Scan 109
Researches into the early history of the violin family, 1883
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 99. See the scan on archive.org.
1of its having only a single string is no proof of a high age. One-stringed fiddles were still in use in the fourteenth century, to judge from a passage in a musical treatise by Joannes de Muris, quoted by A. W. Ambros ("Geschichte der Musik," Vol. ii., p. 32). In fact, the kleine-geige which Sebastian Virdung, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, describes as having usually three strings, and sometimes only one or two, exhibits all the characteristics of Gerbert's instrument. It has no frets on the fingerboard, and its two soundholes are of a crescent shape, precisely as is the case with that declared to be of the ninth century. The illustration of the kleine-geige which is here given from Martinus Agricola's "Musica Instrumentalis" is almost exactly like the woodcut of the instrument in Sebastian Virdung's "Musica getutscht und ausgezogen" (Basel, 1511). It represents the German geige as it was in popular use during the fifteenth century, and probably at an earlier period.
3It would be interesting, and probably also suggestive, to know exactly the musical intervals in which the strings of these various kinds of fiddles were tuned. In examining the old records about them, the student encounters several difficulties. Not only the order of intervals, or the accordatura, on some of these instruments appears to have been altered in different centuries, but also several nations appear to have had their own peculiar arrangement of intervals. Moreover, it would seem that on some of these instruments the performers not unfrequently followed their own fancy or convenience in tuning the strings to facilitate the execution of some particular composition. In fact, this expedient is still occasionally adopted by violinists. It certainly was resorted to by Johann Sebastian Bach, as may be seen by an examination of his compositions for the violoncello. In
5Fig. 25. — Kleine-Geige, about anno 1500.
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