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Scan 92
Antonio Stradivari, 1900
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1pay obeisance and throw out a reflected light; of Gobetti, perhaps more "Straddy" than any other Italian, Gofrilleri, Seraphino, two or three of the Tononis, besides other lights of lesser magnitude, with exceedingly fine qualities, but perhaps open to the charge of intermittency. Further, several of the Milanese school,—offshoots of the Amati and Stradivari,—of Lorenzo Guadagnini, a master of his art in all its details, if ever there was one, his son Joannes Battista, steadier in his working, but more uncertain in his results—shifting from place to place, may have had some connection with this—and the occasionally fine artificers of the same place, Landolfi, the Grancinos and Testores and later on Balestrieri of Mantua and Storioni of Cremona. These men, always good, and when circumstances were favourable, great in their art, often grand in their individuality and power, were, by these modern scientific interrogators placed aside or quietly ignored, apparently either as unworthy of their recognition, or of such inferior renown as not to come within the scope of their investigations.
3A close and searching inquiry into the causes that enabled different masters of their art to bring about the desirable end of their labours, that of imparting a distinct quality and individuality of tone, might have enabled them to get at least a hint as to the means whereby Stradivari gratified the tastes of his patrons at the time and connoisseurs in general of the present day. As indicated before, the Venetian masters were—probably by the same means—able to put before their patrons that kind of tone most in agreement with the luxurious surroundings of the Venetian nobility, or offered and found acceptable to the musical public generally there.
5A prolonged, earnest examination of the peculiarities of tone attached to the violins of the makers of the chief seats of violin making, has led to the inference that the difference in kind or degree was not from individual choice, but chiefly owing to outside influence.
7What is known as the old Brescian type of tone was
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