Who Invented the Violin?

The origin of the violin has always been murky. Scholars have suspected that the violin’s precursor, the viol, was invented in Spain in the second half of the 15th century – before the Jews were expelled. Then, shortly after the Spanish expulsion, the viol showed up in Italy, where it quickly developed into the violin we know today. But who brought the viol to Italy, and who is responsible for its development into the violin, have largely remained a mystery.

In the last few decades, some scholars have concluded that Jewish musicians were the ones responsible. The violin seems to have originated in Italy in the first half of the 16th century, around the same time that the expelled Spanish Jews would have settled there. And the viol seems to have traveled the same path and at the same time that the Jews fled Spain.

The first to propose this theory was Roger Prior, 73, a retired lecturer from the University of Belfast. He’s written two articles and a book about Jewish musicians around the time of the violin’s origin.

“Did you know that there’s no reference to the violin in Spain in the 16th century? When the Jews were pushed out of Spain, one of the obvious places they went to was Italy. That’s where the violin seems to have been developed. That’s the reason for linking the Jews and the violin. I think that’s been quite well-documented,” Prior says.

HERE’S HOW the story goes: In the early 16th century, King Henry VIII began a campaign to increase the prestige of the English court. He started by hiring prestigious Italian musicians, and in 1540 a group of six Italian viol players showed up at his doorstep. Prior’s research concludes that most of these viol players were probably Spanish or Portuguese Jews who had fled to Italy after the 1492 Spanish expulsion. Since Jews seem to have been leading viol players around the same time that the viol developed into the violin, Prior concludes that Jews may have played a role in the creation of the violin.

“I haven’t got any definite proof, but there’s an awful lot of evidence that the viol players were Jewish,” Prior says.

One piece of the puzzle Prior points to is a historically mysterious event in English history. Scholars have always known that in 1541, Henry VIII was told that there were “Marranos,” Portuguese Jews who formally converted to Christianity but still practiced Judaism in secret, living in London. He had these crypto-Jews imprisoned. Prior says that Henry normally wouldn’t hurry to imprison crypto-Jews, but the circumstances were exceptional; he was trying to win Charles V’s favor at the time, and thought that prosecuting “secret Jews” would prove himself as a Catholic. Charles’s English ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, praised the arrests. But suddenly, Charles’s sister and even the king and queen of Portugal wrote to Chapuys as advocates of the prisoners. In the end, the crypto-Jews were released.

Though this story has long been known, the identity of these secret Portuguese Jews has always been a mystery – that is, until Prior connected this account to his research of Henry VIII’s viol consort. First, he noticed that the records used to support the arrests came from Milan, which is where many of the viol players lived before coming to England.

THERE’S FURTHER evidence that the violin may be of Jewish origin. It’s based on Prior’s second theory: that the renowned Amati family was Jewish. The Amatis are famed for being the first makers of the modern violin (and for teaching Antonio Stradivari, widely regarded to be the best violin craftsman in history). If the Amatis were Jewish, this could once again point to the violin being of Jewish origin since they were the earliest prominent makers of the modern violin.

“As far as I understand, the viol existed in Italy and lots of other places throughout Europe. One can’t say it existed in Spain and was then brought to Italy. Even if it was, it doesn’t mean to say that Jews are the only ones who played the viol. So the violin could have been invented by others, then the Jews traveled. But other people traveled too, like gypsies. So I think it’s unrealistic, wishful thinking to say that.”

Please leave your comments to this and let me know what you think? Did the Jews really invent the violin?