For the descent of the guitar-fiddle, the first bowed ancestor of the violin, through many transitions from the cithara, see [Cithara], [Guitar] and [Guitar-Fiddle].
| From Julius Rühlmann’s Geschichte der Bogeninstrumente. |
| Minnesinger Fiddle. Germany, 13th Century, from the Manesse MSS. |
In the minnesinger and troubadour fiddles, of which evidences abound during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, are to be observed the structural characteristics of the violin and its ancestors in the course of evolution. The principal of these are first of all the shallow sound-chest, composed of belly and back, almost flat, connected by ribs (also present in the cithara), with incurvations more or less pronounced, an arched bridge, a finger-board and strings (varying in number), vibrated by means of a bow. The central rose sound-holes of stringed instruments whose strings are plucked by fingers, or plectrum have given place to smaller lateral sound-holes placed on each side of the strings. It is in Germany,[2] where contemporary drawings of fiddles of the 13th and 14th centuries furnish an authoritative clue, and in France, that the development may best be followed. The German minnesinger fiddle with sloping shoulders was the prototype of the viols, whereas the guitar-fiddle produced the violin through the intermediary of the Italian bowed Lyra.
The fiddle of the Carolingian epoch,—such, for instance, as that mentioned by Otfrid of Weissenburg[3] in his Harmony of the Gospels (c. 868),
| “Sih thar ouch al ruarit This organo fuarit Lira joh fidula,” &c.,— |
was in all probability still an instrument whose strings were plucked by the fingers, a cithara in transition.
(K. S.)
[1] See C.E.H. de Coussemaker, Mémoire sur Hucbald (Paris, 1841).
[2] See the Manesse MSS. reproduced in part by F.H. von der Hagen, Heldenbilder (Leipzig and Berlin, 1855) and Bildersaal. The fiddles are reproduced in J. Rühlmann’s Geschichte der Bogeninstrumente (Brunswick, 1882), plates.