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Concept
Pochette (musical instrument)
Summary
The pochette is a small stringed instrument of the bowed variety. It is essentially a very small violin-like wood instrument designed to fit in a pocket, hence its common name, the "pochette" (French for small pocket).
Also known as a pocket fiddle it was developed to be used by dance masters in royal courts and other places of nobility, and by street musicians, from about the 15th century until around the 19th century, with it being especially popular in the 1800s. In the past the rebec was used in a similar way.
A common misconception is that pochettes were intended for children. They were actually conceived for adults; their small size allowed them to be used where the larger violins were too cumbersome to carry, or too expensive to own. The instrument's body is very small, but its fingerboard is long relative to the instrument's overall size, to preserve as much of the instrument's melodic range as possible. Pochettes come in many shapes, with the narrow boat shaped ones called "sardinos" being one of the most common, along with the pear-shaped type. A pochette shaped like a violin is called a "kit violin".
Trichet is said to have described the pochette's leather carrying case as a poche. Similarly, Mersenne wrote that it was common practice among pochette players (such as traveling minstrels or dance teachers) to carry the instrument in a pocket. The word "kit" possibly arose from an abbreviation of the word "pocket" to "-cket" and subsequently "kit"; alternatively, it may be a corruption of "cittern" (κιθάρα). The word "Kit" is believed to have first been used in the first quarter of the 16th century England where it was mentioned in Interlude of the Four Elements, 1517. It is possible that the word "kit" originally referred to a small rebec, which was used in the same manner at the time in England, but came to belong to the violin shaped pochettes later on as it replaced the rebec.
Many fiddlers in the 18th century used pochettes because of their portability.
Official source
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