Scan 578
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1909
7 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 500. See the scan on archive.org.
1studies, I shall know how again to correct you.'"
2—Hogarth's Musical Herald.
4OLE BULL AND FIDDLE VARNISH.
6"A man who had a patent varnish for Violins, brought his invention to Ole Bull, and begged him to try it. He said that it gave ordinary instruments the sweet quality of a Cremona Fiddle. Ole Bull tried it, and found that it improved the tone, and promised to use a Violin prepared with it at a concert he had to give at the house of the Duke of Riario. There was a great deal of fashionable company at this concert, and the heat of the room melted this famous varnish, which was really a preparation of asafœtida. The smell which it exuded was so maddening that an ordinary man would have stopped and excused himself; but Ole Bull merely closed his eyes, turned his face away, and played with an energy which became more frenzied the more intolerable the stink became. He enjoyed an overwhelming success, and the Duke rushed forward to seize his hand in congratulation. The appalling odour of asafœtida struck him in the face, and Ole Bull had to explain in what agony he had been performing."—Ole Bull's "Breve i Uddrag," by Jonas Lie, Copenhagen, 1881.
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