In this podcast I will be telling the wild and wonderful stories englobing the lives of famous violin makers, what they got up to and placing them in their historical and musical context. We will look at instrument makers such as Gasparo da Salo, the Amati family, Guarneri Del Gesu and Stradivari just to name a few. Who were these people? What were their lives like? What was Stradivaris secret? and most importantly why and how did they make these master pieces we see and revere today. What was the first ballet like that Andrea Amati’s instruments played in, costing millions? Why did Antonio Stradivari have a shotgun wedding? and did Guarneri del Gesu really go to prison for murder? I speak to historians, musicians, violin makers and experts to unveil the stories of these beautiful violins, violas, cellos, double basses and the people who made them.
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G.B ROGERI PART 2. In this second episode on Giovanni Battista Rogeri we look at his family and children. Living in Brescia also meant that Rogeri was in the heart of an Opera loving people close to Venice and an exciting time musically and instrumentally.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting, violin makers of history. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband, Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthierie in Mircourt. As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with, and in particular, the lives of those who made them. So often when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect. But here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture. So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, famine and war, but also of love, artistic genius, revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.
Welcome back to part two of The Life of Giovanni Battista Rogeri. In the last episode of the Violin Chronicles, we looked at Rogeri's early life. His apprenticeship with the master Niccolo Amati himself in Cremona. He's moved to Brescia seeking out greener pastures. And now he is in Brescia where we will see his style really come into its own and take a look at this thing Opera, that was really changing the musical landscape for musicians and instrument makers alike.
So stay with me as we take a dive into the life and career of Giovanni Battista Ruggieri. Not Ruggeri, Rogeri. Before we move on, I would like to say that I am an independent podcaster and really appreciate the support people have been showing in helping this show happen. If you would like to be one of those people helping me make more content for you to enjoy, consider going to patreon.com forward slash the violin chronicles, where you can have access to extra episode and help make things happen.
We now find ourselves in the home of Laura and Giovanni Rugeri. The year after this young couple married in 1665, they had their first child called Pietro Giacomo and would go on to have at least six more children. Two years after Pietro's birth, they had another son called Gio Paolo. These two sons would be the only surviving boys of the Rogeri's five sons and would go on to become violin makers as well. In these early years, there is not much we know about Giovanni Battista Rogeri's work, but five years on, into the 1670s, we see an active workshop Giovanni definitely had his own style. When working for Niccolò Amati, his hand can be seen in that cremonese workshop as his instruments differed to those of Niccolò. His bolder style even influenced the young Girolamo II Amati in the development of his own characteristic instruments.
Now, if you can cast your minds back to the first few episodes of the Violin Chronicles, where we spoke about the city of Brescia, we looked at its close connection with Venice. And now that Venice is embracing this exciting new art form called opera, it's no surprise that Brescia is not far behind. And the year before Rogeri married, in 1664, Brescia opened its very own commercial opera house. And this first theatre was called the Teatro degli Erranti. Cremona would never embrace opera to the extent that the Venetian state did. And here we find Giovanni Battista Rogeri setting up his workshop in the midst of this exciting time for the city of Brescia. Here I talk to Stephen Mould about how opera was so different to anything people had ever seen how it was pulling on human emotion and the impact music would have had on people at this time in this part of Italy.
Linda Lespets
And, and also I've, the, with the history of opera, we're sort of going from this Renaissance style. And we sort of move through to the Baroque, which is more, so we're going from the, you know, the Pythagorean theory of music was sort of God's omnipotence and to music being this source of bringing out human emotion. It's sort of the, the idea of music and the sort of thinking behind music was changing during this time of opera developing as well. Yeah. And can we see that in the operas?
Stephen Mould
Look, what you're talking about is absolutely valid. I tend to think of all of those kinds of ideas, they were sort of in the air.
Linda Lespets
Yeah. In the same way that Yeah, because I feel like opera really was, it's all about drama. It is. And human emotion. Like love and jealousy and revenge.
Stephen Mould
Yes. And so the interesting thing is how those things are expressed on the stage, how those things are played out. Again, I come to this idea of the stratas of society in that, let's say, people from the lower classes or peasants or whatever, who had oral traditions of passing on poems or stories and things, and have this very immediate form of street theatre where people, they're actually looking into people's eyes and gazing to get a connection with their audience.
Now, If you look at the way people behaved in the aristocratic circles, they didn't do that too. You might've had an arranged marriage to somebody and never actually been alone in a room with them or looked them in the eyes that it's all, it's all done according to certain social conventions. So although these Pythagorean ideas and everything else were present, I feel that that was a bit more of a background thing. And that, that was. material that was really available to the more aristocratic classes who had time to sit and read and Think about these things. Think about things. I feel particularly in Venice that this emergent middle class was much more much more volatile. It was a time of extraordinary change, but what were interesting was the interactions between the classes. And what I would say then is, if you think of Mozart's the three Don Giovanni, Così Fan Tutte, and the Marriage of Figaro, these are also about different classes of people. And you see all the music, So, for example, in the, in the Marriage of Figaro, you've got Figaro and Susanna who are the servant class and the kind of music that Mozart uses for that are peasant dances, other musical forms that come from their class. When the Count and Countess are talking or singing, they have a different realm of music. In Don Giovanni, you've got The scenario of the Don, who is an aristocrat, and his servant Leporello, who's from the servant class. And I mean, the opera opens with Leporello going, I'm sick of being a servant, I want to be the master. So there's this class conflict, and at a certain point in the second act, they actually disguise one another as, so Leporello disguises himself as Don Giovanni, Don Giovanni disguises himself as Leporello, so there's this weird sort of change. And it then occurs in the music as well. So it's this idea of having different musics from different places. So, to map out all these stations. And the music really was part of the storytelling. Absolutely. And, and the, so the, the, see, we don't, we, we don't sit in a Mozart opera and go, Oh, there's a gavotte. That's this class or that, but they, they didn't even have to have that conversation with themselves. They just knew it. And, and I mean, to bring it back to history, when Louis and Mary Antoinette had to escape from Versailles because of the, all the, it was the revolt coming from Paris. They went out the servant's door of Versailles disguised as their servants. So you see all of this switching around. So I see that as probably the. Dominant thing, which animated opera. This sort of connection with people and their, their class.
Linda Lespets
Right. Yeah. And, and in, with the violin makers, it was a little bit, there's a bit of that story as well, where you've, the violin maker was an artisan, but had to, was making for the aristocracy, but also dealing with, you know it was very, there was sort of a bridge between classes as well, that were working with tradespeople and yeah, the music in general, we seemed to have this like bridge of
Stephen Mould
Yeah. Sort of eng globed a lot of classes. It, it was a way I mean if, if you think of when, when you said that, I think of Hayden for example, who was basically a servant all his life and Mozart who was determined not to be, and only in Vienna.He, could he really do that.
Linda Lespets
But now in Brescia, Rogeri was making instruments using fine wood for his wealthy clients. And for those with a more modest budget, he would use plainer pieces. And to save time, simply draw on the purfling on the backs, for example, of some of his instruments by scratching in the lines with a tracer and filling the grooves in with black. I talked to Florian Leonard about G.B. Rogeri instruments that have historically been confused with Maggini’s and the characteristics of Rogeri instruments that distinguish them from other makers.
Florian Leonhard
Before dendrochronology was established, the Maggini’s were going around and they were actually GB Rogeri’s.
