Books › The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878 › scan 47
Scan 47
The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Proctor, a young man and a new comer:—John Packer, one of the university musicians. But Mr. Low, a proud man, could not endure any common musician to come to the meeting, much less to play among them. Of this kind I must rank Joh. Haselwood, an apothecary, a starch'd formal clister-pipe, who usually played on the base-viol, and sometimes on the counter-tenor. He was very conceited of his skill (though he had but little of it), and therefore would be ever and anon ready to take up a viol* before his betters; which being observed by all, they usually called him Handlewood. The rest were but beginners. Proctor died soon after this time; he had been bred up by Mr. John Jenkins, the mirrour and wonder of his age for musick, was excellent for the lyra-viol and division-viol, good at the treble-viol, and violin, and all comprehended in a man of three or four and twenty yeares of age. He was much admired at the meetings, and exceedingly pitied by all the facultie for his loss."
3"A. W. was now advised to entertain one William James, a dancing-master, to instruct him on the violin, who, by some, was accounted excellent on that instrument, and the rather because it was said that he had obtained his knowledge in dancing and music in France. He spent, in all, half a yeare with him, and gained some improvement; yet at length he found him not a compleat master of his facultie, as Griffith and Parker were not: and, to say the truth, there was no compleat master in Oxon for that instrument, because it had not been hitherto used in consort among gentlemen, only by common musicians, who played but two parts. The gentle-
5* The readiness of an apothecary to take up a viol does not seem, after all, a thing so much out of course. The singularity is, rather, that he should be able to make so little of it.
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