Scan 32
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1875
8 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 4. See the scan on archive.org.
1mencement of the eighteenth century. Marston Middleton, and Ben Jonson mention the "crowd."
3We now come to the next order, viz., instruments of the Viol class. These instruments had not the form of the Violins and Violas of our time; they resembled the Mandoline, having pear-shaped backs. M. de Coussemaker mentions an instrument to which no name is attached, but which is said to have been invented by Albinus. It has four strings, is curved somewhat like a Violin in order to give room for the movement of the bow, and its sound-holes are placed at the lower portion of the instrument, near the tail-piece. It is noticed in a MS. of the fourteenth century, a date which brings us a century later than the Crwth of the Cathedral at Amiens.
5Mention is made in the fifteenth century of the Vielle, the Rota, and the Rebec, as bowed instruments. At a later period these various species underwent divers changes, and gave birth to the Viol, played on the knee and mounted with five strings; the Treble Viol, also a five-stringed instrument, tuned five notes higher than the knee Viol; and the Bass Viol, strung with five strings and sometimes six, which is identical with the Viol da Gamba. The Violone, or large Viol* was placed upon a
7* The Violoncello was the Violone of former times. In the earlier editions of Corelli the bass part is entitled Violone. The Violoncello was originally mounted with five strings, C, G, D, A, D; about 1600 the D string was removed. The former method of stringing was adapted by the Abbé Tardieu.
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