Books › Violin tone and violin makers, 1916 › scan 108
Scan 108
Violin tone and violin makers, 1916
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 86. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN TONE
3CHAPTER XV
5VARNISH AND TONE
7Among the attributes which constitute the finished violin, varnish holds the premier position as a controversial subject. For more than a century it has provided an unfailing source of argument, speculation, experiment, and theory, waged around two issues, the material itself, and its effect on tone. The first is concerned with efforts to discover the formula* of the "old Cremona" varnish, and the second with the effect of all varnish on tone. Notwithstanding the claims which appear (and disappear) with unfailing regularity that this
9* In the Correspondence Department of The Strad for May, 1916, we find the following: "I think his (Stradivari's) varnish was purely and simply got by a visit to his fowl-shed, and the selection of half a dozen brown-shelled eggs therefrom, simply breaking in a dish, beating the contents well together, removing the froth, and applying the residuum at once to his finished violins. . . . I believe this is the long-sought solution of the means employed by Strad to finish off his violins."
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.