wholly superfluous. The superior qualities of the violoncello to the gamba as a solo instrument had escaped him, although the conspicuous success of cello players in the second half of the last century could not have remained unknown to him. It seems, therefore, as if Gerber had a special predilection for the gamba--a taste which only a few of his contemporaries shared with him. Gerber’s[43] confident assertion that the French priest, Tardieu, of Tarascon, had invented the violoncello “in the year 1708,” is simply to be relegated to the region of fable, for the instrument had already existed long before in Italy.[44] Fétis remarks (p. 47) in his article “Antoine Stradivari” (Paris, 1856): The violoncello had already been mentioned by Prätorius in his “Syntagma Mus.” (1614-1620), which is a mistake, for the work referred to contains neither the name nor the illustration of this instrument.[45] But the violoncello must already have been in use about this time in Italy, for (according to Rob. Eitner)[46] it is mentioned in a publication of the year 1641, and then in a work of Freschi’s, which appeared in 1660 as “Violoncino.” In Arresti’s Sonatas in two and three parts, of the year 1665, it is called “Violoncello.” It was of great importance for the Italian instrument makers to produce a bass instrument of the violin type which had already been in use from the middle of the sixteenth century, and this certainly happened towards the end of that period. This is proved by the Brescian Gaspard da Salò[47] (1550-1612). Whether Andreas Amati, the founder of the famous Cremona school (born 1520, died 1580), constructed similar instruments appears doubtful. Apparently the gamba as well as the violin served as guides for the proportions in the construction of the violoncello. From the violin were borrowed the outlines of the soundbox, the arched back, which the more ancient gambas, whose backs were flat, did not have; also the F holes and the fingerboard without frets. From the gamba were taken the large proportions of the violoncello. It was at first constructed like the gamba, in smaller and larger dimensions, until Stradivarius established a standard size. Whether the most famous German violin maker, Jacob Stainer (born 1621, died 1683), made violoncellos is much doubted by experts. It is, however, certain that he made gambas, which were often converted into violoncellos.