Books › Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864 › scan 97
Scan 97
Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864
6 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 75. See the scan on archive.org.
1discovered these laws? Unquestionably, no: but, like a superior man in his art, he had made practical experiments; and what his researches and experience thus enabled him to do with certainty, is precisely the result of acoustical laws, as since formulated by a learned philosopher from the productions of the artist himself. Take him at his starting point, and what do we find in the instruments of his master? A tone, pure, silvery and mellow; workmanship of careful finish; but an absence of intensity in the sound of the instrument, resulting from too elevated an arching, and a defect in certain proportions. Stradivarius himself remained subject to the like conditions for some years, and only abandoned them by degrees. What induced him thus to modify his instruments so very progressively? Evidently, the desire to impart to them qualities which were wanting in those of his predecessors. Foreseeing, then, the possibility of these qualities, he very naturally sought to attain them.
3In 1700, his ideas became settled; his model was decided on, and his hand, skilful to second his intelligent views, gave to the form of his instruments all the perfection desirable. (That which was wanting to the Amati—power united with brilliancy and mellowness—he had discovered.) He did what he wished, because he knew what was required. Was this effected by chance? No; as we shall proceed to prove.
5A man endowed with the rarest powers for the observation of facts and for the deductions which might be drawn from them, Felix Savart, too early lost to science, was, for nearly twenty years, absorbed in the
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