Books › Antonio Stradivari, 1900 › scan 91
Scan 91
Antonio Stradivari, 1900
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1that—which has been in use for a generation but what shows a sinking one side or the other, or, when the modelling is full, a depression in the middle of the upper table, and very frequently a greater fulness at the back where the sound post touches and presses from the inside. These alterations, individually or collectively, alter the "air mass" of the interior, and the violin thus, according to the theory, contains within itself the elements of its own early dissolution, so far as fine quality is concerned. Facts, however, go to prove the contrary, and with the modern regulator's efforts to obtain the best amount of a good thing known to be present, it is quite probable that Stradivari himself never heard his instruments to such advantage as they may be now, notwithstanding the unreasonably high pitch to which violinists are obliged to conform their tuning.
3There was another theory promulgated many years back by certain people of some degree of eminence in their own walk in life. A grand discovery was announced, that the excellence of the violins of Stradivari consisted in the tonal difference between the upper and lower tables peculiar no doubt to that master. This sort of committee of scientific experimenter, violin dealer and author, did not—while centralising their efforts on the violins of one master—say whether the same relationship existed between the back and front of a Nicola Amati, Maggini or Gasparo de Salo, they made something of a slip when they mentioned the violins of the great Joseph Guarnerius as showing the same tonal difference.
5It would have been very interesting to have heard of results after further trials by the same experimenters upon upper or lower tables of violins by now not very much less celebrated makers, who, although of the same class or school, were living—for those times—far away from the central luminary of the Cremonese art. What would have been said of Montagnana of Venice? a star of the first magnitude, curiously near in quality and quantity to the great centre to which he was willing to
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