Books › The violin: its famous makers and their imitators. : With several wood engravings from photographs of the works of Stradiuarius, Guarnerius, Amati, and others, 1880 › scan 41
Scan 41
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators. : With several wood engravings from photographs of the works of Stradiuarius, Guarnerius, Amati, and others, 1880
8 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 27. See the scan on archive.org.
1would be easy to continue this vein of thought, were it not likely to become irksome to the reader; enough has been said to refresh the memory as to the flourishing state of Italian art during these times. What a mine of wealth was then opened up for succeeding generations! and how curious is the fact that not only the Violin, but its music, has been the creature of the most luxurious age of art, for in that golden age musicians contemporary with the great Violin makers were writing music destined to be better understood and appreciated when the Violins then made should have reached their maturity.
3That Italy's greatest Violin makers lived in times favourable to the production of works possessing a high degree of merit cannot be doubted. They were surrounded by composers of rare powers, and also by numerous orchestras. These orchestras, composed mainly of stringed instruments, were scattered over Italy, Germany, and France, in churches, convents, and palaces, and must necessarily have created a great demand for bow instruments of a high class.*
5The bare mention of a few of the names of composers then existing will be sufficient to bring to the mind of the reader well versed in musical matters the compositions to which they owe their fame. In the sixteenth century, Palestrina, Guami, and Zarlino were engaged in writing church music, in which stringed instruments took their share; in the seventeenth, lived Stradella, Lotti, Bononcini, Lully, and Corelli. In the eighteenth century, the period when the art of
7* Montagne, whose travels brought him to Verona in 1580, has recorded that there were Violins as well as Organs there to accompany the mass in the great church.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.