' … for practitioners and teachers of any of the instruments investigated - the book is an extremely important tool in understanding the history and development of those instruments. It contains a great deal of useful resources: three appendices, extensive routes on primary and secondary sources, and a splendid bibliography. it is very much a book to be dipped into time and time again. Music Teacher
Preface; 1. Historical background; 2. Stradivari's workshop materials; 3. The violin forms and patterns; 4. Violin fittings and setup; 5. The dance master's kit; 6. The viola da gamba and viola d' amore; 7. The lute; 8. The mandola and mandolino; 9. The guitar; 10. The harp; 11. The workshop; Appendices: 1. The Hill Bass-Bar collection; 2. Thomas Salmon's 'The Theory of Musick Reduced to Arithmetical and Geometric Proportions' from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1705; 3. A case study: The 'Messiah'; Color plates.
