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Scan 62
The Story of the Violin, 1914
8 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1First Bowed Instruments in Europe
3membered that some little time must have elapsed between the presumed first introduction of the rebab and the above-mentioned representation given by Martin Gerbert in his De Cantu et Musica. New surroundings, circumstances (other pre-existing forms of instruments), desire for greater practicability, for more graceful form, must wrought changes from the that eventually led to the final which we mostly find the rebec succeeding centuries.1 From that we have any record bèbe or rebec and all through the Middle Ages the bow appears as part and parcel of the instru-
51 As to the one string on Gerbert's rubèbe compared to the two on the ordinary Arabian rebab, it is explainable one way or another. Branzoli in his Manuale Storico del Violinista speaks of a species of Oriental rebab which has only one string; moreover, there is another bowed instrument known in Egypt as Rebab esh-Sha'er (Fig. 5) which has only one string, and is used like a 'cello, with an iron foot stuck in the ground. It is possible that the European cousin-ancestor began with one string, and more were added as circumstances called for them. On representations of rebecks in later centuries we invariably find two, and often three strings.
7FIG. 6.—EARLIEST REPRESENTATION OF A EUROPEAN FIDDLE.
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