Bow & Bridge Violin and bow makers, as the old books printed them

Books › Ole Bull: a memoir; with Ole Bull's 'Violin notes' and A. B. Crosby's 'Anatomy of the violinist', 1897 › scan 69

Scan 69

Ole Bull: a memoir; with Ole Bull's 'Violin notes' and A. B. Crosby's 'Anatomy of the violinist', 1897

4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.

1out his sons as "Vikings," so an unspeakable majesty and delicacy is hidden in the simplicity of Northern strains. But there is more. Amid the subdued yet intense feeling of the glory and dignity of man, suddenly enters the foreboding of death: there is almost always beneath the highest mirth an under-current of melancholy,—the pictures are golden, on a black ground. But, at the same time, the foreboding of death augments the feeling of life. The waters, the trees, the mountains, live a life of their own, tempting you with the sweetest, the most potent and secret powers of nature, or crushing you with their colossal strength; no blind powers, no mere creations of superstitious terror, but always animated by a higher spirit, as behooves the fairy beings created by a big-brained race. And, amid all these sounds, terrible or mysterious, is heard the innocent bell-shaped flower, accompanied by the grass of the meadow. This may give you a faint idea of the Hulder—the spirit of the North. Southern music generally consists of sounds that please the ear, whilst Northern music strives to tell you secret tales of your own soul.
3It was the Hulder which Ole Bull would reproduce on the violin; but when he came to feel what really moved itself within him—what musical soul it was that craved for a body, a frame, a voice—the violin put into his hand and the received rules for its use were but ill-fitted to assist him in solving the problem. Therefore, descending from the heights of enthusiasm, he began to study the rudiments, and, first of all, the principle on which the old violins—the old master-makers' vio-

The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.