Books › Violin tone and violin makers, 1916 › scan 40
Scan 40
Violin tone and violin makers, 1916
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 20. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN TONE
3perspective to this discussion, and thereby add materially to its interest and understanding. With this digression I will now proceed.
5The old masters divided the art, or work, connected with the manufacture of a violin into two parts. The first was that of preparing the various pieces of wood and combining them into a more or less finished violin, and the second consisted in so manipulating these parts as to control the tone and cause the instrument to give forth, when finished, exactly the quality, intensity, flexibility and refinement of voice which the maker intended. The resulting violin would, within human limitations, embody the tone ideal of the master. The great tone builders, for the most part, were surrounded by workmen and pupils whose duty it was partly, if not wholly, to prepare the wood and bring the instrument to a more or less rough state of completion. In addition to developing the tone the master designed the moulds and determined the exact size and shape of the instrument, this being a work having much to do with tone as, upon the perfection of the design, depends the type of tone which the master will produce in the instrument. It is probable that some of the Amatis were as well equipped with ideals of tone as Stradivari, but the model which they used prevented them attaining such good
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