THE GREAT VIOLINISTS AND PIANISTS.




THE VIOLIN AND EARLY VIOLINISTS.

The Ancestry of the Violin.--The Origin of the Cremona School of
Violin-Making.--The Amatis and Stradiuarii.--Extraordinary Art
Activity of Italy at this Period.--Antonius Stradiuarius and Joseph
Guarnerius.--Something about the Lives of the Two Greatest Violin-Makers
of the World.--Corelli, the First Great Violinist.--His Contemporaries
and Associates.--Anecdotes of his Career.--Corelli's
Pupil, Geminiani.--Philidor, the Composer, Violinist, and
Chess-Player.--Giuseppe Tartini.--Becomes an Outcast from his Family
on Account of his Love of Music.--Anecdote of the Violinist
Veracini.--Tartini's Scientific Discoveries in Music.--His Account of
the Origin of the "Devil's Trill."--Tartini's Pupils.


I.

The ancestry of the violin, considering this as the type of stringed
instruments played with a bow, goes back to the earliest antiquity; and
innumerable passages might be quoted from the Oriental and classical
writers illustrating the important part taken by the forefathers of the
modern violin in feast, festival, and religious ceremonial, in the fiery
delights of battle, and the more dulcet enjoyments of peace. But it
was not till the fifteenth century, in Italy, that the art of making