Books › The violin and the art of its construction. A treatise on the Stradivarius violin, 1895 › scan 24
Scan 24
The violin and the art of its construction. A treatise on the Stradivarius violin, 1895
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Great care must be taken in placing the upper end of the finger-board; it should be placed exactly at right angles with the under curve of the head (a), a point which is often paid very little attention to, and yet is one which is of the utmost importance. For instance, if the upper nut be placed too far beyond the angle (a), the hand must of necessity be stretched backwards in an uncomfortable position, or the fingers will fall too high upon the strings. On the other hand, if the nut be placed too low, the hand has no certain position upon the curve of the neck, and consequently will play flat in the first position and sharp in the third. It has often been said to me by musicians, and especially amateurs, that their violins played sharp in the first position and flat in the higher ones, and the contrary also has often come under my notice. The sole cause of these imperfections is the disproportionate relation in the length of the body and the neck; for whatever may be the distance between the bridge and the nut, whether long or short, the position of the different tones themselves is exactly determined by the laws of acoustics, and always remains in the same relation to the vibrating string.
3I have given in Fig. 12 the exact position of the tones on the A-string, according to the normal measurement of 325 m/m. given above. The first tone played (B flat) is always exactly the eighteenth part of the whole length of the string from the nut to the bridge; the second tone is the eighteenth part from the first tone, and so on. If the finger-board is 268 m/m. long, the high E on the A-string will coincide with the lower end of the same. The above-mentioned imperfection is also caused by the neck being either too long or too short; in the first case a performer would play too sharp in the third position, and too flat in
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