Linda Lespets
Right, yeah, we did a we did a condition report on a Giovanni Paolo Maggini and It had an old certificate and then we did the dendocrinology and so I had to change the title to attributed to.
Florian Leonhard
Yeah. And it might've been, you know, I mean, I have seen about three, three Rogeris that used to be G. P. Maggini’s Okay. Yeah. Very nicely made. But you can see that the construction behind it doesn't have that more loose idea of creating that shape, but it was a constructed shape. Of course it had the linings, it had the corner blocks in the right way, it had but another feature I found always that was a dead giveaway is the volute. So the scroll, Rogeri had a very strong character of, of how he constructed the scroll in an Amati style. So obviously it was influenced by Amati, but it is his own idea. And you can see right away when he makes his own style, not, not, not a Maggini style, that he has quite a flat cutting out of the, of the back of the scroll and also the front of the scroll.
So that's very flat, incredibly flat. And the similar thing is also from the side. So it comes from, it arrives from the peg box and then runs up into the first turning. And that hardly goes into depth. And he manages to still have the chamfer relatively sharp without having a round cut. He has a very flat cut into the volute. And then he arrives in the eye in the almost Amati school way. And he does, when he cuts the, the Maggini scroll, it just looks as if he just had a different model, but it's the same attitude. It's incredible to see that. So he could not hide that. And I don't think he tried to fake anyway. He just built that model, but it was totally him.
It's like the Maggini copy by Vuillaume I mean, it does totally not look like Maggini, so it looks like a Vuillaume so the Vuillaume couldn't hide his character behind it. Even though Vuillaume’s intention was more to be quite real, he did for his time, do quite nice copies, but of course the copy wasn't intellectually analysed as detailed as somebody would think.
Linda Lespets
The labels Rogeri printed to insert into his instruments are peculiar in that they are printed in red ink. Okay, so not all of his labels are in red ink, but quite a few are. We don't really know why, but what we do know is that red ink was the most popular colour after black. And in legal and notarial documents, red ink was used. It was used for important headings and quotes. Think of red letter Bibles, for example. Fun fact, accountants would enter in black ink, positive figures on business financial records and the negative figures in red, hence to be in the red or the black. That aside, it could have just been that it was an aesthetic choice or a mistake by the printer. Although he had worked in the Amati workshop in his formative years, and one of their signature moves was an almost imperceptible dot in the centre back of instruments, thought to be from a compass in the measurement process in making the instrument, Giovanni Battista Rogeri did not have this on his instruments. We have today many fine violins and cellos by Giovanni Battista Rogeri, but there is, and this is interesting for Brescia, not many violas coming out of his workshop. And this was not because he had a personal problem with viola players, but simply a question of compositional style. Things had changed by the end of the 17th century and the fashion was for trio sonatas that consisted of two treble instruments, such as two violins and a bass, and often a keyboard instrument playing the continuo parts. That confusingly makes four people playing the trio. But in any case, the viola was no longer needed, for now, and this could explain the fact that there is a dip in viola making after 1700 in both Cremona and Brescia. Never fear, the violas do come back in, the later Baroque and Classical periods, but our violin maker will no longer be with us.
Giovanni Battista Rogeri's business in Brescia is a success and he will live with his family in San Giorgio for the next 20 years. His children will grow up and the boys, Pietro Giacomo and Gio Paolo, will eventually be apprenticed with their father. Rogeri, as we have mentioned earlier, had an influence on Girolamo II Amati's style, But Niccolò Amati definitely had a huge influence on Rogeri and his style. He modelled many of his instruments on Niccolò Amati's grand pattern. And although we see this strong influence, Rogeri cannot help but have his own particular style, a type of Cremonese/Brescian fusion. It is sweepingly bold and finely executed, drawing on Cremonese and Brescian influences. He uses local maple for his instruments, backs, ribs, and scrolls. Some of his instruments are remarkably like Niccolo Amati's, and the next could be a Maggini copy with short corners, double purfling around the contours of the instrument, and decorative motifs on the back. Depending on the client's demand, he could do it all, one day Cremonese and Brescia the next, and yet with his own distinct style that you can see, in the sweep of the sound holes of his instruments, that is quite distinctive.
I asked Florian Leonhard what he thought about the influence Brescian makers such as Maggini and Rogeri could have had on Stradivari in his phases of experimentation.
Florian Leonhard
Antonio Stradivari went through a period of making longer violins. These are called his long pattern instrument, and his arching became fuller and evolved. He would keep experimenting until he culminated in his golden period. But could the Brescian school and G.B. Rogeri have played a part in this thought process at that time? Brescia was plodding along with their style on their own. and creating something that, yeah, they just were confident because the musicians wanted to have those instruments.
They were busy, They got rich from it, You know, nobody was poor making those instruments and they, which we can see in the archives today. So you can, you can see that they were successful. They had constantly musicians from all over the country because the musicians were the ones driving what was in demand, you know, in parallel, in the parallel universe, Cremona supplied some other chords with their instruments, and they were successful within that and that system worked very well, but I don't see much cross pollination there going on between those cities. So Cremona will have noticed that Musicians like sometimes to have this kind of Maggini like instruments, and Rogeri was already making such instruments as well. Maybe visible for Cremonese, violin makers, because they, the musicians would travel, because Brescia and Cremona is not that far apart.
But Obviously, the link wasn't so established culturally, as you can tell from the violin making history. So, but Stradivari who totally deserves his name as the genius of our profession, he was constantly, from day one, from the earliest instruments, when we analyse him, you can see from the earliest instruments, his strong character and drive to find out how to make it better. So I think from day one, he tried to see how can I improve this thing. And by 1690, he arrived by saying, let's radically change the design of the arching, because, because the musicians talking about the sonority and warmth and depth of Maggini instruments. And so he, he felt that's lacking.
Let's try to find this out. And then he saw something and he said, let’s try it. And he did it. And it created some effect and he continued this. And so he did it for, for just under a decade, building those long pattern instruments, because long machines were longer and they were fuller arched. And you see that in, in Stradivari's design. But Stradivari still was bound by the very strong, incredible principles that the Amati’s have created in Cremona. So he had the discipline to build it beautifully, with long, slender corners, with a choice of wood that looks magnificent. And it's very, It's aristocratic in the way. So the Amati model by Stradivari doesn't look like Amati you know, so it's, it's a much more graceful in design, in my view.
He combined in the, in the golden period, the two things, so his arching became fuller, which is the major change in study varius designs. For the sound.
Linda Lespets
Yeah, there's less of that there's the scooped, like, towards the edges, It's less, although, Yes, I mean, the Amati brothers, I don't, yeah. The brothers Amati were already quite full.
Florian Leonhard
Yeah. Yes. There's a, yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, it's hard to tell. Since you mentioned the Amati brothers, the Amati brothers were more advanced in the arching from our modern perspective of, of ideal arching than Niccolo, because Niccolo exaggerated that deep, long, wide, wide channel, and therefore has nearly a slightly pinched arching, which you see in some Ruggieris as well.
Linda Lespets
In the 1670s, Rogeri, now in his 30s, his workshop is a busy place. Business is good, and he has a young family with many children. As was the case with many other families, infant death was sadly a common thing, and three of his boys were killed. The two sons that did make it to adulthood were Pietro Giacomo and Gio Paolo.
