Chapter 7

It may have been from a play on the word catgut that so many of these ditties represent pussy in relation with the fiddle. True fiddler's magic belonged to the cat whose fiddling made the cow jump over the moon, the little dog laugh and the dish run away with the spoon. Rarely accomplished too was the cat that came fiddling out of the barn with a pair of bagpipes under her arm, singing "Fiddle cum fee, the mouse has married the humble bee."

Scientists tell us that crickets, grasshoppers, locusts and the like are fiddlers. Their hind legs are their fiddle-bows, and by drawing these briskly up and down the projecting veins of their wing-covers they produce the sounds that characterize them. Was it in imitation of these small winged creatures that man first experimented with the friction of bow and strings as a means of making music? Scarcely. It was the result of similar instinct on a larger human scale.

String instruments played with a bow may be traced to a remote period among various Oriental peoples. An example of their simplest form exists in the ravanastron, or banjo-fiddle, supposed to have been invented by King Ravana, who reigned in Ceylon some 5,000 years ago. 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. The latter is what Chaucer calls the rubible.

Possibly an impulse was given the fiddle by the Moorish rebab, brought into Spain in the eighth century, but ancient Celtic bards had long before this used a bow instrument--the chrotta or crwth, derived from the lyre, which was introduced by the Romans in their colonizing expeditions. As early as 560 A. D., Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, wrote to the Duke of Champagne:

_"Let the barbarians praise thee with the harp, Let the British crwth sing."_

This instrument, whose name signifies bulging box, was common in Britain, and was used in Wales until a comparatively recent period. One of its distinguishing features was an opening in the lower part for the admission of the fingers while playing. A fine specimen is preserved in the South Kensington Museum, corresponding well to the following description by a Welsh poet of the fifteenth century: "A fair coffer with a bow, a girdle, a finger-board and a bridge; its value is a pound; it has a frontlet formed like a wheel with the short-nosed bow across. In its centre are the circled sounding-holes, and the bulging of its back is somewhat like an old man, but on its breast harmony reigns, from the sycamore melodious music is obtained. Six pegs, if we screw them, will tighten all its chords; six advantageous strings are found, which, in a skilful hand, produce a varied sound."

In this same museum is a curious wedge-shaped boxwood fiddle, decorated with allegorical scenes, and dated 1578. Dr. Burney states that it has no more tone than a violin with a sordine. It is said to have been presented by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Leicester, and bears both of their coats-of-arms in silver on the sounding-board. Besides her other accomplishments, the Virgin Queen, we are told, was a violinist. During her reign we find the violin mentioned among instruments accompanying the drama and various festivities, and viols of diverse kinds were freely used. Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night, has Sir Toby enumerate among Sir Andrew Aguecheek's attractions skill on the viol-de-gamboys, Sir Toby's blunder for the viola da gamba, a fashionable bass viol held between the knees. A part was written for this instrument in Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and a number of celebrated performers on it are recorded in the eighteenth century. Two of these were ladies, Mrs. Sarah Ottey and Miss Ford.

Violers and fiddlers formed an essential part of the retinue of many monarchs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Charles II., of England, had twenty-four at his court, with red bonnets and flaunting livery, who played for him while he was dining according to the custom he had known at the French court during his exile. Place was grudgingly yielded to the violin by friends of the less insistent viol. Butler, in Hudibras, styled it "a squeaking engine." Earlier writers mention "the scolding violin," and describing the Maypole dance tell of not hearing the "minstrelsie for the fiddling." Thus all along its course it has had its opponents and deriders as well as its friends.

The soft-toned viol had deeply indented sides to permit a free use of the bow, was mostly supplied with frets like a guitar, and had usually from five to seven strings. Its different sizes corresponded with the soprano, contralto, tenor and bass of the human voice. An extremely interesting treble viol much in vogue in the eighteenth century was the viola d'amore, with fourteen strings, the seven of gut and silver being supplemented by seven sympathetic wire strings running below the finger-board and tuned in unison with the bowstrings, vibrating harmoniously while these are played. A remarkably well preserved specimen of this instrument, made by Eberle of Prague, in 1733, and superbly carved on pegbox and scroll, is in the fine private violin collection of Mr. D. H. Carr, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is one of the few genuine viola d'amores extant. The owner says of it: "The tone is simply wonderful, mellow, pure and strong, and of that exquisite harmony that comes from the throne of Nature. I know of no other genuine viola d'amore, and it compares with the modern copies I have seen as a Raphael or a Rubens with some cheap lithograph." These modern copies are the result of recent efforts to revive the use of this fascinating instrument. A barytone of a kindred nature was the viola di bordone or drone viol, so called because there was a suggestion of the buzzing of drone-flies, or humble bees, in the tones of its sympathetic strings, which often numbered as many as twenty-four. These violas recall the Hardanger peasant fiddle of Norway, of unknown origin and antiquity, whose delicate metallic under strings quaver tremulously and mysteriously when the bow sets in motion the main strings.

