Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 103
Scan 103
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
10 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1OLD VIOLINS
3intensity; and soloists soon found that it was an immense help to wield a novel and stinging timbre which, without any special gift of theirs, awakened attention like the roll of a drum, or the blast of a cornet, or the tinkle of a triangle.
5These considerations alone, in my opinion, account for the popularity of Stainer in all ages; the bulk of hearers belong to the musically untrained, who like pungency, and desire above all to have their ears tickled.
7Just in proportion as music developed and the musical ear got trained to higher and higher refinement, so that specialities of tone became a cult for the ear, as specialities of colour for the eye, just in that measure did the great and subtle qualities of the Cremona school emerge, whilst the rage for Stainer, Klotz, and Duke declined.
9I have no wish to disparage these last-named fine artificers. The increasing rarity of their instruments, and the really splendid qualities which we grant ungrudgingly to the best of them, must always make them much prized, and I fully expect that in a few years there will be a revival of the Stainer craze, and that his violins may then touch Cremona prices. I shall be very glad if they do; it will mean that at last we shall get something like a definite sifting of this great master's best specimens, and that in this shaking in auction rooms, and in the cabinets of collectors, the forged parasites and impudent copies which have for years sailed under false colours—labels (libels, I mean)
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