Books › A treatise on the structure and preservation of the violin and all other bow-instruments; together with an account of the most celebrated makers, and of the genuine characteristics of their instruments;, 1860 › scan 39
Scan 39
A treatise on the structure and preservation of the violin and all other bow-instruments; together with an account of the most celebrated makers, and of the genuine characteristics of their instruments;, 1860
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 17. See the scan on archive.org.
1cheeks were three-fourths the thickness of the breast; and the edges all round, only one-half the thickness. These 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
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