At one time every family of distinction in Britain deemed a chest of viols, consisting for the most part of two trebles, two altos, a barytone and a bass, as indispensable to the household as the piano is thought to-day. It was made effective in accompanying the madrigal, that delightful flower of the Elizabethan age. Singers not always being available for all of the difficult voice parts viols of the same compass supplied the lack. It was but a step for masters of music to compose pieces marked "to be sung or played," thus contributing to the forces that were lifting instrumental music above mere accompaniment for song or dance.

When musicians make demands musical instrument makers are ever ready to meet them, and the viol steadily improved. One who contributed to its progress was Gasper Duiffoprugcar (1514-1572) a luthier and mosaic inlayer, known in the Tyrol, in Bologna, Paris and Lyons. The belief that he originated the violin rests chiefly on the elaborately ornamented forgeries bearing his name, the work of French imitators from 1800 to 1840. There is an etching, supposed to be a copy of a portrait of himself carved on one of his viols with this motto: "I lived in the wood until I was slain by the relentless axe. In life I was silent, but in death my melody is exquisite."

The words might apply to the perfected violin, whose evolution was going on all through that period of literary and artistic activity known as the Renaissance. When or at whose hands it gained its present form is unknown. The same doubt encircles its first master player. Perhaps the earliest worthy of mention is one Baltzarini, a Piedmontese, appointed by Catherine de Medici, in 1577, to lead the music at the French court, and said to have started the heroic and historical ballet in France.

He is sometimes confounded with Thomas Baltzar, a violinist of Lubec, who, in 1656 introduced the practice of shifting in London, where he wholly eclipsed David Mell, a much admired clockmaker fiddler, although the latter, as a contemporary stoutly averred, "played sweeter, was a well-bred gentleman, and was not given to excessive drinking as Baltzar was." His marvelous feat of "running his fingers to the end of the finger-board and back again with all alacrity" caused a learned Oxford connoisseur of music to look if he had hoofs. Notwithstanding the jovial tastes of this German, he was appointed leader, by Charles II., of the famous violins, and had the final honor of a burial in Westminster Abbey.

Here reposed also in due time his successor in the royal band, John Banister, who had been sent by the king to France for study, and who was the first Englishman, unless the amateur Mell be counted, to distinguish himself as a performer on the violin. He wrote music for Shakespeare's Tempest, and was the first to attempt, in London, concerts at which the audience paid for seats. Announcements of the initial performance, September 30, 1672, read: "These are to give notice that at Mr. Banister's house (now called the Musick School) over against the George Tavern in White Friars, this present Monday will be performed musick by excellent masters, beginning precisely at four o'clock in the afternoon and every afternoon for the future at precisely the same hour."

Credit for shaping the first violin has been given Gasparo Bertolotti (1542-1609), called Gasparo da Salo, from his birthplace, a suburb of Brescia, that pearl of Lombardy so long a bone of contention among nations. Violins were doubtless made before his time, but none are known to-day dated earlier than his. A pretty legend tells how this skilful viol-maker imprisoned in his first violin the golden tones of the soprano voice of Marietta, the maiden he loved and from whom death parted him. Her likeness, so the story runs, is preserved in the angel face, by Benevenuto Cellini, adorning the head. The instrument thus famed was purchased for 3,000 Neapolitan ducats by Cardinal Aldobrandini, who presented it to the treasury at Innsprück. Here it remained as a curiosity until the French took the city in 1809, when it was carried to Vienna and sold to a wealthy Bohemian collector, after whose death it came into the possession of Ole Bull.

Gasparo's pupil, Giovanni Paolo Maggini (1581-1631), improved the principles of violin-building, and gave the world the modern viola and violoncello. A rich viola-like quality characterizes the Maggini violin. De Beriot used one in his concerts, and its plaintive tone was thought well suited to his style. He refused to part with it for 20,000 francs when Wieniawski, in 1859, wished to buy it. To-day it would command a far higher price. It is stated on authority that not more than fifty instruments of its make now exist, although a large number of French imitations claim recognition.

While Gasparo was founding the so-called Brescian school, Andrea Amati (1520-1580), a viol and rebec maker of picturesque Cremona, began to make violins, doubtless to fill the orders of his patrons. He must have believed the pinnacle of fame reached when King Charles IX. of France, in 1566, commissioned him to construct twenty-four violins, twelve large and twelve small pattern. They were kept in the Chapel Royal, Versailles, until 1790, when they were seized by the mob in the French Revolution, and but one of them is known to have escaped destruction. Heron-Allen, in his work on violin making, gives a picture of it, obtained through the courtesy of its owner, George Somers, an English gentleman. Its tone is described as mellow and extremely beautiful, but lacking in brilliancy.

