The Violins of Jascha Heifetz

His hands may have created the most beautiful music of the 20th century. But in an instant, Heifetz risked it all to save a timeless, priceless violin.

Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987), considered by many to be the greatest violinist of all time, was recognized for his virtuosity in the concert halls as much as virtue in some of the most important issues of his time. How he treated and protected his prized collection of fine violins tells us something about both remarkable attributes.

Heifetz was born in Europe to a Jewish family who then emigrated to the US in 1917. Already a recognized prodigy, he performed in New York’s Carnegie Hall that same year. Well established in his career by the 1940s, he toured Europe during World War II to entertain troops with “mess hall jazz.” After the War, he defied conventional wisdom, which said that the compositions of Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, heroes of the defeated Nazis, should not be played. He kept them in his repertoire despite official outcry – “the music is above these [Nazi] factors …. I will not change my program,” he said. After one such performance in Jerusalem in 1953, he was attacked with a crowbar and sustained injuries to his right bow hand as a means to protect his violin in its case. The virtuoso instinctively preserved the priceless instrument; in that instant he may have sacrificed his own ability to ever play again. All in service to a violin that came before him and should last long after he was finished playing it. Fortunately, he recovered from his injury and was able to resume performing for 17 more years.

The record doesn’t indicate which violin it is that Heifetz saved that night, as he had several in his career. Briefly, those were:

Dolfin Stradivarius (1714) Acquired by Heifetz in 1951, it may have been the one saved that night in Jerusalem in 1953.

Heifetz -Piel Stradivarius (1731) Heifetz owned and played this from 1925 until 1950

Antonio Stradivari (1734) One of three Strads that Heifetz played.

Carlo Tononi (1736) This was the violin of Heifetz’s youth and the instrument with which he emigrated to the US and made his first Carnegie Hall appearance in 1917.

Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Piacenza (1741) This is an example from the “Piacenza period” of violinmaking by Guadagnini, who lived 30 kilometers outside of Cremona, the home of Stradivarius and other acclaimed luthiers.

ex-David Guarneri (1740 or 1742) It is now owned by the San Francisco Legion of Honor Museum

Guarneri (1740) Heifetz bought this in 1920 (which he could afford at the age of 19), and said it was his favorite violin among them all. He held it to his death in 1987.

It ultimately was a shoulder injury, unrelated to the crowbar incident in Jerusalem, which ended Heifetz’s career as a player, in 1970. But he dedicated the remainder of his life to teaching, as well as advocating for causes as varied as the establishment of 9-1-1 emergency phone numbers and the reduction of smog in Los Angeles.

The virtuous virtuoso died at age 87 from injuries sustained in a fall in his home.

Baroque Musical Instruments vs. Modern Stringed Instruments

The interplay of historical events and inventive instrument making – violins providing the best example – led the transition from one period to the next.

The Baroque Period, roughly the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries, was not just about music but also of the visual arts, fashion and architecture. In each of those a bold and elaborate style was a dominant characteristic, at its latest stages giving way to an even more ornate period that we call Rococo or the “late Baroque” period. This latter aesthetic is associated with Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France and an enthusiast of the late Baroque flourishes and stylings. Her execution, and the French Revolution, essentially had a strong correlation with the end of this era.

The transition of baroque violins and other such instruments had a thin link to the end of aristocratic rule. The more modern violins – via Stradivarius and contemporaries, who were luthiers in the era of the transition from Baroque – were about violinmaking for performances in larger concert venues, not just the intimate courts of royalty.

Baroque violins, for example, were physically larger yet projected a lesser sound than the more modern versions that followed them, owing largely to the construction of the instruments: the neck of Baroque violins were set at a more shallow angle relative to the body, which put less pressure on the bridge from the strings. The bridge was shaped differently with greater flexibility due to less mass. The fingerboards were shorter, strings were made of sheep guts (but called “cat gut”), and bows were definitively different, shaped as straight or slightly convex (with a “swan bill” shape). Not only did the sound have less projection, but the range in the upper registers was limited.

The material used for bows was snakewood, as compared to modern pernambuco wood used today (note: composite fiber materials are often substituted in modern bows due to a shortage of pernambuco). Baroque bow weight and the way they were tightened varied by their origins.

But it was the design of the f-hole in the post-Baroque violins that made for perhaps the greatest degree of sound projection. According to John Dilworth, a maker and restorer of high quality violins West London UK, the c-shape of the holes found in early violins and their precursors (in the 13th to 17th centuries) changed to the f-shape, effectively providing a steeper backward slope to the violin neck and fingerboard. This “made the sound of the violin much more penetrating and enabled soloists to compete with the larger orchestras of the period,” says Dilworth.

Many other instruments of the Baroque period had both technical and aesthetic distinctions. The harpsichords and virginals of the era were themselves the “canvas” for painters, effectively becoming works of art that almost look too beautiful to touch.

Performers on fine violins of the period gradually migrated to the new violins, particularly the Italian violins designed and built by Stradivari and later generations of the houses of Guarneri, Amati, et al. Now referred to as the “standard violin,” they nonetheless still are made with variations that allow players to manipulate the instrument in the interest of making great music.

After the French Revolution in 1789, music became the centerpiece of the nation, with audiences joining in song such as the Hymne des Marseillais played at the intermission of all concerts. With the departure – many by guillotine – of the aristocracy, unemployed court musicians were reemployed in the newly created national music conservatory and new venues for musical theater, comic operas (Theatre du Vaudeville) and the Palais-Royal garden, where the Café des Aveugles featured an orchestra and chorus of blind musicians. These venues, often more informal and sometimes raucous, needed louder instruments.