Books › The M. Steinert collection of keyed and stringed instruments : with various treatises on the history of these instruments, the method of playing them, and their influence on musical art, 1893 › scan 150
Scan 150
The M. Steinert collection of keyed and stringed instruments : with various treatises on the history of these instruments, the method of playing them, and their influence on musical art, 1893
4 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 148. See the scan on archive.org.
1transferring of this method of execution to the violin obviously rested with individual players and composers. Bach's violin solos are written for a performer of transcendent genius, although Bach with unfailing good taste without exception confines the player to the lower registers of the instrument.
3At first no sufficient cause is obvious for the concentration of fiddle-making at Cremona. It may have started from the reason that in the 16th century Cremona was a famous musical centre. The district surrounding it was one of the richest in agriculture in all Lombardy, and was chiefly under the control of the monasteries of the city and neighborhood. These wealthy institutions vied with each other in the splendor of their churches and daily services, and thereby furnished constant employment to painters, composers and instrument makers. The renown of Cremona as a school of music and painting was equal to that of Bologna, but its chief rival in fiddle-making was Brescia, where Caspar di Salo, the two Zanettos, Giovita Rodiani and Maggini made instruments from about 1580 to 1640. The characteristics of these makers, who compose the so-called Brescian School, can be found in the instruments of Andreas Amati, the earliest known violin maker of Cremona. The expression "the Brescian School" is somewhat misleading, it would be more correct to term their instruments as "Early Italian." The reputation of the Cremona Violins is mainly due to the sons of Andreas Amati, namely Antonio and Girolamo Amati, contemporaries of Maggini. Previous to this time, the violin had been treated as a work of art and as a tone-producing instrument, but artistic impulses had produced only superficial decorations in the shape of painting or inlaying with wood, etc. The brothers Amati, however, closely obeying the fundamental law of art manufacture, to wit, that deviation should be founded on construction, reduced the outlines and surfaces of the instrument to regular and harmonious curves, and by applying a certain varnish developed and deepened the natural beauty of the material. But while beautifying the exterior, they did not neglect
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