As much more is required of the student of tone development than a mere acquaintance with the means can give, a thorough working knowledge, leading to successful application, is best acquired by personal instruction from one acquainted with the complicated and ever-changing tonal problems presented by the newly-made violin, and experienced in dealing with them—just as I believe this art was imparted to pupils by masters in the “golden period” of violin-making; the measure of success achieved depending always upon the tone ideals of both the master and pupil, and the skill with which the process is employed to obtain his results. I hope a return will be made to the methods of that period, when tone reached its fullest perfection, to the end that the world may become richer in instruments possessing that quality of tone which is now almost exclusively associated with the violins produced by the “old masters.”
NOTICES
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL
OF THE PRINCIPAL VIOLIN MAKERS
OF THE VARIOUS SCHOOLS AND OF THEIR WORKS
By TOWRY PIPER
PREFATORY NOTE
In the following pages the author has endeavoured, so far as limitations of space and other circumstances would admit, to incorporate the results of observations made during a very long period of years.
Since the year 1877 he has been a more or less assiduous student of old violins and kindred instruments, and has had perhaps exceptional opportunities of handling and examining some thousands of examples of the different schools of violin-making.
Though the work does not, perhaps, come appropriately within the definition of a dictionary of the subject of which it treats, it will be found to contain notices of a considerable number of makers who have not been dealt with in previous English works on the violin.
In deciding the somewhat difficult question as to what names should be included and what rejected, the author, who has for several years been a contributor to the Strad magazine, has found his experience of the correspondence department of that journal of frequent assistance in arriving at a conclusion, as it has been possible in the light of such experience to form some sort of estimate of the nature of the information most likely to be of use to violin players and owners of stringed instruments generally.
Most of the previous works of this kind will be found to contain numbers of names of old viol and lute makers who are not known to have made violins, such as Dardelli, Duiffoprugcar, and many others; but by omitting these, almost in toto, it has been possible to include a number of minor workmen whose instruments possess merit, without unduly increasing the bulk of the book.