Books › The violin, how to make it, 1880 › scan 30
Scan 30
The violin, how to make it, 1880
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 24. See the scan on archive.org.
1ance of action with design. Other makers who achieved results that we value sought out the method by asking of Nature how she linked cause and effect; they approached seeking to know, with open eyes and open mind, and by thinking of the "why and wherefore" of the phenomena presented them in many and multiform variety of changes they became masters of the open secret of Nature. The pathway is open to others as to them—as the fine fancy of the old Greek religion symbolized it—that Nature demands us to go barefooted to her Temple, not in other men's shoes. We must think and make experiments to verify the truth of our thinking, and then found other thinkings upon the connection of our observations upon the experimentings. What if we go seventy times wrong, if once we gain the path of one thread to the labyrinth whose centre we seek. Let us take up the finest Violin the world possesses and what will it tell us?—only how far old Strad went in his pursuit of the beautiful in the world of tones—not how he arrived thereat. What a man has done that is excellent, it little profits us blindly by rule of thumb to copy; the value to us is in showing us what may be accomplished, and exciting our emulation to equal, or excel—making us dissatisfied with lesser attainments. Only mediocrity copies—the artist originates, and excellence, like beauty, is not limited to stereotyped patterns. Nature is not sterile; every day new beauties greet us; we see faces and sunsets like no others that have gone before. Art has the same prerogative. Demosthenes did not exhaust eloquence, nor Titian impoverish the sources of color. We must believe in new re-creations of genius and industry, and as relates to the Violin, we should ask ourselves not, What are the measurements to be by rule and callipers?—no; but we should ask, Why are such and such proportions good?—what is it renders them necessary? Step by step we should feel the artist had a purpose in view, that he sought to culture his material into a shape suited to a certain perception of aim—that aim being to cause an equilibrium or harmony of vibration in the mass of wood, that it should give a clear, sonorous tone without jar or roughness. We should, therefore, try what difference is perceptible in a rough plate of wood, and with jagged edges, as distinguished from one rounded and thinned away at various places—just as the
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