Books › Old violins, 1905 › scan 255
Scan 255
Old violins, 1905
14 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 233. See the scan on archive.org.
1A good Hill recently made, price £30 or £40, e.g. the fine copy of the Tuscan Strad, only requires age to mellow it into a price of three figures.
3These new and garish-looking instruments, which, after all, do not look more gaudy than the Messie Strad, are exceedingly loud in tone, and withal very sensitive.
5A certain tartness of timbre merely calls aloud for another ten or twenty years to soften and refine it into the Cremona tone.
7Meanwhile, the aspirants to Cremona excellence are entertainingly numerous. From time to time I get letters accompanied with samples from people who claim to have discovered the secret of the Cremona varnish.
9Here and there some enterprising maker will get a literary friend to extol him as the successor of Stradiuarius.
11I came across a pamphlet the other day assigning Cremona rank to a worthy musician who makes fiddles en amateur, and a certain German working in America, whose violins present all the usual characteristics of instruments made in Germany. I actually got half through this remarkable document, written au grand sérieux, before I discovered that it belonged to the liver pill, patent syrup, and soap class.
13Rumours may reach you from America of the wonderful Californian wood. Well, European experts tell me that, fine as is the marking, it does not yield the required timbre, and that the planks now coming over
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