Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 232
Scan 232
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
20 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN DEALERS AND AMATEURS
3All violinists will tell you that there is a reserve of force about a Strad; you can "pull out," and you will never be disappointed.
5All lovers of Amati will tell you that they find in Nicolo a trembling sighing sensitiveness, a tenderness, and a tone delicate to the point of vanishing, which endears Amati to the women, and still leaves his finest instruments unapproachable for cabinet-playing.
7And all players will tell you that for domination and downright big-battalion power, Joseph Guarnerius del Gesù has not his equal.
9And the reason for this real, not fancied, supremacy of the great makers and their best pupils?
11The reason is complex, no doubt—so complex that, when all precautions have been taken to imitate wood, proportions, varnish, workmanship, so as thoroughly to deceive the eye, the modern chef-d'œuvre is, in spite of puzzled auditors, still not identical in quality with the old Cremona gems.
13I was called the other day to judge a set of English bells, cast with the same proportions of tin and copper, of exactly the same size, weight, and model as a suite of Belgian bells cast by Severin Van Aerschot; but the sound?
15Ye gods! No silver clang and tin-kettle parody could be farther apart than were those English and Belgian bells.
17But to return to our fiddles. The reasons of Cremona supremacy remain to be tackled.
19I hazard the following points:—
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