Scan 365
Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians Vol.5, 1925
20 lines. Read by computer on 12 September 2026. Printed page 311. See the scan on archive.org.
1are of wood. The wood employed is of three sorts—maple for the back, handle, ribs, and bridge; ebony for the finger-board, nuts, screws, tailpiece and button; the purfling is let in, in three strips of plane-wood set edgeways, the outer two of which are stained black; the belly, bar, blocks, linings, and sound-post are of pine. All metal is a profane substance in fiddle-making: no fragment of it should be employed, whether constructively or ornamentally. The parts must be put together with the finest glue, and with invisible joints.
3The tone, other things being the same, depends largely on the quality of the maple and pine used. The wood must not be new: it should have been cut at least five or six years, and be well seasoned. It is, however, not advisable to use wood that is so old as to have lost much of its elasticity. Both pine and maple should be as white as possible, with a grain moderately wide, even, and as a rule perfectly straight. Local shakes and knots render the wood useless. Curves in the grain derange the vibration, and are therefore usually avoided: but there exist violins in which a slightly curving grain has produced an exceptional power of tone.
5The belly and back are often made each out of a single block of wood. This, however, is wasteful, and they are usually made each in two pieces. A wedge-shaped block of maple of suitable grain for the back, cut like a wedge of cake from the bark to the core of the tree-trunk, having been selected, somewhat exceeding in length and in half-breadth the dimensions of the intended fiddle, and about an inch and a half thick, the saw is passed through it from end to end, dividing it into two similar pieces, each having a thick and a thin edge. The thick edges are planed perfectly true and glued together. The figure of the grain, when the fiddle is made, will thus match in the halves.
7The first thing to be done is to settle the design of the instrument. The modern maker invariably adopts this from a Stradivari or a Giuseppe Guarnieri (del Gesù) fiddle, sometimes mixing the two designs. The old makers generally worked by rule of thumb, using the moulds of their predecessors, and if they made new patterns only slightly varied the old ones as experience suggested. It was by a succession of such minute experimental changes that the classical patterns were reached, and though attempts have been made to reduce their designs to mechanical principles, and to frame directions for constructing them by the rule and compasses,1 no practical violin-maker would think of doing so. There is no reason why he should slavishly copy any model: but his design should be based on study and comparison of classical patterns, not upon any theoretical rules of proportion.
9Having settled the design, whether a tracing from an old instrument, or an entirely new one, the first thing is to trace the outline on a plate of hard wood about as thick as a piece of cardboard, and to cut this carefully out with the pen-knife. This is called the Pattern, and it serves both for back and belly.
11The next thing is to make the Mould, which is made out of a block of hard wood about three-quarters of an inch thick. Its outline stands three-eighths of an inch all round inside that of the Pattern. Having cut out the mould to the requisite size and shape, the workman cuts rectangular spaces for the six blocks, large ones at the top and bottom and small ones at the four corners. The next thing, and one of great importance, is to trim the edges of the mould so that it shall be everywhere perfectly at right angles to the faces. Eight finger-holes are now pierced, to enable you to manipulate it without touching the edges. The making of the mould requires the greatest care and nicety: and fiddle-makers will keep and use a good one all their lives. In addition to the pattern and the mould the fiddle-maker requires four templates of varying size, cut to curves which are the reverse of the principal curves of the surface. The largest is the curve lengthwise in the middle of the fiddle (1), the other three are transverse, being (2) the curve of the surface at the greatest width in the upper part, (3) that at the narrowest part of the waist, (4) at the greatest width at the lower part.
13[It should be observed that there are two kinds of moulds; the inside mould described above, and the outside mould, which is cut from the centre of a plank of hard wood. With the former the fiddle is built round the outside of the mould, and with the latter it is built inside the cut-out space. E. H-A.]
15The first part of the fiddle actually made is the back. The block out of which it is made is first reduced to the exact shape of the pattern; its upper surface is then cut away and brought to the right curves by the aid of the four templates. The maker then hollows out the inside, gauging the proper thicknesses by means of a pair of callipers. Precisely the same method is used for the belly, but its thicknesses are everywhere somewhat less than those of the back.
17The top and bottom blocks are next prepared and shaped, temporarily fixed in the mould by means of a single drop of glue, brought to the exact height of the mould by the knife and file, and cut to the right shape by the aid of the pattern. The next task is to prepare a long strip of maple planed to the right thickness for the ribs. The proper length of each rib is
191 The most noticeable of these is the 'calcolo' of Antonio Bagatella, an amateur of Padua, published in 1782, by which he pretends to reveal the secret of the proportions used by the brothers Amati. It is reprinted in Folegatti's Il violino esposto geometricamente nella sua costruzione (Bologna, 1874). Bagatella seems to have ruined many a good violin by adapting it to the Procrustean bed of his 'calcolo.'
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