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.

Pablo Casals and His Goffriller Cello

 

Misidentified for decades, the instrument of the famous 20^th century cellist is still in the ownership of his widow. Tax policy is why it was misidentified.

 

A rose by any other name is still a rose.

 

The same could be said of the 1733 Goffriller cello. The prized instrument of legendary cellist Pablo Casals, it was hiding in plain sight, believed to be an instrument from the violin shop of violin maker Carlo Bergonzi of Cremona, Italy. Casals played it for 50 years before he knew who actually made it, and today it lives on as “The Pablo,” currently played by Israeli cellist Amit Peled.

 

So why the confusion?

 

The real maker of the cello that Casals played throughout the bulk of his career – touring the capitals of Europe and the Americas, playing for royalty and the American President John F. Kennedy (at the insistence of First Lady Jackie Kennedy) – “actually labeled only a small percentage of the instruments [he made] in order to avoid paying Venetian taxes,” says the Wikipedia page about luthier Matteo Goffriller (1659-1742). Consequently, over time Goffriller’s instruments were often misidentified, even to a world class player such as Casals.

 

(This isn’t the first instance where a tax policy affected the arts and design. The original mansard roof, at a near vertical slope, reduced a tax liability for homeowners of multi-story homes in 1798 France, with the roof subtracting the top floor from the assessment. Queen Anne would similarly tax two-story homes in the American colonies, which led to the New England colonial saltbox home that lent them the appearance of a single story from the front elevation. Machinations by homeowners with chimneys [eight fireplaces vented through just two chimneys] and windows (reduce the number facing the street) similarly saved the owner on their taxes.)

 

Casals acquired the cello around 1917, which featured a facsimile of the Bergonzi label, dated 1733. So the confusion is understandable, although dealers today are held to a higher standard of determining makers and provenance. Carlo Bergonzi was himself renowned for crafting fine Italian cellos, violas and violins.

 

The wood used in the instrument – maple for the back and side, the top from veined spruce – is more characteristic of Venice luthiers, where Goffriller worked as a member of that city’s guild. Cremonese luthiers used different woods from different sources, including willow for internal blocks and linings. The cello’s scroll is characterized by a low belly and forward thrust, a characteristic of Goffriller’s other instruments.

 

Just as remarkable is this instrument’s history and misidentification is the life of Pablo Casals. Born in 1876 near Barcelona, he was in that city in 1937 as the Spanish Civil War raged. He had to escape on a propeller plane to Prague just as Barcelona was about to erupt into war; we can assume the few items he was able to take with him would have been the cello. The catastrophic bombing of Guernica in that conflict – the subject of one of Pablo Picasso’s most famous paintings – along with other hardships on the Spanish people drove Casals to raise money for the afflicted through music.

 

Casals remained in exile until his death in 1973 at age 96, just two years short of the death of dictator Generalissimo Franco.

 

His first marriage existed mostly on paper for decades, but Casals divorced in 1957 to marry his student, the 20-year-old Marta Montañez y Martinez of Puerto Rico. Today, Marta Casals Istomin is in her mid-80s, is a former president of the Manhattan School of Music – and remains the owner of the Goffriller 1733 cello, which she lends to Peled.

 

The Goffriller cello is the rose Marta Casals Istomin could not part with.

 

Need a Strad? Borrow One Here.

 

Patronage of artists has always been essential. But different ways that high priced instruments find young prodigies ensure those strings get bowed.

 

The arts, music in particular, have always survived due to generosity of the wealthy. Mozart – whose behaviors excluded him from support from the Church – found his support in a certain Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who also funded the work of Ludwig von Beethoven and Joseph Haydn. Hungary’s wealthy Esterhazy family also supported Haydn. The celebrated Italian violinist and violist Niccolò Paganini was sufficiently wealthy to have commissioned Berlioz to compose “Harold in Italy” in the early 19^th century.

 

It shouldn’t escape notice that Paganini commissioned that piece specifically to have something to play on a Stradivarius viola he had purchased.

 

Rare is the musician today with the wherewithal to outright purchase a Strad, much less able to pay composers to develop something just for them. In fact, the skyrocketing prices of Stradivari’s fine stringed instruments for sale have effectively put the purchase of these and other fine violins, violas and cellos crafted by other master makers out of reach.

