Books › The Story of the Violin, 1914 › scan 65
Scan 65
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.
1Story of the Violin
3four strings played with the bow, while two others, lying lower beside the bridge, were twanged with the thumb of the left hand. For details of Carl Engel's argument in support of his opinion, we refer the reader to that author's admirable treatise on the crûth.1 The perusal hardly leaves room for any other than the author's conviction, and seems almost the last word that can possibly be said on the subject—be this in relation to the structural peculiarities of the instrument, which point unmistakably to the lyre; or the origin of the word crûth;2 or the established fact that the Anglo-Saxons (Fig. 7) were acquainted with and left records of the fiddle (rebec or crowd) long before the Welsh bards. Nevertheless, there is this verse by Fortunatus. Its significance cannot be denied. And there is also that well-known illustration of a three-stringed instrument—evidently a crûth—taken from a manuscript which formerly belonged to the Abbey St. Martial de Limoge (now in the Paris National Library), and dating from the eleventh century
51 Carl Engel: Researches into the Early History of the Violin Family, chap. ii.
62 Interesting is Fétis's opinion; see this author's Stradivari.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.