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Scan 194
Violin tone and violin makers, 1916
6 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 172. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN TONE
3Leghorn. The violins bear some little likeness to the work of the Gagliano family, have a very good quality of tone, and the varnish is not unfrequently of good texture and appearance, though the colour is apt to fade. The scrolls are very poor. Instruments branded on the button, and sometimes in other places. Of late they have commanded some attention amongst players, and their value has increased considerably. There were two other makers of the name, but of no particular account.
5GRANCINO. — Milan; late seventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries. An important family of makers of whom there seem to have been upwards of half a dozen members. The earliest appears to have been PAOLO, who was at work until near the end of the seventeenth century. The few of his instruments met with by the writer have been of Amati pattern, with yellow varnish, and wood exhibiting little or no figure. It is said that he was a pupil in Amati's workshop. He certainly does not seem to have used varnish which can be compared with that of his master. His son GIOVANNI worked from about the end of the seventeenth century until 1730 or a little later, and has left a good many instruments of considerable value. The violoncellos perhaps take higher rank than the violins, but the finer specimens of the latter are not unfrequently handsome, both as to wood and varnish, and the tone is of full and telling quality. In some of his later work Giovanni discarded some of the Amati features seen in earlier examples. The arching is flatter, and the sound-hole assumes a somewhat pointed form, and is set more obliquely in the instrument. It has been said by writers that he imitated Guarneri del Gesù, a statement which
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