Books › Chats on Violins, 1905 › scan 96
Scan 96
Chats on Violins, 1905
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 76. See the scan on archive.org.
1instruments for the King of Spain, these were beautifully ornamented, having a purfling of ivory. One of the Violins of this quintette once belonged to Ole Bull, through whose hands a number of notable fiddles passed at one time and another.
3Three years later, in 1690, the Marquis Bartholomeo Arbato writes to Strad acknowledging the famous "concerto" of instruments made for the Grand Duke of Tuscany:
5"I assure you the prince has accepted your instruments with more pleasure than I could expect. The players in the orchestra are unanimous in expressing appreciation. They declare your instruments to be quite perfect; they all say they never heard a violoncello with such a tone as yours. My having brought to the knowledge of such a person as His Highness your great skill, will doubtless procure you many orders from his exalted house."
7Before 1792, one of these chefs d'œuvres of Strad's had disappeared from the ducal collection, when, where, or how is an unsolved mystery. Three years later the missing instrument turned up in the hands of a certain Giovanni Felice Mosell, a Florentine
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