Books › The Story of the Violin, 1914 › scan 120
Scan 120
The Story of the Violin, 1914
12 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Two Gasparos
3bassi di viola (double-bass viols)—duoi violini piccoli alla Francese (two little violins of the French kind).
5This is one of the first historical records¹ of the word violin, and here it is called French. No French luthier worthy of being thought of as the creator of the violin can be found at that or any preceding period, but the solution lies near when we consider that Duiffoprugcar lived for years in France, and died and was buried there. And had he no pupils?
7Whatever be the pretensions of the less-known elder Gasparo, our gratefulness to the well-known younger one is thereby not diminished. Who knows whether, but for the art of the younger one sympathetically carrying out the message of the elder, that message might not have been lost to the world?
9Unfortunately, Da Salo’s violins have become exceedingly rare, but those still extant, and undoubtedly genuine, are a striking testimony to his noble art. Among them perhaps the finest, at any rate best known, is the violin on which Ole Bull, the famous Norwegian virtuoso, played for many years. His widow recently bequeathed it to her dead husband’s birthplace, Bergen. The general characteristics of Da Salo’s violins are a large pattern, large ff holes, protruding corners, and a dark brown varnish; the tone is large and even. It seems he worked from about 1560 to 1609 or 1610, the time of his death.
11¹ Prior records leave it uncertain whether tenor viols are meant or really our small violin.
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