By Alfred S. Regnery on 8.31.05 @ 12:04AM
Antonio Stradivari crafted instruments on loan from God.
This review appears in the July/August issue of
The American Spectator. To subscribe, please click
here.
Stradivari's Genius
by Toby Faber
(Random House, 233 pages, $23.95)
SEVERAL YEARS AGO I decided to make a violin. Having played one for
most of my life, and having some fairly well-honed woodworking
skills I thought I might combine the two and get satisfaction out
of the process if not the result. I found a good little book
entitled You Can Make a Stradivarius Violin, containing
all the instructions, a set of plans, and, on the first page, an
admonition to the amateur violin maker:
As far as the dimensions are concerned, the violin as
passed on to us by Stradivari is completely standardized... It is a
waste of time and effort to try to improve on the design finalized
by Stradivari. If you alter [anything] the quantity and quality of
the tone are almost sure to be adversely affected. The
Craftsman is therefore cautioned to strictly adhere to the plans
and dimensions detailed throughout this book.
Antonio Stradivari lived from 1644 to 1737 in the small northern
Italian town of Cremona and, in the course of his life, made over
1,000 violins, violas and cellos, a harp, and a couple of lutes. He
became known throughout Europe as the master of his art, and
virtuosi, kings, wealthy merchants, and competitors lined up at his
door to buy his instruments. He became the singular standard-bearer
of his craft, and his instruments remain the most sought-after, and
the most expensive, in the world.
Tony Faber, the former managing director of Faber and Faber, his
family's famous publishing company (of which T. S. Eliot was editor
for many years), traces six of Stradivari's most famous instruments
from their creation to the present. In the process he tells us
about the famous and often eccentric owners of those instruments,
the often bizarre way they were acquired, the many attempts -- some
quite successful -- to copy Stradivari's instruments, and a good
deal of music history as well.
In our computer and high-tech age when we have at our fingertips
sophisticated tools, analytical machinery, and precision equipment
of every sort, the best that the world's greatest violin makers can
do is copy instruments made by this 18th-century Italian hand
worker. In fact, an effort to reproduce exactly a
particular Strad, and to sell it as an original is considered the
apex of a modern craftsman's skill, and has only rarely been
accomplished. It is often said that one of modern technology's
great embarrassments is its inability to match the quality of
violins made completely by hand nearly 400 years ago by Antonio
Stradivari.
Many of Stradivari's instruments immediately fell into the hands
of Europe's finest musicians. Many have been purchased by wealthy
collectors, although it is a common practice for such collectors to
lend these instruments to famous musicians or even aspiring young
musicians. I recall talking to a fantastic young German violinist,
whose instrument was a Stradivarius; he told me that it was one of
three owned by Deutsche Bank available to Germany's top young
players. Most of Stradivari's instruments have remained at the
pinnacle of the music world and have, over the centuries,
entertained countless millions of people in every corner of the
world. What a story each of these instruments could tell!
And they do. Faber takes, as an example, Stradivari's
Davidov cello (many of the most famous Strads have
acquired names over the years, often for one-time owners), one of
only 21 surviving cellos made by Stradivari. Now played by Yo-Yo
Ma, it was purchased for him, probably for several million dollars,
by an anonymous admirer and lent to him for life. But Yo-Yo first
played the Davidov years before, when it belonged to
Jacqueline du Pre, and subsequently borrowed it for several years
from her, as she found it difficult to play. Made in 1712 for the
Medici family, it remained in the Pitti Palace until Austrian
troops occupied Venice in 1737, who presumably took it back to
Austria. Somehow it wound up in Russia, where it was played by a
number of great cellists, including Carl Davidov, the royal court
musician to the Czar, who performed on it with Franz Liszt, among
many others. It was then purchased by a Polish nobleman named
Wielhorski sometime in the middle 1800s for $200,000, a Guarneri
cello, and the finest horse in his stable. Wielhorski was an
amateur but was able to get a sufficiently fine tone from his Strad
to inspire Felix Mendelssohn to write his second cello concerto for
him, and Robert Schumann to write that he was the most gifted
dilettante he had ever met. After several more owners, including
the famed Hill brothers in London and the Wurlizter shop in New
York, Daniel Barenboim, du Pre's husband, bought it for her. Not
bad for just one nearly 300-year-old cello!
The Cremonese luthier has been an inspiration to every serious
musician ever to encounter his handiwork and will no doubt continue
to be so for hundreds of more years into the future. Faber's book
is a fine introduction to this legend of a man.
And oh, yes, the violin I made? I followed the directions
exactly -- did not change a thing. It looks pretty good, but
somehow it just never sounded like a Strad.
topics:
Books, Russia
