Renowned nineteenth-century musicologist François-Joseph Fétis assembled this authoritative survey with the assistance of noted violin maker and dealer Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. Focusing on the work of the Italian master violin maker Stradivarius, this volume explores the early history and construction of stringed instruments. In addition, this valuable resource provides rare, contemporary glimpses of the world of Paganini, Schumann, and Berlioz. A reprint of a rare 1864 publication, this study offers intriguing historical information to violinists, music historians, and music lovers of all ages. A new Introduction by famed musicologist Stewart Pollens provides further insights.
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WHAT is the origin of bow-instruments? This archæological problem has engaged the attention of many learned men, without their having arrived at a satisfactory solution. Certain obscure expressions, interpreted in an unnatural manner, have induced the belief that the Greeks and Romans possessed, among their instruments of music, something which resembled the viol. Some have fancied they recognized it in the magadis—the name of which is derived from magas (a bridge)—because nothing like a bridge appears in the lyres and cytharas.
The magadis was mounted with twenty strings, or with twenty-one according to Athenæus, or twenty-two according to Pausanias. John Baptist Doni thought it might have borne some analogy with the viola di Bordone, otherwise called lirone, which was used in Italy in the sixteenth century, and the eleven or twelve strings of which served to produce arpeggios with the bow, or harmony in many parts. These conjectures, however, have no historical value, being unsupported by any passage in the ancient writers; neither does any monument among the Greeks present us with an instrument having a neck and a bridge.
Some have been disposed to trace the bow in the plectrum; but
comes from,
to strike. The dictionaries, it is true, define it as the bow of a musical instrument; but this arises from a confusion in regard to the real meaning of the word. Statues, bas-reliefs, and the pictures on Greek vases, afford us numerous representations of the plectrum; but in all we see a piece of wood, bone, or ivory, ending with little hooks to pull the strings, or to strike them with the back. Had the Greeks wished to describe a veritable bow, the hairs of which serve, by friction, to put the strings into vibration, they would have called it
(little bow). But nothing like a bow appears in any Greek or Roman sculpture or painting which has come down to us.
The country which affords us the most ancient memorials of a perfect language, of an advanced civilization, of a philosophy where all directions of human thought find their expression, of a poesy immensely rich in every style, and of a musical art corresponding with the lively sensibility of the people—India, appears to have given birth to bow-instruments, and to have made them known to other parts of Asia, and afterwards to Europe. There, no conjecture is needed, for the instruments themselves exist, and still preserve the characteristics of their native originality. If we would trace a bow-instrument to its source, we must assume the most simple form in which it could appear, and such as required no assistance from an art brought to perfection. Such a form we shall find in the ravanastron, made of a cylinder of sycamore wood, hollowed out from one end to the other. This cylinder is 11 centimètres* [4.331 inches Eng.] long, and has a diameter of 5 centimètres [1.969 in.]. Over one end is stretched a piece of boa skin, with large scales, which forms the belly or soundboard. The cylinder is crossed from side to side—at one-third of its length, next the sound-board—by a rod or shank of deal, which serves as a neck, of the length of 55 centimètres [21.654 in.], rounded on its under part, but flat on the top, and slightly inclined backwards. The head of this neck is pierced with two holes for the pegs, 12 millimètres [.472 in.] in diameter; not in the side, but in the plane of the sound-board. Two large pegs, 10 centimètres [3.937 in.] in length—shaped hexagonally at the top, and rounded at the ends which go into the holes—serve to tighten two strings made of the intestines of the Gazelle, which are fixed to a strap of serpent skin attached to the lower extremity of the rod or shank. A little bridge, 18 millimètres [.709 in.] long, cut sloping on the top, but flat on the part which rests on the sound-board, and worked out rectangularly in this part, so as to form two separate feet: this supports the strings. As to the bow, it is formed of a small bamboo, of which the upper portion is slightly curved, and the lower straight. A hole is made in the head of the bow, at the first knot, for fastening a hank of hair, which is strained and fixed at the other end, by binding a very flexible rush string twenty times round it.
Such is the primitive bow-instrument, now abandoned to people of the lowest class, and to the poor Buddhist monks, who go from door to door asking alms. Its sound is sweet, though muffled. According to Indian tradition, it was invented by Ravana, King of Ceylon, five thousand years before the Christian era.
Other instruments, made in imitation of the ravanastron, are known among the poorer classes of Hindostan. The first, which we may consider as the base of that, is also made of a cylinder of sycamore, 16 centimètres [6.299 in.] long, and 11 centimètres [4.331 in.] in diameter, and hollowed throughout its length; so that the thickness of this sonorous body does not exceed 3 millimètres [.118 in.]. This body is crossed from side to side by a rod or shank of the total length of 86 centimètres [33.858 in.], which forms the neck, as in the ravanastron. A hole is bored vertically, at the lower extremity of this shank, into which is inserted a little pin of iron-wood, 9 centimètres [3.543 in.] long, terminated by a knob or button, which carries a strap of jackall leather, to which the strings are attached. The sound-board is formed of a thin plate of mounah-wood, which, in its longitudinal fibres, bears a resemblance to deal. This instrument, which is called the rouana, is mounted with two strings, like the ravanastron, to which it is in all other respects similar.
To an epoch doubtless posterior to the invention of the two instruments before mentioned belongs the omerti, another bow-instrument, mounted with two strings, and which evinces some progress in the art of manufacture. The body is made of a cocoa-nut shell, one-third being first cut away, and after reducing its thickness to 2 millimètres [.079 in.], it is then polished inside and out. Four elliptical openings, and another of a lozenge form, are cut in the front part of the body, to serve as sound-holes. I possess two of these instruments; in one of them the sound-board is formed of a piece of Gazelle skin, well prepared and very smooth; in the other it consists of a veneer of satin-wood, extremely fine in the grain, and 1 millimètre [.03937 in.] thick. In both instruments, the size of this sound-board at its greatest diameter is 0m,05,15 [2.027 in.]. As in the ravanastron and the rouana, the neck is formed of a shank of deal (red wood of India), which passes through the body of the instrument . The lower part is rounded, and a hole is bored longitudinally at the bottom, to receive a pin, ending in a knob or button, as in the rouana. This button is a little cube, having a hole in it where the strings are fastened. The upper part of the neck is flat, and terminates in a head turned back and finished off at right angles with the neck. The pegs are not placed upon this head, but both are inserted on the left of the neck, and a longitudinal opening is made through the head, 6 centimètres [2.362 in.] in length, and 12 millimètres [.472 in.] wide, for passing the strings into the holes of the pegs: this is a rude commencement of the scroll Lastly, at the lower end of the opening is a little ivory nut, 1 millimètre [.03937 in.] in height, on which the strings rest. The bridge, over which they pass at the other end, is exactly like that of the ravanastron. The bow, which is longer than that of the latter instrument, is also made of a light bamboo, which forms the curved part. At its upper end is a slit in which the hank of hair is fixed; but, instead of being fastened by a rush string at the other end, it passes through a hole in the bamboo, and is there stayed by a knot.
If we compare the omerti with the Arabian instrument called kemângeh à gouz (from kemân, a bow, and káh, pronounced guiáh, place; that is to say, place of the bow,...
