Books › The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878 › scan 31
Scan 31
The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878
9 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1In former days, we had the viol in,
2 'Ere the true instrument had come about:
3But now we say, since this all ears doth win,
4 The violin hath put the viol out.
6Thus, through a considerable tract of indefinite time, and a succession of definite changes, we reach the matured and accomplished instrument, the Violin proper; and then, if we recur to the question, to whom does it belong? the answer becomes less difficult. It is to this instrument, this perfected production, that the Italians may, I think, exultingly point as their own; and, in doing so, they may well afford to be indifferent to all disputes about the title to those earlier apparitions, those crude and half-made-up resemblances to the fiddle, that were but as the abortions which, in human experience, sometimes precede a perfect birth. It is of sufficient notoriety that the earliest instruments of excellence, bearing the name of Violin, as well as the earliest players of eminence, were Italian. The Cremona fiddles of Hieronymus Amati (to go no farther back) were sent into this breathing world about two centuries and a half ago; and Baltazarini, the earliest great player of the genuine Violin on record, is known to have been imported as a curiosity from Italy, by Catherine de Medicis, in 1577. It is tolerably clear, too, that, as a court favourite, the Violin began its career in Italy–its progress, in that capacity, having been, as Burney observes, from Italy to France, and from France to England.
8But the tie of Italian connection may be drawn more closely than this. Galilei, in his Dialogues (p. 147), states that both the Violin and the Violoncello were invented by the Italians; and he suggests more precisely the Neapolitans, as the rightful claimants of this honor.
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