As the Amati brothers, Antonio and Geronimo (Hieronymous) Amati continued their father's trade, producing instruments similar to his. The family reached its flower in Nicolo Amati (1596-1684), son of Geronimo. He originated the "Grand Amatis," and attained a purer, more resonant tone than his predecessors, although not always adapted to modern concert use. One of his violins was the favorite instrument of the French virtuoso Delphine Jean Alard (1815-1888), long violin professor at the Paris Conservatoire. It has been described as sounding like the melodious voice of a child heard beside the rising tide. Another fine specimen was exhibited by Mr. J. D. Partello, in 1893, at the World's Fair, in Chicago.

Nicolo Amati's influence was felt in his famous pupils. Foremost among these was Antonio Stradivarius (1644-1737), whose praises have been sung by poets, and whose life was one of unwavering service. His first attempts were mere copies, but after he was equipped with his master's splendid legacy of tools and wood, his originality asserted itself. His "Golden" period was from 1700 to 1725, but he accomplished good work until death overtook him. From his bench were sent out some seven thousand instruments, including tenors and violoncellos. Of these perhaps two thousand were violins.

A romance encircling this master of Cremona tells that in youth he loved his master's daughter, but that failing to win her heart and hand, he gave himself wholly to his work. He married, finally, a wealthy widow whose means enabled him to pursue his avocation undisturbed by monetary anxieties. His labors steadily increased the family property until "as rich as Stradivarius" became a common saying in Cremona. Because of his achievements and his personal worth, he was held in high esteem. Members of royal families, prelates of the church, men of wealth and culture throughout Europe, were his personal friends as well as his clients. His handsome home, with his workshop and the roofshed where he stored his wood, was, until recently, exhibited to visitors. To-day not a vestige of it remains. Weary of the importunities of relic-seekers, the Cremonese have torn it down, and have banished violins and every reminder of them from the town.

The tone of a Stradivarius, in good condition, is round, full and exceedingly brilliant, and displays remarkable equality as the player passes from string to string. Dr. Joseph Joachim, owner of the famous Buda-Pesth Strad, writes of the maker that he "seems to have given his violins a soul that speaks and a heart that beats." The Tuscan Strad, one of a set ordered by Marquis Ariberti for the Prince of Tuscany, in 1690, was sold two hundred years later to Mr. Brandt by a London firm for £2,000. Lady Hallé, court violinist to Queen Alexandra, owns the concert Strad of Ernst (1814-1865), composer of the celebrated Elegie, and values it at $10,000. A magnificent Stradivarius violin, with an exceedingly romantic history, belongs to Carl Gaertner, the veteran violinist and musician of Philadelphia, and could not be purchased at any price.

Another violin-builder from Nicolo Amati's workshop was Andrea Guarnerius (1630-1695), whose sons, Giuseppe and Pietro, followed in his footsteps. The family name reached its highest distinction in his nephew, Giuseppe (Joseph) Guarnerius (1683-1745), called del Gesu, because on his labels the initials I. H. S., surmounted by a Roman cross, were placed after his name, indicating that he belonged to a Jesuit society.

This Joseph of Cremona figures in story as a man of fascinating, restless personality, who for weeks would squander time and talents and then set to work with a zeal equalling that of Master Stradivarius. Tradition has it that he was once imprisoned for some bit of lawlessness, and was saved from despair by the jailor's daughter who brought him the tools and materials required for violin-building. What he esteemed the masterpiece of his lonely cell he presented as a souvenir to his gentle friend.

The violin about which this legend is woven, dated 1742, was bought by Ole Bull from the famous Tarisio collection, and is now the property of his son, Mr. Alexander Bull. It has an unusually rich, sonorous tone and splendid carrying powers. Similar qualities are attributed to the Paganini Guarnerius del Gesu, 1743, known as the "Canon" and kept under glass at the Genoa Museum. Mr. Hart, a violin authority, places highest in this make the "King Joseph," 1737, long in the private collections of Mr. Hawley, Hartford, Connecticut, and of Mr. Ralph Granger, Paradise Valley, California, and recently put on the market by Lyon & Healy, of Chicago.

An interesting Nicolo Amati pupil was Jacob Steiner (1621-1683), a Tyrolese, who, although bearing a glittering title, "violin maker to the Austrian Emperor," was harassed with financial perplexities and died insane. His most noted violins were the sixteen "Elector Steiners," one sent to each of the Electors and four to the Emperor. During his life the average price of his violins was six florins. A century after his death the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe's grandfather, paid 3,500 florins for one of them. It is also recorded that an American gentleman on La Fayette's staff, in the Revolutionary War, exchanged for a Steiner 1,500 acres of the tract where Pittsburg now stands. Mozart's violin, in the Mozarteum at Salzburg, is a Steiner.

