Fig. 5.—REBEC
The rebec,[10] however, we will welcome, for here we tread upon safe ground. Lying uppermost upon the table before us is a sketch (Fig. 5) of this little pear-shaped instrument which was the parent of the viol, and the darling of the minstrel’s heart. Its progenitor was the rabab of Arabia, and it derived its Frenchified title through the rabab’s Spanish equivalent “rabel,” or “arabel.” Owing to its commodious size, and consequent utility, this little instrument diffused itself rapidly over Europe. To sunny Provence; to France; to Normandy; and lastly to England it went in the hands of Troubadours and Crusaders, and so great was the charm of its coarse strings and rotund form, that mankind cherished it for many centuries. In England it became quite habitual to look upon the violin and the rebec as almost the same instrument; so much so, that the term fiddle became as synonymous with the rebec as with the violin. Thus we find Fletcher, in his “Knight of the Burning Pestle,” putting the following speech into the mouth of one of his characters: “They say ’tis present death for these fiddlers to tune their rebecs before the Grand Turk,” while “Golding,” in Thomas Shadwell’s Comedy of “The Miser,” speaks of the Fiddler’s Violin.
The first instrument played with a bow in France, the rebec survived longest in that country, and in the first half of the sixteenth century we find woodcut representations of it in complete “sets”—i.e. soprano, alto, tenor, and bass—in Martin Agricola’s “Musica Instrumentalis Deudsch.”
Fig. 6.—SPANISH MINSTREL (Eleventh-century MS.)
Underneath our rebec picture is quite an ornamental drawing of a man dancing upon stilts (Fig. 6), which comes from a Saracen’s pencil. This gentleman is a minstrel, and we ought to admire him, yet the cast of his countenance has been a severe shock to our cherished dreams of the romantic silky haired troubadours of the past. The picture is taken from a Spanish MS. of the eleventh century, one of the most valuable of its kind in that Aladdin’s cave—the British Museum—and is considered to be the work of a monk of the monastery of Silos in Bourgos (Old Castille). The instrument held in the minstrel’s left hand, while he nimbly trips upon a “light fantastic toe,” is curious and interesting, for it is in the nature of a freak. So equivocal is its appearance that as one looks one might easily be led into paraphrasing Shakespeare by exclaiming: “Is it a rebec that I see before me?” Certainly the form resembles that instrument, yet it has none of its three-stringed simplicity. More properly speaking, it appears to be a combination of the guitar and viol system, for, while the fingers twang the string above, the bow rubs a drone accompaniment beneath. How much of this arrangement is due to the fancy of the artist, and how much to truth, it is impossible to surmise, but certain it is that this is not the only specimen of a combination musical instrument to be found amongst the Arabs. The learned and industrious Michael Prætorius, in his “Theatrum Instrumentorum” (Wolfenbüttel, 1620), gives two views of an Arabian instrument which he calls a Monocordum and pipe. In form it is identical with the rabab (Fig. 3) but the neck serves the double office of fingerboard and reed, so that the performer could play both instruments at one and the same time. One cannot help regretting that this invention has passed out of use, as it would surely be welcome to those weary hosts and hostesses of modern times who ceaselessly strive to “cut down” the expenses of the inevitable music at the inevitable “At Home.” The artist would play solos upon his combined flute and viol among the clattering tongues and tea-cups, and the fee for his services would work out in the following satisfactory manner:—One artist + two musical instruments = One Fee. Excellent!
Beneath the minstrel in his elaborate stockings lies a picture of a comfortable, pleasant-looking old gentleman wearing a crown upon his head, and scraping what looks uncommonly like an attempt at the Stradivarius model. This figure (Fig. 7) taken from a bas-relief which was once in the Chapel of St Georges de Boscerville, Normandy—built in 1066—and now preserved in the museum at Rouen, is perhaps the oldest known representation of such a shaped viol extant. Monsieur Fetis, speaking of this figure in his “Histoire General de la Musique,” describes it as a “two-stringed rubebe held between the knees of the person who plays upon it with a bow.”
Fig. 7
FIGURE FROM ST
GEORGES DE BOSCERVILLE
(11th century)