Scan 102
The Violin: Its Famous Makers and their Imitators, 1875
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 62. See the scan on archive.org.
1Carlo Bergonzi furnishes us with another example of the extensive research with which the great Cremonese makers pursued their art, and a refutation of the common assertion that these men worked and formed by accident rather than by judgment. The differences of the two makers mentioned above as regards form are certainly too wide to be explained away as a matter of mere accident. It is further necessary to take into consideration the kind of tone belonging to these instruments respectively. If Bergonzi's instruments be compared with those of his master, Stradiuarius, or of Guarnerius del Jesù, the appreciable difference to be found will amount to this, that in Bergonzi's instruments there is a just and exact combination of the qualities of both the other two makers named. Is it not, therefore, reasonable to conclude that Carlo Bergonzi was fully alive to the merits of both Stradiuarius and Guarnerius, and deliberately set himself to construct a model that should embrace in a measure the chief characteristics of both of them?
3The scroll is deserving of particular attention. It is quite in keeping with the body of the instrument, and has been cut with a decision of purpose that could only have been possessed by a master. It is flatter than usual, if we trace it from the cheek towards the turn, and is strikingly bold. Here, again, is the portrait of the character of the maker. Although by a pupil of Antonius Stradiuarius, the scroll is thoroughly distinct from any known produc-
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