Books › The varnishes of the Italian violin-makers of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their influence on tone;, 1904 › scan 51
Scan 51
The varnishes of the Italian violin-makers of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their influence on tone;, 1904
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1will be found that not only did the varnish cover the wood, but it saturated its outer layer, thus forming a homogeneous and elastic diaphragm such as has been described. The outer stratum of the wood (forming table, back, and ribs) is no longer soft and porous, it is homogeneous and compact; in fact, after all the surface varnish has been worn away, the bare wood takes a fine polish; it is clearly to be discerned that the varnish has penetrated the wood to some depth.
3Mr. Edward J. Payne, author of the article on Antonio Stradivari in Grove's "Dictionary of Music," writes thus of Stradivari's varnish:—"It is oil varnish "of a soft and penetrating nature, apparently per- "meating the wood to some depth beneath the sur- "face, so that when the body of the varnish is worn "off the colour and substance appear to remain."
5Probably no one has made so many experiments on the tone of instruments as the late M. Félix Savart, of Paris. His opinion is thus quoted by M. Mailand (46) (the translation is mine):—"The varnish adds "to the beauty at the same time that it renders the "quality of sound permanent; when the varnish- "ing of the table is neglected, the instrument loses "its mellowness and its force. No one is ignorant "that guitars whose tables are not varnished lose "much with age; it is the same with pianofortes. It "might be thought that in this latter instrument, the "deterioration, after some years of service, would "depend entirely on the considerable pressure "exerted on the table by the tension of the multi- "plicity of strings; but it derives its origin from "another source. If it depended only on the cause "which has been assigned to it, the sound would not
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