Old Violins by H. R. Haweis

One of the subtle charms of the violin is that it may be called bisexual.

It unites in itself and welds together the masculine and feminine qualities.

Its very fabric is bisexual. The soft, easily moved vibrations of the swelling front are controlled, checked, and yet excited by the slower and harder pulsations of the maple back. The porous deal and the close-grained maple or sycamore thus thrill together, and each supplies the deficiency of the other, both blending in harmonious and sympathetic union, the ribs welding the back and the belly into an organic whole, whilst the sound-post, poetically called by the French the soul of the violin (_l'âme du violon_), collects the quick and slow vibrations, and fusing them, produces the subtle resultant of violin tone.

That tone is the offspring of neither back nor front, nor ribs alone, but of all these differently vibrating surfaces, collected and made musical in the "soul," and poured forth as the breath of life from the ∫ ∫ holes as out of the very mouth and nostrils of the violin. Surely the children of the violin are nothing but the sweet and subtly compounded sounds that it utters.

The bisexual figure holds good even to the bow and strings. The bow is the male and the strings are the female elements. They can only vibrate when touched -- swept into a tempest of emotion or caressed into tender whispers.

They wait and pine for this magic touch, and long for their own fulfilment. They are so sensitive that they respond to the lightest feathery kiss of the powdered and anointed horse-hair -- they murmur, they sigh, they scream, they weep, they laugh, but only when smitten, coaxed or agonised, sometimes almost torn, at others calmly and masterfully swept; whilst the finger-tips, pressing out the vibrations and generating those magnetic thrills which go forth charged with the musician's very thought and feeling, aid and abet the masculine power of the bow. They are its ministers; without them the might of the bow itself would be impotent; without them the very strings would be unable to yield their infinite variety of tone and inflection of meaning. Yes, certainly the violin is of all instruments the most human, personal, and sympathetic, for the violin is truly bisexual.

It is also a miracle of art, strength, and simplicity -- we may say at once, as light as a feather and as strong as a horse. It is composed of thin sheets or slips of wood, only about a fragment of an inch thick; but, by the simplest and soundest mechanical construction, these are so put together as to resist a strain of about a hundredweight upon the belly, neck, and tailpiece, from the tension of the four strings.

Six sycamore ribs and twelve internal blocks and linings suffice to hold the back and belly together.

The neck carries the ebony finger-board and lifts its characteristic scroll or head -- so expressive that makers can almost be recognised by its physiognomy.

The neck is let solidly into the ribs and fastened against the lower part of the belly. When firmly glued it is extremely difficult to detach it, and once only in my experience has the neck of a violin proved unequal to support the enormous pull made upon it by the strings.

It was in Ceylon. The heat was intense and moist. I had borrowed a violin for experimental purposes in one of my lectures at Colombo. In the middle of an attempted passage the neck quietly doubled up; the strings fell in a loose cluster. The glue had liquefied, and the whole fiddle came to pieces in my hands. What no time nor wear and tear had been able to effect had been suddenly achieved by the peculiar hothouse, vapour-bath treatment of the tropics.

The early viol-makers no doubt at first selected their wood empirically; but it soon became an established rule to take a soft wood for the belly and a hard wood for the back. If all were soft, the sound would be muffled and tubby; if all were hard, the sound would be metallic and light; neither must the thickness of back and front be uniform -- each must be thicker towards the middle, but how thick or how thin must depend upon the relative densities of the wood. The problem was to find the relative densities which would best vibrate together -- a cunning connoisseur in timber can judge of these densities even by the feel of the wood. Of course the densities will affect the tone yielded by the wood when set in vibration, and it is difficult to believe that Stradiuarius and his school were unacquainted with some exact technical method of testing the acoustic properties of these woods.

Monsieur Savart's experiments with specimen strips of Stradiuarius backs and bellies showed that in most cases tested there was the difference of one tone between the belly and the back. A 1717 and a 1708 Strad back both yielded a F♯, a 1724 and a 1690 Strad bellies gave the interval, so that Stradiuarius worked his backs and bellies on some regular principle. On examining specimens of Joseph Guarnerius, it was found that his best were made with only a full tone between back and belly; but occasionally the interval was greater.

The sound-bar is a subtly proportioned strip of pinewood running nearly all the way down the middle of the belly inside. The increasing tension of the modern pitch has made it necessary to strengthen all the old violin sound-bars, as the increasing demands for execution have compelled the lengthening of all their necks.