Scan 117
Researches into the early history of the violin family, 1883
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 107. See the scan on archive.org.
1single figure supposed to be a Muse, an instrument nearly in the form of a modern violin, but the neck is much longer, and neither bow nor plectrum is discoverable near it." Laborde ("Essai sur la Musique," Vol. i., p. 295, Paris, 1780) gives an illustration of Orpheus playing on a fiddle to the delight of lions and other ferocious animals, and this picture he states to be after an antique sculpture.
3Several other evidences of this kind could be cited, most of which have been proved to be either spurious, or genuine antiquities altered by modern restorers. Nevertheless, some musical historians are inclined to believe that the fidicula was played with a bow. Others conjecture the same of the magadis—probably influenced by the opinion of Giovanni Battista Doni, who, in his musical tracts written about the middle of the seventeenth century, maintains that it resembled the viola-di-bordone, which has drone-strings running at the side of those played with the bow.
5These opinions deserve only a passing notice, since they are not supported by well-ascertained facts. However, as regards stringed instruments provided with a neck, by means of which the player can produce different intervals with his fingers, it hardly admits of a doubt that not only the Romans but also the Greeks and Hebrews possessed such instruments. At any rate, the ancient Egyptians had instruments of the lute kind. One of these occurs represented in hieroglyphic inscriptions, which are stated by our learned Egyptologists to have been written about two thousand years before our Christian era. This points to a very high antiquity of the instrument. Its figure in these writings denotes nofre—i.e., "good" or "pleasant"—which shows that the instrument was held in esteem at a very early period; indeed, it must have been a particular favourite, since it was used to represent that meaning in preference to any other musical instrument.
7Another kind of lute which not unfrequently occurs depicted on the ancient Egyptian monuments has an extraordinarily long neck, and closely resembles the tanbour or tamboura, still in use with the Arab-Egyptians. It would require too much space here to give a detailed description of the
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