Scan 89
The violin & its story : or the history & construction of the violin, 1905
4 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. Printed page 73. See the scan on archive.org.
1One of these causes was that makers sought to improve upon the Cremonese, and went aside from the excellent rules of that school. Stainer, the prototype of the German makers, himself gave impetus to this desire for improvement. He made his bodies very high in the breast and back. A high arching not only suggests but positively demands less strength of wood. Stainer saw this well enough, and therefore made his bellies and backs weaker in wood than we find in the lower arching of Stradivarius. He fell, moreover, into an error of another kind, inasmuch as he allowed his high arching to fall away too suddenly towards the edges, and thus prevented the full and proportionate vibration of the whole surface. Hence we find that the tone of his instruments lacks the sweetness and roundness which the Italian violins possess, and more nearly resembles the sharp and "pointed" tone which is the characteristic of later German makes. Perhaps it was this very quality of tone which kept the Stainer violins so long in favour. This rapid fall from the arch when it got near the edges which, in Stainer's case was the direct and inevitable result of the extraordinary height of his arching, came to be regarded as an essential feature, and the depression round the edges became enlarged until it developed into a downright channel, from which the middle part of belly and back rose as a sudden roll or pad; and the wood of the flatter part of the arching was made even thinner than was the case with Stainer's higher arching. These faults were very glaring in the productions of the older German and Bohemian makers. Even good makers like Stadelmann and Geissenhof (both of Vienna), and Leopold Widhalm, of Nuremburg, were to blame in these respects. The most pernicious fault was the thinness to which the bellies were reduced, the result of which was that after a short time the tone became thin, hollow and dull, and after no long interval the instruments were quite ruined.
3All these clumsy and tinkering attempts at improvement have resulted in deterioration and degeneration. The Italian instruments rose in price when it was found
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