Books › Notice of Anthony Stradivari, 1864 › scan 96
Scan 96
Notice of Anthony Stradivari, 1864
8 lines. Read by computer on 24 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1difference between them. The back was exactly one tone lower than the belly.
3For contradictory experiments, a back and belly were constructed in other relations: when nearly in unison, beatings resulted; and when farther apart than an interval of a tone, they no longer vibrated conjointly in a normal manner.
5Here, then, is a new fact acquired for science: the maple plate, or the back of the violin, should be a tone lower than the deal plate [or belly], in order to obtain the finest sonority possible when they are united. Can it be supposed to be by mere chance that this relation is invariably found in the excellent instruments of Stradivarius and Guarnerius, and that the first of these masters, of whom the other was the pupil, had no method for determining the said relation, of which his great experience and practical skill had incontestably recognised the necessity? Chance may give rise to a fact in one instance, but it never regularly repeats the same.
7We now come to another point no less essential: The intensity of the sounds rendered by a violin depends on the mass of air contained within it, which ought to be in a certain relation with the other elements; a relation which it is here the question to determine. By a series of ingenious experiments, made with an apparatus which permitted the mass of air contained in a violin to be augmented or diminished [at pleasure], we are assured that, if the strings are put into vibration while the mass of air is at a medium, we obtain sounds at once mellow and powerful; if the volume of air be too great, the grave sounds are weak and dull, and the acute harsh
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