Books › Fiddle frauds and how to detect them, 1894 › scan 9
Scan 9
Fiddle frauds and how to detect them, 1894
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1FIDDLE FRAUDS
2AND
3HOW TO DETECT THEM
5AMONG the many objects of art there are probably few of which it is so difficult to form a correct judgment as of stringed musical instruments, whether of ancient or modern date, and particularly of the violin, which has deservedly been designated the "King of instruments."
7The invention of the violin—an off-shoot of the olden viola—is often ascribed to Gasparo di Salo, an Italian; but it has long since been definitely determined that the real inventor was Kaspar Tieffenbrucker, a German, who lived about 1510 at Bologna, and made violins fifty years before Salo. His descendants settled, between the middle of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, at Venice. A considerable proportion of the Italian violin-makers of the olden time were of German descent, as their names clearly show: for instance, Hans Frey, of Bologna (1597), Magnus Stegher, of Venice, Michael Harburg, of Padua (1620), David Techler, of Rome (1680), Hans Man, of Naples, and others.
9The great merits of the violin as a stringed instrument being quickly perceived, it rose within a very short space of time into high favour with all musicians and music-lovers, and great attention was consequently paid to the art of performing upon it. This naturally produced an emulous influence upon the makers, each striving to attain structural perfection, and, as a consequence, we have the unsurpassed
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