Scan 53
Georg Gemünder's Progress In Violin Making 1881, 1881
6 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1hand; whilst this is really the greatest fault which it can possess. Another believes that an instrument is improved in tone by first breaking it to pieces and then joining it together again:* but this, too, is false; for glue is only a means for uniting pieces of wood, and cannot possibly augment the vibration. It may be, that if an instrument of faulty construction is repaired by an intelligent maker, its defects are corrected; in which case it is doubtless better than it was before: for a good instrument, if not too greatly damaged, may certainly be so far restored by the hand of a skilful workman as to discover no sensible loss of tone; but assuredly no better tone can be produced by breaking it to pieces and then glueing it together again.
3Other ridiculous experiments are made by blockheads, who torture their instruments by changing the bridge and sound-post until they will scarcely sound at all. Then they go to an instrument-maker, who, profiting by their simpleness, pretends that their instrument is too weak in the wood, and proceeds to lay on pieces where none are at all necessary: or he tells them that the bass-bar is too weak and short. It is then changed, and money earned. All this, however, only satisfies until the expenses are forgotten, when the experiments with the bridge and sound-post are again renewed, until at last the instrument is either exchanged or thrown aside as worn out or useless. The same fate would befall the concert-violins of Rode, Kreutzer, Spohr, or Möhser, if they had the misfortune to come into the hands of such gentry: but these are taken better care of, and their possessors, who know their value, prize them like their very eye-sight.
5* This ridiculous idea was conceived by Maupertuis. See his paper, "Sur la Forme des Instruments de Musique," in the Mémoires de l'Acad. Roy. des Sciences, 1724, pp. 215—226.—Tr.
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