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Scan 750
Grove's dictionary of music and musicians, 1922
6 lines. Read by computer on 5 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1about 1702. We find him still adhering to the 14-inch length, but broadening, developing, and arching the model, until it assumes an unsurpassable grandeur and symmetry. His years of experiment have resulted in a neatly compacted instrument, with light edges, accurate corners, round arching, broadly treated but exquisitely graceful sound-holes and scroll, and a varnish soft in texture, which shades deliciously from orange to red. From 1703 until about 1709, the year of those famous violins 'La Pucelle' and the 'Viotti,' Stradivari seems to have settled upon certain points of construction, from which he rarely departed afterwards. A slight variation of curve is observable, but the main features and general dimensions agree with one another. Then followed years of indecision, in which no consistency of plan is to be traced, and until the end of his career, some minute changes of thickness, width, or length, characterise his work. Yet, in spite of these diversities, the years following 1710 undoubtedly mark the production of some of his finest instruments. In 1711 he made the fine violin known as the 'Parke'; in 1713, the 'Boissier' belonging to Sarasate; in 1714 the 'Dolphin'; in 1715 the 'Gillot' and the 'Alard,' which experts look upon as the master's finest creation; and in 1716 came the 'Messiah.' These years also mark the production of some of his grandest violoncellos, such as the 'Duport,' 1711; the 'Batta,' 1714; and—the most superb of all—the 'Piatti' in 1720. All of these are instruments of smaller proportions (about 29 1/2 inches long) than those he made anterior to the years following 1700, which kept to the dimensions of his contemporaries. That Stradivari did not occupy himself with the proportions of the violoncello, as he did with those of the violin, is hardly to be wondered at, seeing that the capacities of the violoncello were hardly understood in his day. It was not until the latter years of his life that such artists as Franciscello employed it as a solo instrument, and Stradivari—with his usual quick responsiveness to the demands of artistic appreciation—gradually modified the proportions of his instruments from about 31 1/2 inches to about 29 1/2 inches in length, as the progressing technique of the contemporary virtuosi exacted a diminution in size.
3His violas bear a more distinctive stamp of his creative genius than do his violoncellos. The changes so apparent in his violins are quite as evident in these larger instruments, and the models marked 'TV' and 'CV' preserved in the Dalla Valle collection evidence that he made these in two sizes, i.e. 'Tenor Viola' and 'Contralto Viola.' Before 1690 the influence of the Brescian school, and of the Amatis, still ruled the proportions of his violas, but after that year he adopted a smaller model—about 16 5/8 in length—and to this he mainly adhered. These three members of the string quartet seem to have occupied Stradivari's attention almost exclusively. No authentic double basses or any designs for the same have as yet come to light, and with the exceptions of the remains of a viola-da-gamba, a kit,—now in the Musée of the Paris Conservatoire,—two handsome guitars, dating from the early years of his career, and the head of a third, it may be said with truth that Stradivari's fame rests entirely upon his violins, violas, and violoncellos. His principles of construction are analysed in detail in the work already quoted.
5Stradivari's methods have been preserved from century to century, until they have become the fundamental basis of the art of violin-making. No detail of his work was too unimportant for the master's vigilant observation. That he personally designed the pegs, finger-boards, tail-pieces, inlaid patterns, bridges, and even the minutest details of his violin cases, is attested to by the numerous drawings of these in the Dalla Valle collection, while the several sketches for bow-tips and nuts reveal the interesting fact that he also made bows. His material, as already stated, was not always of the finest, owing to the restriction of limited funds during the early part of his career. However, it may be said that in the classification of the relative importance of the various factors required to make a perfect violin, material and dimensions are subservient to varnish, and it was in the application of this that Stradivari surpassed his contemporaries, rather than in the discovery of any new compound for the same. Generally speaking, the so-called 'Lost Cremona Varnish' was, in the writer's opinion, no secret in Stradivari's lifetime, but the common property of the luthiers of the day who compounded it from the materials used by the great painters of the epoch. Space will not admit of our discussing the many theories put forth regarding the component parts which constituted this varnish. Suffice it to state here, that in the opinion of the writer—an opinion which, it must be said, is controverted with some skill by Messrs. Hill—the late Charles Reade's hypothesis of an oil varnish over a spirit varnish is the most fundamentally correct solution of Stradivari's varnishing (vide Readiana and the Pall Mall Gazette, Letters, 1872). The exigencies of time-limits which have brought a demand for quick-drying varnishes in modern times sounded the death-knell of the brilliant, tender, transparent varnish of the Cremona School, so that the world has been forced to acknowledge that it is now a mere memory. Stradivari's own recipe was inscribed on the fly-leaf of a family Bible, but his descendant Giacomo Stradivari destroyed this, though it is said that he kept a copy of it which he carefully preserved for any future members of the family who might adopt the
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