Books › The music of the Bible : with an account of the development of modern musical instruments from ancient types, 1879 › scan 83
Scan 83
The music of the Bible : with an account of the development of modern musical instruments from ancient types, 1879
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 73. See the scan on archive.org.
1the theory of a resonance-box was understood, the existence of a lute (6), having a much larger resonance-box than a lyre and a much shorter neck than a nefer, became a mere matter of time. The transition from 6 to 7, that is from a lute to a guitar, is so natural as to call for no remark; the indentations in the sides of the guitar, primarily intended to make it lie comfortably on one leg of the player, seem to have suggested the indentations in the side of the violin family (8), so necessary for the free movement of the bow. In Fig. 9 will be seen an early fiddle, the Asiatic rebab, afterwards the rebec, or three-stringed viol of Europe, in which the absence of deep curved indentations is noticeable; also, the shape of the resonance-box is interesting as suggesting that when strings stretched over a resonance-box were hit with hammers the uselessness of the neck would be apparent; such a box, deprived of its head and tail, would form the body of a dulcimer (Fig. 10). When the hammers of a dulcimer are connected with levers called "keys" we call it a pianoforte.
3It will be well to say at once that the above sketch of the development of musical instruments is not meant to be chronologically true; it is merely intended to illustrate the remarkable co-relation of all string-instruments, ancient and modern. The use of a bow as a means of exciting vibrations of strings is in itself a most interesting fact, and suggests that the rubbing of one simple bow against another may have led to its discovery. Certainly bows are of great antiquity, many savage nations having instruments constructed like a nefer (Fig. 4), but played with a bow. A glance at the Plate will show how important a part of the growth of musical string-instruments is due to the resonance-box. In its early state it was merely formed by stretching a membrane of skin (commonly snake-skin)
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