Bow & Bridge Violin and bow makers, as the old books printed them

Books › The arts and crafts book of the worshipful Guild of violin-makers of Markneukirchen, from the year 1677 to the year 1772, 1894 › scan 41

Scan 41

The arts and crafts book of the worshipful Guild of violin-makers of Markneukirchen, from the year 1677 to the year 1772, 1894

8 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 33. See the scan on archive.org.

1(violin and bass-maker's apprentice, son of the Master Johann Adam Reichel) manufactured in 1771 as his diploma work. This was the first occasion that the making of basses (violoncellos) was recorded in the Register.
3Johann Adam Reichel, who died in the year 1794, aged 80 (probably born about 1714), and who had married the violin-maker, Wolf Ehrhard Lippold's daughter, Eva Sophia, it curtly described as a bass-maker, and this art was carried on by his descendants in both branches, and the Ecclesiastical Registers designate them all as "Bass-makers." It can hardly be inferred, however, that the art of bass-making was more generally spread than this.
5We have Johann Adam Reichel I., a direct descendant of the originator, founder, and head master of the Guild of Violin-makers mentioned in the first half century of the Craft Register; though we regard him as the first who made bass-making his chief study, and at last even his only work, yet there is always a possibility that there may have been isolated cases of other masters of the same family, or relations of the family seeking to rival the Reichels. The stigma of narrow-minded exclusiveness (Guild egotism) does not, as we have seen from many facts recorded above, rest upon the Reichel family. Artistic and technological records point, however, to the fact that bass-making in Markneukirchen was limited to these families.
7The entire 16th century, and also the 17th, was far less favourable to the development of instrumental than to that of vocal music, as Von Wasielewski has observed in his history of instrumental music.

The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.