Biographical Notice Of Nicolo Paganini With An Analysis Of His Compositions And A Sketch Of The History Of The Violin

MP3 Audio CD. Biographical Notice Of Nicolo Paganini With An Analysis Of His Compositions And A Sketch Of The History Of The Violin

SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE VIOLIN.

The Instrument.


Despite all contrary assertions, based upon pretended monuments,
Oriental, Greek, and Roman antiquity was unacquainted with instruments
played with a bow. Neither India nor Egypt furnish the least traces of
them; nor do Greece and Italy; nor, in fact, does the whole of the old
civilized world. As I stated in the “Résumé Philosophique de l’Histoire
de la Musique,” the bow comes from the West; it was introduced into
the whole of Europe by the western nations. Though Viols are found
among the modern Arabs in Persia and Turkey, they were taken there
by Europeans in the time of the Crusades. The Goudock of the Russian
peasant, and the Crwth of the ancient Irish, appear to proceed from the
highest antiquity, and to have been the type of instruments of this
nature. The Irish chroniclers speak of musicians who, in the sixth
century, were celebrated for their talent on the Crwth, a species of
Viol with six strings; and Venance Fortunat, a Latin poet who wrote in
609, states distinctly that this instrument belonged to Great Britain.

It is not my intention to follow up here the various transformations
of bow instruments in the middle ages; it will suffice to observe
that there were frequent changes in them from the thirteenth to the
sixteenth century; as much in the common kinds, vulgarly called in
French Rebec, and in German Geige ohne Bunde (Violins without band or
side pieces), which possessed only three strings, as in the improved
Viols, the body of which was formed of belly and back joined by side
pieces, as in our Violins, Tenors, and Basses. The smaller kinds also
possessed only