Books › The Story of the Violin, 1914 › scan 33
Scan 33
The Story of the Violin, 1914
7 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1and Assyrians had intended to represent a bow instrument they would hardly have left out its most essential characteristic—the bow.
3Turning last to the Old Testament, it would appear from certain passages in Daniel, where the designation "viol" occurs in connection with other instruments, that the Hebrews at those times—viz., during and after the Babylonian captivity—were familiar with some kind of instrument resembling the viol of our forefathers (the immediate predecessor of the violin, as we shall see). But although this is by no means impossible, there is nothing in the original text to warrant the belief that the inspired scribes meant really an instrument played with a bow. It is more probable that the name of "viol" was applied by the translators to an instrument shaped somewhat like those mentioned above, the strings of which were twanged.
5A Misleading Translation
6Luther's version of the passage in Genesis iv. 21: "Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ" (probably pandean pipes); he translated the Hebrew text into German as: "Jubal von dem sind hergekommen die Geiger and Pfeifer," meaning literally in English: "Jubal, from whom have come the fiddlers and pipers." Taken unconditionally and verbally, this passage should have long satisfied the German musical historians as to the origin of the violin. Doubtless the great Reformer—himself an enthusiastic
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