Books › The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878 › scan 19
Scan 19
The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1wholesale dealer in time, and is never at a loss for a few centuries to link his conjectures to, the matter was easy enough; indeed, the more doubtful, the better, since doubt is the very life of theory. Accordingly, we have been invited to fall back upon "the ancients," and to recognize the Epigonion as the dignified and classic prototype of our merry and somewhat lax little friend, the Fiddle. To certain ancient Greek tablets relative to music, which have been somewhere brought to light, Professor Murchard has minutely assigned the date of 709 years before the Christian era; and the following passage, Englished from his translation, is stoutly alleged by the antiquarian advocates of the glories of the violin race:—"But Pherekydes began the contest, and sat himself down before all the people, and played the Epigonion;—for he had improved the same; and he stretched four strings over a small piece of wood, and played on them with a smooth stick. But the strings sounded so, that the people shouted with joy."
3This is plausible enough, but far from conclusive. It is but the outline of a description, and admits of various modes of filling up. If the instrument partook at all of the violin character, it might seem, from the reference which its name bears to the knees, to have been the rude progenitor of either the double-bass or the violoncello, which have both, as is well known, their official post between the knees: but then, the prefix of ἐπι would denote that it was played upon the knees of the artist. "Very well," says the antiquarian; "it was a fiddle reversed." "Nay, Dr. Dryasdust, if you yourself overturn what you are about, I have no need to say more." Au reste, let any body stretch four strings over a small piece of wood, and play on them with a smooth stick, and then take account of what it
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.