X. Domenico Montagnana Violoncello 170
XI. Antonio Stradivari. Tenor. 1690
Antonio Stradivari. 1734 186
XII. Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu. 1738
The "Dolphin" Strad. 1714
Antonio Stradivari. 1718 200
XIII. Antonio Stradivari. 1702
Antonio Stradivari. 1722
Antonio Stradivari. 1703 232
XIV. Stradivari Violoncello 250
XV. Chapel of the Rosary, Cremona 266
XVI. Antonio Stradivari. 1708
Antonio Stradivari. 1736
Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu. 1735 282
XVII. The "Betts" Stradivari. 1704 298
XVIII. Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu Antonio Stradivari (Inlaid). 1687 316
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XIX. Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu. 1733
Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu. 1741
Antonio Stradivari. 1726 332
XX. Gasparo da Salo
Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu. 1735 348
XXI. Antonio Stradivari. 1690 380
"Marriage at Cana," by Paolo Veronese 376
Tartini's Dream 428
THE VIOLIN
ITS FAMOUS MAKERS AND THEIR IMITATORS
SECTION I
The Early History of the Violin
1.
The early history of the Violin is involved in obscurity, and in consequence, much diversity of opinion exists with regard to it. The chief object of the writer of these pages is to throw light upon the instrument in its perfected state. It is, therefore, unnecessary to enter at great length upon the vexed question of its origin. The increased research attendant upon the development of musical history generally could hardly fail to discover facts of more or less importance relative to the origin of instruments played with a bow; but although our knowledge in this direction is both deeper and wider, the light shed upon the subject has not served to dissipate the darkness attending it. Certain parts have been illumined, and conclusions of more or less worth have been drawn therefrom; for the rest, all remains more hopelessly obscured and doubtful than the identity of the "Man in the Iron Mask" or the writer of the "Letters of Junius."
It is satisfactory to know that the most valuable and interesting part of our subject is comparatively free from that doubt and tradition which necessarily attaches to the portion belonging to the Dark or Middle Ages. When we reflect that Music--as we understand it--is a modern art, and that all instruments of the Viol and Fiddle type, as far as the end of the fifteenth century, were rude if not barbarous, it can scarcely excite surprise that our interest should with difficulty be awakened in subtle questions pertaining to the archaeology of bowed instruments.
The views taken of the early history of the leading instrument have not been more multiform than remote. The Violin has been made to figure in history sacred and profane, and in lore classic and barbaric. That an instrument which is at once the most perfect and the most difficult, and withal the most beautiful and the most strangely interesting, should have been thus glorified, hardly admits of wonder. Enthusiasm is a noble passion, when tempered with reason. It cannot be said, however, that the necessity of this qualification has been invariably recognised by enthusiastic inquirers into the history of instruments played with a bow. We have a
curious instance of its non-recognition in a treatise on the Viol,1 written by a distinguished old French Violist named Jean Rousseau. The author, bent upon going to the root of his subject, begins with the Creation, and speaks of Adam as a Violist. Perhaps Rousseau based his belief in the existence of Fiddling at this early period of the world's history on the words "and his brother's name was
Jubal; from him descended the Flute players and Fiddlers," as rendered by Luther.
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1 "Traite de la Viole," Paris, 1687.
The parts Orpheus and Apollo have been made to play in infantile Fiddle history have necessarily been dependent upon the licence and the imagination of the sculptor and the medallist. Inferences of antiquity, however, have been drawn from such representations. Tracings of a bow among the sculpture of the ancients have been sought for in vain: no piece is known upon which a bow is
distinguishable. A century since, an important discovery was thought to have been made by musical antiquarians in the Grand Duke's Tribuna at Florence, wherein was a small figure of Apollo playing on a kind of Violin with something of the nature of a bow. Inquiry, however, made it clear that the figure belonged to modern art. Orpheus has been represented holding a Violin in one hand and a bow in the other; inquiry again showed that the Violin and the bow were added by the restorer of the statue.
The views held by musical historians regarding the origin of the Violin may be described by the terms Asiatic and Scandinavian. The Eastern view, it need scarcely be said, is the most prolonged, exceeding some five thousand years along the vista of time, where little else is discoverable but what is visionary, mythical, and unsubstantial. It is related--traditionally of course--that some three thousand years before our era there lived a King of Ceylon named Ravanon,2 who invented a four-stringed instrument played with a bow, and which was named after the inventor "the Ravanastron." If it were possible to identify the instrument of that name, now known to the Hindoos, as identical with that of King Ravanon--as M. Sonnerat declares it to be--the Eastern view of our subject would be singularly clear and defined. A declaration, however, resting on tradition, necessarily makes the gathering of evidence in support of it a task both dubious and difficult.3
2 M. Sonnerat, "Voyage aux Indes Orientales," 1806.
3 In Mr. Engel's "Researches into the Early History of the Violin Family," 1883--a book containing much valuable evidence on the subject--the author rightly remarks: "Now, this may be true; still it is likewise true that most of the Asiatic nations are gifted with a remarkably powerful imagination, which evidently induces them sometimes to assign a fabulously high age to any antiquity of theirs the origin of which dates back to a period where history merges in myth. At the present day the Hindoos possess, among their numerous rude instruments of the Fiddle class, an extraordinarily primitive contrivance, which they believe to be the instrument invented by Ravanon. Their opinion has actually been adopted by some of our modern musical historians as if it were a well established truth."
It is said that Sanscrit scholars have met with names for the bow in Sanscrit writings dating back nearly two thousand years. If this information could be supplemented by reliable monumental evidence of the existence of a bow of some rude kind among the nations of the East about the commencement of the Christian era, its value would necessarily be complete. In the absence of such evidence we are left in doubt as to what was intended to be understood by the reported references to a bow in ancient Sanscrit literature. The difficulty of understanding what Greek and Roman authors meant, in reference to the same subject, must be greatly intensified in the works of ancient Eastern writers.4
4 In the "Reflections" at the end of Vol. I., "Burney's History of Music," we read, "The ancients had instead of a bow, the Plectrum." "It appears too clumsy to produce from the strings tones that had either the sweetness or brilliancy of such as are drawn
from them by means of the bow or quill. But, notwithstanding it is represented so massive, I should rather suppose it to have been a quill, or piece of ivory in imitation of one, than a stick or blunt piece of wood or ivory."
The inquiry is simplified from the point of view of a Violinist if we reject all bow-progenitors but those which have been strung with fibre, silk, hair, or other material, the properties of which would permit of the production of sustained sounds. Implements less developed belong to a separate order of sound-producing contrivances, namely plectra, and may be described as permitting
strumming by striking in place of twanging or twitching the strings.