THE VIOLIN-MAKER by Des Kelly

Being a guitar-player myself, I am aware of the fact that there are many other eLanka readers out there, who either play this instrument or, would love to learn to play guitar themselves. My advice to them is this.

Try the Ukelele first. A much smaller instrument, it has only four strings & is much easier to “tune”. If you can sing, as well, it is easier still, to manage. However, if there is no music in you, you cannot sing in key, & your “timing” is up the creek, don’t even bother to try learning any musical instrument. You would be much better off playing marbles.

This said, let me get down to a true story about a much more difficult instrument to play, or even listen to, unless the player is an expert at it. Because a violin has no “frets”akin to a guitar, any “violin-virtuoso” has to “feel” each note played on this fretless little neck, by sheer skill. A fraction “off”, either flat or sharp, and the beautiful instrument sounds like a cat being strangled.

I remember one of Ceylon’s most famous violinists by the name of Douglas Ferdinands. Now, there was a violinist. He could play anything and make it sound good. Normally, violins sound sensual, sweet, sexy & superb, played as a “string-section” of an orchestra.

Half a dozen violins, especially in harmony, played expertly, always make a good band sound even better.

Now, let me get down to the story of the “Violin Maker”. This is, in fact, a story of a fogery that turned out to be a little too clever. While it is ni easy matter for a violin maker to rival the famous “Stradivarius” instruments, an American maker once did just that.

He did this in such an effectual manner, several experts pronounced his violin a genuine “Strad”.

This successful man was George Gemunder, who died in 1902, had this remarkable ability as a maker of violins and was known to many a distinguished violinist if that era, people such as Ole Bull, Remenyi, and Wilhelmj, but he achieved his greatest success, as the story goes, at the last Paris Exposition of the 1800’s. To that exposition he sent an imitation Stradivarius, and, to test it’s merits, had it placed on exhibition as the genuine article. A committee of experts carefully checked the instrument and, voila!!, pronounced it AS A STRADIVARIUS.

So far, Gemunder’s triumph was complete, but now came a difficulty. When, being an honest “Gem”(pardon the pun-under), he claimed that this was not an “old” violin but a new one, made by him, the Committee did not believe him. They declared that he had never made the instrument and that he was an imposter. Gemunder had done his work too well, which reminds me of another old adage. HE THAT LOOKS NOT BEFORE, FINDS HIMSELF BEHIND”