Books › Antonio Stradivari, 1900 › scan 58
Scan 58
Antonio Stradivari, 1900
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1This idea was started in the early part of this century in books on the violin, professing to tell the reader all about it or nearly so, and he had only to go, get the stuff, and make Stradivari violins, in fact with the addition of the amount of scientific knowledge of the subject peculiar to modern imitators, he would make "old Strad" "take a back seat." This has been often tried by would-be "Strads," "Guarneris," or "Bergonzis," and full of specious promises that if you will but purchase their wares you be rewarded for your pains by being possessor of everything good that they could endow the instrument with. Keep it, persevere, and the precious qualities will come; some were daring enough to assert that they were already there, if even your mental vision was so obtuse as not to perceive it, absurd prejudice was the cause of this they said, oblivious to the fact that the best musicians of Stradivari's time used the violins fresh from the atelier of the master perfectly new, expressing their unbounded admiration for their beautiful acoustic properties or "pleasurable sounds."
3Is the like said of new violins at the present time? These imitators, some of them might be with perfect truth termed forgers, are legion, as in the case of everything that is of a high standard of excellence and which makes acquisition desirable. These artificers had their day, so far as forcing their imitations upon the credulous and unwary could be accomplished, and others have replaced them, yet there aloft still sits the grand master upon his high eminence, unapproached, with the whole world clamouring and struggling for the possession of what in the earnestness of his purpose was only his everyday work.
5Before leaving the imitators and forgers, for they are distinct one from the other, the first simply taken being honest, the other not, it may be as well to refer as briefly as possible to the general aspect as afforded by such specimens of Stradivari's art that remain with us after fairly constant usage during the generations that have passed since his decease. Most connoisseurs and
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