Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 234
Scan 234
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
12 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN DEALERS AND AMATEURS
3about 512 to the second; still remains the vibratory qualities of infinite varieties of grain—coarse or close, loose or serried—in wood fibre acting upon that air column.
5The old makers varied their models, but, no doubt, had regard to the thicknesses and the subtle relations between the hard and soft woods which would produce the power or quickness of reply, or sweetness, or penetratingness aimed at.
7It may be that the secret for the production of these is quite incommunicable, just as a painter, an actor, a singer, a sculptor will do a thing before you, which you cannot do, which he cannot teach you how to do, though he place his brush, his chisel, his music, his toga and footlights at your disposal.
95th. We have no time for failures; they had. Endless experiment, endless comparison, observation, meditation, unlimited leisure: one and the same man made each part, and knew the interpenetrative qualities and the mutual adaptation of the sundry parts.
11We now have subdivision of labour; each man makes one of the parts, and some one else puts them together. How can such backs accord with such bellies? How can such ribs cotton with such strange and fortuitous planks? Truly a scratch company brought together like strangers, yet expected to accept their arbitrary assortment, and make sweet harmony together. But they were not fastened together, in view of one another, by one and the same master-mind, who knew what was good for them, and what they were good for!
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