Among the Great Masters of Music | Page 9

any one to touch it, and
many anxious days he passed during the Commune, fearing for his
musical treasures. However, they luckily escaped the dangers of the
time, and when, in 1875, Vuillaume died, the "Messie" became the
property of his daughter, who was the wife of M. Alard, the celebrated
teacher of the violin. From his executors it was bought in 1890 for
2,000 pounds, for the English gentleman who now possesses this most
famous of all the works of Stradivarius. Charles Reade, the novelist,
who was a lover of the violin and an expert in such matters, in 1872
had thought this instrument to be worth 600 pounds, so that its value
had trebled in less than twenty years. The celebrated violinist, Ole Bull,
owned a Stradivarius violin, dated 1687, and inlaid with ebony and
ivory, which is said to have been made for a king of Spain. In the
"Tales of a Wayside Inn" Longfellow speaks of it:
"The instrument on which he played Was in Cremona's workshop made,
By a great master of the past Ere yet was lost the art divine;
* * * *
"Exquisite was it in design, Perfect in each minutest part, A marvel of
the lutist's art; And in its hollow chamber, thus, The maker from whose

hands it came Had written his unrivalled name,-- 'Antonius
Stradivarius.'"
Haweis, in his admirable book on "Old Violins," reproduces for us "the
atmosphere in which Antonio Stradivari worked for more than half a
century.
"I stood in the open loft at the top of his house, where still in the old
beams stuck the rusty old nails upon which he hung up his violins. And
I saw out upon the north the wide blue sky, just mellowing to rich
purple, and flecked here and there with orange streaks prophetic of
sunset. Whenever Stradivarius looked up from his work, if he looked
north, his eye fell on the old towers of S. Marcellino and S. Antonio; if
he looked west, the Cathedral, with its tall campanile, rose dark against
the sky, and what a sky! full of clear sun in the morning, full of pure
heat all day, and bathed with ineffable tints in the cool of the evening,
when the light lay low upon vinery and hanging garden, or spangled
with ruddy gold the eaves, the roofs, and frescoed walls of the houses.
"Here, up in the high air, with the sun, his helper, the light, his minister,
the blessed soft airs, his journeymen, what time the workaday noise of
the city rose and the sound of matins and vespers was in his ears,
through the long warm days worked Antonio Stradivari."
[Illustration: Stradivarius. From painting by E. J. C. Hamman.]
Edouard Jean Conrad Hamman, who painted the picture of
Stradivarius--deep in thought amid his violins--which accompanies this,
was a Belgian. Born at Ostend in 1819, and a pupil of De Keyser, he
lived a long time in Paris, won many medals and other honours, and
died in 1888, leaving behind him numerous pictures, several of which
are reproduced in this book. His "Erasmus Reading to the Young
Charles V." is in the Luxembourg, and the Brussels museum has his
"Dante at Ravenna," and the "Entry of Albert and Isabella into Ostend."
Besides these he produced "The Mass of Adrien Willaert," "The
Childhood of Montaigne," "Shakespeare and his Family," "Vesalius,"
"Hamlet," and "Murillo in his Studio." One of his paintings, entitled
"The Women of Siena, 1553," shows the women of that city working

on the fortifications intended to resist the besieging army of Charles V.,
and another depicts Columbus first sighting land on October 12, 1492.

TARTINI.
A few years ago the Istrian town of Pirano unveiled a statue, not
exactly to one of its illustrious sons, but to the only one of its children
who ever became famous, so far as we know. The pedestal of the statue
is inscribed.
Istria to Giuseppe Tartini, 1896.
The admirably conceived figure which surmounts the pedestal
represents the master standing, violin and bow in hand, at the moment
of his accidental discovery of the curious acoustic phenomenon known
as the "third sound,"--i. e., the production of a third note in harmony
when only two are struck with the bow. The statue was modelled by
Dal Zotto, an able Italian sculptor, whose work found so much favour
with those present at its inauguration that they enthusiastically carried
him about the piazza on their shoulders,--a tribute we judge to have
been well deserved.
The subject of Dal Zotto's statue was sent, while yet very young, from
Pirano, (where he was born of a good family in 1692) to Capo d' Istria,
to study at the college of the "Padri delle Scuole." It was here that he
received his first