Books › The violin : how to choose one, 1893 › scan 31
Scan 31
The violin : how to choose one, 1893
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 27. See the scan on archive.org.
1entirely transparent, and of all shades of brown, red, and yellow. The vehicle in which the gum was dissolved is an oil. Applied to the violin, it compacts the tone without rendering it shrill or harsh, and gives additional beauty to the wood. Turning to Germany, France, and England, and examining the productions of their violin makers contemporaneous with the Cremona school, scarcely a trace of the Italian varnish is to be met with. In German instruments the varnish is distinguished by extreme hardness, a glazing lustre, and an absence of all delicate shades of colour. In France the colouring was too pronounced. The varnish of old English makers lacks transparency. For a period of 200 years, from the time of Gasparo da Salo to that of Bergonzi, the varnish was common to every Italian maker. Cremona had no monopoly, for the knowledge and use of it extended to Padua, Venice, Rome, and Naples. It is impossible, therefore, to say that the selection of ingredients, or the methods of preparation employed in the manufacture of this mixture, so well known and widely used, were in any sense a secret; but later quite a change is observable. From a hundred Italian violins of this later date only a notable few can be selected as possessing the true varnish; from 1745 to about 1760, then the manufacture of this varnish may be properly called a secret, as being confined to a chosen few. As a knowledge of the varnish became at last confined to a few, instances are not wanting of the prosecution of such by their less fortunate fellow-workmen. It is quite evident that, apart from any considerations of beauty, the importance of the varnish as an acoustic element was well recognised. How was the secret lost? A careful study extending over a vast number of objects, reveals the fact that this varnish of the Italian violin makers was common to the painter, the varnisher, and the gilder as well. Generally it is colourless, then the quality and texture are the indications; but occasionally it is of brilliant hues, and then it proclaims itself to the eye at once. Let an ancient piece of Italian furniture—a chair, a cabinet, the case of a spinet or harpsichord—be examined, and provided it have escaped modern retouching, the varnish might be by Stradivarius himself. Let specimens of a later date—say 1760—be examined; here is no such varnish. This is smooth, fairly lustrous, hard, and durable. The chair of 1725 presents a surface broken and worn away: that of 1760 one comparatively smooth and fairly able to endure further
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