Books › The History of the Violin and Other Instruments Played on with the Bow from the Remotest Times to the Present by William Sandys and Andrew Forster, 1864 › scan 35
Scan 35
The History of the Violin and Other Instruments Played on with the Bow from the Remotest Times to the Present by William Sandys and Andrew Forster, 1864
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1sur les Instruments de Musique au Moyen Age," we are much indebted, and with whom M. Bottée de Toulmon agrees in his "Dissertation sur les Instruments de Musique employés au Moyen Age" (Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires de France, vol. xvii. p. 95), considers that the rote was derived from the chrotta or crwth in the following manner:—It was found after a time (and after the introduction of the bow) that the hand was embarrassed in its movements by the shape of the instrument, as the bow must necessarily have struck several strings together. To obtain greater facility, the external parts surrounding the neck, which had been introduced, were removed, and the shape became gradually something like the bass-viol, and played in the same way, between the legs, or on the knee. The rote, then, according to this opinion, was a modification of the original chrotta or rottta, and this does not seem inconsistent with the derivation of the early instrument given by Notker, and Gerbert gives two representations of the cythara Teutonica (Figs. 2 and 3) from MSS. of probably about the eighth century, though he considers one to be older. From the epithet "Teutonica," they were evidently instruments derived from or belonging to the northern countries, and similar to the chrotta Britannica, and not at this time played on with the bow. The word cythara seems to have been used by the early writers as a general expression for many classes of stringed instruments: the cythara Anglica, for instance, was a harp, another example of a northern instrument. Cassiodorus, in the sixth century, includes among stringed instruments, and which he says were struck with a plectrum, "species cithararum diversarum."
3These instruments, including the ancient psalterion, were not viewed by the Churchmen with favour for
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