Chapter VI: Relationship Between a New Violin and Tone

Fiddle-making may be either a hobby or a business. Sometimes it is both. It is also more or less of an art, but only the connoisseur is able to explain wherein and why. To the “man in the street” a fiddle is just a fiddle, as like any or all other fiddles, as one pea is like another. Sometimes it is red, sometimes yellow, and sometimes brown. Therein do they differ.

There is nothing about the making of a violin which calls for our special notice. This has been set forth in many exhaustive works, described and illustrated at great length. In a work on tone it would be useless to devote space to cabinet-making. The relation between making a fiddle and tone is all that need concern us here. Let us see just what that relationship is. In order to make the subject clear we must generalise. We cannot go into the numberless and complicated details that affect the sound in one way or another--for good or evil--because it is not sound, not the mere noise a violin will emit, that interests the tone-lover. We procure, let us say, suitable wood and a book on fiddle-making and set to work. In due time, with the exercise of patience and such skill as we can command, we produce a violin--our first--built carefully to the measurements and along the lines of, say, the immortal Stradivari. When the varnish is dry enough we string it up, and _not until then do we know what its tone is like_! And what, by the way, is it like? The answer is simple enough: it is like the tone of any other fiddle so constructed. We have accomplished tone results no greater and no less than any other copyist has achieved in the past hundred and fifty years, because we have done no more than they have done and no more than any one can do. We have made a box about fourteen inches long, a little over an inch deep, eight inches or so in its widest part, and with an irregular outline. We have slightly arched the top and bottom of this box, and provided it with various fitments and strings. Every box so made will, without exception, produce a sound of some sort, whether made by Antonio Stradivari in 1720, or John Doe in 1916. Sometimes that sound is loud, and sometimes it is weak, often it is both, and again it is neither, depending upon matters which the makers may, or may not, appreciate and, perhaps, alter for the better or worse within these narrow limits. This, then, is the relationship between the raw fiddle and tone.

Both the violin and such tone as it will naturally, or we might say mechanically, possess, is but the crude material which the tone-builder uses. By means of the one he refines, regulates, and develops the other. Manifestly the result depends upon what he considers a fine and telling tone. There can be no guess-work about it, and nothing can be left to chance. He must know exactly when he has reached the result he desires, and the higher his ideals the better the tone. As the raw material in the shape of unrefined tone is, to a greater or lesser extent, filled with flaws, these must be eliminated; as the violins in their undeveloped state ever present tone problems infinite in variation--no two being alike--the tone builder can follow no set rule, and no mechanical method. To achieve, therefore, a thoroughly artistic and satisfactory tonal relationship between the instrument and its voice depends, first, on high ideals and, second, a process elastic enough to meet, successfully, conditions which are always changing.

As to the tonal position of the modern violin, there is no denying the fact that it has long been an object of suspicion. The wonder is not that this suspicion should exist, but that a new fiddle should have any tonal repute left at all. Let us review some of the causes responsible for this condition of affairs.

In the “good old days” of violin making, say in 1725, when the most famous of all makers were working, surrounded by many who, if less famous, were able to hold their own, there were no fiddle factories swamping the market with machine-made trash, belittling and depreciating the (then) new and less numerous hand-made instrument. There were no dealers in, say, the violins of da Salò, Maggini, and the first Amati, to the exclusion of the new ones of Stradivari, Bergonzi, and Joseph Guarnerius del Gesù. There were no collectors of the old and rare who disregarded the work and tone of the living builders. There were no books on the history of the violin devoting sixteen pages to, let us say, Duiffoprugcar, who worked two hundred years previously, and indicating the living makers thus: “Stradivari, Antonio, now living”--when mentioned at all. There were no “Journals devoted to the interests of violinists,” in which Carlo Bergonzi might have read an article on the work of Antonio Amati, filled with fulsome praise and flattery of the old, but containing little, or nothing, about what was being done there in Cremona at the time. There were no players of the violin who preferred a battered fiddle, made by some unknown maker in 1592, to one made in his home town of Cremona three years previously--in 1722. Having none of these things to contend against, their lines were truly laid in pleasant places if we compare them with the builders of 1916, who have all these things, and many more besides, against the popularity of their instruments. In passing, it is worthy of note that, whatever influence there is against a just consideration of the modern tone work,[F] this influence does not in the least affect the sale of factory fiddles. These are still sold at the rate of some hundred thousand instruments per annum to those who never read fiddle books or literature; to whom a fiddle is just a fiddle; who place all old fiddles in one class, and all new fiddles in another--and this kind of buyer is far more numerous than might be supposed, if figures did not place the matter beyond doubt. But every worker who builds his violin by hand, selecting costly materials and doing his work with loving and painstaking care, knows what this influence means. He knows there are surrounding him many influences, all of which lead the tone-seeker in one direction, namely, towards the old.

Yet the fine modern instruments still survive, and are growing rapidly in tone repute. In spite of everything they still find players whose only consideration is TONE, just as TONE was the only consideration in the days when the old makers flourished. If the new violin can, in the face of all that is against its popularity, still find this favour, it must, indeed, have tone merit so exceptional as to be far in advance of many of those old violins whose praises are so persistently advertised. Everything considered, this strikes us as a happy augury for the immediate future of the new fiddle. I venture to predict that its makers will not be compelled to spend a century or so in the tomb before their good work is appreciated. That these new violins are becoming a factor seriously to be reckoned with is not lost upon those whose interest it is to foster the trade in old instruments of less tonal value. After all, it _is_ tone value that will decide the question between the old and the new, and it is possible the day is not far distant when old violins (outside those by the famous creators of grand tone) will have to stand or fall upon their tone-merit, rather than upon the claim of having been made by some obscure or unknown maker in an equally uncertain but ancient day. Meantime modern makers must expect new work to be ignored by all save those who have no old axe to grind; to be condemned, or “damned by faint praise;” all of which it has stood and will continue to stand. Its claim is founded upon a tone-base too substantial to be shaken. All it requires is a fair trial and comparison with the products of the old masters; and the more famous the old master the better the test; for it may easily prove itself superior to an ordinary old violin without being in any respect remarkable in tone. In order that no question may arise as to the accuracy of this statement, I give, in the next chapter, the results in a contest of tone between six old master violins, and six new instruments by living makers.

I believe that most of us who are lovers of the fiddle began as idolaters of the instrument, rather than of its tone. Of such lovers this may be said: in our early faith we were prone to accept many strange and uncouth gods; but, as we grew older, we became more particular; we selected for our allegiance one out of many; but as even idols cost money, we were not always privileged to possess the one which was our heart’s desire, but worshipped it from afar, meantime living in hope and consoling ourselves with a less potent fetish. It is said of the Chinese that, when an idol ceases to answer requirements, it is chopped in pieces and another purchased. Our progress with fiddles is not dissimilar, only _we sell_ our idol. And thus many of us spend our lives--and money--seeking fiddles when, in reality, it is tone we are after. That we so seldom find it is due to the fact that we make up our minds beforehand where it will abide. Never, I believe, has imagination played me such scurvy tricks as when it caused me, during the years of my novitiate in tone, to invest some ancient and tubby “gourd” with the dulcet voice of a “real Cremona.” I look back upon those distant days with real humiliation. And I recall the assurance with which I clung to my faith!--mainly because I had no such illuminating guide to tone as the one presented in the next chapter.