Books › The instruments of the modern orchestra & early records of the precursors of the violin family : with over 500 illustrations and plates, 1910 › scan 13
Scan 13
The instruments of the modern orchestra & early records of the precursors of the violin family : with over 500 illustrations and plates, 1910
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1ments such as rebecks, guitar-fiddles, vielles and viols. The tone was, in the main, the result of certain structural features of the soundchest, i.e., a back and soundboard flat or delicately arched, joined by sides or ribs of equal width, and soundholes placed on each side of the strings; as opposed to the vaulted back to which was glued, without the intermediary of ribs, a flat soundboard, forming the pear- or boat-shaped sound-chest common to instruments of the rebec or lute tribe. These two types of sound-chest were already present respectively in the ancient Greek kithara and in the lyre of Hermes (chelys or testudo) and it is the Greek kithara which, according to my opinion, is the ancestor of the violin. In support of this theory I rely on the authority of a unique MS., the "Utrecht Psalter," in which each psalm is illustrated by a clever drawing in pen and bistre ink. In this MS. the evolution of the instruments of the violin type from the kithara by the addition of a neck is unmistakably shown in the illustrations to certain psalms in which the cithara is mentioned; these instruments have not yet been traced in any European illuminated MSS. There would, therefore, be a gap between the rottà (or cithara in transition) and the guitar, were it not for the drawings of the Utrecht Psalter. A consensus of expert opinions summarised in Chapter VIII. agrees that the originals from which the artist drew his inspiration came from Syria or the Christian East, this particular MS. being executed at Rheims. These opinions are strengthened by my contribution from the domain of musical archæology. I have shown (p. 362 sqq.) that the drawings were designed originally to illustrate a Greek or Syriac version of the Psalms, whereas the Gallic version of St. Jerome was used in the Utrecht Psalter.
3The guitar-fiddle or bowed guitar, which, in its perfected form, was known in Italy as the lyra, was the immediate precursor of the violin. Philological evidence provides the last link and shows that the words violin and guitar are derived from
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