Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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214 SALMON SALO
Boyal, May 28, 1817, and waa also lay vicar of
"Westminster Abbey and lay clerk of St. George's,
"Windsor. With an ungrateful voice he sang
with much taste and expression, and was an
excellent singing-master. He died at "Windsor,
Jan. 26, 1858. W. H. H.
SALMON, Thomas, born at Hackney,
Middlesex, June 24, 1648, was on April 8,
1664, admitted a commoner of Trinity College,
Oxford. He took the degree of M.A. and
became rector of Mepsal or Meppershall, Bedfordshire.
In 1672 he published An Essay to
the Advancement of Mustek, by casting away the
perplexity of different Cliffs, and limiting all sorts
of Musick in one vmiversal cha/racter. His plan
was that the notes should always occupy the
same position on the stave, without regard as
to which octave might be used ; and he chose
such position from that on the bass stave i.e.
G was to be always on the lowest line. Removing
the bass clef, he substituted for it the
capital letter B, signifying Bass. In like manner
he placed at the beginning of the next stave the
letter M (for Mean), to indicate that the notes
^ere to be sung or played an octave higher than
the bass ; and to the second stave above prefixed
the letter T (for Treble), to denote that the
notes were to be sounded two octaves above the
bass. Matthew Locke criticised the scheme
with great asperity, and the author published
a, Vindication of it, to which Locke and others
replied. [See Locke, Matthew.] [In 1688
he wrote a book on Temperament, A Proposal
to perform Music in Perfect and Maihernatical
Proportions ; he lectured before the Royal Society
on Just Intonation, in July 1705 ; and in the
following December approached Sir Hans Sloane
with a view of making researches into the Greek
enharmonic music. He died at Mepsal, and
was buried there August 1, 1706. For his nonmusical
works, see Diet, of Nat. Biog.'\ w. h. h.
SALO, Gaspako da, a celebrated violinmaker
of Brescia. [The career of this maker
rested entirely upon conjecture, until the keeper
of the Brescian State Archives, Cavaliere Livi,
undertook to investigate da Sale's life, and
published the result of his researches in the
Nuova Antologia, on August 16, 1891. The
documentary evidence there quoted has proved
Gasparo da Salo to have been a member of an
artistic family ; that his legitimate name was
Gasparo di Bertolotti ; that his grandfather was
a lute-maker of Polepenazze, named Santino di
Bertolotti ; and that his father was a painter,
Francesco di Bertolotti, who was, apparently
called ' "Violino ' by his intimate friends. Owing
to the loss of certain requisite pages of the
parish registers of Salo, the exact date of this
violin-maker's birth is still unknown, but calculating
by the income-tax returns of Brescia,
which declare him to be twenty-six in 1568,
and forty-five in 1588, his birth locates itself
with some degree of accuracy in the year 1542.
It is supposed that da Salo learnt his art partly
from his grandfather and partly from a Brescian
viol -maker who stood sponsor to his son
Francesco, named Girolamo Virchi. "Whether
Virchi was da Sale's master or not is merely
surmise, but what is certain is that the great
Brescian master's earliest efforts met with such
small encouragement that he contemplated
removing to France, but was turned from his
purpose by a loan of 60 lire from a certain
brother Gabriel of St. Pietro. This advance
was apparently the turning-point in da Sale's
career ; it was the moment when hazardous
venture gave place to definite aim. In 1568
da Salo was reni^ing a house and shop in the
Contrada del Palazzo Veochio, Brescia, at £20
per annum. He then possessed the title of
'
Magistro di Violino,' and owned a .stock of
musical instruments which he valued at £60.
In 1579 there is an added title of 'Magistro a
Cittari,' and in 1583 'Artifice d' Instrumenti
di Musica.' Five years later, 1588, and twenty
after his first establishment in the Contrada
del Palazzo Vecohio, he changed his residence
to the Contrada Cocere, where he valued his
stock of finished and unfinished violins at
£200, and styled himself Magister instrumentorum
musica.' In 1599 he bought a house in
Brescia, in a street called St. Peter the Martyr ;
and between 1581 and 1607 owned some smaU
properties about Calvagese, near Salo. He
•
died in Brescia on April 14, 1609, and although
all trace of the place of his interment is lost, it
is known that he was buried at Santo Joseffo in
Brescia. His wife's Christian name was Isabella
she was born in the year 1546. G. da Sale's son,
Francesco, was bom in Brescia, 1565, and died
there in 1614 (?). He was married to Signorina
Fior of Calvegese, near Salo, in his twenty-third
year. He followed the fiddle -making profession
during his father's lifetime, but ceased to
do so after his death. It is probable that he sold
his business to his father's pupil Paolo Maggini,
and retired. In any case he apparently left
Brescia in 1614, and nothing further is known
of him after that date.] Gasparo da Salo was
one ofthe earliestmakers of stringed instmments
who employed the pattern of the violin as distinguished
from that of the viol. His works
are of a primitive pattern, more advanced than
that of Zanetto and other old Brescian makers,
but totally diiferent from that of the contemporary
Amati family. The model varies,
being sometimes high, sometimes flat ; the
middle curves are shallow, and the sound-holes
straight and angular. The wood is generally
well chosen, and the thicknesses are correct
and the tone of the instrument, when of the
flat model and in good preservation, peculiarly
deep and penetrating. [He made many instruments,
especially basses, of pear wood as well
as sycamore wood. His selection of timber was
most careful ; indeed, the remarkable regularity