Scan 110
The Violin: Its Famous Makers and their Imitators, 1875
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 68. See the scan on archive.org.
1Violins. In one of the excellent articles contributed by Mr. Reade in 1872 to the Pall Mall Gazette, he remarks: "The first known maker of the true Tenor, and probably of the Violin, was Gasparo da Salo. The student who has read the valuable work put forth by Monsieur Fétis and Monsieur Vuillaume might imagine that I am contradicting them here, for they quote as 'luthiers' antecedent to Gasparo da Salo, Kerlino, Duiffoprugcar, Linarolli, Dardelli, and others. These men, I grant you, worked long before Gasparo da Salo; I even offer you an independent proof, and a very simple one—I find that their genuine tickets are in Gothic letters, whereas those of Gasparo da Salo are in Roman type. But I know the works of those makers, and they did not make Tenors nor Violins. They made instruments of the older family, Viole d'Amore, da Gamba, &c. Their true tickets are all black-letter tickets, and not one such ticket exists in any old Violin nor in a single Tenor." The case is stated in Mr. Reade's peculiarly clear and decisive manner, and he has left no loophole for his antagonist's escape. Any instrument of a mongrel kind, having a carved head and uncouth workmanship, and in size something between a Tenor and a Violin, has been, as a matter of course, fathered upon these old Viol makers. From an artistic point of view, it is of no consequence to ascertain who made these old fossils, their merits being of the slenderest kind; it is only historically that any interest can attach to them.
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