As they grew up, they would help their father more and more in the workshop. And in the year 1688, when Giovanni was in his late 40s, the family would move house. Perhaps his father in law had died and the house they had been living in for the last 20 years had to be sold. But now Ruggieri, his wife and their five children, the two boys and three daughters, moved into a rented house nearby to the Cortell del Polini.
Giovanni Battista Ruggieri's workshop was busy. He was making instruments in his own bold style, based on the techniques he had learnt as an apprentice from his master Niccolò Amati. His work definitely showed the style of the great Cremonese maker, in the shape of the scroll and the outline of his violins. But the sound holes, they were his own thing. Their shape showed his unique stamp on the instrument, and as he was now settled in to life in Brescia, he also embraced some of the local models such as Maggini. Although he wouldn't construct the instrument as Maggini had done, he would copy the model The double purfling, the short corners with open sea bouts, and that distinctive Brescian scroll.
But the making process was indeed Cremonese. This is what he had learnt, and it had worked for him. He used an inside mould with blocks and side linings for those instruments that had to be made quickly. He would sometimes not even do the purfling on the back. It would be drawn on. Time is money, hey? For his instruments, Rogeri had a good stock of fine spruce and beautifully figured maple.
Like Rugeri, Rogeri also made smaller cellos. It is the late 1660s and overwound gut strings are starting to appear. This means that bass instruments could be made smaller. They didn't need room for gigantic gut strings on the lower strings. Composers in Bologna, Naples and Rome also started to write music with the cello in mind.
And it is around now we find cellos by Rogeri. He is using his own model and it is small and powerful. We can imagine that some of Rogeri's instruments would have been played by the local musicians in orchestras, religious processions and the opera house that was in full swing in downtown Brescia. The players in this city would have needed Rogeri and other instrument makers to maintain their instruments and repair them if any mishap occurred, and occur they would in these lively orchestras at the time.
This was the world of the theatre at its best. Now, Venice at this time was the first place to create a commercial opera house. And what this meant was that it was a business. So you pay for your ticket, you went, and this meant that there was a mixture of classes crossing over in the theatre. Move to France and the other royal courts of the time, opera was a court entertainment and a very different experience.
Stephen Mould
So in the 17th century, a woman who came from a family without money and so forth and wanted to remain independent in society and life to some extent and to, and to do well. They had three Possibilities. Become a courtesan, a high class prostitute. This is assuming they didn't want to become a street walker or an opera singer. Those three professions were seen as being intertwined. And just they, they were the social climbing options.
Linda Lespets
Right. And was it like was there as much drama off the stage as on the stage?
Stephen Mould
Oh, I'm sure. In these like milieus, in this like, yeah. You mean amongst all the operas?
Linda Lespets
Yeah, amongst them, yeah.
Stephen Mould
Well, Don Giovanni was premiered in Prague and the, I think it was the Donna Elvira, her name was Saporito. So she's an Italian singer. Saporito means a tasty dish. And she was evidently so promiscuous during the whole production period of Don Giovanni that she was nearly expelled from the city. And so in the score of Don Giovanni in the last act you know, they're having dinner and Don Giovanni refers to Saporito, a tasty dish. There are all these in jokes. You can imagine all of what went on behind the scenes.
Linda Lespets
So in, in Italy, yeah. So I'm imagining the violin makers In Cremona, their, their clients are maybe in the church or in you know, entertainment, opera And amateurs amongst the Yes, the, yeah, they're great clients, yeah even for us. And so, yeah, so in Italy you've got that happening and you could suppose that it would be the same thing happening in Paris. But what was happening in Paris at this time?
Stephen Mould
Well, I think the centre of the world at that time was Versailles, and that's where the king tended to hang out. So this is, this is a really interesting one because it shows how opera tends to reinvent itself according to circumstances. So Lully was born in, he was born somewhere in Italy. I think he did come from Florence. And he was a really, really, really good dancer. And he turned up, I'm not quite sure how, in, in France and was introduced to the king, who was also a very good dancer. And Lully effectively used his position with the King of Influence to create French opera. And it's just, it's a bit like making a minestrone, I have to say. What was popular then, obviously, ballet. Dance. That was the main art form, the most popular. So the, you know, all the ballet operas that have got extensive amounts of ballet in them that he realized that that ingredient was going to be a big ingredient in the soup. It was more than a bay leaf. Then there was the, the spoken drama, which there was a great tradition of. And so he created the specific French style of recitative, which is rather different to the Italian. The Italian. And secco recitative is just in the rhythm of the words. What you see on the paper is not what you do.
It's very conversational in that. Whereas the French the way the French actors delivered their lines was very, very declamatory. Even into the 19th century, when you hear actresses like Sarah Bernhardt, there's, there's recordings of her speaking and it's, it, it almost sounds comical. So French recitative is much more in time and it's got this sense of declaimed rather than spontaneous speech. The other thing that Lully did was he invented the French overture. He just thought, well, we'll need a style of overture and he kind of like dotted rhythms and so forth. Yeah. which paradoxically are called scotch snaps. So he created a product. Then it becomes interesting. All of the other operas were about, they in a way had the life of pop, pop songs that there would be a few performances would be over. And then everybody just wanted the next opera. Nobody said, Oh, you remember that really good opera we heard five years ago. Let's revive that. No idea of revival, no idea of anything that it was all just the next, the next, the next. Now I have a funny feeling that Louis didn't. I'm not sure that he had the best musical ear. He certainly wasn't in, didn't have an inquiring ear, and I rather suspect that he saw opera as being a kind of cool thing that he could go and a bit like watching a sitcom on the television at night, but he happened to have a little opera house in his, his palace, but he could talk during it and, you know, do what he wanted to do while, while the opera was going. That wasn't so unusual in those days.
So It so happens that in Lully's time, this was the beginnings of the so called opera repertoire. There was a repertoire of operas that Lully wrote, and you can see here a work like Thésée. It was first performed in 1675. Last performed in 1779, and it was in the repertoire for 104 years. Now this only happened in the rarefied world of Versailles. That these, these operas, so it was, it was like, you know, having a certain number of television channels. Probably Louis would say, Oh, let's have Prosperine. You know, remember that one? And so they then did it and then clocked up a few more years. It was in being performed for 78 years. So instead of constant. So in that sense, Lully was also kind of a good strategist and businessman. I imagine he wanted to be out there dancing, not sitting at his desk writing operas all the time. So he had this little. You know, library of operas, if you will, or repertoire of operas. So this idea of sort of leads into the institutionalized opera house and the idea of an opera repertoire of pieces that you vibe. Right. And so in Italy, was it more just one after the other? Yes, it was much more haphazard as it still is in Italy. And now we're like. We're really stuck in the Versailles, we're doing the Versailles method.
And so he, he, you know, he was, he seemed to me to have been a terrific strategist, businessman, very good at dealing with kings of that hand. He only really made one mistake, which was putting his baton through his foot and dying of gangrene. And he, they were going to amputate the foot because he wouldn't be able to dance.
Linda Lespets
I mean, that's how important it was. It's like, if I can't dance, I'm going to die.
He was a very. So it kind of makes sense that Louis had to sort of recycle the operas.
Stephen Mould
Recycling's a great word.
