Books › The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878 › scan 21
Scan 21
The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878
14 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1with the bow (or, at least, the plectrum); and that this instrument afterwards received the name of sambuce.
3The hieroglyphics of Peter Valerian, page 628, chap. 4, present the figure of a muse, holding, in her right hand, a kind of bass or contra-violin, the form of which is not very unlike that of our violins or basses.
5Philostratus, moreover, who taught at Athens, during the reign of Nero, gives a description of the lyre, which has been thus translated:—
7"Orpheus," he says, "supported the lyre against his left leg, whilst he beat time by striking his foot upon the ground; in his right hand he held the bow, which he drew across the strings, turning his wrist slightly inwards. He touched the strings with the fingers of his left hand, keeping the knuckles perfectly straight."
9From this description (if bow it could be called, which bow was none), it would appear as if the lyre to which Philostratus alludes were, forsooth, the same instrument which the moderns call the contra-violin, or viola di gamba! To settle the matter thus, however, would be indeed to beg the question.
11As before observed, the word plectrum is, in the dictionaries, translated by bow; but, even if this were a warranted rendering of the word, it remains to be ascertained not only whether the bows of the ancients were of a form and nature corresponding with ours, but also whether they were used in the modern way. Did the ancients strike their bow upon the strings of the instrument—or did they draw forth the sound by means of friction? These questions are still undecided; but opinions preponderate greatly in favor of the belief that the plectrum was an implement of percussion, and therefore not at all a bow, in our sense.
13A recent French writer, Monsieur C. Desmarais, in
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