 

Fine stringed instruments are very expensive

 

This is because the best stringed instruments exist in an economic equation that differs from great pianos, brass, and woodwind instruments, the modern versions of which are as good as the old ones. In contrast, there is a finite supply of the finest stringed instruments ever made (by Stradivarius and Guaneri, in particular) but there is a growing market. Supply-demand curves being what they are, this has pushed pricing of Strads to as high as $20 million (how much the “Messiah Stradivarius is believed to be worth, sitting in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England).

 

So how does the prodigy with Julliard tuition debt afford a violin, viola, or cello worthy of her or his talent?

 

Enter the patrons. While royal courts of Europe are much smaller (and poorer?) than in the past, the techpreneurs and others of wealth are picking up the slack.

 

A different kind of a violin loan

 

There are two organizations that exist to be matchmakers between talented musicians and the owners of these extremely valuable instruments. These patrons loan the instrument to the musician.

 

One such organization is The Stradivari Society, based in the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Launched in 1985 by the wife of the president of Motorola, Mary Galvin, the organization loaned the Ruby Stradivarius (1708) to a young violinist, Dylana Jenson. Soon after, the organization arranged the loan of another violin for the prodigy, Midori, when she was just ten years old. Other recipients of great violins through this organization include Joshua Bell, Philippe Quint, Hilary Hahn and Maxim Vengerov.

 

The Stradivari Society has about two-dozen patrons. The artists must insure the instruments, and some are able to eventually purchase their Strads and Guarneris as their careers take off.

 

This arrangement comes with an implication of a partnership. The benefactor and beneficiary are friendly, there might be a free private concert here and there – who wouldn’t want Midori playing Pachelbel at their daughter’s wedding? – and the player is always in a position of obligation. It may skew their career choices.

 

A different arrangement was created around 2013, where the instrument is donated to a university or music school with which the artist is associated. The instrument can be on a lifetime loan to the musician or be purchased by the player. The lender-recipient relationship is eliminated.

 

The fine arts will probably always be subject to support from the well off. But the economic models are changing to support different relationships – still getting those great instruments out of museums and into the hands of great musicians.

Demystifying Harmonics of Stringed Instruments

Instruments like violins and cellos produce harmonic tone vibrations, involuntarily or by intent, from strings other than the string being played.

Students of stringed instruments who also have an affinity for physics are likely delighted with the subject of harmonics. They not only understand how vibrations are at the core of producing sounds, but that all things are related – including the strings of a violin, cello, bass, harp or guitar that are not directly involved in the principle note being played in any particular instance.

Indeed, when the E-string is being played, the G-, D- and A- strings vibrate as well, producing what are known as overtones. The effect on human ears is that a warmer, well-rounded sound is perceived. An overtone is a full octave higher than the played note. Interestingly, the listener doesn’t explicitly perceive the overtones.

There two types of harmonics, with decidedly different effects and requirements of the player:

1. Naturally-produced (“open string”) harmonics. This is the harmonic that just happens, due to the physics of vibrations of the played (“fundamental”) string, causing a sympathetic vibration among the other strings. One need not be a physics major nor even a music theoretician to create or understand it. Natural harmonics happen…naturally.

2. Artificial (intentional or “string”) harmonics. This requires training, practice and skill on the part of the musician – all useful, as some musical scores specifically have harmonics written in. It involves the soft placement of a second finger on a second string as the violin bow plays the primary string.

The harmonic created by the artificial method is done so by (lightly placing the third or fourth finger on the string where the harmonic node would be found (nodes are the ½, ¼, or 1/8th place on the string, where the natural overtone is otherwise produced). By placing the finger at these points, the violinist interrupts all the other overtones except this one.

This is science and math applied to music. But there remains a fine art and human physicality in producing an artificial harmonic as well: just the right amount of pressure – not too little and not too much – has to be applied.

The sheet music calling for string harmonics is identifiable by tiny diamonds shapes over a note or notes (in some cases a circle above the note, along with the finger number, is the notation). In most cases, the composer is driving for a bell-like quality to the tone, which can create a better blend of tonality with flutes and piccolos (instruments that also have a bell-like sound). Because violins and violas have a shorter neck, the players of these instruments have to think with a bit more mathematical precision to produce the harmonic. Cellists and bassists have a bit more freedom because of the longer necks of those instruments.

What is the most likely instance of a stringed instrument harmonic? A sound that is two octaves and a major third above the fundamental tone – tones that are otherwise inaccessible on the instrument. Harmonics are more easily achieved on fine stringed instruments, which are generally easier to play than poorly crafted ones.

It involves a stretch of the effects of vibrational frequencies that any physics student could love.

