The foregoing remarks point to the absence of reliable evidence of the existence of a bow—worthy of the name from the point of view of a Violinist—among the Asiatic nations in the early centuries of our era. The Ravanastron of India, the Rebab of Arabia, and other stringed instruments used by the Persians and the Chinese, hardly admit of being looked upon as links in the genealogical Fiddle chain. Whatever the shape and use of ancient Eastern instruments—having something in common with the European Violin—may have been, the slight apparent affinity is accidental, and no real relationship exists between the European and the Asiatic Fiddle.11
11 Mr. Engel, "Researches into the Early History of the Violin Family," page 104, remarks: "It is rarely that the name of an Asiatic musical instrument can be traced to a European origin. There are, however, one or two instances in which this seems to be possible. Thus, the Chinese name Ye-Yia, by which they occasionally designate their Fiddle, may possibly be a corruption of giga or geige, considering that the common name of the Chinese Fiddle is Unheen, and that Macao, where this instrument is said to be called Ye-Yin, has been above three hundred years in the possession of the Portuguese, and in constant communication with European nations." This seems to deprive the argument of the Eastern origin of the Fiddle of weight, and favours the already strong evidence of Scandinavian origin centred in the word Geige.
2.
The survey of the early history of bowed instruments in the North of Europe necessarily discovers a broader field of ostensible data than is possible to be found in the Asiatic view of the subject. Tradition, accompanied by its attendant uncertainties, gives place to facts recorded in illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, on sculptured stone, on engraved brasses, in the lay of the minstrel, in the song of the poet, and, finally, in the works of the painter and of the musician. The information obtainable from these several sources is often of the slightest kind, and admits of little else than a rude historical outline being drawn. The varied character of the evidence, however, serves in some instances to counterbalance the lack of detail.
Enquiry into the history of any science seldom fails to make us acquainted with men whose views and opinions were formulated prior to the production of well-digested evidence in favour of their premises—a condition of things resulting oftentimes in their judgments being post-dated, and their names in consequence severed from them; in short—
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"Elder times have worn the same, Though new ones get the name." |
In relation to our subject, the Hon. Roger North, Attorney-General to King James the Second, occupies a position of the kind described. In his work entitled "Memoirs of Music," written in the early part of the eighteenth century, we have the ingenious author's views as to the source from whence sprung the progenitor of the long line of Fiddle and Viol. His treatment of the subject displays a truly commendable amount of skill and judgment, and more so when we consider the limited sources of information at his disposal in comparison with those at the service of subsequent musical authors. He says, "There is no hint where the Viol kind came first in use." "But as to the invention which is so perfectly novel as not to have been heard of before Augustulus, the last of the Roman Emperors, I cannot but esteem it perfectly Gothic." "I suppose that at first it was like its native country, rude and gross, and at the early importation it was of the lesser kind which they called Viola da Bracchia, and since the Violin." He concludes by expressing his belief that the Hebrews did not sound their "lutes and guitars with the scratch of an horse-tail bow." These opinions of Roger North are for the most part identical with those held by well-known promoters of the Northern view of our subject.12
12 Paul Lacroix remarks, in "The Arts of the Middle Ages": "Stringed instruments that were played on by means of bows were not known before the fifth century, and belonged to the Northern races." Sir Gore Ouseley, in his English edition of Naumann's "History of Music," commenting upon the author's statement that "the Rebab was introduced by Arabs into Southern Europe, and may be the precursor of all our modern stringed instruments," says, "From this view I am compelled to dissent," and speaks in favour of the Northern origin. William Chappell, "Popular Music of the Olden Times," remarks: "I will not follow M. Fétis in his newly adopted Eastern theory of the bow. The only evidence he adduces is its present use in the East, and the primitive form of Eastern instruments." "I would ask how comes it that the bow was unknown to the Greeks and the Romans? Did not Alexander the Great conquer India and Persia? And were not those countries better known to the ancients than to the modern until within the last three hundred years? The Spaniards derived their instruments from the Moors, but the bow was not among them."