Books › Violins, old & new, 1887 › scan 8
Scan 8
Violins, old & new, 1887
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1contemporary, puts the case clearly thus:—"Now "why should Nicholas Amati, Joseph Guarnerius, Gio. Paolo Maggini, Gaspar di Salo, "Steiner, or Antonius Stradivarius, of Cremona, Brescia, Absom, or elsewhere, who all worked "at the close of the seventeenth and beginning of the "eighteenth century, have produced violins which are "so excellent of their kind? What is the reason why "an Italian instrument cannot be repeated exactly "as to shape and material, so that to-day a violin "so constructed should give forth the same sweetness, "purity, and volume of sound? To the first question "the same reply could be given as that furnished by "the painter who, when asked 'how he mixed his "colours?' answered simply 'with brains.' In re- "sponding to the second question—one of mechanical "execution simply, it would seem manifest that, with "the rapid advance we have made in tools and instru- "ments of precision, to acknowledge that we had not "the imitative faculty would be to deny the manu- "facturing progress made in this century. . . . It "passes human comprehension to believe that an "instrument made out of the simplest of all mate- "rials, wood, by Italian or German luthiers two cen- "turies ago—violins which sang, laughed, screamed, "sobbed, or moaned, should not be repeated by "violin-makers to-day. There can be no secrets "which thought, skill, and science cannot solve. "There is but one single element, and that is the one
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.