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 37
Scan 37
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
6 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1cithara, ipsi tympanum, ipsi chorus, ipsi chordae, ipsi organum, ipsi cymbala." John of Salisbury, in the twelfth century, writing on the use of music in churches, says: "Sumite psalmum, date tympanum, psalterium iocundum cum cithara." In an old French Bible of the same date, the third verse of the 149th Psalm is rendered, "Loent-il son noun en crouth, si chantent-il à lui en tympan et psaltruy." Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, says, "Instrumenta musica, sicut citharas et psalteria, non assumit ecclesia in divinas laudes, ne videatur iudaizare."
3Although the rotta, rota, or chrotta, was thus derived, according to Notker, from the psalterion, yet it did not supersede that instrument, but they gradually differed more from each other in shape, and the rote adopted the bow, while the psalterion, about the fifteenth century, was known as the dulcimer. They are frequently mentioned together in old writers, and also in conjunction with the vielle, or viola. The pseudo-Bede mentions together the organum, viola, and cithara, atola, and psalterium; and Constantinus Africanus, in his work "De Morborum Curatione," says that soft music should be played before the invalid, as from the campanula, vitula, rota et similibus; and Sanutus, amongst other sweet music, names "violae, citharae, et rotae."
5Gerson, of a later date (about the fourteenth century), whom we also cite from the valuable work of Gerbert, in reference to the passage in the Psalms, "laudate eum in chordis et organo," says, "Chordae secundum glossas positae sunt pro quibuslibet instrumentis, aliis a psalterio et cithara quae chordis sonat (sic) repercussis, sit viella, sit symphonia, sit lyra, sit rota, sit guiterna," &c.; and in another part he says, "Canticum cum pulsu fit tripli-citer; aut in rotatu, ut in symphonia; aut tractu aut
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