Why Violins Lost Their Tone

MR. THEOBALD FRECH, of Washington, D. C, has written to the Violin Department, giving a number of observations on the causes of violins sounding badly. As his points are well taken, they will doubtless be of interest. He says "Differences of temperature, hot. cold, wet or dry weather, will affect the tone of the strings and the instrument. When a violin is brought from cold or wet air into a warm room, it will require considerable attention to put it into proper tune until strings and instrument become adapted to the temperature of the room.

"The drapings and furnishings of a room curtains, carpets, pictures, etc., will have a very unfavorable effect on the tone of the violin, as compared with its brilliant tone when played in a room with bare floor and walls.

"Another point to be looked after is the fingerboard. Through long wear the strings may have worn grooves in the fingerboard. When the strings are pressed into these grooves, in vibrating the string will strike the edges of the grooves quite a distance from the finger, thus making the tone muffled and dull. The fingerboard must be perfectly level and- smooth, so that the string will vibrate the entire distance from the exact point at which the linger presses it down. Sometimes there are 'humps' on the fingerboard, right above where the third finger (in the first position), for instance, presses the string down. When the string touches this 'rising' for an eighth of an inch or more, the effect on the vibrating string and tone can easily be imagined. I have taken grooves out of fingerboards from one-half to over an inch in length, in violins, where their owners could not imagine why of late years the violins had lost their clear tone."

One of the most astonishing things the violinist and teacher meets with in his daily experience is the aversion which many amateur violin ] layers have to taking lessons. Lovers of the violin will be met with, who devote much time to violin playing, who boast that they have never taken a lesson in their lives. Some of them seem to take much pride in the fact. They will go on year after year, using false methods and making habitual mistakes, which any good teacher could correct in' even a few lessons, and yet they seem to prefer to go on blindly groping in the dark, rather than obtain instruction.

In a large majority of cases this perversity is not due to a lack of funds to pay for the instruction, for such people often buy expensive violins, the best strings, etc., that money will buy, as well as good works on violin playing. Then they will attend concerts and recitals given by the best violinists, in the hope of penetrating some of the mysteries of playing. They will also read long essays on violin playing and pore over pictures showing the proper positions of the body, fingers, arms, etc., and as a rule understanding practically nothing of what they read and see. If they do muster up courage to take a few lessons, the chances are that they will go to some "freak" teacher, who has not learned his profession properly at all. and has only a smattering of the art of violin playing. It is then a case of the "blind leading the blind."

The violinist who boldly declares with pride that he "never took a lesson" in his life should not complain if discriminating music lovers, manifest a tendency to run,' if he manifests any sign that he is about to play.

Some of the brightest musical intellects of the human race have been employed for hundreds of years in building up the art of violin playing. It stands to reason that an ordinary twentieth century human being with a mediocre intellect, can not learn for himself, what it took hundreds of great men hundreds of years to create.

No matter how little the amateur may play, he 'will find it to his great advantage to take even a few lessons. Even a single lesson is better than nothing. In a few minutes a go id teacher can point out mistakes which have been a stumbling block for years. A course of lessons in bowing from a real master of violin playing, will set a pupil on the right road, for his entire lifetime, instead of floundering around in the quagmires of false position, bad tone, and faulty bowing.