Books › the history of the violin, 1864 › scan 174
Scan 174
the history of the violin, 1864
6 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 152. See the scan on archive.org.
1twenty-four violins." On 8th May following he refers to a circumstance which sometimes occurs in the present day, of a country fiddler having been a person who had seen better days. His uncle had written him to beg an old fiddle for Perkin the miller, whose mill the wind had broken down, and he had nothing to live by but fiddling; he wanted it by Whitsuntide to play to the country girls. Pepys adds that he intended to send him one on the morrow. On the 5th Oct. 1664, he describes an instrument called the arched viall, tuned with lute strings, and played on with keys like an organ, a piece of parchment being always kept moving; the strings being pressed down by the keys, were thus scraped as by a bow; and it was intended to represent several viols played on with one bow, "but so basely and harshly that it will never do." After three hours' stay it could not be fixed in tune. Several instruments on this principle have from time to time been invented, but have not been brought into use.
3In July, 1666, he heard one of Lord Lauderdale's servants play some Scotch tunes on the violin, which he did not appreciate, or the selection was bad, or our best Scotch tunes are of more recent date, as no doubt many are. The performer played "several and the best of their country, as they seem to esteem them by their praising and admiring them: but, Lord! the strangest ayre that ever I heard in my life, and all of one cast." He mentions 8th October, 1667, the death of Saunders by the plague at Cambridge, "the only viollin in my time."
5The greatest performer of the time, however, and one who seems to have been in advance of his age, was Thomas Baltzar, born at Lubeck about 1630. He came over to England in 1655, and is said to have been the
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