g in the private collections of
Mr. Hawley, Hartford, Connecticut, and of Mr. Ralph Granger, Paradise
Valley, California, and recently put on the market by Lyon & Healy, of
Chicago.

An interesting Nicolo Amati pupil was Jacob Steiner (1621-1683), a
Tyrolese, who, although bearing a glittering title, "violin maker to the
Austrian Emperor," was harassed with financial perplexities and died
insane. His most noted violins were the sixteen "Elector Steiners," one
sent to each of the Electors and four to the Emperor. During his life
the average price of his violins was six florins. A century after his
death the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe's grandfather, paid 3,500
florins for one of them. It is also recorded that an American gentleman
on La Fayette's staff, in the Revolutionary War, exchanged for a Steiner
1,500 acres of the tract where Pittsburg now stands. Mozart's violin, in
the Mozarteum at Salzburg, is a Steiner.

Many violin-makers did good work in the past, many are achieving success
to-day. It has been confidently asserted that the violin reached its
highest possibilities in the old Brescian and Cremona days. Why should
this be the case? The same well-defined principles, based on acoustics
and other modern sciences, that have led to the steady improvement of
other musical instruments ought surely to be of some advantage to the
violin. Indeed, who knows but the day may come when the present will be
considered its golden age.

While the men of Cremona were still fashioning their models the want of
good strings was felt. This was met by Angelo Angelucci, known as the
string-maker of Naples, a man who loved music and passed much time with
violinists. Through his painstaking efforts such perfection was reached
that Tartini, who was born the same year as he, 1692, could play his
most difficult compositions two hundred times on the Angelucci strings,
whereas he was continually interrupted by the snapping of others.
Improvements in the bow, often called the tongue of the violin, are due
to the house of Tourte, in Paris, in the eighteenth century, lightness,
elasticity and spring coming to it from Francis Tourte, Jr.

Three eminent virtuosi, Corelli, Tartini and Viotti, whose united
careers spanned a period of 150 years, prepared the way for modern
methods of violin-playing. Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) left his home
in Fusignano, near Bologna, a young violinist, for an extended concert
tour. His gentle, sensitive di