This especially prejudices the minds of the virtuosi so far that they do not believe it to be possible to make violins which answer the general requirements of concert playing until they have attained a great age.
Vuillaume has, therefore, by his chemical preparation of wood, injured this art seriously, because the previous prejudice was corroborated thereby. Such prejudices stand in the way of progress in making good violins.
But as everything in the world is going on, so the art of the construction of violins has not remained behindhand, and I can prove this to the musical world by my own experience.
To the knowledge of making such violins as artists and amateurs demand, there belong besides ingenuity in carrying out the mechanical work a knowledge of the following three sciences, namely: mathematics, acoustics and the choice of wood.
A knowledge of acoustics, which is most indispensable to the violin maker, cannot always be acquired, since it emanates from an innate genius, which makes itself manifest in the very choice of the wood.
When by the aid of these sciences I had arrived by a natural proceeding at what I aspired, I made violins in imitation of the old Italian instruments and presented them to great artists and connoisseurs, and the highest authorities of Europe and America. They pronounced them to be genuine old Italian violins, not only on account of tone, but also in regard to form and appearance. In this manner I broke that prejudice. I proved to the so-called "connoisseurs" that those violins laid before and acknowledged by them to be good, were of my making, hence they were new. If I had presented those violins as new productions of my own to those gentlemen, they would have condemned them forthwith and said that they would not prove good till they had reached a great age, and that they would perhaps in a hundred years equal the old Italian instruments.
In general, however, it is not taken into consideration that if a violin is not scientifically constructed the good quality of tone will never be obtained, either by much playing or by age. In applying the three above mention sciences I have gained not only the fine quality of tone, but also that ease with which the tones are made to come forth.
But we must be thankful to the great masters; they have laid for us the foundation of the manufacture of violins, by which they became immortalized.
Their system, however, is but little understood by the present violin makers, because very few intelligent people devote themselves to this art, and the most of those who are learning it, practice it not in the way of art, but of business. What wonder, when even the greatest artist in Europe, Vuillaume, imitated the very mistakes which the great Italian masters made in regard to mathematical division. He did not consider that they, in improving the art, made experiments in regard to form, swell and different thicknesses in working out the bottom and top. But there are a great many professional men who, from exaggerated veneration, consider all productions of those masters as law and beyond correction.
I have discovered that the old masters did not arrive at perfection, but made mistakes in their mathematical division and in the workmanship of the different thicknesses of the bottom and top. Those faults I have endeavored to avoid in the manufacture of my violins, and I think I have solved this problem.