Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 98
Scan 98
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
14 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLINS IN GERMANY
3and Albani, when he fell a victim to the odium theologicum.
5Heretical books were found in his possession, or heretical opinions were expressed by him, or both. He was, in fact, a Lutheran, and a Lutheran in Absam was far too near to the preserves of Mother Church, and very soon, like a hawk on a pheasant run, he was shot down. Stainer was also miserably in debt, and perhaps somewhat litigious, as people of genius and independence of character are wont to be.
7In 1677, having got out of prison, Jacobus petitioned the Emperor Leopold, whose protégé and employé he had been, and who was a great musical amateur, for money. Leopold lost his opportunity; unlike Ludwig of Bavaria, who won for himself an easy immortality by supplying Wagner with funds, Leopold turned a deaf ear to the immortal violin-maker.
9Stainer seems to have dragged on a wretched existence for six years longer, overburdened with care and debt. The attentions of his wife and eight daughters did not prevent him from going mad with worry and want; nay, a helpless and incompetent family may even have contributed to this so unhappy close of a splendid but blighted career.
11They show even now at Absam the bench to which the wretched man is said to have been bound when his paroxysms came on. He died in 1683, not only insane but insolvent. His wife died in great poverty six years afterwards, in 1689.
13There seems no room in this sad life-story for his
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