Scan 112
Researches into the early history of the violin family, 1883
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 102. See the scan on archive.org.
1Respecting the compass of tones obtainable on the instruments popular in the later centuries of the middle ages, some of the recorded statements which at a first glance appear to be in contradiction with known facts, are explicable if we bear in mind that most of the stringed and wind instruments of that period were made of three or four sizes, in order to render their pitch of sound in conformity with the different human voices. In fact, this contrivance has remained in practice until the present day, although during the last two centuries instrumental music has to a great extent, so to say, emancipated itself from vocal music, and has become an important branch of the art, claiming an independence which during the middle ages it can hardly be said to have possessed.
3Although the descriptions of the kleine-geige and of the grosse-geige given by Martinus Agricola, in his "Musica Instrumentalis," date only from the year 1529, there is reason to surmise that the accordaturas given by him are the same which were in use during the later centuries of the middle ages; at all events, no earlier ones have been transmitted to us which can be accepted with equal confidence. Agricola describes the kleine-geige as being tuned in fourths or in fifths. No doubt the former accordatura was the older of the two. The instrument was made of three different sizes: the smallest being called diskant-geige; the next in size, alt-geige, or tenor-geige; and the largest, bass-geige. Likewise the grosse-geige (Fig. 26) was usually made of three sizes; occasionally of four. Agricola calls this instrument also welsche-geige, a designation which indicates that it was supposed to have been obtained from Italy. It was, in fact, the mediaeval viol. It had frets on the fingerboard; but instead of being mounted with nine strings, it usually had only five strings, except the largest kind of the grosse-geige, used for the bass, which had six strings. The accordatura was in fourths, with the interposition of a major third, much in the same way as that of the lute, which is also still retained on the guitar. Moreover, both the grosse-geige and the kleine-geige were not unfrequently constructed with four strings.
5Fétis, in his "Histoire Générale de la Musique," Vol. v.,
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