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Scan 296
Musical instruments, 1908
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 242. See the scan on archive.org.
1"Prison Josephs" have been a popular imposition. Joseph Guarnerius del Gesu made instruments more rugged in appearance than those of others of the Cremona school. This lack of polish proved a temptation to makers of forgeries, and as an explanation of especially rough violins a romantic story has been manufactured. The tale rests upon an imprisonment which Joseph is said to have suffered, although even this fact cannot be proved satisfactorily. It it said that for the sake of amusement Joseph made love to the jailor's pretty daughter, who loved him in return, and through her efforts the prisoner was furnished with inferior materials and inferior tools which he used in constructing crude instruments. The story has effected many sales and the uninitiated often points with pride to his "Prison Joseph."
3Many indignities have been practised upon the violin. A cane has served as the foundation of an instrument described as the cane violin. One designed for use by travelers has been so constructed as to fold upon itself, and is called the traveler's violin. One freak is known as trapezoidal. Even the sanctity of a Stradivarius violin was invaded by an Englishman who took away the sides and substituted a central rib with a complicated mechanism in which a steel spring figured.
5Nothing is more pitiable than the attempted playing of one who does not understand and never can. "A fiddler is, when he plays well, a delight for those that have their hearing, but is, when he plays ill a delight only for those who have not their hearing," says J. Stevens in his Essays and Characters, Ironical and Instructive (1615). In former times it was considered most unseemly for a woman's hand to touch the violin. W. Parke in his Musical Memoirs speaks of Minerva dashing her flute to pieces because of the horrifying reflection in the water, of her face while playing, and goes on to say, "Although I would not recommend any one playing on a Cremona fiddle to follow the example of the goddess, yet it strikes me that, if she is
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