Scan 173
The violin, its famous makers and their imitators, 1887
4 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1I have no remembrance of having seen a dated label. Such may exist, and these dates may not, like many in connexion with the old makers, be arbitrary ones. The best and most certain guide, however, to a knowledge of the time when he worked is, I am convinced, to be found in the character and style of his instruments. Gasparo da Salò was essentially a maker of Viols. He made Accordos, Violonos, and Tenor Viols, and but few Violins. The general character of all his instruments is essentially primitive, significant of their being anterior to those of Andrea Amati, of whom we have evidence that he made Violins for Charles IX. in 1572.
3We have no data of much value to guide us as to the condition of Viol manufacture in Italy beyond that contained in the work of Ganassi on the Art of Playing the Viol, published at Venice, 1543. The instruments referred to by Ganassi are of an earlier type than those of Gasparo da Salò; they are six-stringed Viols, and have not the four drawn-out corners, whilst Gasparo made Tenor Viols with four strings, with projecting corners. Although this evidence tends to fix the date of Gasparo's manufacture as commencing about 1550, we have to consider that Ganassi was doubtless writing of the Viol with which he was familiar, and was not concerned with an altogether new form of instrument, which had possibly then been recently introduced at Brescia. I am therefore inclined to believe that Gasparo da Salò worked a few years earlier than has been stated. The difference between the Viols described by Ganassi and the four-stringed instruments associated with Gasparo da Salò, I cannot but regard as casting light upon the development of the last form of the Italian Viol. The Viol described by Ganassi, and that of Gasparo, give
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