Books › The violin, how to make it, 1880 › scan 28
Scan 28
The violin, how to make it, 1880
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 22. See the scan on archive.org.
1Violin for one hundred guineas, but considering it of too large a pattern, he purposed lessening its dimensions, and, at the suggestion of the celebrated performer, J. P. Salomon (who died in 1815), he practically carried out this experiment, and as a result, the instrument was irrecoverably injured, and was sold a few years afterwards for fifty-six pounds, a sum which was given perhaps more for the mere purpose of obtaining a Stradivarius, than from the changed and deteriorated quality of the instrument.
3CHAPTER II.
5THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES OF CONSTRUCTION.
7In the Violin the theory of construction, according to acoustical laws, is understood in a less degree than any other musical instrument. In a purely elementary work like the present, space will not permit of entering into all the scientific details which have been at various times set forth, as tending to clear up this difficulty, neither would some of them be of much benefit; but those experiments of a leading character, and which are now known to be of the most advantage, those alone will the reader find the most generally useful. To susceptible and highly cultivated natures, music is capable of awakening every emotion of the human soul, from the most rapt devotion to the mildest exhilaration, from the most passionate grief to the excess of mirthfulness. The opinions upon music of that remarkable Association—the Rosicrucian Brotherhood—defined in such obscure language, are, to say the least of it, strange, but perhaps not so foolish as superficial thinkers may imagine. The following are a few fragments culled from the philosophy of this sect, and which are only varied modes of expression of the opinions of the Kabalists, Gnostics, Pythagoreans, and Platonists:—
9"The whole world is a musical instrument, a chromatic, sensible instrument; life a chromatic and diatonic scale of musical tones. The axis or pole of the celestial world is intersected by the spiritual Sun, or centre of sentient being, and from thence stream forth rays of light, which, divided,
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