Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 26
Scan 26
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN CONSTITUTION
3but the sweet and subtly compounded sounds that it utters.
5The bisexual figure holds good even to the bow and strings. The bow is the male and the strings are the female elements. They can only vibrate when touched—swept into a tempest of emotion or caressed into tender whispers.
7They wait and pine for this magic touch, and long for their own fulfilment. They are so sensitive that they respond to the lightest feathery kiss of the powdered and anointed horse-hair—they murmur, they sigh, they scream, they weep, they laugh, but only when smitten, coaxed or agonised, sometimes almost torn, at others calmly and masterfully swept; whilst the finger-tips, pressing out the vibrations and generating those magnetic thrills which go forth charged with the musician's very thought and feeling, aid and abet the masculine power of the bow. They are its ministers; without them the might of the bow itself would be impotent; without them the very strings would be unable to yield their infinite variety of tone and inflection of meaning. Yes, certainly the violin is of all instruments the most human, personal, and sympathetic, for the violin is truly bisexual.
9It is also a miracle of art, strength, and simplicity—we may say at once, as light as a feather and as strong as a horse. It is composed of thin sheets or slips of wood, only about a fragment of an inch thick; but, by the simplest and soundest mechanical construction, these are so put together as to resist a strain
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