Violin Making / 'The Strad' Library, No. IX.

by Walter H. Mayson

The upper table or belly, made of pine, Swiss pine by preference, is the most important factor in the production of tone, consequently that to which the chief attention of the artist should be directed. No matter how good be his back or his ribs, or the sweep of his lines or curves, or quality of his varnish and its elasticity or its superb colour, the selection of wood for his upper table or belly, or soundboard, must be his chief concern, and neither money nor energy spared to secure the best.

Well, I have by me several, of various degrees of excellence, and some of very doubtful reputation; nay, I may at once say they are bad—even by their look they are bad. This one is fairly straight in the grain, but it has been dried artificially, not as were the backs, yet more wickedly treated—impregnated with a deleterious something having the power of destroying a germ destined, if left to age, to become the soul of resonance, bringing it at once to a wretched maturity, its cells starved so, that when the strain of three hours' play in a hot room is put upon it, dumb is its voice, poor at the best, and it is played out.

Do you not see that the soft part of the wood running between the lines or reeds, and where lie the cells of the pine, are too rapidly agitated, and cannot possibly hold their own under such worn-out conditions? whereas, given honest wood and genuine age, we should get strength to resist, and from such resistance would come what we seek, richness, possible only from sound resonance.

For these cells must have the vigour of mature age, if that age be 150 years when naturally dried, in them; and my contention is, that the soundest is that which has not been robbed of its sap, as turpentine, before it be felled on the mountain side; but cut when well-grown, and well looked after for some years, then cut on the quarter (of which, later), and left for at least seven more years before we use it; and mind, even then, it is new wood.

I say, this is my contention, and how I account for many superior, great-souled violins, which it has been my hard struggle to produce, yet now gaze on with pride; almost glorying in that enthusiasm which enabled me to combat all against my theory, and do that which I believe was done two hundred years ago, to such fine issues, reviled or not for so doing, is now to me of little consequence.

Yet you must be told that there has been fierce, very fierce, controversy on this point, some going half-way and asserting only a portion of the sap should be withdrawn; some (and one of them a great chemist, a friend of mine) fighting hard to have it all taken away, and artificially dried after that! Does nature do this to the lungs of a Madame Patti or a Sims Reeves before she turns them on the world? Nonsense!

But it is tests you want, and I will supply another, somewhat original. This piece I called above, bad, I lay aside, as No. 1; another, worse in grain, but, I believe, honest, as far as having the sap left in it goes, but not old, No. 2; and a magnificent piece of very old Swiss pine, brown, and honestly brown, with, probably, two or three hundred years of exposure as a beam in a Swiss chalet (for from that place and that dwelling I am prepared to prove it comes to me), which I number 3.

The No. 1 is what I call feverish in its vibrations, and would be certain to give any instrument a hollow tone, an instrument cuddled, tempered, and made to fit the ear of the expected purchaser by the experienced one who has it to dispose of. The tone would not be intermittent—if it were that, we might have some hope of ultimate fulness and fair quality; but it would be loud and coarse; bawling when it should be energetic, yet somewhat hoarse, scarce knowing where to vibrate, it being capable of doing so, and well, when fairly mature. But that which, like the brazen actress, has a word or a sentence ready at any moment, and in any key and in any pitch, say good-bye to that at once.

The No. 2 will be good in about four or five years, but would be bad to work just now, so we will take up No. 3, upon which I must dwell somewhat.

I can depend on the gentleman's word who procured this and other pieces for me; and I imagine his estimate of age is much under the approximate date, for I should say it was nearer three than two hundred years old. The colour all through is a mellow brown; the reed is of medium width, well developed, and nearly equal all over, and it is singularly bowed from bottom to top, meeting, when joined (for it is in two parts), just as will a string of a violin when you hold it in both hands, and twang it to test its equal vibration.