A retired officer of the Italian army, M. Galbussera, reproduced the pretended invention of Chanot in a Violin which he exhibited in the Palace of Brera at Milan in 1832. M. Antolini, of that city, a distinguished artist, criticised in a small pamphlet the false principle which led to this return to primitive forms.[A]
Some years after Chanot’s Violin had been consigned to the department of the museum specially devoted to this object, Felix Savart, a physicist of eminence, struck with the discoveries of Chladni on the communication of vibrations and regularity of sonorous waves, devoted himself with great ardour to the application of these discoveries in the construction of bow instruments, and after several experiments, made with great sagacity, he arrived at the following deductions:--1st, When two or a larger number of bodies, whatever they may be, come into immediate contact, and one is directly put into motion, they all produce the same number of vibrations at the same time; 2nd, All these vibrations follow parallel directions; 3rd, The increase of the sound of any kind of body--for example of a string--depends upon the simultaneity of the vibrations of the bodies with which this string is in contact; and this increase is carried to its highest point when the bodies put into motion by communication are in such conditions that, if they were directly put into motion, they would produce the same number of vibrations as the body acted upon in the first instance.
The chief consequences of these principles are, that the vibrations produced by the strings of the Violin are communicated to the belly by the bridge, from the belly to the back by the sounding-post; and that the oscillations, in equal number, of all these bodies, cause equal vibration, and, by similar numbers of oscillations, to the mass of air held in suspension within the body of the instrument; hence it follows that the object in the construction of this sonorous box is to favour as much as possible the communication of the sound-waves, and to bring them into harmony. In seeking the application of this theory to the manufacture of bow instruments, Savart fell into error in the first pamphlet he wrote upon this subject,[B] when he expressed the opinion that the curves, the angles, and the raised belly adopted by the old manufacturers could only have proceeded from the prejudices of routine; but he discovered this error while prosecuting the continuation of his studies, and he ultimately extolled the proportions of Stradiuari, which he first believed to be only favourable to good effects from considerations which the celebrated maker had not perceived.