Bow & Bridge Violin and bow makers, as the old books printed them

Books › The Violin: How to Master It, 1880 › scan 34

Scan 34

The Violin: How to Master It, 1880

10 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.

1the hole in the tail piece, bring it out below and up over the side, slip it under the string, there passing from bridge to hole, keeping the knot behind the ridge on the tail piece, and then tighten carefully and tune as usual. When one end of a string is thinner than the other, it is best to turn the thin end towards the bridge. If a string plays false—flat or sharp—the fault may sometimes be modified or remedied by reversing it; but as a rule this defect arises from bad gauging of the relative thickness of the strings, or from a joint or knot in the string itself, formed in making, and generally invisible to the eye; or from a fault of the violin, as a false string taken from one violin will sometimes play perfectly in tune on another.
3CHAPTER V.
5Holding the Violin.
7The position of the violin, in these days when almost no limit is put to shifting but the bridge itself, is of the utmost importance, the slightest awkwardness or error of detail being sufficient to cramp the execution for life. In their directions on this point, as well as that of the holding of the bow, nearly all violin tutors are tantalizingly vague, and therefore misleading; the cause being, I suppose, that the typographical directions have to be crammed into the smallest possible space, or are left to be elaborated and explained by a teacher, while most prominence is given to the actual music. No such drawback exists here, and I will try to make the directions so clear and minute that mistake will be all but impossible.
9The violin is held in the left hand, with the chin resting on the breast of the instrument, well over the ribs, and on the left side of the tail-piece. The violin is then as near as possible horizontal, the rule being that the knuckles, or second joints of the fingers of the left hand, are level with the nose of the performer. The left side of the instrument is raised to an angle of twenty-five degrees, to allow of the back strings being commanded easily with the bow without moving the

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