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Scan 48
Old violins, 1910
14 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 40. See the scan on archive.org.
1powerful influence of Maggini can be traced in the evolution of those perfect but moderately sized Strad 'cellos which date mostly after 1700.
3The tone of Maggini is full, mellow, and plaintive, rather than biting like Stainer, bell-resonant like Strad, or soft and sensitive like Nicolo Amati; but great players like Vieuxtemps, Ole Bull, Leonard, and De Beriot have found him sufficient, and if more have not extolled Maggini, it may be on account of the rareness and inaccessibility of his instruments.
5It has been said by a competent authority that not more than fifty extant Magginis are known, and in England at present (1897) about thirty violins, ten violas, and but two violoncellos and one double-bass.
7Maggini died at the comparatively early age of fifty-one. All researches made in the archives of S. Lorenzo, his parish church, have failed to reveal the date of his death, and the worst of it is that the registers of that church prior to 1700 have disappeared.
9We hear plenty about his wife, Anna Foresti, who died 1651, aged fifty-eight, and was buried in a neighbouring parish.
11It is more than probable that Maggini himself was a victim to the plague which raged at Brescia in 1632, and that he was hastily interred, or, dying at the Pest House, no official note of his death may have been taken. At any rate, in 1632, the year of the plague, his son describes himself as "filius quondam Johannis Pauli"—the son of the late Gio. Paolo.
13His last income-tax return is dated 1626, and he
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