Books › The M. Steinert collection of keyed and stringed instruments. With various treatises on the history of these instruments .., 1893 › scan 159
Scan 159
The M. Steinert collection of keyed and stringed instruments. With various treatises on the history of these instruments .., 1893
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 155. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE viol is the typical representative of a very large, varied and widely distributed class of instruments, of which in modern music the violin is the chief member. The viol of the fifteenth century was characterized by a flat back, in having generally crescent-shaped sound-holes in the belly, and a broad, thin neck, forming a close amalgamation of the neck with the body. It had from five to seven strings, tuned in fourths and one-third. The viol was made in several sizes. The smallest, called the treble or discant viol, passed over later into the modern violin; the next larger, the tenor, into the viola da braccio and viola d'amore and the modern viola; the next, bass, into the viola da gamba and the violoncello; and the largest, double-bass, into the violone and the modern double-bass. The viola da braccio, or arm-viol, is so called to distinguish it from the bass viol or viola da gamba, the leg-viola. The viola da braccio had six strings, and was tuned thus: G, D, A, F, C and G (the second below middle C). The viola da gamba had properly six strings, tuned thus: D, A, E, C, G and D. The viola d'amore used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, having usually seven ordinary gut strings with from seven to fourteen supplementary strings of metal under the fingerboard which sound sympathetically. The gut strings were usually tuned thus: D, A, F sharp, D, A, F sharp, D (next below middle C). The sympathetic strings, if few, were tuned diatonically in the scale of D, or if many, chromatically. The viola d'amore was an arm-viola. The viola pomposa, a species of viola da gamba invented by Joh. Seb. Bach, having five strings
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