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Scan 38
The story of the violin, 1904
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Origin of the Violin
3years, to the very morning, one might say, of creation, they reveal a state of civilisation in those most ancient nations simply astonishing, and this fact alone would permit us to draw significant conclusions as to the cultivation of music among them. There is also the unmistakable proof for it in the shape of representations of their musical instruments. We find them in considerable numbers and variety—played by men and women (whole musical parties and processions); single and in groups; crude and developed; and recognising among them plainly the ancestors of many of our own modern instruments, we might not unreasonably look in their company also for some sort of prehistoric fiddle—but in vain. The nearest approach to the form of a violin is an instrument, somewhat resembling a lute, provided with a finger-board and one or two strings. Burney¹ discovered such a one on an obelisk in Rome, and representations of similar ones have since been found in Egypt, dating back to 1500-2000 B.C.; also on Assyrian monuments, where they appear under conditions which make it probable that they were a foreign importation—perhaps from Egypt. But these instruments, though suggestive of the bowed kind, will hardly be taken seriously as belonging to them. Doubtless their strings were twanged like those of the harp, lyre, cithara, etc. If the old Egyptians
5¹ Burney, History of Music, vol. i. p. 204.
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