Books › The Violin and its Music, 1881 › scan 183
Scan 183
The Violin and its Music, 1881
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 159. See the scan on archive.org.
1instruments have come down to us in their original state. Many have been destroyed for the purpose of repairing old Italian Violins, and others have been converted into Violas by reducing their sides and removing their heads, which were made to carry five or even more pegs, but beyond this the head-piece was, in Fiddle physiology, pre-Adamite, and therefore wholly unsuited to pass current with others of a higher development. Returning to the subject of the tablature, the reference on the title-page to the Double Bass is perfectly clear, and I am inclined to believe relates to an instrument larger than the Violone, which name has long been associated with the Double Bass of the Italians. We have ocular proof of the existence at an early period in Italy of Double Basses of two sizes in the instruments themselves, the smaller of which I regard as the Violone of the sixteenth century.
3It is here that our enquiries lead us into a field of Italian Viol history, from which we get more than a glimpse of Italian Viol development. With the opening of the sixteenth century appears to be associated that which, for the want of a better name, I will call the Italian Reformation of bowed instruments. The rapid spread of this reformation speedily caused the crop of incongruities which sprung from the Gothic Viol germ to run to seed in museums like that of Hercules, Duke of Ferrara. That this bowed instrument reformation had its rise in the coming to the States of Venice of the Netherlander
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