposed that the violin was not developed from lutes, but from the oriental rebec, which arrived in Europe, probably, with the ancient Indo-Germanic immigration." This objection, the Doctor says, is true, but it does not prove that the manufacture of violas and violins was not the work of the lute makers. The two instruments have so much in common that their construction by the same hands is not at all unlikely. In reality, the Italian makers did not add to their names that of their special trade, and it is a well-known fact that many of the most renowned of them, such as Gasparo da Salò and Stradivari, and, of even earlier date, Dardelli and Duiffoprugcar, made lutes and other instruments besides those played with a bow. There was, indeed, an instrument—the bow lyre—which may have served as the connecting link between the two. In Germany the manufacture of lutes and violins
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