Scan 39
The Fiddle Fancier's Guide: A Manual of Information Regarding Violins …, 1892
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1presses, and in these are found illustrations of viols of various shapes, until we come to the large work of Athanasius Kircher issued from the Roman press in 1650, and entitled "Musurgia Universalis." The illustrations of viols in this book represent violin form as it is at the present day. In every point, these illustrations conform to our present outline and model. He calls them Chelys major and Chelys minor. They are four-stringed instruments—large and small—having volute and scroll precisely like our present violin. The shaping of the neck and fingerboard is much the same as we have them. The outline of the instruments almost exactly corresponds to that of our violin. The design of the sound holes, and the placing of them are what might well be called identical with our methods. We are only shown the front of the viols, but the shading round the margins, combined with that on the fingerboards, and the evident curve of the bridges, plainly indicate the nature of the arching to be broad and long. Kircher, in describing these instruments, says that the larger one was commonly called violone, and that it had at the utmost four strings. That the stopped portion of the strings was a third part of their whole length, he further adds, with regard to the violone, but, in describing the lesser "Chelys," which he calls a noble instrument, he says that although it has at the most four strings, one can ascend as far as the fourth octave. This implies a much longer fingerboard than is shown in the drawing, which, for the rest, is remarkably accurate in its general features. The only other point in which its absolute faithfulness might be questioned would be the indication of the precise
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