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 disposition proving unfitted to cope with the jealousy of Lully, chief violinist in France, and with sundry annoyances in other lands, he returned to Italy and entered the service of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome.  In the private apartments of the prelate there gathered a choice company of music lovers every Monday afternoon to hear his latest compositions.  Besides his solos these comprised groups of idealized dance tunes with harmony of mood for their bond of union, and played by two violins, a viola, violoncello and harpsichord.  They were the parents of modern Chamber Music, the place of assemblage furnishing the name.