Scan 120
The violin & its story : or the history & construction of the violin, 1905
12 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 104. See the scan on archive.org.
1bar, so as to enable the belly to resist the greater pressure it is called on to bear.
3Vuillaume believed that the "enormous pressure" of the strings on the belly would gradually bring about the entire destruction of all the old instruments.
5The proper position for the bass-bar is such that the left foot of the bridge stands right over it. Its purpose is to bear the weight on that side, and it follows that it must be so adjusted, and be made of such a strength as to bear its burden without sinking.
7The opinions of even the best makers are at variance on this point; and as the thickness of the belly has to be kept strictly in view in making the bass-bar, it is very difficult, if not quite impossible, to give any fixed rules as to its size and proportions. The higher or lower arching of any particular instrument will also have a definite effect in determining the length of the bass-bar. Some think they have discovered the philosopher's stone by fixing the bar "on the straight;" others "find salvation" in putting it a bit "on the slant;" while others regard the point as of no importance. An artist once asked Stoss, of Vienna, about the position of the bass-bar, and he said, "If the wood and the workmanship are all right, you can put the bass-bar where you like—it would still be a good fiddle." To another, who asked him how he placed it, he said, "I don't know—I put it just where it seems to me best." To a third he said, "Drop all speculation about the bass-bar. If you can invent a machine by which we can lengthen or shorten the sound-post by a hair's breadth where it stands, and without taking it out of the fiddle, we have learned the great secret—we want nothing else."*
9The other foot of the bridge—that on the E string side—also wants support, and this is furnished by a vertical and cylindrical post, standing firmly between belly and back. This post must not, however, stand
11* Stoss's remarks come to this:—A good maker wants knowledge, experience, and, above all, intuition.—Translator.
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