Books › The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878 › scan 33
Scan 33
The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878
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1fication applying to the size, and possibly also to some minor details in the form.
3The French writer, Mersennus, who designates all instruments of the violin and viol class under the term barbiton, describes one of them, the least of the tribe, as the lesser barbiton. This latter was a small violin invented for the use of the dancing-masters of France, and of such form and dimensions as to be capable of being carried in a case or sheath in the pocket. It is the origin of the instrument which in England is called a Kit, and which is now made in the form of a violin.—Is it too great a stretch of conjecture, to hint, that this may, possibly, have been the kind of thing intended by the term above quoted?
5That curious enquirer, Mr. Gardiner, in his "Music of Nature," assigns to Italy the local origin of the Violin, but without placing the date as near to exactness as it might have been. He makes it to have been "about the year 1600." He might safely have gone thirty or forty years farther back, at least, notwithstanding that the shape of the instrument, towards the end of the 16th century, has been supposed, by Hawkins, to have been rather vague and undetermined*. The transition from the old shapes to the new had occurred, though it was as yet far from universal. It is sufficient that the change had commenced.
7Admitting the genuine and perfect violin to be rightfully assignable to the Italians, it may be of some interest, now, to present a few more records relating, prin-
9* M. Baillot makes a somewhat longer draft upon the past tense; for he states, that for nearly three hundred years back there has been no change in the structure of the violin.—Introduction to the "Méthode de Violon du Conservatoire."
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