Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 229
Scan 229
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
14 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1OLD VIOLINS
3without the fear of dropping his fiddle. I have an old Andrew Guarnerius so plugged, and the violinist Oury first pointed this out to me and explained the reason of the plugged hole!
5Scores have sent me descriptions of their fiddles, and expected me to pronounce on the genuineness of them, or are sure that they own a real Strad or Amati, because theirs (in their opinion) exactly corresponds to my description of Strad or Amati in "Music and Morals." All this shows that the outside public have not the faintest inkling of true violin lore.
7Oliver Wendell Holmes felt this when he wrote to me in 1885.
9He had himself written very charmingly on the violin, and the passage is quoted with approval even by so redoubtable a critic as Mr. George Hart in his admirable book "The Violin" (1887).
11Oliver Wendell Holmes had the acuteness to see that all mere picturesque writing was valueless from a technical point of view, and he thus expresses himself to me in a letter dated December 5, 1885:—
13"I never knew until I read what you say of the instrument what profanation I had been guilty of to touch one, much more to write about it!" and he was kind enough to add: "You have given a life to the fiddle such as nothing but its own music ever gave it before!"—words which, coming so spontaneously from the author of the "Autocrat of the Breakfast-table," I think I may be allowed to quote with pardonable pleasure.
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