Scan 28
The Violin & Its Story: Or the History & Construction of the Violin, 1905
19 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1grounds, that the latter is traceable to the Rebab or Rebek of the Arabs.
3When we endeavour to trace the development of bowed instruments from the Carolingian era, we find very little help from the few remaining adventitious samples of the plastic and draughtsman's arts. In the thirteenth century the learned musicians, writers, and poets take no notice of the class of instruments in question. The passage in Ottfried's "Evengelienharmonie," is the single exception known to us:—
5"Sih thas ouh al ruarit, thaz organa fuerit lira, ioh fidula, ioh managfaltu suegula,"
7(There moved all those who carried instruments,
8The lyre and fiedel and many sorts of pipes.)
10Here appears for the first time the name of "Fiedel." It is difficult to understand why many will not see in Ottfried's "fidula" a stringed instrument, but merely the "fidicula" of the ancients.
12The oldest representation of the Rebek is found in a manuscript of Abbot Gerbert of the ninth century. (See Fig. 6). In this picture it has only one string, the half-moon-shaped sound-holes are cut in the table, and the string passes over the bridge. One part of the handle, or neck, appears to stand higher than the table.
14In the next century the Rebek is shown with two, sometimes three, strings. If the painter or sculptor occasionally shows it with four strings, it results either from carelessness or ignorance. The same instrument is at one time shown with a bow, and at another without one; now under one name, and then under another. It is quite useless to expect any exactitude in the real sense of the word.
16Notker's* Psalm Book (tenth century) contains a picture of a Rebek with a bow, as in Fig. 7.
18* Notker was a monk of St. Galle, and died in 1022. In poetical and musical gifts he surpassed all his contemporaries. Many of his poems attained great fame, and the common people, impressed by the power of his verse, maintained that he gave the devil such a sound drubbing with a hazel rod that his Satanic majesty endowed him with the poetic gift.
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