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, 1875 › scan 28
Scan 28
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, 1875
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 12. See the scan on archive.org.
1without paying too great a regard to the exterior, have nevertheless turned out instruments which are excellent in point of tone. His double-basses (Violons*), which may be met with in most of the chapels, are particularly good, and maintain the first rank among those manufactured in Germany.
3The Tyrolese makers, who carried on an extensive business, have produced a great number of violins, tenors, and violoncellos, most of which, however, have been sold under fictitious names as genuine Cremonese or Steiner's. Much deceit is practised with these instruments; and, as no one has hitherto given an accurate description of them, cases of this kind are still of daily occurrence. The characteristics of the genuine Italian instruments will be treated of at length in the next Chapter.
5Egitia Klotz was the most respectable of the Tyrolese makers, as he sent out all his instruments under his own name. They are made better than any of the violins of his countrymen; for, instead of employing the white larch wood used by them, he manufactured the bellies of good Swiss pine: hence his instruments, which are constructed agreeably to the rules of acoustics, possess a finer and more powerful tone than any other of the Tyrolese. His son, Joseph Klotz, also sent out instruments under his own
7of Schmidt, who also has everywhere preserved an equal height for the sides, which, in the Cremonese models, gradually diminish one-eighth of an inch in approaching the neck. The scroll is not so deep, nor so finely carved; and lastly, instead of the excellent amber varnish used by the Italians, Schmidt has covered his instruments with spirit varnish, or merely polished them."—Tr.
9* No "discrepancy on the part of the author" occurs here, as a former translator of this work imagined, the word Violon signifying in German. a double-bass; not a violin, as he supposed.—Tr.
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