Linda Lespets
Because, I mean, he had a lot more on his plate. There was, Louis XIV, he just loved to dance. So there was so much dancing. And I imagine that's why ballet was more a thing in France, whereas Italy was, it was all about opera. But Louis was like, oh, yeah. Like he really wanted more ballet as well. So Lully had to do the ballets The the opera as well. He's like look, I don't have time to come up with new operas We're just gonna do these again But then in doing that like each time you redo an opera people will always compare it to another one the one before And they'd have to refine it.
Stephen Mould
I suppose and so you'd So again, coming back to what you were saying about the changes in thought between the Renaissance and the Baroque and so forth, it was probably more about, I mean, if you think of an opera as being like a variety show, and I'm, I'm being a little silly in saying it, but it was, whatever were the customs of that period. Place, the call for opera, and it was, it was always answering a demand was for something that fulfilled the needs of a court or a ruler in terms of providing a suitable entertainment and I kind of, I guess the advantage of opera was that it was one, a one stop entertainment, that you got a bit of music, you got, you got a bit of recited TV kind of spoken drama, you got a fun overture, people got up and danced in, in the, in the ballet bits. So in a, in a sense it was a kind of something for everyone. So the primary function of opera, as far as I can see, is that it has always answered a social need and in doing that it's sometimes been a social, delivered a social critique as well.
Linda Lespets
And so in, in Venice, when it was like, you were saying it's all the mixture of classes in France, that was not the case, was it? Because it was in Versailles?
Stphen Mould
No, this was, this was much more. So, so all of the themes of the of the Lully operas are, I believe, classical. Yeah. Because they're catered for the, noble class. Yes. And, and so this is like, you know, if you go into the Louvre today and see all those big historical paintings of ancient times, it's like the current Monarch is in this sort of very European thinking that there's this line of this lineage and that these great ancient battles that were fought that's what Napoleon thought he was fighting in in the 19th century he had that he was this Roman Emperor yeah he had that that mental sense of that was his that was his world you know he'd read about it and everything and Probably lived it a little bit too much in his head, if you know what I mean. So, all of those things, and then this distant classical world that was somehow they were able to recreate it. It wasn't lost, it was something that they could re find in their everyday life. If only they shut that down. the rest of the world out. And we all know where that ended up. But that's, so this is, these types of pieces are a kind of escapism. Maybe even you know, something like a 17th or 18th century painting come to life with music with it, of this sort of Arcadian sort of aspirations and, and this, this idea that civilization began with the Greeks, which I mean, today we know that that is utter rubbish. But people have clung on to it as a nice idea for a very, very, very long time. So your experience, say you were a French nobleman and you'd seen an opera in Versailles and then you go to Venice, it would be a totally different experience. Completely different. And there was a lot of travel amongst the aristocracy. Yes, so it was constantly being reinvented. With the public opera, you've got maybe not the absolute, you know, penniless lowest of lowest classes, but you've got a mixture of classes, so I would say a whole lot of people in a room for an opera performance, the smell, the amount of noise, the whole thing would be probably Yeah. I mean, I prefer It probably was like a The lighting, I mean there was no electricity right? So it was all candles and It was very, it was very dim lighting compared to Until it caught fire. Until it caught fire, yes.
You know, in music history, if you're an instrumentalist, you say that the most natural and beautiful instrument is the violin. I happen to work in the world of opera, so it's the human voice. And there is probably, in the philosophies, More this idea that the instruments imitate the human voice, which is the God given or natural voice so the violin's beautiful because it sounds like the human voice. So this rise of public opera, I'm sure, I mean, don't know so many examples from the, let's say, the 16th or the 17th, sorry, the 17th or the early 18th century, but you did get to a point where there would be arias that had a solo violin obbligato.
There are some in Mozart.
Linda Lespets
Ah, yeah. And oh I have written here, was opera political?
Stephen Mould
Always. Yes. So that, yeah, so not only was it this amazing spectacle, but it was like it was political as well. Which made it even more, that's an extra level of drama. And look, when everything was going well that was okay, but then it was constantly subject to censorship. Censorship. Verdi could not write an opera without having the libretto past the censors. He wanted La Traviata, which was written in 1851 or 1853, I can't remember which, but the Victor Hugo novella was written at that time. So it was an opera about a courtesan at that time. Verdi was fascinated by it because he was never married to his final, or did they get married? But she was his mistress for years and years and years and years and years and had kind of been an opera singer slash courtesan. So he was fascinated by the subject, since it wasn't having any of that, it had to be set back in the 17th century. Which makes it a lot safer. There was a whole thing with the marriage of Figaro about not having dancing in it. Because, was it Charles II? I always get these people confused, but in Vienna, somebody had died. Maybe Charles I died, I can't remember, but the court, or the king was kind of in mourning, so he said there's to be no dancing on the stage. But also, the marriage of Figaro with all the thing about the, the classes that, that Figaro and Susanna are smarter than the count and the Countess. And the count, having to beg for the Countess’s forgiveness and all this stuff. The play of Behe was setting off. It was like it did not start the French Revolution, but it, it was one of those things that was in the air. It was revolutionary in its ideas, in, its in its ideas, and that was more than just putting on an opera. That was, that was, playing with the politics at the time in a slightly dangerous way. Yeah.
Linda Lespets
With his two sons helping him in the workshop, Giovanni Battista Rogeri is making instruments to order with Pietro and Gio Paolo. This is seen in the workmanship of the instruments. The sons style was slightly different, but this did not stop the father and son from making instruments together. Elements of several people on the one instrument are evident. Giovanni would work with his two sons who over the years grew up. Gio-Paolo in 1667 is thought to have died sometime in his 30s. There is no death certificate for him but at some point he died. Instruments from him just stop. Now, Giovanni's older brother, Pietro Giacomo, married, but over the years it became evident that they would have no children. Pietro worked with his father on orders, taking more and more responsibility in the workshop as his father aged. For now, he would finish the outline of the instrument with his distinctive long hooked corners that were quite different to his father's work. But his father, Giovanni, always insisted on cutting the sound holes. Later, as time went on and his father stopped spending so much time in the workshop, we can see instruments with the same Pietro outline and his own, not his father's, hand in cutting the sound holes. Into the instruments they would glue their label that gave the name of Rogeri, not Rugeri. Even then, people would confuse them. After his name, he added that he was a student of Niccolo Amati, and in the city of Brescia. This is all in Latin, and there's the date. Something his Brescian predecessors did not do.
So now we know just when he made his instruments. Sometime around the late 1690s, when Rogeri was in his mid to late 50s, it looks as though he took on a young apprentice called Gaetano Pasta. Giovanni knew Gaetano's father Bartolomeo Pasta from his days in Cremona when he was working in the Amati workshop in the early 1660s. When Giovanni Rogeri had arrived as a young man, Bartolomeo Pasta was only two years older than him, was finishing up his apprenticeship and about to move to Milan. There was less competition there as Cremona was now bursting at the seams with luthiers. But over the years, being in trade, Giovanni Rogeri and Bartolomeo Pasta may have stayed in contact. His workshop in Milan was going well and he had three sons who had followed their father in the trade. Perhaps three brothers in the one workshop was a bit too much testosterone, especially with sharp tools at hand and delicate instruments to smash. In any case, Gaetano Pasta was in his late teens and out of there. He left for Brescia to work for Rogeri and the strong influence of Rogeri can be seen in his work. His labels are written Milanese, Alevio del Amati di Cremona. But this may have been because it sounded better to be from Cremona and the Amati workshop. Giovanni Rogeri sons were at least 10 years older than Gaetano Pasta, and by this time, a new set of hands in the workshop were welcome. Pasta's move to Brescia may have been to be apprenticed in another workshop, see the world and learn from his dad's friend, who had just happened to have the most successful shop in Brescia at the time, but very soon he met the lovely Caterina Pavarino, or perhaps it was her lovely dowry, being the widow of a late colleague, Stefano Lassigne, who was a violin maker. So at the age of 22, Gaetano Pasta was married to a local girl. Probably inherited a bunch of useful stuff from his wife's first husband, and so, he stays. As time goes on, Pietro Giacomo Rogeri will take over the workshop from his father, making more and more instruments, continuing in his father's style, but exaggerating it with extended trumpeting corners to the instruments and not quite matching the elegance of his father. Giovanni Battista Rogeri would die in 1710 at the age of 68. Over in Cremona, Stradivari was well into his golden period of making. And then 14 years after Giovanni's death, his son Pietro Giacomo would die, bringing an end to the Rogeri workshop in Brescia.
