Books › The instruments of the modern orchestra & early records of the precursors of the violin family : with over 500 illustrations and plates, 1910 › scan 261
Scan 261
The instruments of the modern orchestra & early records of the precursors of the violin family : with over 500 illustrations and plates, 1910
20 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Compass. The compass of the keyless Georgi Flute is nearly the same as that of the Concert Flute, from
3if the lower C and C sharp be required, extra holes and keys can be added.
5Quality of Tone. The tone of the instrument is a true flute tone of excellent and uniform quality, and is brilliant and sympathetic besides.
7Possibilities. Everything that is possible on the Boehm flute is possible on the Georgi, and more, on account of the simplicity of the fingering, (each finger having but one duty to perform) and of the semitonal system. All trills are equally easy on this flute and the difficulties of the tremolo are now greatly lessened. The chromatic scale can be played rapidly with the utmost facility.
9The Stelzner Violin Family.
11What is it that Dr. Stelzner has accomplished with his new family of instruments? Where was the need of their being called to existence at all?
13These are questions that one must expect will be put by people unacquainted with the instruments, and it will therefore be as well to endeavour to answer them.
15The celebrated old Italian instruments, the Strads, Amatis, and Guarneri, are growing old; the wood has attained its highest point of perfection, and as it is unfortunately perishable, the chefs-d'œuvre of the old Cremona and Brescia masters must one day decline and perish; there is therefore, every need to have good violins ready to replace them.
17The general outline and proportions of the Italian violin have been empirically determined, and no rules or laws of acoustics have yet been discovered that account for their beauty of tone, nor that would enable any maker to obtain the same results from those models. Dr. Stelzner asserts that the old Italian violins excell all others in beauty of tone, in spite of a construction which runs counter to the laws of acoustics, because age and use have mellowed the wood, and because their form is the nearest to perfection yet attained. By serious study and experiments in the domain of sound, and more especially in connection with its production in the sound chests of stringed instruments, Dr. Stelzner has discovered that the quality of tone produced depends upon the energy of the soundwaves generated within the body of the instrument by the molecular vibrations of the air; also that quality is influenced by the coincidence of the foci of these waves.
19The present semi-circular outline of the shoulder and tail-end of the violin are therefore distinctly unfavourable to an increase in the quantity or the quality of tone.
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