“Violins of Hope” Immortalize Music of Holocaust Musicians

While not intrinsically great instruments, Jewish-owned violins, cellos and violas that somehow survived the concentration camps live on in concert. 

Among the many perverse facts of the Holocaust is there were camp orchestras. Talented instrumentalists from the Jewish and “Gypsy” (Roma) communities involuntarily held by the murderous regime were put to work to provide music. Their audiences were new arrivals as they disembarked from cattle cars, some as they were led to certain death while others judged healthy enough to work to barracks. Some of the musicians were forced to entertain their captors at parties.

It’s impossible to not mentally summon the theme from Schindler’s List, the 1993 movie about the Holocaust (composed and conducted by John Williams, featuring violinist Itzhak Perlman). The music performed by the camp orchestras included marches, parlor music, dance music, popular music of the day, film and operetta melodies, the works of Richard Wagner and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. In Auschwitz composer Henryk Krol wrote Arbeitslagermarsch, the Concentration Camp Labor March.

Since 1996, the father and son team of Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein, based in Tel Aviv, have been collecting the violins, violas and cellos that were owned by these camp musicians before and during World War 2. The collection has grown to more than 60 instruments, each with a story: Some were used in the camps; some were tossed from those trains as they were headed to the camps. The collection is known as the Violins of Hope.

One instrument in the collection, the Auschwitz violin, was made around 1850 in Germany and was purchased in the post-War years from a penniless survivor. Like many of the stringed instruments, it was neither rare nor valuable. Another German-made violin, circa 1900, was tossed from a train traveling from France by a desperate man who said “In the place where I now go I don’t need a violin – here, take my violin so it may live!” A worker obliged his request but never played it. Decades later his children told the story to a violinmaker in the South of France who purchased it and turned it over to the Weinsteins for the Violins of Hope project.

But Violins of Hope is more than instruments that the Weinsteins have restored to playing condition. It’s a series of concerts using these instruments, held around the world, accompanied by discussions on the significance of the instruments. Despite the fact these are not Stradivarius violins, virtuosos the likes of Shlomo Mintz (Jerusalem), David Russell (music professor at the University of North Carolina) and others play them. Upcoming concerts in 2019 and 2020 are in Louisville, Kentucky; Fort Wayne, Indiana; San Francisco; and Los Angeles.

Amnon Weinstein told National Public Radio in 2012 that violins were commonly displayed on the walls of Jewish homes, particularly among Orthodox Jews who were forbidden from displaying portraits or sculpture. He was first asked to restore one such violin in the early 1960s by a musician-survivor who had been part of the Auschwitz Men’s Orchestra, but Weinstein was repulsed by the presence of ashes inside the instrument and refused to work with it – in part because he himself had lost many family members to the Holocaust.

Weinstein’s emotions on that had softened by the 1990s when he launched Violins of Hope. “All instruments have a common denominator,” he says on his website. “They had to do with the war. To be more specific, they had to do with the Holocaust –­ death or survival. And hope. All instruments were symbols of hope and a way to say, remember me, remember us. Life is good, celebrate it for those who perished, for those who survived. For all people.”

That clearly includes the doomed violinist on that French train. His violin miraculously survives. “The sound of violins is often compared to the beauty of the human voice,” Weinstein writes. “When played with talent and spirit, it is known to reach out and touch hearts. This was the role of violins in the war –­ to touch hearts, kindle hope for better times and spread it around. Wherever there was music, there was hope.”

Fibonacci Series and Stradivarius Instruments

Math is intrinsic to music. But what’s truly fascinating is how the designs of fine violins, flowers and huge galaxies connect to Fibonacci’s Golden Ratio.

The Fibonacci Series might sound like a spy thriller, but it’s perhaps more exciting because it draws a direct, mathematical connection between the human perception of beauty and nature itself. It also was the basis for the proportions that Antonio Stradivari used to construct his eponymous violins.

It starts with a mathematical pattern of increasing values. They are 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233 and so on; each number represents the sum of the two preceding it. Taking any one number from the series above 5 – let’s say 21 – and dividing it by the previous number (in this case 13), the ratio is 1.6. This is referred to as the Golden Ratio.

Represented in geometric forms these numbers and the Golden Ratio create a spiral that is seen in both art and nature. To a musician, the bass clef is essentially this form. Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is composed of points that conform to this geometry. Mozart wrote many of his two-part sonatas according to the Golden Ratio: the exposition (musical theme) is 38 bars and the development and recapitulation (where the theme is developed and repeated) is 62 bars, and 62 divided by 38 is 1.631. Western harmony and musical scales, with 13 notes in an octave and eight notes in a scale, also produce (via division) 1.625.

