Books › The violin and its music, 1881 › scan 37
Scan 37
The violin and its music, 1881
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 15. See the scan on archive.org.
1superiority turns wholly on shape and form, and there is no question but the Mastersingers' Viol of Durer's time was more highly developed than either that of Italy or France at the same period; and being so we have every reason to assume that Germany possessed Viol writings earlier than those nations, but that accident has deprived us of them.
3According to Hawkins, the earliest intimation of instrumental music in parts, is contained in a book written by a Spanish Dominican in 1570, named Thomas à Sancta Maria, the title of which is "Arte de tanner fantasia para tecla, viguela y tode instru-mendo de tres o quatre ordenes."
5Later research has brought to light a German work dated half a century earlier. Schmid, in his work on Petrucci, describes this curious book as written by Hans Judenkünig, of Vienna, and published there in 1523 by Hans Syngriner: the text is in German and Latin, the music consisting of little symphonies, songs, and dances, with tablature for Lute and Violin (Geygen) in separate parts. It has the following title:—"Ain schone Kunstliche Unterweisung in diesem Bucchlein, leychtlich zu begreyffen, den rechten Grund zu lernen auff der Lautten und Geygen."
7I regard this book as a key which opens the way to the birthplace of the instrument mainly concerned in these pages—the Violin. On its title-page we have probably the earliest mention of the Geygen
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