It is formed of
a small cylindrical sounding-body, with a stick running through it for a
neck, a bridge, and a single string of silk, or at most two strings. Its
primitive bow was a long hairless cane rod which produced sound when
drawn across the silk. Better tone was derived from strings plucked with
fingers or plectrum, and so the rude contrivance remained long
undeveloped.
The European violin is the logical outcome of the appliance of the bow
to those progenitors of the pianoforte, the Greek monochord and lyre,
precisely as our music is the outgrowth of the diatonic scale developed
by the Greeks from those instruments. Numerous obstacles stand in the
way of defining its story, but it is known that from the ninth century
to the thirteenth bow instruments gained in importance. They divided
into two classes--the viol proper, with flat back and breast and
indented sides, to which belonged the veille, videl, or as it has been
called, guitar-fiddle, and the pear-shaped type, such as the gigue and
rebec.
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