With Stradivarius’ fine violins, the master violinmaker’s designs follow the Golden Ratio in the proportions of specific parts of the violin. The violinmaker ensured the proportion of the neck, pegbox and scroll to the body of the violin (upper bout, waist and lower bout) achieves the ratio.

Also, subdivisions of the instrument – waist to upper bout, waist and upper bout to those sections plus the neck – meet the 1.6 ratio as well. (Note: there seems not to be the same mathematical principle applied to fine cellos, violas, and stringed bass instruments created by the master maker).

Is this what make the music from a Strad so rich and resonant? So many other factors are involved (the density of Cremonese wood in the 17th century, for starters) but it bears noting that the Golden Ratio is also used in saxophone mouthpieces and the acoustic design of many cathedrals. In the Journal of the American Viola Society, a 1994 analysis of Bartok’s Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (Movement Two) argues the composition relies heavily on the Fibonacci Series.

Where this takes a fascinating turn is how the Golden Ratio and its geometric representation is found in nature and even in space. The logarithmic spiral, found in seashells and sometimes called “the golden spiral,” look a lot like that bass clef and range in sizes from tiny to much bigger – all within the same ratio. But those same spirals repeat in spiral galaxies, where the arms of stars, gas and dust extend from the galaxy center in a pinwheel-like fashion – a pattern in proportions also seen in satellite images of hurricanes. The human face, by the averages, follows the Golden Ratio in where the eyes, nose and chin are positioned. The proportion of DNA molecules, 34 by 21 angstroms, fit the ratio as well. In flower petals, the lily has three, buttercups have five, chicory flowers have 21 and daisies have 34. Nature places all petals in the 360-degree circle, at a turn of 0.618030 (an inverse of the 1.6 ratio). Seed heads in sunflowers repeat the spiral seen in these other examples.

Is it possible that this Fibonacci Series is a universal proportion, determined by some version of intelligent design? That’s subject to some debate, to put it mildly. But what’s clear is it all adds up in Stradivarius violins playing Mozart sonatas.

Maple Wood and the Acoustics of Violins

It takes several kinds of woods to make fine stringed musical instruments. But the back of the violin, made with maple, has much to do with sound resonance.

Students of the violin and violinmaking are generally aware that a fine violin – as well as cellos and violas – is made up of several types of wood. Maple is used for the body as is spruce (and the two are often in a spruce top arching-maple bottom combination), and ebony for the fingerboards. These are collectively referred to as “tone woods.”

With some variation fine stringed instruments have also been made of cedar, mahogany, and walnut. But going back to celebrated luthiers Stradivari and Guarneri, considered the most talented violinmakers of all time, maple has been considered the most prized and preferred wood for the violin body.

Why maple? To be clear, it’s not just any maple (but we’ll get to that in a moment). Maple offers the combination of sufficient weight, resonance, stiffness, and sturdiness needed to create beautiful music. As the bow is drawn across the strings of the instrument, the vibrations travel through the bridge to the top of the violin body. From there, those same vibrations travel through the sound post (usually made of spruce) to the bottom/back, then through the air and out the f-holes.

The reason that maple serves well in this capacity is it’s in the sweet spot between strength and resonance. It has the density – when the proper woods are selected – to serve those vibrations that begin with the violinist’s bow and end at the audience’s ears.

This wood comes from forests, of course, but there is a lot of interim time between the felling of a tree and the time when the violinmaker begins to work with it. Some of these craftspeople will visit the growing trees to select them, perhaps looking for maple grown in mountainous areas with a consistent and reliable climate and four seasons that temper the wood and provide it with a ring structure that is ideal for the back of a violin. That takes a great deal of foresight given how the wood is then cut into billets and is air aged (away from light and moisture). The aging process takes years, even as long as a decade, to allow sufficient drying.

And while the aesthetics of a violin might not be the first priority of the student, conductor, player, or audience member, all great violins have the shimmer, tiger-like skin that well-figured maple provides.

The selection of the wood is just the beginning of the work of the luthier. Months if not years go into making any type of fine stringed instrument. Some do it well, others less so. Factories can forge a cello, violin or viola largely without human hands, but they tend to use lesser woods and sell at a lesser price. Which is all well and good for the beginning student or the casual player. Suffice it to say well-handled tone wood (plus metal in the frog and horsehair in the strings) makes the violin.