Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 73
Scan 73
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
10 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1OLD VIOLINS
3long Strads, and they seem to be a sort of constructional or experimental link between the smaller Amati pattern and the grand Strad pattern of 1700–37—a model evidently suggested by the grand Nicolo, but not adopted by the cautious Strad till some years after Nicolo’s death.
5From 1694 to 1700 Stradivari not only went out of his way to make long Strads, which not only looked longer because they were narrower and pinched in, but actually were longer—i.e. 14-inch, as compared to the 1690 13-inch Strad. In other respects also he walked through his own traditions. Having mastered all violin lore, he was evidently at last trying a series of daring experiments to settle in his own mind once and for ever certain problems of tone.
7We have known painters trifle with colour in the same way. Gainsborough would paint his blue boy, and Whistler symphonies in green, mauve, or anything else unexpected, and Turner would recreate the light that never was on sea or land; but in reality it was no trifling, but study in arrangement of colour. So you can have study in construction, empirical ventures, and a testing of tone problems, whether in sound or colour.
9As Stradivari mused and carved, and glued and varnished, year after year, his meditations might run thus: "Flatten the belly—thicker here or there according to wood, density of fibre; air column restrained by narrow width, as in the long pattern, but same cubic inches of air allowed for in length or height of ribs, only differently defined by different shapes of instruments. Enlarge
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