STRINGED INSTRUMENTS. Stringed instruments are divided into two principal classes: (A) Those in which the tone is produced by drawing a bow made of horse-hair across the strings. (B) Those in which the tone is produced by plucking the string either with the lingers or a small instrument called plectrum. The instru ments of class A have but few strings (gen erally four), and depend for the production of their complete range upon stopping, i.e. short ening the vibrating portion of the string by means of the fingers. To this class belong (1 ) the violin, (2) the viola, (3) the violoncello, (4) the double bass. (See the separate articles.) Some of the instruments of class B have few strings like those of class A: others have a separate string for each note. Those having few strings are: ( 1 ) the mandolin, (2) the guitar. (3) the banjo. Those having many separate strings: ( 1 ) the zither, (2) the harp. (See the separate articles.) Formerly there were in use instruments that were played with a bow, which also had additional strings to be plucked with the fingers. (See TuEomio.) Among the stringed instruments by far the most important are those constituting the viol family (class A). The present perfection of these instruments is the result of a slow- evolution of possibly a thousand years. But so far we have no evidence whatever
that any instruments of the viol family were known in antiquity. Because Arabic authors of the fourteenth century mention stringed instru ments, it was supposed for some time that viols originated ill the Orient. This has been disproved by Gethert, who in the second volume of Ins .1fa siert ,Raera published a representation of a Euro pean stringed lyre of the ninth century very sim ilar in shape to the later yiga. Even earlier, however, the crowd (q.v.) was known in Wales. For several centuries viols were built in two shapes, either with a fiat body like the violin or with a pear-shaped body like the mandolin. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries stringed instruments of all possible varieties of shapes were built. These. however, were all superseded in the. course of the following (-mantles, when the art of violin-making reached its height. After the violin had been perfeeted the same attention was also bestowed upon the instruments of lower pitch of this fa mily. such as the bratsehe. viola (1:1 gamba. viola d'amore, etc, (Sec VIOLIN; VIOLONCELLO.) A full ac eount of how the viol family came to he the foundation of the modern orchestra will he found under OnenEsTRA.