Books › Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864 › scan 106
Scan 106
Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864
4 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 84. See the scan on archive.org.
1and thin; if it be too little, the grave sounds are coarse, and those of the first string lose their brilliance.
3If we examine the sound produced by the air in the chest when the tone rendered by the strings is most beautiful and intense, we find that it keeps within certain limits which depend on the form and the other elements of the instrument. In trying the mass of air contained in several [instruments of] Stradivarius, by means of a wind-conductor formed of a simple brass tube, slightly conical, and flat at its larger end, so as to leave only a little slit for the escape of the air, it was found, by placing the flat end of this apparatus over one of the f holes and blowing through the other end, that the air always produced a sound corresponding to 512 vibrations in a second, which was that of [middle] C, in the time of Stradivarius; but which, in 1838, when Savart made his experiments, answered to B natural [a semitone below]. Through the excessive rise in the pitch for about the last eighteen years, the sound produced by 512 vibrations is now nearly in unison with B flat. All the excellent violins of Stradivarius and Guarnerius have yielded the same result. This, then, is another fact acquired for science: the air contained in a violin should produce a sound equal to 512 vibrations in a second, when set in motion by the apparatus of which we have spoken. If the intonation of the air be higher, the grave sounds of the instrument are dry; if lower, the sounds of the first string are of difficult emission, and those of the fourth resemble those of the alto.
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