Books › The heart of music; the story of the violin, 1906 › scan 245
Scan 245
The heart of music; the story of the violin, 1906
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1In the Workshop of Amati
3eight inches and a half, and at the narrowest four inches and a half, broad. It is about two inches and a half in the deepest part and weighs about eight ounces and a half. Beyond this we have a neck terminating in a scroll, which, with pegs, finger-board, and tail-piece of ebony, bring the weight up to about twenty ounces. The wondrous capabilities and wonderful equilibrium of all the parts may be summed up in one short sentence—it supports a tension on the strings of sixty-eight pounds,1 and a vertical pressure on the bridge of twenty-six pounds."
5In every fiddle there are seventy separate and distinct parts, seventy perfect pieces to be fitted together all in absolute harmony and complete balance. This number becomes eighty-three under certain conditions, as may be seen later. The seventy parts are as follows: Back, two pieces; belly, two; corner blocks, six; linings, twelve; bass bar, one; purfling, twenty-four; tail-piece rest, one; tail-piece, one; tail-piece fastening, one; tail-pin, one; pegs, four; finger-board, one; bridge, one; nut, one; strings, four; sound-post, one; and neck and scroll, one. This division is occasionally varied by letting in the
71 When Heron-Allen wrote this the violin pitch had not been raised, bringing the tension up to over eighty pounds.
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