Books › The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878 › scan 41
Scan 41
The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1bass viol, could be played upon it. Todini had originally given the bass of this instrument an unusual depth; but he abandoned that, when he invented the double bass, —which instrument he was the first to introduce and play upon in oratorios, concerts, and serenades.
3The arms and seal of the town of Alzei, in the neighbourhood of Worms, consist of a crowned lion rampant, holding a fiddle in his paws. The fiddle alone appears to have been the original bearing; for the palatine lion was first joined to the fiddle when Duke Conrad of Hohenstauffen was enfeoffed by the Emperor Frederick I with the Palatinate of the Rhine. His son-in-law, the Palsgrave Henry, calls the Steward (Trucksess) of Alzei, his vassal, in a bill of feoffment, dated in 1209, and in another document, 1211. This Steward, however, and Winter of Alzei, bore the fiddle as their arms. On account of these arms, the inhabitants of Alzei are mockingly called fiddlers by their neighbours*.
5Connected with the history of the instrument in England, there is a curious old custom, now "invisible, or dimly seen," and I know not when commenced, which is thus described in Hone's Table Book:—
7"The concluding dance at a country wake, or other general meeting, is the 'Cushion Dance;' and if it be not called for, when the company are tired with dancing, the fiddler, who has an interest in it, which will be seen
9* The learned Wilhelm Grimm, who quotes this curious record from Storck, Darstellungen aus dem Rhein-und-Moselhunde, conceives that this armorial bearing fully explains the allusion to the fiddle of Volker, the accomplished musician and warrior in the old poem of the "Nibelungen Lied" (supposed of the 12th century), and forms a key to the enigma of his being exhibited in the joint capacity of champion and fiddler, and bearing his fiddle, that is, his arms, into the battle with him.
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