Books › The violin : how to choose one, 1893 › scan 18
Scan 18
The violin : how to choose one, 1893
4 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 14. See the scan on archive.org.
1cessors of Gasparo da Salo, he has produced the largest tone of any maker, the most powerful, perhaps, being the one used by Ole Bull, who told me that he used it in a large hall at Moscow where nothing else would tell, and trying in succession the Strads and Josephs in my possession, the violins of these Cremonese masters sounded rather effeminate, though very fine." The reason Ole Bull gave for preferring his Gasparo da Salo to all the Cremonas in his possession was, that it was "a violin, the tone of which could be graded in all colours," while of the violins of Stradivarius he said, "Though the tone is wonderfully even and full, it is tinctured with a peculiar nasal quality; for this reason, though I have owned several fine specimens of this maker, among them one of a quartette made for the Court of Spain, I have never played upon them in public." By "wonderfully full," he meant "pretty full," for no more can be said of the tone of the best Stradivarius in existence. For penetrating brilliance and sweetness, they are rarely excelled, but in largeness and grandeur of tone they are frequently excelled. The best violins of Joseph Guarnerius certainly equal them in sweetness, and as certainly excel them in power; more, there is often in these violins a mellowness and easy response which we frequently find absent in those of Stradivarius. Mr. E. J. Payne, himself a worshipper of Stradivarius, in a paper on that maker read before the Cremona Society said—"It cannot, I think, be denied that a greater volume of sound can be produced from the violin of Joseph Guarnerius. Whether the same sustained force of tone which Spohr is said to have drawn from his Joseph Guarnerius violin could be produced on a Stradivarius may well be doubted. It is said of Spohr that in playing an adagio he had the power of filling the concert-room with the sound of a long-sustained note, while the movement of his bow was so slow as to be scarcely perceptible to the eye. Against this reserve of force, however, is to be set a certain deficiency in flexibility and readiness of speech, and a want of delicacy in the finer shades of sound." This last remark only applies to some Guarnerius violins, and equally to some Strads. It is a popular idea that the tone of the Strad comes easily: it is a delusion—the tone is often very difficult to get.
3The violins of Guarnerius in turn are inferior to those of Maggini in largeness and grandeur of tone; and those of Maggini in turn, as proved by Ole Bull, pale somewhat before those of Gasparo da Salo.
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