Books › The Story of the Violin, 1914 › scan 93
Scan 93
The Story of the Violin, 1914
10 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Story of the Violin
3pageants, corporation banquets, funeral and wedding processions, dances, etc., etc., but they were drawn into the music-making at the churches. Next, they learned the notes—if they had not done so before—to double the voice parts in choral singing. An independent orchestral (instrumental) accompaniment did not yet exist. This practice gave birth to the construction of different-sized viols: the larger ones naturally corresponding to and supporting the bass; the middle-sized ones the tenor, and so forth. In this way, to satisfy a want, whole groups of the same species of instruments were called into existence. There were bass viols, tenor and treble viols, etc., with varying numbers of strings.1
5Moreover, the construction of the large-sized instruments led to the introduction of corner blocks, which mark another important step in advance in instrument-making. They permitted an increase of tension of the resonant box formerly impossible, and thereby a freer transmission of the vibrations of the strings.
7Besides these several groups of instruments in use until well into the sixteenth century, and all going under the name of viol and specified in the works of Agricola2 and Michael Praetorius,3 there were others of special design which in this or that country, for a time at least, enjoyed popularity. In Italy it was the "viola
91 See Appendix. 2 See Appendix. 3 See Appendix.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.