No prefatory remarks are necessary to introduce the reader to the following pages. They emanated, in the first place, from a desire for personal instruction, and what the French term le soulagement du cœur, a combination—according to Vauvenargues—calculated to prove useful to one’s fellows, car personne est seul de son espéce. Those who live on my plane of thought will welcome this volume, and those who do not, will easily find a way out of the difficulty presented to them by their attempted perusal of its pages: most modern houses are now provided with wastepaper baskets of ample proportions!
My true reason for allowing myself to wander into the paths of a preamble, springs from a desire to thank my friends and colleagues for their assistance in supplying me with many interesting facts.
In particular I am indebted to Sir George Donaldson for permission to reproduce his Duiffoproucart Viol; to Dr William H. Cummings for the use of his interesting old engraving of Benjamin Hallet; to Mr W. E. Whitehouse for notes concerning Signor Piatti; to Mr Edward Heron Allen for courteous admittance to his valuable library, and for permission to reproduce the handsome carved violoncello by Galli; to Mr John Bridges for his photographs of “The King” Amati, and for supplying me with many points relating to its history; and to Miss Gertrude Roberts for helpful research at the British Museum.
Also I waft hearty acknowledgments to that great host of musical historians—my predecessors—to whose various records from century to century we owe our present knowledge.
Olga Racster.