Scan 347
The violin, its famous makers and their imitators, 1887
6 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1revolutionized Violin-playing. He had followers in the chief cities of Italy. There was Vitali at Modena, Visconti at Cremona (who, it is said, tendered his advice to Stradivari upon the construction of his instruments—advice, I think, little needed); Veracini at Bologna, and a host of others. Dibdin, the Tyrtæus of the British navy, said: "I had always delighted in Corelli, whose harmonies are an assemblage of melodies. I, therefore, got his Concertos in single parts, and put them into score, by which means I saw all the workings of his mind at the time he composed them; I so managed that I not only comprehended in what manner the parts had been worked, but how, in every way, they might have been worked. From this severe but profitable exercise, I drew all the best properties of harmony, and among the rest I learnt the valuable secret, that men of strong minds may violate to advantage many of those rules of composition which are dogmatically imposed."
3We must now retrace our steps somewhat, in order to allude to another Violinist, who influenced the progress of the leading instrument out of Italy, viz., Jean Baptiste Lulli. The son of a Tuscan peasant, born in the year 1633, Lulli's name is so much associated with the romantic in the history of Violin-playing that he has been deprived in a great measure of the merits justly his due for the part he took in the advancement of the instrument. The story of Lulli and the stew-pans¹ bristles with interest for juvenile musicians,
5¹ Lulli having shown a disposition for music, received some instructions on the rudiments of the art from a priest. The Chevalier de Guise, when on his travels in Italy, had been requested by Mademoiselle de Montpensier, niece of Louis XIV., to procure for her an Italian boy as page, and happening to see Lulli in Florence, he chose him for that purpose, on account of his wit and vivacity, and his skill in playing on
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