Books › Old violins, 1905 › scan 222
Scan 222
Old violins, 1905
12 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 200. See the scan on archive.org.
1You get it home; there is something wrong about it; the timbre of the A string is unequal—sweet, but too weak—it has a crack in one rib.
3You don't expect a trumpet-sound like that of a Joseph, or quite the bell-like ring of a Strad, but you do mean to have a quality like the ripple of water—a round, soft, and incomparably sensitive and intime tone, not to be surpassed by Strad and never reached by Stainer.
5Of course your early Nicolo has got to be overhauled. He has got a crack—perhaps more than one. Why, he is already more than two hundred years old, and may have a mark of the young Stradivari's chisel about him. Of what attention is he not worthy! Take him to a subtle violin medicine-man, who will at a glance see what he has got to deal with, and will sit down before him and think!
7He will then take him up, handle him, tap him, pull him to pieces with excessive care and reflection. When you get him back, you may still be not quite satisfied, but wait. Your treatment has to begin where the fiddle-doctor's ends.
9The convalescent home comes after the hospital—your house is the convalescent home.
11The glue must dry; the changed sound-post must grow to the newly-directed strain and tension of the vibrating boards; the refixed flanks must learn to deal with the air column, and the filled-up crack, by constantly thrilling with the rest, must have time to forget that it ever was a crack!
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