Books › Notice of Anthony Stradivari, 1864 › scan 102
Scan 102
Notice of Anthony Stradivari, 1864
6 lines. Read by computer on 24 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1If a new experiment were now made to ascertain the pressure of the four strings on the belly of a violin, no doubt it would be found greatly augmented. This enormous weight incessantly tends to effect the destruction of the old instruments, and demands increased power of resistance in the bar underneath the bridge. Such is the real cause of the necessity of substituting for the old, weak bar, in the violins of Stradivarius, one of stronger proportions.
3Most of the violin makers are ignorant that it is with this appendage, as with the back and belly of the instrument. The wood whose sonority, in given dimensions, is the most acute under the action of the bow, is that which should be preferred for the construction of the bar; because, as before stated, in these conditions the vibrations are more prompt and free. The same is true, in regard to the wood of which the bridge is made.
5If it were necessary to prove, otherwise than by results, the profound knowledge which the celebrated makers of Cremona possessed of all the phenomena of resonance in their instruments, it would suffice to examine the form of the bridge, and to follow the experiments of Savart on this essential part of the sounding apparatus. How many conjectures must they not have made before arriving at the knowledge of the necessity of all the incisions seen in the present bridge, which even artists themselves merely view as ornaments! From the immense number of differently shaped bridges which have come down to us, I have chosen only two varieties of viol bridges, one belonging
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