Books › The fiddle fancier's guide; a manual of information regarding violins, violas, basses and bows of classical and modern times, together with biographical notices and portraits of the most famous performers on these instruments, 1892 › scan 42
Scan 42
The fiddle fancier's guide; a manual of information regarding violins, violas, basses and bows of classical and modern times, together with biographical notices and portraits of the most famous performers on these instruments, 1892
2 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1the choosing of them. In the matter of tone and capacity there are hardly two violins alike, and one does not meet a great many people who are really good judges of tone. It appears to be a faculty something like tea-tasting, and for which no amount of training seems to be a very good substitute. Many grocers' assistants could tell you a fairly sound tea by closing their hand on a small quantity, and others could indicate a similar quality by scanning the roll of the leaf, but standards of that kind are the result of an experience which might fail any day. No man during this century had better opportunities of training himself in the matter of proper violin tone than the late J. B. Vuillaume of Paris, and few men have spoken with a calmer assumption of supreme knowledge than he, and yet few—I was about to say not any—have been so thoroughly hoaxed on this subject as he was. He made splendid violins with a most excellent quality of tone in a great many instances, but he did not know apparently—although he professed to know—the differences when he heard them. My advice to all readers of this Guide who think of laying out five, ten, fifteen, twenty, or even twenty-five and thirty pounds on a violin, is to purchase a sound, new instrument—unless, of course, they have some exceptionally rare opportunity of getting one of the finer old ones at the same money—a chance which is not likely to occur. And if they have no knowledge themselves of what a violin tone should be, let them seek the services of someone who does know.
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