Books › The story of the violin, 1904 › scan 67
Scan 67
The story of the violin, 1904
9 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Story of the Violin
3Italian; rebec, rebelani, and Geige ohne Bünde¹ (without frets) in German; and rubible, rebec, and also crowd in English. The latter designation suggests rather forcibly the Welsh crwth, an instrument of which I shall speak presently.
5The oldest representation of such a transplanted rebab was extracted by the Abbot Martin Gerbert² from a manuscript dating from the beginning of the ninth century. Comparing it (Fig. 6) with the Arabian prototype (Fig. 3) the family likeness (apart from the bow) is unmistakable, although it is called by Gerbert "lira." At the same time, its form resembles somewhat the ancient chelis (a small variety of the lute), a fact which is not surprising when it is re-
7¹ Geige and gigue mean evidently the same instrument, both words being probably derived from the French gigot=leg of mutton (on account of the similarity of the form). See Ruehlmann: Geschichte der Bogen-instrumente; Brunswick, 1882.
8² De Cantu et Musica Sacra; pub. 1774.
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