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Scan 207
The story of the violin, 1904
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 167. See the scan on archive.org.
1Violin Art in Italy
3presented to Catherine de Medici, and subsequently appointed, first, as her premier valet-de-chambre, and then primo cavaliero and superintendent of music in Paris. He is considered the founder of the heroic ballet in France.
5By the time Biagio Marini (born at Brescia, second half of sixteenth century, died 1660, at Padua) and, still better known, Carlo Farina (in 1626, violinist to the Elector of Saxony) appear in the annals of musical history the fame of the violin had surely been carried far and wide. Musicians in Italy and elsewhere who hitherto perhaps had cultivated the treble viol, took up instead the new instrument, which offered a much greater scope, and amply repaid the greater labour involved in learning it. Representations of the violin in its perfect Amati and Brescian form in many pictures of the great Dutch painters¹ go far towards proving how widely known and popular the lovely instrument was long before Corelli appeared.
7Towards and after the middle of the seventeenth century, therefore partly contemporaries of Corelli, we find in Italy among other violinists of less renown: Giuseppe Torelli (died 1708), who is said to be the inventor of the concerto; Antonio Veracini, uncle of the celebrated rival of Tartini, and presumably his teacher; Farinelli, uncle of the great singer of the same name, concert-master
9¹ Among others, Gerard Dou's (1613-75) celebrated picture in Dresden, "Der Geigenspieler."
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