Books › Violin tone and violin makers, 1916 › scan 104
Scan 104
Violin tone and violin makers, 1916
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 82. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN TONE
3be said regarding the bulk of old violins, and brings us no nearer a solution of the problem.
5Mellowness, softness, richness, or whatever it may be termed, appears to me as merely one of those elements which, like purity, adds one to the total of desirable features which we look for and expect in a violin of Quality. It may appear reasonable to assume that time might improve one or all of these features, provided they originally existed, or act with more potency on the quality of mellowness; but it is against experience, as well as reason, to say that time is an unfailing creator of them, else mellowness would not be absent in the tone of hundreds—not to say thousands—of hand-made violins constructed prior to 1800. Furthermore, should we accept this theory we must be prepared to believe that the greatest makers of the olden time were not the masters of tone we have always supposed them to be. Again, how does it come about that time has selected the violins of certain old makers, and not always the best workmen either, while the violins of others just as old, or even older, remain untouched by this miraculous, mellow-producing elixir? If it be said that certain conditions in the structure of the instrument are unfavourable to the action of age, is it too much to ask that these be pointed out to us?
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