Books › Famous violinists and fine violins : historical notes, anecdotes, and reminiscences, 1896 › scan 119
Scan 119
Famous violinists and fine violins : historical notes, anecdotes, and reminiscences, 1896
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 99. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE TWO JOSEPHS OF CREMONA
3Until that fact became known to the public, the violins most in vogue for sweetness and power were those of the celebrated Nicolo Amati, and the no less celebrated Antonio Stradivari, his workman. In Great Britain, Richard Duke, of London, was at that time (latter end of eighteenth and beginning of nineteenth centuries) considered the best maker; and he was quite fashionable among the rich amateurs of the West End. But even in those early days it had been long held, not only in England, but throughout the whole of Europe, that the violins of the Tyrol and of Cremona were the finest in the world. The instruments made by members of the Amati family brought the largest prices in the market all through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Then came Stradivari, in many respects a most remarkable man, who actually superseded his master, Nicolo Amati, and was ranked during the eighteenth century as now, the maker of the finest violins and violoncellos ever produced.
5The only makers who ever quite equalled Stradivari were, in the first instance, Lorenzo Guadagnini, who was his workman for thirty-five years, and who manufactured violins, on his own account, for about five years after the death of his celebrated master. He used to label his instruments thus: "Lorenzo Guadagnini da Cremona, alumnus Stradiuarius." All his violins nowadays, and for some time past, are, and have been, sold as Stradivarius instruments,
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