Whither, then, are we to turn, after all, for the solution of this problem in musical genealogy? That the violin is of a respectable age, though not so old as what is commonly called antiquity, is a fact apparent to the least laborious of enquirers; and it seems to have been the practice, with those who have had occasion to touch on this point, either to announce the said fact simply, and leave the reader to make the most of it, or to mix up with it, by way of elucidation, some general remark about the absence of light on the matter. “The origin of the violin,” observes one of these authorities, “like that of most of the several musical instruments, is involved in obscurity. As a species of that genus which comprehends the viola, violoncello, and violone, or double-bass, it must be very ancient.” Similarly indefinite are the conclusions of others who have approached the subject; so that it becomes necessary to dispense with such embarrassing aid, and to help oneself to the truth, if it is, peradventure, to be gathered. To me, much meditating on this matter (if I may borrow Lord Brougham’s classic form of speech), there seems reason to fix on Italy as the quarter to which we must look for the “unde derivatur” required. Say, thou soft “Ausonia tellus,” mother of inventions and nurse of the arts, say, soft and sunny Italy, is it not to thee that belongs the too modest merit of having produced and cherished the infancy, even as thou hast confessedly supported and developed the after-growth and advancement, of the interesting musical being whose history, in its more secret passages, we are here exploring? Is it a world (as Sir Toby feelingly asks), is it a world to hide virtues in? Well, if we cannot obtain direct satisfaction, let us pursue the investigation of our point a little more circuitously.
The perfect instrument which we now delight to honor by the name of the violin – the instrument complete in form and qualities – “totum in se teres atque rotundum” – appears to have been the result of a highly interesting series of improvements in the art of producing musical sounds from strings. How long a duration of time was occupied by the elaboration of these improvements respectively, is not readily to be ascertained, nor, perhaps, would the enquiry repay the trouble – but the general order of progression in the improvements themselves, is as clear as it is agreeable to contemplate. The first great advancement consisted in the sounding-board, by means of which invention a tone was produced, through the vibration of the wood, that was incomparably better and fuller than what was previously procured, through the mere vibration of the strings. As the human voice is evolved from the mouth under a concave roof, which serves it as a sounding-board, and gives additional grace and vigour to its inflections, so does the upper shell of the violin add a power of its own to the language of the strings. The next improvement in the instrument, thus extended in capability, was the neck or finger-board, which increased the range and variety of the sounds, by giving to each string the power of producing a series of notes. The bow was the next great step of advancement; and this, like other important inventions, has provoked much learned dispute as to the time and place of its origin, which however we shall not here more particularly revert to, for indeed, “non nostrum tantas componere lites.” With all these additions and appliances, we come not yet to the instrument par excellence, the true violin; for an intermediate and inferior state remains to be gone through. The consideration of that state brings us to the regular construction of the several instruments known by the general name of viol (for we pass by the rebec, as being only a spurious or illegitimate kind of fiddle), that were in the most common use during the 16th, and till about the middle of the 17th, century. These were similar to each other in form, but in size were distinguished into the treble-viol, tenor-viol, and bass-viol. They had six strings, and a finger-board marked with frets, like that of the lute or guitar2. Finally, as the crowning change, the glorious consummation, came the conversion of the viol into the violin, effected by a diminution of size, a reduction of strings, from six to four, and the abolition of those impediments to smoothness, and helps to irritation, the frets. The same reformation attended the other instruments of the viol tribe, which now became, mutato nomine, the viola and the violoncello.
In former days, we had the viol in,
’Ere the true instrument had come about:
But now we say, since this all ears doth win,
The violin hath put the viol out.
Thus, 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.
But 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. Dr. Burney, who does not attempt to settle the point, quotes the passage, to the above effect, from Galilei, and admits his own inability to confute it. Montaigne, whose travels brought him to Verona in 1580, has recorded, that there were Violins as well as organs there, to accompany the mass in the great Church. Corelli’s Violin, an instrument specially Italian, which afterwards passed into the possession of Giardini, was made in 1578, and its case was decorated by the master-hand of Annibale Caracci, probably several years after the instrument was finished; as Caracci at that date had numbered but eight of his own years.
Towards the end of the 16th century, the Violin is found indicated in some Italian scores, thus: —piccoli Violini alla Francese; which circumstance has been sometimes alleged as rendering it probable, that the reduction of the old viol or viola to the present dimensions of the Violin took place in France, rather than in Italy: but the fact does not seem to offer a sufficient basis for the conjecture, when it is considered that no instruments of French construction, corresponding with the Violin in its present form, and of as early a date as those which can be produced of Italian make, are known to exist. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that these piccoli Violini, or little Violins, were not identical with the Violin proper; – although Mr. Hogarth3 (from whose respectable authority I am rather loth to differ) quotes the phrase as one tending to the support of the French claim. The term in question, which occurs, particularly, in Monteverdi’s Opera of Orfeo, printed at Venice in 1615, seems to me to imply merely some French modification of the already invented Italian model – a modification applying to the size, and possibly also to some minor details in the form.
The 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