Scan 30
A Treatise On The Structure And Preservation Of The Violin, 1875
10 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1These are the proportions best adapted for obtaining a full, round, and sonorous tone. Whoever thinks that I should give an exact scale for the particular height, fall, and thickness of the belly, calculated in hundredth-parts of an inch, is mistaken. Such calculations I certainly make for myself; but, here, I am not writing for instrument-makers, nor for those who busy themselves with repairing, without being able to construct a violin; but simply for professors and amateurs, in order to give them a general knowledge of the correct proportions of a good instrument.
3The back is formed in the same proportion as the belly, but is, in most violins, rather thicker in the wood.
5During two years, I measured and calculated the proportions of the very best instruments, according to the rules of mathematics, under the late Herr Ernst, Concert-director at Gotha, with whom I also studied music for three years. Herr Ernst himself made excellent violins, as the reader is doubtless aware, which will in a few years approximate to the Cremonese, if they escape the misfortune of falling into the hands of such gentry as I have before described!
7Jerome Amati, of Cremona, by whom the oldest violins were made,* used the most beautiful maple with a very full figure, and, as far as I have been able to ascertain, constructed most of the backs of a single piece. The figure of the wood runs from the left to the right side, somewhat slanting downwards. The form of his violins is large, and the curves from one corner to another are most pleasing to the eye. The corners resting on the sides are very obtuse, and therefore
9* That is, so far as the author's knowledge of the Cremonese instruments went (see the commencement of this chapter); but the head of the Amati family was Andrew, who was born about 1520, and died about 1580. See p. 63.—Tr.
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