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Scan 200
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 186. See the scan on archive.org.
1we in France so particularly prize, but it must also be admitted that the French makers gave the finishing touch to the viol when they hit upon the plan of inclining the neck a little backward and lessening the thickness, for by this means the masters who play this instrument perform with much greater ease, and there are no English viols which do not require a French neck to render them suitable for playing." Besides yielding satisfactory evidence of the excellence of the English manufacture of that day, these words indicate that there was an anterior and larger type of old English as well as French viol. The earliest reference which we have as yet relating to the manufacture of the modified English viols places their fabrication in the year 1598, as will be seen later on, these instruments being of the size praised by Rousseau. The large English viols, of which every trace seems to have totally disappeared, would, therefore, be made before 1598, and in this connection it may be interesting to note that in the year 1511 a German writer, named Sebastien Wirdung, published at Basle a work containing what are supposed to be the first faithful representations of the musical instruments then in use. A large viol, figured in this work under the name of Grosze Geigen, reappears in another work published in Wittemburg in 1529, by Martinus Sore (called Agricola), as an illustration of Die grosze Welsche Geigen (large Italian viols). Although these instruments were common in Germany at the time, this writer's correction of Wirdung's nomenclature indicates that in 1529 the large viols had, in Germany, the reputation at least of being of Italian origin, and taking this in conjunction with the viol which the King René,
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