And this brings us to an end of the series on Rogeri and Rugeri. I hope now you can tell the difference between these two makers. They both worked in one of the most exciting and industrious times of instrument making in this part of the world and have drawn influencers and influenced other great makers of this age.
A big thank you to my guests. Stephen Mould and Florian Leonhard for joining me in this episode. And if you have enjoyed these episodes, please tell a friend about it or write a review on the app you have listened to. This does in fact help. And this piece of music you're listening to right now is a live recording of Boccherini by the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Finally, thank you for listening. And I hope to catch you next time on the Violin Chronicles.
Ep 24. Giovanni Battista Rogeri Part I
Episode 28
Tuesday, April 23, 2024 • Duration 42:42
G.B ROGERI PART 1. Giovanni Battista Rogeri has often been confused with other makers such as the Rugeri family, because of his name, and Giovanni Paolo Maggini, because of his working style. Trained in the famous workshop of Nicolo Amati in Cremona, Rogeri set out to make a name for himself in Brescia creating a Cremonese Brescian fusion. Learn all about this often mistaken maker in this first episode on the life of Giovanni Battista Rogeri.
This is the story of Giovanni Battista Rogeri the Cremonese trained violin maker who made it big in Brescia and has since been confused with other makers throughout history. Florian Leonhard talks about the influences Rogeri pulled on and exactly why his instruments have for so long been attributed to Giovanni Paolo Maggini.
Transcript
Far, far away in a place called Silene, in what is now modern day Libya, there was a town that was plagued by an evil venom spewing dragon, who skulked in the nearby lake, wreaking havoc on the local population. To prevent this dragon from inflicting its wrath upon the people of Silene, the leaders of the town offered the beast two sheep every day in an attempt to ward off its reptilian mood swings.
But when this was not enough, they started feeding the scaly creature a sheep and a man. Finally, they would offer the children and the youths of the town to the insatiable beast, the unlucky victims being chosen by lottery. As you can imagine, this was not a long term sustainable option. But then, one day, the dreaded lot fell to the king's daughter. The king was devastated and offered all his gold and silver, if only they would spare his beloved daughter. The people refused, and so the next morning at dawn, the princess approached the dragon's lair by the lake, dressed as a bride to be sacrificed to the hungry animal. It just so happened that a knight who went by the name of St George was passing by at that very moment and happened upon the lovely princess out for a morning stroll. Or so he thought. But when it was explained to him by the girl that she was in fact about to become someone else's breakfast and could he please move on and mind his own business he was outraged on her behalf and refused to leave her side. Either she was slightly unhinged and shouldn't be swanning about lakes so early in the morning all by herself, or at least with only a sheep for protection, or she was in grave danger and definitely needed saving. No sooner had Saint George and the princess had this conversation than they were interrupted by a terrifying roar as the dragon burst forth from the water, heading straight towards the girl. Being the nimble little thing she was, the princess dodged the sharp claws. As she was zigzagging away from danger, George stopped to make the sign of the cross and charged the gigantic lizard, thrusting Ascalon, that was the name of his sword, yep he named it, into the four legged menace and severely wounded the beast. George called to the princess to throw him her girdle, That's a belt type thing, and put it around the dragon's neck. From then on, wherever the young lady walked, the dragon followed like a meek beast. Back to the city of Silene went George, the princess, and the dragon, where the animal proceeded to terrify the people.
Ep 18. Girolamo II Amati, the last of the Amati family of violin makers
Episode 19
Friday, October 13, 2023 • Duration 00:31
GIROLAMO AMATI II. Girolamo II Amati was the last of the Amati family of violin makers in Cremona. He worked along side Antonio Stradivari and the Guarneri family in an intense moment of violin making and musical discovery at the time. Listen to how he fits into the story of the violin and turns out to be more that what he is (or not) remembered for.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthierie in Mircourt. As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with. And in particular, the lives of those who made them. So often when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect, but here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture. So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, famine, and war, but also of love. Artistic genius, revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning, and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.
Welcome to the Amati workshop where over the last 150 years generations of instrument makers have lived and worked and the fourth generation is about to start his apprenticeship with his father who is perhaps the most famous of the family due to his beautiful craftsmanship and innovation of design. I'm talking about Niccolo Amati. In 1660, a young 11 year old Girolamo, Nicolo's son, Amati is taken into the workshop. Up until now, he would have been going to the local parish school, learning to read and write. At home, he would be doing odd jobs in the workshop, helping out his father. But now he was going to start working with him and the other apprentices and workers in the shop for real.
Who would not have been proud to work in the famous Amati workshop that attracted the attention of nobles, royals, and also some of the other local boys in town. Especially one who was five years older than Giolamo Amati, named Antonio Stradivari. Nicolo Amatis son would be spending his days with his father and his assistants. At the moment, his father's employees included Bartolomeo Pasta and Giovanni Battista Rogeri. Around the corner lived and worked close family friends, the Guarneri's. Already they had five children and it looked like more were on the way. Girolamo II, as he is known, would have spent a lot of time with his father's senior assistant, Giovanni Battista Rogeri, whose style was bolder than Nicolo's and his influence can be seen in the work of Girolamo Amati II, who would become the last violin maker of the Amati family.
Free Patreon Episode, how to recognise that violin
Episode 18
Friday, September 29, 2023 • Duration 48:31
For a quick revision of your makers with tips and clues to look out for so you too can recognise their work.
If you would like to hear more so that you too can become more confident in your knowledge of instruments and sound like a pro go to
NICOLO AMATI PART 4. Nicolo finds love, the workshop is full steam ahead and this violin maker has to find creative ways to get family members out of his house so his future bride doesn’t freak out! This is one busy luthier. Follow Nicolo Amati as his family grows and his influence as a violin maker branches throughout Italy and Europe.
In this episode you will also meet a very important family in the story of the violin, the Guarneris, see how their lives overlap with the Amatis as we start to see the beginning of the end of the “house of Amati”
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Lutherie, in Mirecourt.
Welcome back to the story of Nicolò Amati, the third in this generation of violin makers. We now find him in his mid 40s. He has survived the bubonic plague in which he lost many of his family members. He lives in the house his grandfather, Andrea Amati, bought and passed on to his sons. And now Nicolo finds himself with an odd crew of orphaned cousins, nephews, nieces, and siblings to look after post pandemic.
