Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1892 — The Violins of Old. [ARTICLE]

The Violins of Old.

The great •violin makers all lived within the compass of one hundred and fifty years. They chose their wood from a few great timbers felled in the South Tyrol, and floated down in rafts, pine and maple, sycamore, pear and ash. Tney examined these to find streaks and veins and freckles, valuable superficially when brought out by varnishing. They learned to tell the density of the pieces of wood by touching them; they weighed them, they struck them, and listened to judge how fast or how slow, or how resonantly they would vibrate in answer to strings. Some portions of the wood must be porous and soft, some of close fiber. Just the right beam was hard to find; when found It can be traced aH through the violins of some great master, and after his death in those of his pupils. The piece of wood was taken home and seasoned, dried in the hot Brescia and Cremona sun. The house of Stradivarius, the great master of all, is described as having been as hot as an oven. The wood was there soaked through and through with sunshine. In this great heat the oils thinned and simmered slowly, and penetrated far into the wood, until the varnish became a part of the wood itself. The old violin makers used to save every bit of the wood when they found what they liked, to mend and patch and inlay with it. So vibrant and so resonan t is the wood of good old violins that they murmur, and echo, and sing in answer to any sound where a number of them hang together on the wall, as if rehearsing the old music that once they knew. It was doubtless owing to this fact that when the people could not account for Paganini’s wonderful playing, they declared that he had a human soul Imprisoned in his violin, for his violin sang and whispered, even when all the strings were off.