The New Violin Idiom. Violin Music and its Uses in Different Countries, 1600-50

Abstract

Abstract Gb. Doni’s enumeration of the violin’s many expressive possibilities may seem extravagant. Nevertheless his statement, however regarded, is a clear tribute to the progress of the violin and to the appreciation of its inherent qualities by musicians in the first half of the seventeenth century. What is true of the violin is true of all instruments in one degree or another, the specific and idiomatic capabilities of individual instruments being realized more and more clearly after r6oo. Mersenne expressed the new attitude very clearly: ‘While each instrument can be used to play such pieces as one desires, nevertheless experience shows that some pieces are more successful than others when they are played on certain instruments, and what is good on one is not so agreeable or so fitting on another.’