The world in which Nicolo lived was changing dramatically. These were the years that Europeans were arriving in the Americas. There were the Spanish and Portuguese in the south. Up north were the English, Dutch, French, and the Swedes. In 1644, when Nicolo Amati was entering his late 40s, the young Antonio Stradivari was born.
Most likely in Cremona and not far from the Amati home. The question, looking at Nicolo Amati this week is, was he just an artisan at the beck and call of musicians and wealthy patrons, looking to have a collection of instruments for musicians coming to their house or court? Socially speaking, where did Nicolo Amati sit in the greater scheme of things?
And why was it that Luthiers from Cremona had this reputation of producing excellent instruments? Why were they better than any other city in that part of Italy at the time? Rome, Naples and Venice were all important cultural centres then, so what made this relatively small city stand out? Well, in the last episode of the Violin Chronicles, we saw Nicolo Amati surviving the plague and getting on with his life.
Ep 16. Nicolos grand plan or ”Grand Pattern”? The new-age violin part 3
Episode 16
Friday, September 22, 2023 • Duration 39:02
NICOLO AMATI PART 3. Welcome to another episode of “The Violin Chronicles” podcast that delves into the lives and legacies of the world's most renowned artisans and craftsmen. In today's episode, we journey back in time to explore the extraordinary craftsmanship of Nicolo Amati, a name synonymous with the art of violin making.
In this Episode we look at a major turning point in this history of Cremonese violin making that you simply cannot miss.
After the great plague of 1630 Nicolo is picking up the pieces of his life and moving on. Tracing the footsteps of this master luthier we will uncover the secrets behind Nicolo Amati's enduring legacy, a legacy marked by precision, passion, and innovation. From his early years in Cremona, Italy, to the workshop where he meticulously crafted some of the most exquisite violins in history.
We'll also explore his influence on subsequent generations of violin makers, including the revered Stradivari and Guarneri families and how they were so greatly influenced by this master luthier.
Through interviews with experts in the field and insights from contemporary violin makers inspired by Amati's genius, this episode offers a deep dive into the world of stringed instrument craftsmanship. Whether you're a seasoned musician, a lover of fine arts, or simply curious about the magic behind the music, Nicolo Amati's story is sure to captivate your imagination.
So, tune in as we unravel the enchanting tale of Nicolo Amati, the craftsman who transformed wood and strings into timeless works of art that continue to resonate with the world's most discerning musicians and collectors. Get ready for an enriching and harmonious journey through the life and work of this true master of the craft.
Transcript
In the last episode of the Violin Chronicles, something kind of crazy happened. The bubonic plague that swept through northern Italy basically killed every violin maker. Except one, Nicolo Amati, which made him, I suppose, the best violin maker in Italy, right? But all that aside, he was still a very talented craftsman, thankfully.
So just imagine about half the people you know and don't know in your life dying in a very short space of time. There's war, famine, crazy inflation, and pandemic ever looming on the horizon. This is Nicolo's life right now.
Ep 15 Nicolo Amati part 2 The violin that almost wasn’t
Episode 15
Monday, September 11, 2023 • Duration 29:28
NICOLO AMATI PART 2. In this episode of “the Violin Chronicles”, we delve into the life of Nicolo Amati, a name synonymous with the exquisite craftsmanship of violins. Beyond his unparalleled contributions to the world of music, Nicolo Amati's life was marked by profound tragedy during the devastating 1630 bubonic plague that swept through Europe. Join us as we unravel the remarkable tale of a man who not only mastered the art of violin-making but also found strength in the face of unbearable loss.
Nicolo Amati hailed from a renowned family of luthiers, and his violins are celebrated for their delicate craftsmanship and unparalleled tonal quality. Yet, amidst the acclaim and admiration, lies a harrowing chapter of his life that shaped his artistry and resilience.
In this episode, we explore the remarkable transformation of Nicolo Amati, who channeled his grief into creating some of the most exquisite violins the world has ever seen. We delve into the technical brilliance that characterized his work, as well as the emotional depth and resonance of the instruments he crafted during this tumultuous period.
Through the lens of history and musicology, we uncover how Nicolo Amati's journey through tragedy not only preserved the art of violin-making but also enriched it, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire musicians and craftsmen to this day.
Join us as we pay tribute to the indomitable spirit of Nicolo Amati, a master craftsman who found hope and redemption amidst the shadows of a devastating pandemic, leaving us with a priceless musical inheritance that transcends time and tragedy.
Tune in to “The Violin Chronicles” for an insightful exploration of Nicolo Amati's life, artistry, and resilience during the 1630 bubonic plague, a story of triumph over adversity that resonates through the ages.
Transcript
Have you ever heard someone say, this is an Amati Violin? And you've thought, Ooh, wow, that must be old. And then they say, it's a Girolamo Amati or a Nicolo Amati or an Andrea Amati. But by this time, if you're anything like me, you're lost and your mind is wondering, and you can't remember which one of those Amatis it's supposed to be. Is it the grandfather or one of the brothers? Is this the Amati that's supposed to be worth more than the others? And if so, is it the right period in his making? And it is. In the end, you just settle for, it's an Amati and the rest will stay in the murky swamp of information you can't quite remember.
Ep 14 Maggini, the real thing... or a copy, with Florian Leonhard and Benjamin Hebbert
Episode 14
Wednesday, June 28, 2023 • Duration 59:59
G.P MAGGINI PART 2. In the history of violin making Maggini is a must. I speak to two violin experts Florian Leonhard and Benjamin Hebbert about Giovannin Paolo Maggini. Maggini's Brescian style of making violins was very distinctive and an incredible amount of copies of this luthiers work has been copied in the intervening 400 years, the two violin makers I am talking to will shed light on why and how this came about and we will give you some tips on how to recognise a Maggini instrument and make one yourself....perhaps.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthierie, Mircourt. As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with, and in particular, the lives of those who made them. So often, when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect. But here, my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture. So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, famine, and war, but also of love. Artistic genius. Revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.
Welcome back to the story of Giovanni Paolo Maggini. In the first episode about this maker, I have briefly covered his life story. We don't know all that much about this maker during his lifetime, but his influence and style is definitely long lived. And the sheer number of copies of his instruments that have been made in the intervening 400 years is simply staggering. And so in this episode, I will be talking to two experts about why and how Maggini instruments were and are such hot stuff.
To begin with, In these conversations, the mention of the Hills book comes up quite a lot. Let me quickly explain why. W. E. Hills and Sons, if you don't know, was one of the great English violin workshops in London, only to be rivalled by J& A Beares. A bit like what Batman is to Superman. Big players. Did you, did you know, by the way, that Bruce Wayne, Batman's alter ego, is actually the owner of the Daily Planet newspaper, who employs Clark Kent, making Batman technically Superman's boss. I find this fascinating because this is kind of what happens in the story of the Beares and Hills companies, but I digress.
Ep 13. Giovanni Paolo Maggini; his life and the Brescian School of violin making.
Episode 13
Monday, June 26, 2023 • Duration 28:17
G.P MAGGINI PART 1. This is the captivating journey through the life and craftsmanship of Gio Paolo Maggini, a renowned violin maker hailing from Brescia, Italy. Join us as we unravel the legacy of this extraordinary luthier whose instruments continue to mesmerize musicians and collectors worldwide.
