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Scan 199
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 185. See the scan on archive.org.
1mechanical for natural means, and it appears to me that this organistrum might, at the time of its fabrication, be considered an improvement on the probably unequal quality of the sounds then produced by the bow in human hands, and might also be thought to give greater liberty to the performer. In the next century it, in fact, created a division of labour, employing two musicians, one to turn the handle and the other to stop the strings. But, as in many humbler and—if it is not heterodox to say so—some greater arts, the work of human hands has triumphantly established its superiority over that of machines, so the violin bow has maintained its supremacy, while the genius of the inventor of the organistrum has come down to us in the form of the French fiddle. In this view, the crwth may not unfairly be considered as the stock from which the viols sprang, but it seems impossible to hazard even a conjecture as to the period at which they were introduced to this country. In Italy, Germany, and France, from whatever earlier instrument it was derived, the viol appears to have been in vogue in various shapes from the twelfth or thirteenth century, and it seems only certain that at the time when Thomas Mace wrote his "Musik's Monument" instruments of this class had been in use for a very inconsiderable time, and that those of English manufacture had attained a very high reputation, not only at home, but also on the Continent, for, in the "Traité de la Viole," by Jean Rousseau, published in Paris, 1687, this is placed beyond doubt. This writer says, "It is true that the English reduced their viols to a suitable size before the French, as may be easily judged by the old English viols which
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