Books › The violin and its music, 1881 › scan 56
Scan 56
The violin and its music, 1881
8 lines. Read by computer on 10 September 2026. Printed page 36. See the scan on archive.org.
1until such improvements had been effected as would fit it to pursue a distinct and independent course.
3The use to which instruments were put in the fifteenth century was that of accompanying the dance, making martial music in processions, and rendering a semi-barbarous accompaniment to the voice. The performers were left free to play upon them as fancy prompted; in short, their accompaniments were rude improvisations, and their melodies and dances were but the popular ditties of the period rendered in a very free manner.
5That the Viol was used in the Music of the Church as an adjunct to the voice long before any written music existed for the instrument may be assumed from the variety of forms and sizes we see given to Viols in early prints, which variety evidences the aim of the masters of the fifteenth century to assimilate the Viol with the different registers of the human voice, as also the indefinite condition of the instrument in the days of old Flemish masters.
7Instruments of some kind or other had been pressed into the musical service of the Church from a very early period, for we are told that Saint Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century denounced the practice of employing them as "tending to stir up the mind to delight, than frame it to a religious disposition." Notwithstanding, however, this and other anathemas, the custom grew apace, culminating with the Reformation. It happened that the Refor-
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