Delving into the fascinating world of Gio Paolo Maggini, exploring his innovative techniques, distinctive designs, and the enduring influence he had on the art of violin making. Not much is known about this enigmatic maker but the tragedies and hardships of his life have not deterred from the allure of his violins, celebrated for their robust tonal quality, remarkable projection, and distinctive stylistic workmanship.
Christopher Moore principal Viola of the Melbourn Symphony Orchestra talks to us about his relationship with his Maggini Viola made in Brescia, and the journey he has been on with his four stringed friend.
TRANSCRIPT
Long, long ago in the realm of ancient Italy, a great strapping hero strode upon the earth. His name was Hercules, a mighty warrior favoured by the gods. One day, after crushing grapes in his rock-hard biceps and shaving his chiselled jawline, Hercules embarked for his legendary quest for the Golden Fleece. His path led him eventually to a region near the powerful Po River. In this land, a proud and formidable king named Eurytus ruled with an iron fist. His beautiful daughter, Calliho, possessed a grace and radiance that could rival the sun. When Hercules laid his eyes upon her, his heart was captivated, and he yearned to make her his bride. Yet King Eurytus, blinded by his own ambition, refused the hero's request. He scorned Hercules and cast him away, denying him the hand of his beloved daughter. This act of defiance set in motion a clash of titanic proportions. Determined to prove his worthiness, Hercules faced King Eurytus in a series of gruelling challenges.
With each feat, the hero showcased his immense strength remember the grape crushing biceps and indomitable spirit. But it was a test of unparalleled magnitude that would forever mark the destiny of Brescia. Hercules set his sights on the Mela River. A waterway that flowed through the land. Its currents were wild and untamed, often causing havoc and destruction. Undeterred, the hero summoned his god given might and diverted the course of the river. With Herculean force, Hercules carved a new path for the Mela River, leading it through a marshy and forsaken terrain. The once desolate and waterlogged land now bloomed with life and fertility. It was a transformation of remarkable proportions.
Ep 12. Nicolo Amati, The calm before the storm. Lutherie and beyond!
Episode 12
Monday, June 5, 2023 • Duration 35:57
In which we look into the young life of Nicolo Amati.
NICOLO AMATI PART 1. I talk to Timo-Veikko Valve principal cellist in the Australian Chamber Orchestra who plays on an Amati Cello with a fascinating past.
Tracing the extraordinary life and career of Nicolo Amati, one of the most influential violin makers in history. Join us as we delve into the early years of this legendary craftsman, uncovering the formative experiences and remarkable craftsmanship that laid the foundation for his illustrious career.
Looking into Nicolo Amati's life, exploring the influences, techniques, and artistic vision that shaped his path as a violin maker. From his apprenticeship under his father, Girolamo Amati, to his explorations of innovative designs and meticulous craftsmanship, we unravel the milestones that propelled Nicolo Amati to prominence.
Join us as we uncover the triumphs and challenges Nicolo Amati faced throughout his career, the collaborations with renowned musicians of his time, and the legacy he left for generations of violin makers to come. Explore the craftsmanship, precision, and artistic finesse that made Nicolo Amati a true master of his craft.
Transcript
The man known by many in the streets of Cremona, or the poor houses, went by the name of Omobono, or Good Man. As he crossed the Piazza del Commune, he stopped to give a coin to a beggar, huddled in a corner, and continued on to his destination. He was visiting a family that had fallen on hard times and were in dire need of help, help that he could give them.
Omobono Tucenghi was a tailor and fabric merchant who lived in Cremona in the 12th century. His whole life he had felt compassion for those less fortunate, and a need to make a difference in the world in which he found himself. More days than not, you could find Omobono distributing alms from his seemingly bottomless purse to the poor and needy of Cremona, helping all those who crossed his path.
Over time, Omobono's need to help others did not diminish, quite the opposite in fact, and in his 50s, he decided to stop his trade altogether to dedicate himself to good works. The only fly in the ointment appears to have been his family. His wife and children were not too keen on their father and husband giving away the family fortune to apparently random strangers he found on the street. But this did not deter him as he continued on helping those in need, giving money from his purse that was always full of coins and never emptied by divine providence, and attending Mass every evening. One of these evenings, in the church of St. Giles, On a cool November night, he sang Gloria for the last time, crossed his arms over his chest and fell to the ground. At first, no one noticed the devout Omobono, but when the time came for him to read the Gospels and he did not come forward, his fellow churchgoers approached to find him dead. The citizens of Cremona immediately venerated him as a saint and Sicardo, Bishop of Cremona, personally went to Rome to represent the cause and canonization of Omobono. He wrote in his article “At that time, a simple, very faithful and devoted man lived in Cremona, who was called Omobono. In his death, and with his intercession, God performed many miracles”. Pope Innocent III, satisfied with the official investigation into his life and miracles, canonized Omobonos just after two years, in 1199.
George offered to kill the dragon if they consented to becoming Christian. George is sounding a little bit pushy, I know. But the people readily agreed and 15, 000 men were baptized, including the king. St. George killed the dragon, slicing off its head with his trusty sword, Ascalon, and it was carried out of the city on four ox carts. The king built a church to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. George on the site where the dragon was slain and a spring flowed from its altar with water that it is said would cure all diseases.
This is the story of Saint George and the Princess. It is a classic story of good versus evil, and of disease healing miracles that would have spoken to the inhabitants of 17th century Brescia. The scene depicting Saint George and the Princess is painted in stunning artwork by Antonio Cicognata and was mounted on the wall of the Church of San Giorgio. Giovanni Battista Rogeri gazed up at this painting as family and friends, mainly of his bride Laura Testini, crowded into the church of San Giorgio for his wedding. Giovanni was 22 and his soon to be wife, 21, as they spoke their vows in the new city he called home. He hoped to make his career in this town making instruments for the art loving Brescians, evidence of which could be seen in the wonderful artworks in such places as this small church. Rogeri would live for the next 20 years in the parish of San Giorgio. The very same George astride an impressive white stallion in shining armour, his head surrounded by a golden halo. He is spearing the dragon whilst the princess calmly watches on clad in jewels with long red flowing robes in the latest fashion. In the background is the city of Brescia itself, reminding the viewer to remember that here in their city they too must fight evil and pray for healing from disease ever present in the lives of the 17th century Brescians.
Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthierie in Mircourt. As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with, and in particular, the lives of those who made them. So often when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect, but here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture. So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, famine, and war, but also of love. Artistic genius. Revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning and bravery, that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.
Welcome to this first episode on the life of Giovanni Battista Rogeri. After having spent the last few episodes looking at the life of the Ruggeri family, we will now dive into the life of that guy who almost has the same name, but whose work and contribution to violin making, you will see, is very different. And we will also look at just why, for so many years, his work has been attributed erroneously to another Brescian maker.
The year was 1642, and over the Atlantic, New York was called New Amsterdam. The Dutch and the English were having scuffles over who got what. Was it New England? New Netherlands? In England, things were definitely heating up, and in 1642, a civil war was in the process of breaking out. On one side there were the parliamentarians, including Oliver Cromwell, and on the other side were the Royalists, who were the supporters of King Charles I. This war would rage on for the next 20 years, and not that anyone in England at this time really cared, but the same year that this war broke out, a baby called Giovanni Battista Rogeri was born in Bologna, perhaps, and for the next 20 years he grew up in this city ruled by the Popes of Italy. He too would witness firsthand wars that swept through his hometown. He would avoid dying of the dreaded plague, sidestep any suspicion by the Catholic church in this enthusiastic time of counter reformation by being decidedly non Protestant. And from an early age, he would have been bathed in the works of the Renaissance and now entering churches being constructed in the Baroque style.
