Scan 91
Voice and violin: sketches, anecdotes, and reminiscences by T.L. Phipson, 1898
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 73. See the scan on archive.org.
1IX
3TOMARISSEN AND THE BEY OF TUNIS
5TOWARDS the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the great qualities of the Amati violins were beginning to be highly appreciated, a certain rich Bey of Tunis, named Muftareddin, was well known to be a great amateur of music. He had an orchestra composed of the finest artists he could collect. His agents travelled all over Europe and Asia, and along the coast of Africa, to engage any musician of extraordinary merit whom they might happen to meet.
7The orchestra was required more especially to play the sprightly dance music of that day—horn-pipes, jigs, Oriental ditties, valses, &c.—which were performed every evening in the open air after dinner, when the heat of the sun had subsided, and the Bey, with his counsellors and friends, lounged upon a capacious balcony, smoking their chibooks, and enjoying the soft, cool breezes which set in about that hour from the blue waters of the Mediterranean.
9One morning, shortly after daybreak, an agent of the Bey was ushered into his private apartment, and informed him that in his travels in Sicily he had met
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