Books › Violin making, 1902 › scan 97
Scan 97
Violin making, 1902
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 53. See the scan on archive.org.
1advanced; and on this, my favoured mode of working for the tone so highly spoken of by my numerous admirers, I have no more to say, except to tell you that the wood so finished corresponds in tone to D, and you will still remember that the back was C.
3But other thicknesses than these, both of back and belly, are employed; such as thinner in back and thicker in belly; and as used by Joseph Guarnerius del Jesu—the back about such as we have used in this instrument, but the belly a trifle THINNER in the centre than at the edges—they being about one-eighth of an inch. And we have it on record that many of the violins of Stradivari were originally one thickness all over the upper table, barely one-eighth, and about as I use for the lower: would that we could speak with authority on this as on many another point! But many instruments have had wood taken from them by vampires and faddists, and we can not speak with authority as to the vital points of scores of these noble efforts of art, therefore better not lay down laws or adduce supposed facts regarding them, but do our utmost to build up something as noble, and each one of us leave art no worse than he found it, casting reproach and scorn on the utterly indifferent, or the detestable pander or the vampire.
5As I have not to recur to the thicknesses again, it may here be a convenient place in which to say a few words on the nodal points in relation thereto.
7Many of you may not know what a "node" in music means exactly—some of you may know nothing whatever about it. Simply, it is the fixed point of a sonorous
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.