Books › The Story of the Violin, 1914 › scan 26
Scan 26
The Story of the Violin, 1914
6 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Prologue
3body of the soul within? Look at this fine creation of a famous master here before me on the table: what a delicious play of curves and colours;—the noble sphinx-like head from which it rolls down or unfolds itself (just as you look at it), in graceful and continuous arabesques;—the tender swell and modelling of the chest and back;—that amber colour deepening to a rich, an almost reddish brown towards the centre where the sound-life pulsates strongest, quickest! A corner of a Titian canvas, is it? Yes, or Rembrandt's. And behold the fine fibre of the wood shining through the varnish like the delicate roses through my lady's finger-nails! What can be finer? No wonder people love a violin like that, and yearn and starve themselves for it, and many a fair maiden, pretending only to inspect the wood, has ere long (no one seeing) pressed a furtive kiss on such a lovely form as this.
5The enthusiast has had his say. But is that all? Look at this frail thing made of wood—only wood; it has withstood the stress of two whole centuries. I say the stress, for it has not been stored away in a glass case like a relic or a picture only to be looked at. No, it has been used—used almost daily! and how used! With every touch of the friendly bow every fibre of its delicate body has quivered and trembled like the heart of a maiden under the first kiss of her lover. In agony have been born those thousand million tones which in two hundred years have issued from this body to delight man. And
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