Books › The violin : how to choose one, 1893 › scan 79
Scan 79
The violin : how to choose one, 1893
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 75. See the scan on archive.org.
1There can now be no hiding of a particular tone or quality of tone in a violin; for the best violins that can thus be constructed may now be taken to pieces, their exact notes recorded by the acute copyist and the same effect repeated by the humblest in the land.
3The Shakespere of violin makers was undoubtedly this Dieffopruchar, the man who grasped the true theory that the strings do not vibrate indiscriminately over the plates but are confined to that part which either gives its own tone, as in the case of the back, or its own tone and harmony as in the case of the breast. That man must have had this very system or he could not have designed the violin to give the perfect fifths which the plates do give. Then came Gasparo da Salo, the Burns of violin makers, and by altering a note in the plates he perfected the work of his master, and had our concert pitch not risen so much we could not have done better to-day than copy his work. But after him came men who either did not understand his system, or cared only for beauty of outline, and shape, and lovely finish, and by leaving out the notes got at the positions which I have numbered 2, 4, 7, and 9, their work falls away in tone no matter how nice their outside finish, until Maggini pulled them up sharply and thought the notes out again or got them from his master. After Maggini, who is said to have died suddenly of the plague, and so perhaps had not time to give the secret to another, there is a weary blank in violin making. Every maker seems to have been groping in the dark for a system hopelessly lost. They all try different notes and fail. Even Stradivarius thought and thought till his life was nearly gone, and failed, because the beauty of his outline is got at the expense of sacrificing some of the best notes which the plates demand. Then came Joseph Guarnerius, the saddest and most admirable of all violin makers—most admirable, because he tried hard to fit his outline to the best echoes and tones of Brescia—and the saddest because he lived next door to a popular maker, and all the time felt that he himself was making grander works. No crowds came from every foreign court to keep him busy at the bench rather than sitting in the wine shop to pass the time or shut out regrets and despair. Sadder still we see him forced at times to sink his superior knowledge, and make a violin for bread which, in appearance and tone, can scarcely be told from one by his successful rival—as if some imperious patron had said "Make
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