Antonio Stradivari, His Life and Work, 1644-1737

Rating:
Summary: Good, but very long winded
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: One of the essential texts
Review: 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.