Books › The violinist, 1900 › scan 91
Scan 91
The violinist, 1900
15 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE VIOLINIST
3The Miracle of the Violin
4BY N. E. OLDMAKER
6THE great miracle in the story of the violin is that it is practically the same instrument today that it was over three hundred years ago, when Gaspard da Salo made the first one. The finish, the workmanship have improved, but the principles of its construction remain the same. And that is true in spite of the fact that almost every violin maker of those three hundred years has at some time in his career been possessed by an ambition to improve on the violin as it stands.
8Violins have been designed of triangular and other shapes. They have been made with a set of strings under the ordinary set; with strings inside as well as outside. Some have been made with a metal comb inside, such as you see in a music box; others have been designed with double sound posts, with flat tops, without any openings, whatever, and with various shaped openings differing from the common "F" holes.
10There has been no end to these wild imaginings, but the violin of the twentieth century remains in principle the same as that of the Italian inventor, de Salo. His violin had a more arched top than is seen today. That gave it a very sweet tone, but one that did not carry well. Stradivarius made a flatter top, which produces a more tenor note with better carrying power. And the lines have grown more beautiful and the workmanship more finished. Mere age does not make a violin perfect. If it were clumsy and badly made in the beginning, there is no magic in time that will remedy these defects.
12Like other works of art, there is no hard and fast rule as to the relative value of violins. A good violin maker is an artist, and he gets what his work brings from a capricious public. Yet the man who pays $1,000 for a violin, may be quite right. It may be the one instrument in the world that just suits him. Its proportions, its "feel," its response, may fit him to the smallest nicety. And if he can afford the thousand dollars, the instrument is well worth the price.
14When a violin is new it is more or less—what shall I say?—stiff, rigid, unresponsive. It is played upon, the bow is drawn across the strings many, many times and innumerable vibrations are set quivering through the wood. The more it is played upon the less rigid it becomes, the more swiftly it responds to the bow. So a man out in Indiana arranged a machine which,
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