Books › Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883 › scan 17
Scan 17
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 3. See the scan on archive.org.
1subject is a man seated, reading a volume to two youths, who, leaning on knotted sticks, are listening attentively. On a little table or box in front of the principal figure is inscribed the name Chironeis. On each side of the reader is an object which authorities in these matters term thecae, indicating the profession of this principal figure. One of these has a neck or handle, an oval disc or sounding plane, and a tail piece extending below this disc rather more than half the length of the neck. From the upper extremity of the neck to the lower extremity of the disc strings are stretched, and across these strings, at the centre of the disc, is placed a bow of as rational construction as anything that has come down to us prior to the days of Corelli. The instrument is, indeed, almost identical in shape with some forms of the Ravanastron, the oriental precursor of the occidental fiddle. An illustration of a portion of this vase will be found at the end of the chapter on Bows. The other object is exactly of the form of one of those boat-shaped lutes, with long necks or handles, which are still made at the present day. It is adorned with a kind of tassels, just as they are nowadays sometimes decorated with ribbons. The bow above mentioned is placed so close to the instrument that it appears to have no hair, and it might, on that account, be claimed as a species of plectrum; but when we remember that Paganini is reported to have played divinely on his violin with a slender rush, in a contest which he had with a vain young man in Italy, we need be at no loss to suppose that the ancients may have excited the vibration of their strings by a similar contact before hair came to be used. Chironeis, the name written on the square box, was that
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