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 68
Scan 68
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
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1FENDT, JACOB, London. Born 1815. Died 1849. Another son of Bernhard Fendt. The whole conception of his instruments is generally higher than the work of other members of his family. His wood is generally very fine and regular, while some of his backs are really, in regard to figure, most beautiful. In his Guarnerius copies, the sound holes are rather exaggerated reproductions of that great maker's style, but in this respect he is in very good company, as the best copyists that ever lived have failed in exactly hitting off the striking peculiarity of Joseph del Jesu's sound holes. I have heard it urged that these great makers, both English and foreign, did not try to "slavishly copy" the individuality of Joseph Guarnerius, but I cannot say that I have great faith in the validity of this kind of reasoning. I believe that they tried to copy him and Stradivari, as well as Nicolas Amati, in the most minute particular, and that they simply failed to do it perfectly. When Vuillaume turned out, under stress of circumstances, his reproductions of the old masters, and put in imitations of the old tickets—and very clever imitations too—we may be absolutely certain that he left nothing undone that he could have done, and so it is with any maker, who has set himself to copy the old masters in that fashion. With the exception of putting in old tickets, discolouring the wood by artificial means, and otherwise imitating the aged appearance—barring, perhaps, the artistic breaking up of varnish—makers could not do better than "slavishly" copy such productions as the Cremonese masters have left us. Like Vuillaume, Jacob Fendt, in order to live,
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