Italian Violinmaking: The Amati Family

 

Stradivari is known for the greatest violins, but the likely inventor of the modern violin was Andreas Amati. French royalty deserves some credit as well.

 

The story of the Amati family of violin makers is closely intertwined with another, historically prominent clan: that of Catherine de’ Medici (1519-1589), the Italian noblewoman, queen consort of France, and mother of the French kings Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III.

 

This was a time when the original Amati luthier, Andrea (1505-1577), essentially invented the violin in the form we know it. The Amati violins preceded Stradivari, Guarneri, Stainer and others for whom a greater body of work survives to this day. The story of the successive three generations of Amatis is one that emphasizes the strong relationship between the royal courts of Europe and the development of the fine violins, violas and cellos we know today – and the precarious place these exquisite instruments occupied as dynasties fell to revolutions that overturned the monarchies.

 

Andrea Amati essentially created the “violin family” –which includes the violin, the viola, and the cello – standardizing the evolution of stringed instruments from the medieval fiddle, the vielle, lira da braccio and rebec. Other luthiers were his contemporaries (the families Micheli and Bertolotti da Salo), but Amati had an important customer early on that propelled his instruments, and the family legacy, to fame.

 

(It bears noting that the evolution to the Amati violin form is subject to some debate. Some Amati instruments survive to today while evidence of other versions of the violin exist only in paintings and church frescoes. The depictions of those other versions from that time have only three strings and an oval-ish body, unlike the hourglass-with-cutouts form from Amati that has defined the appearance of these instruments for 500 years.)

 

Today, the auction house Sotheby’s has said about the Amati instruments that their “brilliance raised the status of the violin from a farmhand’s entertainment to an embellishment fit for a royal court.”

 

Indeed they did. The luthier Amati had made the earlier, three-string version of violins up until a point. But around 1536, when he would have been about 30 years old, it is believed (through thin but convincing evidence) that his relationship with the French court began with 4-stringed instruments in the form that Amati devised. The first cello, created by Amati, was called “The King” and made in 1538. This is around the time when Henry II ascended the French throne. Henry’s mother, Catherine de’ Medici, commissioned an entire ensemble of 38 instruments in 1560 from Amati.

 

Andrea Amati had two sons who were luthiers, Antonio and Girolamo, and they were succeeded by Girolamo’s son Nicolo, who is credited with improving on the violin in ways that created a powerful tone (referred to as the “Grand Amati”). Nicolo’s son, Girolamo (aka, Hieronymus II) was the last in the line of Amati violinmakers, living until 1740, a full 200 years after his great grandfather made the name synonymous with fine, royalty-worthy stringed instruments.

 

All dynasties fall eventually, including that of the French aristocracy. Of the 38 instruments commissioned by Catherine de’ Medici, few survived the French Revolution of 1789, a time when vestiges of both wealth and the Church – art, buildings, and lives – were destroyed. Surviving Amati instruments are highly prized and largely kept safe in museums, where common people can see them and study the journey of simple fiddles to fine instruments – all attributable to a visionary luthier of the early 16^th century.

Andrea Amati and the King Charles IX Instrument Collection

 

Catherin de’ Medici brought a love of dance from Italy to the French court. In so doing, she drove the enduring standardization of violins, violas, and cellos.

 

Hard as it may be to imagine, it was a practice in the 18^th and 19^th centuries to reduce the size of bass violins (bassos) to what we now know the cello to be. This was even done with one of the 38 instruments made by early luthier Andrea Amati for King Charles IX of France.

 

First, a little history on the collection:  The instruments – a full complement of the modern interpretations of the violin, the viola, and the cello – were commissioned by none other than Catherine de’ Medici (1519-1589), the queen consort of France and mother of three French kings: Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. The luthier, Amati, somewhat standardized these from earlier stringed instruments, part of how this music was elevated from the peasantry to the royal courts – an enduring legacy seen on concert stages in the 21^st century.

 

But while only nine of those instruments in the King Charles IX collection survived the destruction of the French Revolution (1789-90), one that evidently made it intact to 1801 was the “King cello.” Curiously, Amati didn’t originally make it as a cello but as a “basso,” or bass violin. Larger than the cellos Amati did make, it was literally cut down as bassos had fallen out of favor with musicians and audiences by this time. Rather than it be neglected, a Parisian luthier, likely Sebastien Renault, inscribed on the back of the reduced instrument, “Mended….1801” after the reduction.

 

That mending process might seem extreme, but in fact was done a fair number of times in this era. The Vienna Symphonic Library posts a description in an article titled “How the violone became a cello,” in which it says:

 

“One further characteristic of early cello-making should be mentioned: the so-called “cutting,” the reduction in size of large instruments to dimensions which have remained customary to the present day: the top and bottom of the body was cut off, shortening it, the upper and lower bouts were narrowed and the ribs made flatter. Not one of the instruments made before the middle of 17th century seems to have survived this rather gruesome-sounding hacking up of instruments.”

 

To initiate such a clear alteration of an instrument with such provenance speaks to the favored place of Amati’s standardization of the string instruments – even while disrespecting the larger original size. Andrea Amati was in fact part of several generations of Amati luthiers, however this particular violin maker was known to de’ Medici, herself originally from Italy and one who loved to dance. She is credited by way of this commission with transitioning the higher-pitched violin from its origins in lower-brow culture to the royal courts. The original collection of fine stringed instruments was made up of 12 “large” sized violins, 12 “small” sized violins, six violas, and eight cellos. The collection was commissioned by de Medici for her son Charles IX’s ascendancy to the throne in 1560.

 

So while only about a quarter of the original collection survives to this day, including one instrument in significantly “mended” condition, the basic structure of the violin, viola, and cello have endured to this day. Credit one queen consort and her love of dance.