Scan 115
Researches into the early history of the violin family, 1883
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 105. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE FIDDLE.
3The designation "fiddle" is generally explained as having been derived from the Latin fidicula, a stringed instrument mentioned by Cicero, who states ("De Natura Deorum," Book ii.) that it was made of the wood of the plane-tree. Although fiddle may possibly be a derivation from the Latin fides, denoting "string," and also "stringed instrument," and of which fidicula is the diminutive, there can hardly be a doubt that a Roman instrument called fidicula was known to the higher classes of people in central and western Europe long before they applied the bow to its strings.
5As regards the form and construction of the fidicula, the inquirer has to encounter most contradictory statements, which prove, if anything, merely the fact that nothing certain is known about this instrument. Some writers conjecture that it had a neck like the lute, others that it resembled the lyre. Furthermore, according to some historians, the Romans possessed an instrument of torture, constructed with cords, which they called fidicula. Can this be ironically meant for a rude fiddle? The Germans had formerly a contrivance called fiedei, which constituted the first or mildest degree of torture. A string with a noose fastened round the elbow was drawn to and fro.
7Our musical historians, about a century or two ago, were rather inclined to attribute the invention of the violin to the nations of antiquity. Wolfgang Caspar Printz, in his "History of Music" ("Historisch Beschreibung der edelen Sing- und Kling-Kunst," p. 28, Dresden, 1690), gives illustrations of three Hebrew instruments more or less resembling the violin, or rather the mediæval viol—viz., the minnim,
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