Scan 110
Researches into the early history of the violin family, 1883
14 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 100. See the scan on archive.org.
1the present century, Paganini especially is said to have sometimes adopted an extraordinary accordatura on the violin. In short, it may be surmised that in mediæval time, when our stringed instruments played with a bow were still in the stage of infancy, an arbitrary arrangement of the intervals produced by the open strings was not uncommon; howbeit, there appear to have been certain rules for observance which are worthy of scrutiny.
3I purposely did not touch upon this subject until now, because the notations illustrating it are more interesting if placed together as much as possible, and this could not be done before some account of the geige had been given. Let us now for a moment return to the primitive geige called rebec.
5In a treatise written by Hieronymus de Moravia, in the thirteenth century, the manuscript of which is in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, a two-stringed rubeba (rebab, rebec) is described as being ordinarily tuned in the interval of a fifth:—
7The compass of the obtainable tones on this rubeba extended above an octave, thus:—
9We have seen already that the rebec was made of various sizes; indeed, some of the names applied to it, which have previously been noticed, suggest a diminutive specimen. It may therefore be surmised that the pitch of sound was in some rebecs higher than it is indicated in the above notation.
11The two-stringed rebab still in use in the Barbary States, especially in Algiers and Tunis (see the engraving, Fig. 19, on page 84) has very thick catgut strings, which are tuned in the interval of a fifth, thus:—
13As regards the three-stringed rebec, I doubt whether the tuning in two fifths, as given by Fétis, in his "Histoire Générale de la Musique," thus—
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.