Scan 55
A Treatise On The Structure And Preservation Of The Violin, 1875
8 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1a slight fault in a good instrument, than to expose it to a greater injury.
3I will now briefly state what should be done for the preservation of an instrument. It is absolutely requisite that a good old violin should be kept in a wooden case, lined with woollen cloth or flannel; as the too great heat in summer, and the sudden changes of cold and heat in the winter, are prejudicial to it. Too great a heat renders the wood brittle and the tone difficult to be brought out, besides drying up the strings, so that no delicate sound can be drawn from them. In winter, the too great warmth of a room produces the same results. When an instrument is removed in the winter from one house to another, without a case, it condenses moisture, on being brought out of the cold into a warm room, which causes dust to fasten on it, both inside and out, and forms a crust, which can only be got off with Dutch rush. Much greater damage is done to the instrument in summer, when left out of its case, as the flies crawl in at the f-holes, and in a few years so dirt the inside of the back and belly, that the wood feels like shagreen.
5The instrument should be kept particularly clean, and the rosin-dust carefully wiped off with a linen cloth. The inside, too, should be cleaned every half-year with a handful of barley, made rather warm, and poured in at the f-holes. Then, by properly shaking the instrument, the dust will adhere to the barley and come out with it through the f-holes.
7In order to preserve the strings a length of time in good and sonorous condition, it is necessary to keep a small piece of taffeta, moistened with almond-oil, in the bladder containing the spare strings, and, each time after playing, to rub the strings with it, from the bridge to the nut, before
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