Books › Cremona violins. Four letters descriptive of those exhibited in 1873 at the South Kensington museum. Also giving the data for producing the true varnishes used by the great Cremona makers, 1900 › scan 12
Scan 12
Cremona violins. Four letters descriptive of those exhibited in 1873 at the South Kensington museum. Also giving the data for producing the true varnishes used by the great Cremona makers, 1900
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Well, it would collapse with a crash, long before the strings reached concert pitch, if the violin was not a wonder inside as well as out. The problem was to withstand that severe pressure without crippling the vast vibration by solidity. The inventors approached the difficulty thus: they inserted six blocks of lime, or some light, wood; one of these blocks at the lower end of the violin, one at the upper, and one at each corner—the corner blocks very small and triangular; the top and bottom blocks much larger, and shaped like a capital D, the straight line of the block lying close to the sides, and the curved line outwards. Then they slightly connected all the blocks by two sets of linings; these linings are not above a quarter of an inch deep, I suppose, and no thicker than an old penny piece, but they connect those six blocks and help to distribute the resistance.
3Even so the shell would succumb in time; but now the inventor killed two birds with one stone; he cunningly diverted a portion of the pressure by the very means that were necessary to the sound. He placed the bridge on the belly of the violin, and that raised the strings out of the direct line of tension, and relieved the lateral pressure at the expense of the belly. But as the belly is a weak arch, it must now be strengthened in its turn. Accordingly, a bass-bar was glued horizontally to the belly under one foot of the bridge. This bass-bar is a very small piece of deal, about the length and half the size of an old-fashioned lead pencil, but, the ends being tapered off, it is glued on to the belly, with a spring in it, and supports the belly magically. As a proof how nicely all these things were balanced, the bass-bar of Gasparo da Salo, the Amati, and Stradiuarius being a little shorter and shallower than a modern bass-bar, did admirably for their day, yet will not do now. Our raised concert pitch has clapped on more tension, and straightway you must remove the bass-bar even of Stradiuarius, and substitute one a little longer and deeper, or your Cremona sounds like a strung frying-pan.
5Remove now from the violin, which for two centuries has endured this strain, the finger-board, tail-piece, tail-pin and screws—since these are the instruments or vehicles of tension, not materials of resistance—and weigh the violin itself. It weighs, I suppose about twenty ounces: and it has fought hundredweights of pressure for centuries. A marvel of construction, it is also a marvel of sound; it is audible farther off than the gigantic pianoforte, and its tones in a master's hand go to the
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