Books › The Belle Skinner collection of old musical instruments, Holyoke, Massachusetts, 1933 › scan 136
Scan 136
The Belle Skinner collection of old musical instruments, Holyoke, Massachusetts, 1933
25 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. Printed page 118. See the scan on archive.org.
1No. 48
3SORDINO OR POCHETTE
5ITALIAN
61690
8STRADIVARIUS
10In his Dictionary of Old English Music, Jeffrey Pulver writes that one cannot be sure when the terms, Poche, Pochette, Kit and Quart-Geige were synonymous and when not. In The Nature of the Four Elements, by John Rastell (circa 1520), occur these lines:
12"This daunce wold do mych better yet
13yf we had a kyt or taberet,
14But alas ther is none here."
16showing that the term "Kit" was used at this early date.
18In the Fourth Song of Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion (1622) there is a valuable and detailed account of the musical instruments used in England at that period, with these lines:
20"Some that delight to touch the sterner wiry Chord,
21The Cythron, the Pandore, and the Theorbo strike:
22The Gittern and the Kit the wandring Fiddlers like, . . ."
24This would show that "Kit" might be the name used for the small instrument described here. Gerald Hayes writes, in his Musical Instruments, 1500-1750 (II, p. 212), "There remains only the tiniest of all violins, the dancing-master's kit, which was but a changed form of a much older instrument bearing the same name. The original kit was like a little rebec, with a body greatly elongated in proportion to its breadth, until the late seventeenth century, when the form of the diminutive violin was adopted. The former type was known as the poche or pochette." . . . In Germany the name Taschengeige was used. Hipkins in Musical Instruments (Plate XXXIII) agrees that the Sordino or Pochette was a descendant of the mediaeval rebec, distinguished
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.