Many violin-makers did good work in the past, many are achieving success to-day. It has been confidently asserted that the violin reached its highest possibilities in the old Brescian and Cremona days. Why should this be the case? The same well-defined principles, based on acoustics and other modern sciences, that have led to the steady improvement of other musical instruments ought surely to be of some advantage to the violin. Indeed, who knows but the day may come when the present will be considered its golden age.

While the men of Cremona were still fashioning their models the want of good strings was felt. This was met by Angelo Angelucci, known as the string-maker of Naples, a man who loved music and passed much time with violinists. Through his painstaking efforts such perfection was reached that Tartini, who was born the same year as he, 1692, could play his most difficult compositions two hundred times on the Angelucci strings, whereas he was continually interrupted by the snapping of others. Improvements in the bow, often called the tongue of the violin, are due to the house of Tourte, in Paris, in the eighteenth century, lightness, elasticity and spring coming to it from Francis Tourte, Jr.

Three eminent virtuosi, Corelli, Tartini and Viotti, whose united careers spanned a period of 150 years, prepared the way for modern methods of violin-playing. Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) left his home in Fusignano, near Bologna, a young violinist, for an extended concert tour. His gentle, sensitive disposition proving unfitted to cope with the jealousy of Lully, chief violinist in France, and with sundry annoyances in other lands, he returned to Italy and entered the service of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome. In the private apartments of the prelate there gathered a choice company of music lovers every Monday afternoon to hear his latest compositions. Besides his solos these comprised groups of idealized dance tunes with harmony of mood for their bond of union, and played by two violins, a viola, violoncello and harpsichord. They were the parents of modern Chamber Music, the place of assemblage furnishing the name.

Refined taste and purity of tone, we are told, distinguished the playing of Corelli, and to him are attributed the systematization of bowing and the introduction of chord-playing. He heads the list of musicians who protest against talking where there is music. On one occasion when his patron was addressing some remarks to another person, he laid down his violin, and on being asked the reason said "he feared the music was disturbing the conversation." This did not prevent him from being held in the highest esteem. After his death Cardinal Ottoboni had a costly monument erected over his grave in the Pantheon, and for many years a solemn service, consisting of selections from his works, was performed there on the anniversary of his funeral.

It was during a period of retirement in the monastery of Assisi that Giuseppi Tartini (1692-1770) resolved to quit the law course in the University of Padua and seek a career with his violin. He became a great master of this, a composer of works still regarded as classics, and a scientific writer on musical physics. His letter to his pupil, Signora Maddelena Lombardini, contains invaluable advice on violin practice and study, especially on the use of the bow, and his treatise on the acoustic phenomenon known as "the third sound," together with his work on musical embellishments, may at any time be read with profit.

It was after hearing the eccentric violinist Veracini that His Satanic Majesty appeared to Tartini in a dream and played for him a violin solo surpassing in marvelous character anything that he had ever heard or imagined. Trying to write it down in the morning he produced his famous "Devil's Sonata," with its double shakes and sinister laugh, a favorite of the violinist, but to the composer ever inferior to the music of his dreams. It is rather curious that anything of a diabolic nature should be associated with this man of amiable and gentle disposition, whose care of his scholars, according to Dr. Burney, was constantly paternal. Nardini, his favorite and most famous pupil, came from Leghorn to Padua to attend him, with filial devotion, in his last illness.

The talents of Corelli and Tartini seem to have been combined in the Piedmontese, Giovanni Battiste Viotti (1753-1824), a man of poetic, philanthropic mind, whose sensitive, retiring disposition unfitted him for public life. Wherever he appeared he outshone all other performers, yet there was constantly something occurring to wound him. At the Court of Versailles he left the platform in disgust because the noisy entrance of a distinguished guest interrupted his concerto. In London, after his means had been crippled by the French Revolution, he was accused of political intrigue.

While living in seclusion near Hamburg he composed some of his finest works, among them six violin duets, which he prefaced with the words: "This work is the fruit of leisure afforded me by misfortune. Some of the pieces were dictated by trouble, others by hope." At one time he embarked in a mercantile enterprise, in London, his transactions being regulated by the strictest integrity, but, as was inevitable, he soon returned to Paris and his art. After he had abandoned the concert room one of his greatest pleasures was in improvising violin parts to the piano performances of his friend, Madame Montegerault, to the delight of all present. He never had more than seven or eight pupils, but his influence has been widely felt. Many anecdotes are told of his kindness and generosity, and it is an interesting fact that among those who sought his advice and patronage was no less a personage than Rossini.