Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 4.djvu/291

VIOLIN. and probably others were in use, each being adapted to the music intended to be performed.

The Guitar-fiddle was larger than the Geige and Rebec, and approximated in size to the Tenor. [See opposite, Fig. 6.] This instrument is probably the Fidel of Chaucer. It has place in English life as an instrument of luxury.

Existing representations of the Fidel appear to indicate that the increased length of the instrument was not at first accompanied by a corresponding increase in the length of the strings, and that it was fitted with a tailpiece and loop of unusual length. It had no corner-blocks. A good idea of the mediæval Fidel may be gained from the modern Spanish or common guitar, which appears to be simply the improved Fidel of the Troubadours minus its bridge, tailpiece, soundpost and soundholes. It has precisely the same arrangement for the pegs, which are screwed vertically into a flat head, which is often, but not always, bent back at an angle with the neck. The guitar, however, requires no bridge, and no soundpost: its tailpiece is glued to the belly, and it retains the primitive central soundhole, which in the bowed instrument gives place to a double soundhole on either side of the bridge. [See .]

We now reach a step of the greatest importance in the construction of bowed instruments, the invention of 'corner-blocks.' This improvement followed naturally from the invention of the waist. A modern violin has two projecting points on each of its sides, one at either extremity of the bouts or bow-holes which form the waist of the instrument. In the classical pattern, which has prominent corner-blocks, these projections form a sharp angle: in the older ones, including the viols, the angle is less acute, and the corner therefore less prominent. These corners mark the position of triangular 'blocks' inside, to which the ribs of the instrument are glued, and which are themselves glued to the back and belly, forming, so to speak, the corner-stones of the construction. They contribute enormously to the strength and resonance of the fiddle. Corner-blocks, as well as bowed instruments of the larger sizes, first appear in the 15th century: and as large fiddles can only be conveniently constructed by means of corner-blocks we may fairly conclude that the two inventions are correlative.

The writer inclines to ascribe the origin of corner-blocks to Germany, because it was in that land of mechanical inventions that the manufacture of the viol in its many varieties was chiefly carried on by the lute-makers from 1450 to 1600, because the earliest known instrument-makers, even in France and Italy, were Germans, and because it is in the German musical handbooks of the first part of the 16th century—Virdung, Luscinius, Judenkünig, Agricola, and Gerle—that we find the viol family for the first time specifically described. This invention was the turning-point in the development of bowed instruments. It not only separated them definitely from their cognates of the lute and guitar class, but it gave them immense variety in design, and rendered them easier to make, as well as stronger and more resonant. Whether double or single corner-blocks were first employed, is uncertain. Possibly the first step was the introduction of single corner-blocks, by which the ribs were increased from two to four, the upper ones having an inward curvature where the bow crosses the strings. The illustration is from a drawing by Raffaelle, in whose paintings the viol with single corner-blocks occurs several times. [For another specimen, see, Fig. 3.] Single corner-blocks were occasionally used long after the introduction of double ones. The writer has seen very good old Italian tenors and double-basses with single corners. A well-known specimen in painting is the fine Viola da gamba in Domenichino's St. Cecilia. The vibration is more rapid and free than that of the instrument with double corners, but the tone is consequently less intense.

But the foundation on which fiddle-making was finally to rest was the viol with double corners. Double corners produced a new constructive feature, viz. the 'middle bouts,' or simply the 'bouts,' the ribs which curve inwards between the two corner-blocks. While the corner-blocks enormously increased the resonance of the fiddle, the bouts liberated the right hand of the player. In early times the hand must have been kept in a stiff and cramped position. The bouts for the first time rendered it possible for the fiddler to get at his strings: and great stimulus to playing must have been the consequence. It was long before the proper proportions of the bouts were settled. They were made small and deep, or long and shallow, at the maker's caprice. At one period, probably an early one, their enormous size rendered them the most conspicuous feature in the outline. It would seem that fiddlers desired to carry their newly-won freedom of hand to the uttermost: and the illustrations in Agricola prove that this preposterous model prevailed for instruments of all four sizes.

The fantastic outlines which were produced