Scan 49
The Violin Gallery: Comprising: Section I. South Kensington Special …, 1890
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Even so the shell would succumb in time, but now the inventor killed two birds with one stone: he cunningly diverted a portion of the pressure by the very means that were necessary to the sound. He placed the bridge on the belly of the violin, and that raised the strings out of the direct line of tension, and relieved the lateral pressure at the expense of the belly. But as the belly is a weak arch, it must now be strengthened in its turn. Accordingly, a bass-bar was glued horizontally to the belly under one foot of the bridge. This bass-bar is a very small piece of deal, about the length and half the size of an old-fashioned lead pencil, but, the ends being tapered off, it is glued on to the belly, with a spring in it, and supports the belly magically. As a proof how nicely all these things were balanced, the bass-bar of Gasparo da Salo, the Amati, and Stradiuarius being a little shorter and shallower than a modern bass-bar, did admirably for their day, yet will not do now. 'Our raised concert pitch has clapped on more tension, and straightway you must remove the bass-bar even of Stradiuarius, and substitute one a little longer and deeper, or your Cremona sounds like a strung frying-pan.
3Remove now from the violin, which for two centuries has endured this strain, the finger-board, tail-piece, tail-pin and screws—since these are the instruments or vehicles of tension, not materials of resistance—and weigh the violin itself. It weighs, I suppose about twenty ounces: and it has fought hundredweights of pressure for centuries. A marvel of construction, it is also a marvel of sound; it is audible farther off than the gigantic pianoforte, and its tones in a master's hand go to the heart of man. It can be prostituted to the performance of difficulties, and often is; but that is not its fault. Genius can make your very heart dance with it, or your eyes to fill; and Niel Gow was no romancer, but only a deeper critic than his fellows, when, being asked what was the true test of a player, he replied, "A man is a player when he can gar himself, greet wi his fiddle."
5Asking forgiveness for this preamble, I proceed to inquire what country invented these four-stringed and four-cornered instruments.
7I understand that France and Germany have of late raised some pretensions. Connoisseurship and etymology are both against them. Etymology suffices. The French terms are all derived from the Italian, and that disposes of France. I will go into German pretensions critically, if any one will show me as old and specific a German word as viola and violino, and the music composed for those German instruments. "Fiddle" is of vast antiquity: but pear-shaped, till Italy invented the four corners, on which sound as well as beauty depends.
9The Order of Invention.—Etymology decides with unerring voice that the violoncello was invented after the violono or double-bass, and connoisseurship proves by two distinct methods that it was invented after the violin. 1st, the critical method: it is called after the violon, yet is made on the plan of the violin, with arched back and long inner bought. 2nd, the historical method: a violoncello made by the inventors of the violin is incomparably rare, and this instrument is disproportionately rare even up to the year 1610. Violino being a derivative of viola would seem to indicate that the violin followed the tenor; but this taken alone is dangerous; for viola is not only a specific term for the
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