Customer Reviews

Antonio Stradivari: His Life and Work (1644-1737)

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This is perhaps the most important book ever published relating to the topics of violin making and the unchallenged greatest maker of all times. The Hills are the most respected scholars, ever, of the violin, and this was a landmark publication in 1902 and remains so. Under the quaint language is the information that subsequent scholars have used as the basis of their understanding of Stradivari's work (and stolen for the basis of many of their own articles and books), and almost everything written in the book is still considered accurate--an unprecedented event in violin publishing, where there's much more myth than fact in many books, especially those of the past, many of which are essentially fiction posing as non-fiction. There is simply no reason not to own this book if you are interested in violins.

The style may seem quaint, but if you have spent any time at all reading scholarly works from this time period, you will find that Hill's prose is far from unreadable. By and large, I continue to find Hill's style to be readily approachable after 3 decades worth of repeated readings.

In any case, the prose is not what makes this work invaluable. Like another reviewer stated, you cannot do any study of Stradivari instruments without first consulting Hill, and Hill remains the foundation of all scholarly work concerning Stradivari, even a century later. While not exactly for laymen, nonetheless this book is relatively accessible to those who have only a passing knowledge in stringed instruments. For those more expert, Hill remains the essential starting point. If you have a young violinist in your family, I would recommend this book as a gift. I still have my decades-old book, received one Christmas long long ago, and I am glad that I got it.

I bought the authors' book regarding Guarneri family because this information is not available in Wikipedia. From this book I learned that the authors are expert violin makers. The Guarneri book demonstrated the authors' serious research efforts. This makes me buy this book. As in the Guarneri book, this book has many nice color photos and black/white photos. The discussion about material, construction, and varnish are all very interesting and well explained. The dimension information regarding Strad, Amati and Gurneri violins are informative. I highly recommend this book to everyone who loves violin.

This will be a short review because the main thing I want to say is that if you want to know about Antonio Stradavari's life and work this is the main source. The Hills were a well respected family of violin and other instrument dealers and the fact that the book was written a hundred years ago adds to the value as the authors were that much closer to the sources. Add to this that the book is quite readable.

This is a good book for people who want to learn more about the great Italian luthier, but it definitely has its flaws. The book was written around the turn of the 20th century and its style is very stilted and convuluted. I often had the feeling the authors could have conveyed the information they give us in two pages in one paragraph. Also, their worship of anything related to Stradivari gets to be a bit much after awhile. Still, this is the book to turn to for information on this great violin maker.