PREFACE
No prefatory remarks are necessary to introduce the reader to the following pages. They emanated, in the first place, from a desire for personal instruction, and what the French term le soulagement du cœur, a combination—according to Vauvenargues—calculated to prove useful to one’s fellows, car personne est seul de son espéce. Those who live on my plane of thought will welcome this volume, and those who do not, will easily find a way out of the difficulty presented to them by their attempted perusal of its pages: most modern houses are now provided with wastepaper baskets of ample proportions!
My true reason for allowing myself to wander into the paths of a preamble, springs from a desire to thank my friends and colleagues for their assistance in supplying me with many interesting facts.
In particular I am indebted to Sir George Donaldson for permission to reproduce his Duiffoproucart Viol; to Dr William H. Cummings for the use of his interesting old engraving of Benjamin Hallet; to Mr W. E. Whitehouse for notes concerning Signor Piatti; to Mr Edward Heron Allen for courteous admittance to his valuable library, and for permission to reproduce the handsome carved violoncello by Galli; to Mr John Bridges for his photographs of “The King” Amati, and for supplying me with many points relating to its history; and to Miss Gertrude Roberts for helpful research at the British Museum.
Also I waft hearty acknowledgments to that great host of musical historians—my predecessors—to whose various records from century to century we owe our present knowledge.
Olga Racster.
CONTENTS
| CHAT THE FIRST | |
| PAGE | |
| Fog—The South Kensington Museum—The Ravanastron—Arabia—TheKemangeh à Gouze—Egyptand the Rabab | [1] |
| CHAT THE SECOND | |
| Lunch, and the Emperor Albinus—The Crwth—Theimmature Bow Instruments which precededthe Fifteenth-century Viol—M. Coutagne andGaspard Duiffoproucart | [43] |
| CHAT THE THIRD | |
| The Renaissance—The Influence of the NetherlandsSchool—A brief Outline of the growing Use ofthe Viol in Germany, Italy, England, France | [81] |
| CHAT THE FOURTH | |
| Andrea Amati—“The King” and its History—Gasparoda Salo—Woods employed by AncientLuthiers—Paolo Maggini and the “Dumas”Bass—Monsieur Savart’s Experiments—Freaks—StradivariusVioloncellos—Signor Piatti’sVioloncellos—The Bass of Spain—Davidoff’sVioloncello—Herr Klengel’s Amati—A neatSwindle—Stradivarius’ Contemporaries—Ownersof Rugger Violoncellos—George IV.’spseudo Stradivarius—The earliest Treatise onthe Violoncello as a Solo Instrument—MrAndrew Forster’s Gamba—The Prince Consort’s“Ancient Instruments” Concert—Developmentof the Technique of VioloncelloPlaying | [109] |
| CHAT THE FIFTH | |
| Two Eighteenth-century Women Players of theViola da Gamba | [185] |
| CHAT THE SIXTH | |
| An Eighteenth-century Violoncello Prodigy | [211] |