Old Violins by H. R. Haweis

He who wields the violin bow aright wields the wand of a magician. If ever mortal could call the spirits from the vasty deep, it is the virtuoso who throws into sympathetic vibrations the cords of a Cremona.

The wood of his wand, from the forests of Fernambuc or Pernambuco, choice and seasoned, and delicately graduated and tapering, receives through the varying pressure of his five fingers the waves of his personal magnetism.

The back of his thumb will often touch even the hairs which are in direct contact with the strings, and therefore the psychic and emotional vibrations of the artist's soul are wedded closely to the physical pulses of sound which throb in the agitated air column of the Cremona, and flow forth in the air waves (like light and heat), filling space with their musical magnetism, and seeking only the medium of kindred spirits and suitable organisms to utter through the vibrating human nerve tissues of others the open secrets of the player's soul.

No Mesmer, or magician of the East, controls a more subtle force than does the violinist, who, face to face with his audience, lifts his tapering wand and rules therewith the

"_Tides of music's golden sea setting towards eternity._"

By those who indite exhaustive historical or constructive treatises on the violin -- the bow, like the violin, has been treated archeologically -- we have been led up to ancient monuments and shown bows (or things supposed to be bows) on vases, sculptured frescoes, missals and other monkish manuscripts. We have been sent out to wild islands and continents, and introduced to the Ravanastron bow of ancient Ceylon; the bow of the Moorish rebab; the ninth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth century viol bows of Europe -- all more or less primitive, with sometimes gut for hair, or hair loose, hair limp, and with no means of regulating its tension except by the introduction of the fingers to press the hair or tighten it for a moment.

In Paul Veronese's Marriage at Cana (Versailles) this is well shown. Paul himself was a viol player, and apparently held his bow chiefly by the hair for this same regulative purpose.

C. Simpson (the division "viol"), 1667, gives a somewhat more advanced viol bow, in which the hand splits the difference between wood and hair and rests on both (Fig. iii). Of course, when held to the chin, this clumsy finger regulation of the hair tension would be less convenient to manage, and hence we come upon the eighteenth century with a strip of notched metal (Fig. iv.) and a movable sliding nut.

As for our purpose the violin proper began in the eighteenth century with the emergence of its true type from the viol tribe, so for our purpose the violin bow begins with the emergence of the violin. A glance at the bows of Corelli (1700), Cramer (1770), Viotti (1780), and Tartini (1740) (Fig. vi.) will show the evolution in the direction of the Tourte bow; and although Tourte (1740) is generally credited with substituting the screw for the crémaillère, it will be noticed that Corelli's bow (1700) has already got the screw. But is the Corelli bow authentic, or in reality a bow subsequent to 1740, the earliest working date of Tourte _père_?

With Francois Tourte, the younger son, culminated the art of violin bow making. He is the Stradivari of the bow. We give his portrait, but father and son were both master-workers. Although the Stentor (Fig. vi.) bow's head has superseded, for some reason, the more rounded form of Francois Tourte, nothing has been done since in advance of Tourte, and "after Tourte" is still the greatest recommendation a bow can have.

It is easy to see what called forth Francois Tourte. He came in answer to a need. He doubtless heard of Tartini and examined his bow. It was comparatively short and cumbrous. Forty years afterwards Viotti comes to Paris, and with him dawns a new era in violin playing. Refinements and delicacies of tone, upper shifts and varieties of execution, various styles of bowing, dealing with staccato, arpeggio, and rubato, methods varied and brought to perfection, demanded qualities of balance, lightness, and elasticity which would have been quite thrown away on the old sawing and scraping school of the seventeenth century. The very Cremona violins, beginning to mature as the century waned, called aloud for a suitable and sympathetic companion to caress, excite, charm, draw from them their sweetest tones and most vigorous powers.

Francois Tourte was rescued from the clock-making business, to which he had been early apprenticed, by the sheer bent of his own genius. His brother, who worked with his father, was not the genius, and, as is often the case, the father failed to see which of the two sons was to carry on the fame of the house, and there may have been jealousies and disputes besides. The poor stuff given Francois to work upon when, after eight years of watch-making, he was allowed to enter the parental workshop a little, suggests that he was the male Cinderella of the family.

He had to deal with strips of old sugar-barrels and fashion them into bows, which he sold for about fifteen-pence each. But as soon as he got a free hand he experimented with all kinds of wood, and arrived at the conclusion that the only wood suitable for his purpose was Fernambuc wood. It combined stiffness and lightness, but was very difficult to obtain, on account of so many ports being in those disturbed times blockaded. Fernambuc wood was only imported for dyeing purposes, and the price had risen in Paris to five francs a pound. Then, as only pieces with straight grain were required, whole trees might be cut up in search of a few likely strips. This accounts for the high prices of Tourte bows, even when first produced.