Books › The violin and its music, 1881 › scan 24
Scan 24
The violin and its music, 1881
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 4. See the scan on archive.org.
1of early bowed instrument history, and far-seeing views of the excellencies of the Viol as a mechanical contrivance.
3That the Goths possessed a bowed instrument which in succeeding ages gave rise to the Viol is a supposition strengthened by evidence which has accrued since the publication of North's Memoires. Whether the original of the true Viol "entered with those barbarous nations settled in Italy, and ultimately passed to other states," is to my mind a doubtful question, since it is almost certain that the Viol in form and character nearest to that of the sixteenth century was chiefly developed where the Teutonic language predominated. Whatever the Viol-germ may have been which the Goths carried to Italy, that which they sowed in Germany and in Spain was productive of results far in advance of those of its Italian prototype, to the period when the musicians of the Low Countries immigrated thence. The value of this view of Viol-history may be tested by simply comparing the bowed instruments depicted in the paintings and on the architectural monuments of the German and Gallic nations, as far as the middle of the fifteenth century with those of Italy.
5Evidence of much weight bearing on the German development of the Viol is found in the Anglo-Saxon's love of music. The minstrel's art was cultivated by this people with extraordinary zeal, and they played bowed instru-
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