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Scan 115
The violinist, 1900
11 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE VIOLINIST
3The Violin—An Appreciation
4By Ramon F. Adams
6NO INSTRUMENT ever has been, or ever will be, I suspect, invented capable of even approaching the violin in extraordinary power and variety of expression. Its vocal singing; its smooth gliding; the impassioned power of a sweep from one end of the string to the other; its weird tremolo; its pensive and velvety legato; its clear bird-like harmonics; its pearly staccato bowing; its wailing chords; the mellow vox humana of its bass string; its flute-like sweetness of its third, and the ringing brilliance of its upper register, can scarcely be excelled even by the human voice. All other instruments give but a clumsy imitation; this all but outrivals the thing imitated. Hear the overture of "William Tell" imitated on a piano or organ—for even under the fingers of a master it can be but an imitation; observe how all the short notes are either buried in a mass of groaning harmony or never attempted to be fingered; then hear the same composition rendered by a full orchestra, every note, however short, standing out sharp and clear, and then understand in part what makes the violin monarch of every musical instrument. Again hear a piece of dance-music, no matter of what nationality, executed by a flute or piano, and afterward listen to the same thing performed on the violin. The first is as a theatrical scene, all scrambling and coarse daubing, compared with the clearness and minute beauty of a picture by Raphael. The shortest note, in the faintest whisper or most noisy fortissimo, the most rapid run, or the swiftest chromatics can be executed with a precision and perfection attainable on no other instrument. In another and more scientific sense, the violin is the only perfect instrument. A piano cannot be tuned perfectly, and the flute that will play in tune on all its keys has never yet been made. Where these and other instruments stagger and limp, the violin springs to the front without an effort. Volumes might be written on its majestic powers, but what good? The violin reached perfection two hundred years ago,—for except in the setting back of the neck a little to increase the pressure of the strings, on account of our heightened concert pitch, and greater command of the high notes and a slight thickening of the bass bar, no alteration of importance has been made on the Cremona models,—and at the same time became king of all. Its reign is undisputed, and therefore needs no demonstration.
8The construction, the history, the sound of the violin would make a romantic work in three volumes, as sensational as, and far more instructive than, most novels. The very fine wood smells good to begin with. The forests of Southern Tyrol, which now teem with saplings, when the old violins were made, from 1520 to 1750, still abounded in those ancient trees, so eagerly and often vainly sought out by modern builders, and which to old violin makers found to possess the finest acoustic properties. The mighty timbers were felled in late summer. They came in loose floating rafts from the banks of the Garda; they floated down the Mincio to Mantua. Brescia was in the midst of them. From Como they found their way to Milan, and from Lake Maggiore direct, via the Ticino and the Po, to Cremona.
10What market days were those! What a timber feast to select from; and what cunning lovers, and testers of wood were the old makers; the fathers of the violin! The rough heaps of pine, pear, lemon, and ash, beloved of the Brescians—of maple and sycamore preferred by the Cremonese—lay steaming dry and hard in a few hours beneath the sun of the southern Alps. Before a beam was bought, the master passed his hand over the surface. He could tell by touch the density of its fibre. Then he would take two equal slips of deal and weigh them, and judge of their porousness. The very appearance of the wood would guide him to its possible vibrational powers. Then he would, perchance, before leaving the market, cut strips of equal length, and elicit their relative intensities by striking their tongues. He would often select for a definite purpose, looking for a soft, porous piece, or a specially hard and close-fibred grain—a certain appearance he would instinctively associate with rare acoustic properties. After the lapse of two centuries, we can trace such favorite beams by peculiar
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