Books › Violin tone and violin makers, 1916 › scan 23
Scan 23
Violin tone and violin makers, 1916
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 3. See the scan on archive.org.
1AND VIOLIN MAKERS
3Let us now explain how this curio value originated; how it advanced; the mighty interests surrounding it; how it usurped the position of tone; and how it has come about that the old violin is valued, bought, and sold entirely regardless of its tonal capacity.
5Between the years 1550 and 1875 there worked in Italy and elsewhere some seven hundred makers of violins and kindred instruments who were sufficiently well known to warrant the inclusion of their names in modern books of reference. As a large number of existing old fiddles are by unknown makers; as no amount of research will unearth all who made violins during that period, it is safe to add as many more as would make the total nine hundred. Among these nine hundred makers two take the first rank, closely followed by three or four who take second place, and a dozen or so who occupy the third position as creators of really great tone in the violin. Let us say the total is twenty, and we shall then have eight hundred and eighty violin makers of olden times who simply "made fiddles." Upon the violins turned out by the twenty who rank as "Old Masters;" whose instruments, and especially choice specimens of them, were always few in number when compared with the productions of their more numerous confrères, and are to-day almost priceless; upon
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