Scan 64
The Violin Gallery: Comprising: Section I. South Kensington Special …, 1890
12 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1FOURTH LETTER.
3August 31st, 1872.
5THE fiddles of Cremona gained their reputation by superior tone, but they hold it now mainly by their beauty. For thirty years past violins have been made equal in model to the chef-d'oeuvres of Cremona, and stronger in wood than Stradiuarius, and more scientific than Guarnerius in the thicknesses. This class of violin is hideous, but has one quality in perfection—POWER; whilst the masterpieces of Cremona eclipse every new violin in sweetness, oiliness, crispness, and volume of tone as distinct from loudness. Age has dried their vegetable juices, making the carcass much lighter than that of a new violin, and those light dry frames vibrate at a touch.
7But M. Fetis goes too far when he intimates that Stradiuarius is louder as well as sweeter than Lupot, Gand, or Bernardel. Take a hundred violins by Stradiuarius and open them; you find about ninety-five patched in the centre with new wood. The connecting link is a sheet of glue. And is glue a fine resonant substance? And are the glue and the new wood of John Bull and Jean Crapaud transmogrified into the wood of Stradiuarius by merely sticking on to it? Is it not extravagant to quote patched violins as beyond rivalry in all the qualities of sound? How can they be the loudest, when the centre of the sound-board is a mere sandwich, composed of the maker's thin wood, a buttering of glue, and a huge slice of new wood?
9Joseph Guarnerius has plenty of wood; but his thicknesses are not always so scientific as those of the best modern fiddle-makers; so that even he can be rivalled in power by a new violin, though not in richness and sweetness. Consider, then, these two concurrent phenomena, that for twenty-five years new violins have been better made for sound than they ever were made in this world, yet old Cremona violins have nearly doubled in price, and, you will divine, as the truth is, that old fiddles are not bought by the ear alone. I will add that 100 years ago, when the violins of Brescia and Stradiuarius and Guarnerius were the only well-modelled violins, they were really bought by the ear, and the prices were moderate. Now they are in reality bought by the eye, and the price is enormous. The reason is that their tone is good but their appearance inimitable; because the makers chose fine wood and laid on a varnish highly coloured, yet clear as crystal, with this strange property—it becomes far more beautiful by time and usage: it wears softly away, or chips bodily away, in such forms as to make the whole violin picturesque, beautiful, various, and curious.
11To approach the same conclusion by a different road—No. 94 is a violin whose picturesque beauty I have described already; twenty-five years ago Mr. Plowden gave £450 for it. It is now, I suppose, worth £500. Well, knock that violin down and crack it in two places, it will sink that moment to the value
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