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Scan 208
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 194. See the scan on archive.org.
1Ferabosco, an eminent English violist and composer for the instrument, who was born at Greenwich, Dr. Rimbault says, of Italian parents, about the year 1580. "He was an intimate friend of Ben Jonson, and composed the music to many of his masques. In 1601 he published two works, 'Ayres,' and a collection of 'Lessons for One, Two and Three Viols.' Ben Jonson wrote some complimentary verses on both occasions." Ferabosco was alive in 1641, when his name occurs in a warrant exempting the king's musicians from the payment of subsidies. Christopher Simpson, author of "The Division Violist," speaks of him as dead before the year 1665. The highest glory of the English viol period thus appears to have been somewhat short-lived, for, if Ferabosco's father introduced the instrument, ten or twelve lustres would probably circumscribe the duration of its sway, as, before the Restoration, it had begun to go out of fashion. In the band of Charles I., in 1625, there were "eleven violins and four viols." Here the distinction is evident and leaves no room for misunderstanding. By this time the violin had asserted itself in some degree, though a slight one. Roger North, writing of this period says: "But in the reigne of King Jac. I., and the paradisicall part of the reign of King Cha: I., many musick masters rose up and flourished. Their works lay most in compositions for violls; but at that time the lute was a monopolist of the ayery kind, and the masters, gentlemen and ladyes, for the most part use it." "The violin was scarce knowne tho' now the principall verb, and if it was anywhere seen, it was in the hands of a country croudero, who for the portability served himself of it." This
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