Scan 477
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1884
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 383. See the scan on archive.org.
1at a concert degrades his own dignity. If you love music, hear it; pay Fiddlers to play for you, but never Fiddle yourself." Such was Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son. It is quite evident that he had no notion of the exquisite enjoyment derivable from being an executant in a quartett, the conversational powers of which have been so frequently noticed. That Lord Chesterfield's strictures discouraged the practice of the Violin in the higher circles of society is very probable, appearing as they do in a work which was held in the light of a textbook upon the conduct of a gentleman for some considerable time. Happily, the hollowness of much of his advice came to be recognised, and he who deemed cards and dice a necessary step towards fashionable perfection, and ordained that Fiddlers were to be paid to play for you as substitutes for your own personal degradation, came to be remembered, possibly, more on account of the laxity of his precepts than for any other reason.
3In the days of Lord Chesterfield lived Michael Christian Festing, who was particularly zealous in the cause of music. He was a pupil of Geminiani, and wrote several solos. Festing still further carried out the idea of Britton the "small-coal man," by bringing together a number of noblemen and gentlemen amateurs for the practice of concerted music. They met at the Crown and Anchor tavern in the Strand, and named their society the "Philharmonic." So much for his furtherance of the art. It now
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