Books › The heart of music; the story of the violin, 1906 › scan 273
Scan 273
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.
1Guarnerius
3man's life will always be a secret; his secret will always be kept. The whole world may pass by on the outside, may peer and pry as they will, may even lean into the quiet darkness and see the casket where he sleeps through the centuries; but no man may enter there; the guardian of the tomb stands watchful, if unseen. So we may guess, and marvel, and wonder, and conjecture, and theorise, — it is all quite safe and harmless. We shall never disturb the ashes even of his lightest dream or thought.
5Thus, from the outside, straining importunate eyes to pierce the shadows, we may look on the much storied, much discussed, doubtless much slandered life of him who wrote himself upon the musical ages as "Guarnerius."
7As has been said, Giuseppe del Gesù studied with his cousin, whose namesake he was, and learned all that that redoubtable master could teach him. It is highly probable, moreover, that his erratic and original genius fed itself at more than one source, and that he acquired skill not only with the aid of his kinsman, but under the guidance of other violin makers of Cremona. It has even been asserted that one of his masters was Stradivari himself, and although open to grave doubts, this supposition is not impossible.
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