Word: violine
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When Antonio Stradivari died in Cremona, Italy in 1737, he left behind him an estimated 1,100 masterfully constructed stringed instruments, of which perhaps 600 that have any claim to his name exist today. Every violin virtuoso, concertmaster and well-heeled amateur in the world has wanted to own an instrument by the famed Cremona fiddlemaker. The supply, while never plentiful, has surprisingly never been exhausted, and last week the proceedings of a Swiss court pointed to the reason why: buyers of supposed Strads and other instruments with great Cremona labels have been the victims of a traffic in fake...
...responsible for last week's court action is an Italian violin connoisseur named Giovanni Iviglia. Twenty years ago, an exhibition of old-master violins was held in Cremona, and of the 2,000 which Expert Iviglia now says were offered from all parts of the world, only 40 proved to be genuine. Believing that the center of a fake violin trade was Switzerland, Iviglia, with the blessings of the Italian government, set up an "Advisory Bureau for Purchasers and Owners of Italian String Instruments" in Zurich...
With the aid of the local police laboratory, his bureau examined hundreds of violins brought to it by worried buyers. Most of the instruments had telltale modern coats of lacquer or labels with inks and paper of recent manufacture. In one violin, the police lab even found particles of nylon. A concertmaster brought Iviglia a "Stradivarius" (for which he had paid $13,000) with a label reading "Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis faciebat Anno 1703." Underneath, another label was found reading "Pietro Antonio della Costa, Treviso, Anno 1764." Both labels were false. A Swiss collector brought in a 1716 "Stradivarius" for which...
...immigrant, the Gomberg brothers grew up in a Boston slum with five other children, all but one of whom became musicians. "It was a question," says Ralph, "of who would get what room to practice in; being the youngest, I got the bathroom." While the other children were studying violin, cello and trumpet, Harold and Ralph took up the oboe, criticized each other's playing, wound up as scholarship students in Philadelphia's Curtis Institute. Both Harold and Ralph got their jobs with their present orchestras when they were...
Since then, Melody in A Major has appeared in many incarnations, including arrangements for violin, pipe organ, alto sax, and in 1951 Broadway Veteran Carl (Bongo Bongo) Sigman wrote some lyrics for it. But it took another seven years to the end of the long, long road from the McKinley Administration to the Hit Parade. Last summer M-G-M hauled out the old song, gave it a slushy arrangement halfway between rock 'n' roll and a ballad. By last week It's All in the Game was the biggest "new" hit in the country, ranked...