Books › Old violins, 1905 › scan 213
Scan 213
Old violins, 1905
12 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 191. See the scan on archive.org.
1the curiosity, and perhaps ridicule, of the villagers by tapping their trees with a hammer and then putting his ear close to the wood to hear the sound.
3They thought he was mad, and he did go mad from worry and want, but the sanest thing he ever did was to tap those trees and listen to the sound.
5His name was Jacob Stainer.
7Matthias Klotz was only nineteen when he came to Mittenwald, but by this time the Mittenwalders, who had heard how the eccentric tramp with the hammer had gone back to Absam and made the place famous by his fiddles, were prepared to receive the young workman with favour and hospitality, for they hoped he might do something of the kind for Mittenwald.
9They were not mistaken. One year before Klotz arrived at Mittenwald, Stainer had died incoherent and insane at Absam, and now that the greatest of German makers was dead, Mittenwald was soon destined to become noted in its turn for its fiddles.
11It is generally affirmed that Klotz was a pupil of Stainer. Certainly his relations with Nicolas Amati are not very well defined. The probabilities are that he was a pupil of both—in the sense of being familiar with their work. The fact that his violins are sometimes mistaken for Stainer, points to the strong Absam influence which was upon him—it could hardly be otherwise—whilst the tendency noticeable in the fiddles of his son Sebastian, who certainly did visit Cremona, to bring down the model flatter than was fashionable at this time, indicates that the firm at all events
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