Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 91
Scan 91
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
3of Stradivari. It is flattened at top and bottom, and seems to the eye less graceful; but in his selection of wood, his glorious varnish, the relative thickness of his slabs, and in the cunning knowledge of those fibre densities in back and belly which are likely to sound well together, he is second to none.
5Montagnana no doubt embodies and transplants to Venice the Cremona secrets. As I noticed in the case of Bergonzi, Montagnana, owing to the paucity of his instruments as well as to the splendour of his contemporaries, Strad and Giuseppe Guarneri, has not until lately received the honour which is due to him. He suffers, too, from having often been labelled Guarnerius or Bergonzi, makers who had the vogue of the day. These frauds are now being unmasked, and the few great successors of the Cremona giants, Bergonzi, Montagnana, Guadagnini, and Balestrieri (very fine in Guadagnini's style, flat, big build, powerful tone), and Storioni, have at last a chance of taking their proper places and fetching their prices.
7When we come to Lorenzo Storioni (1769–99) we come to the last maker of importance who can with any show of plausibility be called even a second or third rate master of Cremona. Storioni's model was Joseph Guarnerius, but he copied him more in his rough work than in his great qualities. In his varnish we notice the singular change which came over the Cremona varnish after about 1760. Up till then all the Cremona violins have the Cremona varnish; after that time it simply disappears. Why is it? This
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