Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 67
Scan 67
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
8 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1OLD VIOLINS
3Arisi alludes to a point of great interest which early excited my attention and curiosity—the many-sidedness of the man. "In Cremona," writes Arisi, "is also living my intimate friend Antonio Stradivari, an excellent maker of all kinds of musical instruments." Indeed, he could make anything that was in demand, and he did; he could "fancy-purflé" to order, inlay, make fiddles in odd shapes, or with a twist in the curve here or there, or longer or shorter for experiment, or big or small.
5The Marquis Carlo dal Negro of Genoa owned a Stradivari harp in 1820. The master was not above making mandolines and lutes to order. Messrs. Hill own a perfectly plain Stradivari guitar in fine condition. It is of exquisite close-grained wood. I have often wanted to hear the sound of that guitar. I noticed a Stradivari cither in the South Kensington Loan Collection with an elaborately carved female head of great beauty. I did not wonder that he who could carve such scrolls could carve a head or anything else.
7There are, or were, within the present century, other gems of workmanship some of which it is to be feared have perished, children's fiddles, instruments made with small figures, flowers, arabesques. Everything that comes from his hand is finely accurate in drawing. Sometimes his decoration is merely painted in black, sometimes ivory, ebony, or mother-of-pearl is used, but everything Stradivari did was perfectly done; he qualified himself to the nth, as mathematicians say, for each branch of his art.
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