Scan 124
Researches into the early history of the violin family, 1883
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 114. See the scan on archive.org.
1the instrument. The circumstance of the player supporting the instrument, by having placed her left hand below it, rendered it almost impossible to use her right hand for pressing the strings down, since she required her right hand for twanging the strings. However, in the present sculpture we have two musicians and only one instrument. From the manner of touching the strings in which the girl is depicted who does not carry the instrument, it may perhaps be surmised that she is engaged in producing different musical intervals like a lutenest or a player on the guitar.
3Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that the Romans on a few of their instruments employed this method for obtaining a series of tones on a single string. They had, for instance, a monochord which was thus constructed. Likewise, the pandura appears to have had a sort of fingerboard. Probably the pandura had also the lute-like shape of the present instrument; but it is recorded to have been mounted with only three strings.
5The fidicula is supposed to have been sounded by means of a plectrum, or by being struck with rods. The plane-tree wood, of which it was made (platanus), appears to have been the same wood of which the violin is made, excepting, of course, the belly, which is of pine. The Germans call the plane-tree morgenländischer ahorn—i.e., "oriental maple." From the German word ahorn is probably derived the term "air-wood" (often corrupted into "hair-wood") of the English violin-makers. Thomas Mace ("Musick's Monument," p. 49, London, 1676) says, respecting the lute: "The air-wood is absolutely the best; and next to that our English maple."
7If the designation fidicula was really applied to a lute-like stringed instrument, of which we possess no further historical record than the allusion to it by Cicero, this may more likely be the instrument than any other known to us. The circumstance of its being depicted as twanged with the fingers instead of a plectrum does not materially affect this hypothesis, since also the testudo was played in either way.
9But, it may be asked, what evidences are there in support of the opinion just expressed that, before the Arabs introduced into Western Europe the lute, guitar, and rebec, some
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