Books › Old violins and violin lore. Famous makers of Cremona and Brescia, and of England, France, and Germany (with biographical dictionary); famous players; and chapters on varnish, strings and bows, 1893 › scan 41
Scan 41
Old violins and violin lore. Famous makers of Cremona and Brescia, and of England, France, and Germany (with biographical dictionary); famous players; and chapters on varnish, strings and bows, 1893
8 lines. Read by computer on 14 September 2026. Printed page 33. See the scan on archive.org.
1to have affected, either at Brescia or at Cremona, the manufacture of musical instruments. There seems to have been an uninterrupted line of viol and either and lute makers at Brescia from 1300 and onwards.
3But when it is remembered that war does not interrupt the functions of religion or diminish the importance of the clergy (nay, often enhances both), we can understand that the musical instrument makers might have been as much in demand, in the stormiest times of the Visconti and Medici, as druggists, soothsayers, or mountebanks; and they probably made impartially for friend or foe—for any one, in fact, who could afford to pay.
5Up to within the last few years very little was known of this man Gio. Paolo Maggini—Magino or Magicino. As he put only the name and place, but not the date, on his labels (all dated Magginis are therefore frauds), it is not easy to assign fixed dates to any of his instruments, and the personal information to be squeezed out of them is of the meagrest description. He worked in Brescia; few of his instruments survive. His violas are as rare as Gasparo's violins, but he distances all other makers in the attention that he gave to that new-fangled and suspiciously regarded instrument, the true violin.
7His handwriting, some of which survives, would lead one to suppose that his education was very moderate, but the signatures of illustrious princes of this period are no better. Recently, however, the State Archives of Brescia have revealed some interesting gleams of
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.