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Scan 139
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 125. See the scan on archive.org.
1well and in a correct manner, so that he could distinguish the best quality of tone—and to be able so to play the violin requires a musical ear of a certain degree of refinement—ought to have a good knowledge of physics, and especially of acoustics, and an acquaintance with mathematical formulae sufficient to enable him to apply the laws of that science, as the problems presented by the quality and condition of his wood came up from time to time before him for solution. We may not, perhaps, assume that the great master makers of Cremona were theoretically acquainted with these laws; but that they practically knew some of them has been proved by their work beyond all doubt, and it is not very safe to limit conjecturally the knowledge of people of whom we know so little from any other source than that of their work. A startling reproof to the assumption that science and art are growths of the later ages of the world, was given by the discoveries made in the Troglodyte caves in the valley of the Vizère, in Dordogne. I have before me now a cast of a sculptured ivory dagger-handle taken from these caves, in which the head, antlers, body, and limbs of the reindeer are most artistically conventionalised in relief, not scratched, but sculptured in a manner that positively would not have shamed Benvenuto Cellini himself.
3We may well, therefore, be moderately cautious in assuming these Cremonese makers to have been theoretically ignorant of some scientific laws the knowledge of which has not yet enabled us to equal their productions, and we have indubitable proof that their chemical knowledge taught them to make and apply a varnish
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