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Artemio versari Collection

STRINGED INSTRUMENTS
As for a great many other ancient musical instruments, for the violin also we do not have an identity card allowing to historically establish origin, authorship and date of birth. The scattering over the centuries of the first examples built and of the original documents – drawings and model – has made it nearly impossible for historians and strings experts to inequivocally establish to whom the anteriority of the creation of the violin is owed. The few early violins we know of lack the inside label bearing the author’s name; then there are rudimentary instruments, perhaps in part successively transformed by their makers themselves, and yet others ruined and altered later on by violin makers who wanted to embellish and improve the original primitive shape. To this situation we should add the great confusion caused by the many mystifiers, very adroit in making copies and in falsifying old instruments. The generic name violin can already be found in 15th century writings and documents, but refers to small violas (reduced soprano violas); the same can be said of the strings similar to the violin that are represented in several Renaissance paintings. The historians who devoted themselves to research on primitive enstruments and valid documents allowing to recognise the inventor of the violin, failed to find sound information. The historian Fétis was the first to attribute to the Italian Gasparo da Salò the great merit of the invention of the violin. Others instead upheld the authorship of Andrea Amati. The in recent years, some scholars would have discovered a violin on which supposedly appeared an oil painting the experts ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci. But in any case we cannot not recall the name of Gasparo da Salò and Andrea Amati among the first violin makers. To the latter we attribute the synthesis of the modern quartet, with those characteristics that have remained nearly unaltered for centuries. The viola and the cello have also been set for centuries in an unaltered shape and structure. The double bass alone has a certain flexibility. The double bass with three strings having disappeared a long time ago, the field was left to two types with four or five strings.

From Museo della Musicas by Artemio Versari
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Artemio versari Collection
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