Scan 101
Joseph Guarnerius, his work and his master [Andreas Gisalberti], 1906
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 59. See the scan on archive.org.
1CHAPTER VII.
3OF THICKNESSES—THE SIZES OF THE VIOLINS BY JOSEPH AND HIS TEACHER—THE TUITION OF GISALBERTI, WHO IS SAID TO HAVE MARRIED INTO THE MARIANI FAMILY—MANY OF HIS WORKS PROBABLY STILL EXTANT BUT UNDISCOVERED.
5MUCH has been written about the thicknesses of the upper and lower tables in the violins of the great makers. And in this purely mechanical department of the art of the liutaro, many have declared that in a certain system, as they called it, lay the secret of the splendid tone of Joseph, and that other masters obtained their tone by a different system. The idea seems to have had its incubation in the brain of the connoisseurs owing to the fact of the discovery in one or two specimens of the position of the thicknesses referred to. These critics, however, do not seem to have been aware of the same system—if such it can appropriately be called—having been not unfrequently worked upon by makers of other schools and classes of tone-quality, among whom may be mentioned some of the Testores of Milan, besides others of the Stradivari school.
7All persons who have directed their attention to the construction of violins, old and new, must be well aware of the numberless attempts that have been made to get a particular quality of tone by means of different graduations of thickness of different parts of the instrument.
9Had there been anything in this beyond what may be
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