Books › Old violins, 1905 › scan 252
Scan 252
Old violins, 1905
14 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 230. See the scan on archive.org.
11st. Selection of wood. No doubt the old Lombardian forests, with their salt-impregnated roots, provided rare planks. The vaunted American woods fail technically to satisfy the Cremona requirements.
32nd. The knowledge, at first empirical, then intuitive, born of a lifelong study of the relative density of woods fitted to vibrate together. Nothing can teach this, no rule or measurements; for every plank varies in porousness, density of fibre, age, and seasoning.
5Charles Reade was napping when he expressed a hope that a certain Stradivari back, mated with a new belly, might some day be united to some Stradivari back of which he knew; but unless it happened to be the belly Strad had selected for that particular back, what reason is there to suppose that the result would be satisfactory?
73rd. I am of opinion that the old method of careful oil-sizing and the subsequent application of gum materially affected the tone.
9Think for a moment only of what is implied in the saturation—too much or too little of the wood—with oils, spirit, gum of this or that quality.
11Necessarily some vibratory capacities must be affected—for better, for worse—by the filling in, one way or another, of the wood pores; and do not the commonest of modern artificers admit that the Cremona varnish, and the exact mode of its application, is as yet undiscovered; and when they speak otherwise, do they not laugh in their sleeves?
134th. Admit that the proportions are exactly equal, the column of air almost identical in cubic measure,
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