Bologna was a city flourishing in the arts, music and culture, with one of the oldest universities in the country. But for the young Giovanni Battista Rogeri, to learn the trade of lutai, or violin maker, the place he needed to be was, in fact, 155. 9 km northwest of where he was right now. And if he took the A1, well, today it's called the A1, and it's an ancient Roman road so I'm assuming it's the same one, he could walk it in a few days. Destination Cremona, and more precisely, the workshop of Niccolo Amati. An instrument maker of such renown, it is said that his grandfather, Andrea Amati, made some of the first violins and had royal orders from the French king himself. To be the apprentice of such a man was a grand thing indeed.
So we are in the mid 1600s and people are embracing the Baroque aesthetic along with supercharged architecture and paintings full of movement, colour and expression. There is fashion, and how the wealthy clients who would buy instruments in Cremona dressed was also influenced by this movement.
Emily Brayshaw.
You've got these ideas of exaggeration of forms and you can exaggerate the human body with, you know, things like high heels and wigs and ribbons and laces. And you've got a little bit of gender bending happening, men wearing makeup and styles in the courts. You know, you've got dress and accessories challenging the concept of what's natural, how art can compete with that and even triumph over the natural perhaps. You've got gloves trimmed with lace as well. Again, we've got a lot of lace coming through so cravats beauty spot as well coming through. You've got the powder face, the, the wig. Yeah. The makeup, the high heels. Okay. That's now. I actually found a lovely source, an Italian tailor from Bergamo during the Baroque era. The Italians like really had incredibly little tailors and tailoring techniques. And during this sort of Baroque era. He grumbles that since the French came to Italy not to cut but to ruin cloth in order to make fashionable clothes, it's neither possible to do our work well nor are our good rules respected anymore. We have completely lost the right to practice our craft. Nowadays though who disgracefully ruin our art and practice it worse than us are considered the most valuable and fashionable tailors.
So we've got like this real sort of shift. You know, from Italian tailoring to sort of French and English tailoring as well.
And they're not happy about it.
No, they are not happy about it. And this idea that I was talking about before, we've got a lovely quote from an Italian fashion commentator sort of around the mid 17th century. His name's Lam Pugnani, and he mentions the two main fashions. meaning French and Spanish, the two powers that were ruling the Italian peninsula and gradually building their global colonial empires. And he says, “the two main fashions that we have just recorded when we mentioned Spanish and French fashion, enable me to notice strangeness, if not a madness residing in Italian brains, that without any reason to fall in love so greatly Or better, naturalize themselves with one of these two nations and forget that they are Italian. I often hear of ladies who come from France, where the beauty spot is in use not only for women, but also for men, especially young ones, so much so that their faces often appear with a strange fiction darkened and disturbed, not by beauty spots, but rather by big and ridiculous ones, or so it seems somebody who is not used to watching similar mode art”.
So, you know, we've got people commentating and grumbling about these influences of Spain and France on Italian fashion and what it means to be Italian. When we sort of think about working people, like there's this trope in movie costuming of like peasant brown, you know, and sort of ordinary, you know, people, perhaps ordinary workers, you know, they weren't necessarily dressed. In brown, there are so many different shades of blue. You know, you get these really lovely palettes of like blues, and shades of blue, and yellows, and burgundies, and reds, as well as of course browns, and creams, and these sorts of palettes. So yeah, they're quite lovely.
And I'm imagining even if you didn't have a lot of money, there's, I know there's a lot of flowers and roots and barks that you can, you can dye yourself. Yeah, definitely. And people did, people did. I can imagine if I was living back there and we, you know, we're like, Oh, I just, I want this blue skirt. And you'd go out and you'd get the blue skirt. The flowers you needed and yeah, definitely. And people would, or, you know, you can sort of, you know, like beetroot dyes and things like that. I mean, and it would fade, but then you can just like, you know, quickly dye it again. Yeah, or you do all sorts of things, you know, and really sort of inject colour and, people were also, you know, people were clean. To, you know, people did the best they could keep themselves clean, keep their homes clean. You know, we were talking about boiling linens to keep things fresh and get rid of things like fleas and lice. And people also used fur a lot in fashion. And you'd often like, you know, of course you'd get the wealthy people using the high end furs, but sometimes people would, you know, use cat fur in Holland, for example, people would trim their fur. Their garments and lined their garments with cat fur. Why not? Because, you know, that's sort of what they could afford. It was there. Yeah, people also would wear numerous layers of clothing as well because the heating wasn't always so great. Yeah. You know, at certain times of the year as well. So the more layers you had, the better. The more, the more warm and snug you could be. As do we in Sydney. Indeed. Indeed. Canadians complain of the biting cold here. I know. And it's like, dude, you've got to lay about us. It's a humid cold. It's awful. It's horrible. It just goes through everything. Anyway. It's awful. Yeah.
So at the age of 19, Giovanni Battista Rogeri finds himself living in the lively and somewhat crowded household of Niccolo Amati. The master is in his early 60s and Giovanni Battista Rogeri also finds himself in the workshop alongside Niccolo Amati's son Girolamo II Amati, who is about 13 or 14 at this time. Cremona is a busy place, a city bursting with artisans and merchants.
The Amati Workshop is definitely the place to be to learn the craft, but it soon becomes clear as Giovanni Battista Rogeri looks around himself in the streets that, thanks to Nicolo Amati, Cremona does indeed have many violin makers, and although he has had a good few years in the Amati Workshop, Learning and taking the young Girolamo II Amati the second under his wing more and more as his father is occupied with other matters. He feels that his best chances of making a go of it would be better if he moved on and left Cremona and her violin makers. There was Girolamo II Amati who would take over his father's business. There were the Guarneri's around the corner. There was that very ambitious Antonio Stradivari who was definitely going to make a name for himself. And then there were the Rugeri family, Francesco Rugeri and Vincenzo Rugeri whose name was so familiar to his, people were often asking if they were related. No, it was time to move on, and he knew the place he was headed.
Emily Brayshaw.
So, you've also got, like, a lot of artisans moving to Brescia as well, following the Venetian ban on foreign Fustian sold in the territory. So Fustian is, like, a blend of various things. Stiff cotton that's used in padding. So if you sort of think of, for example someone like Henry VIII, right? I can't guarantee that his shoulder pads back in the Renaissance were from Venetian Fustian, but they are sort of topped up and lined with this really stiff Fustian to give like these really big sort of, Broad shoulders. That's how stiff this is. So, Venice is banning foreign fustians, which means that Cremona can't be sold in these retail outlets.
So, Ah, so, and was that sort of That's fabric, but did that mirror the economy that Brescia was doing better than Cremona at this point? Do you, do you think? Because of that?
Well, people go where the work is. Yeah. Cause it's interesting because you've got Francesco Ruggeri, this family that lives in Cremona. Yeah. And then you have about 12 to 20 years later, you have another maker, Giovanni Battista Rogeri. Yeah. He is apprenticed to Niccolo Amati. So he learns in Cremona. And then he's in this city full of violin makers, maybe, and there's this economic downturn, and so it was probably a very wise decision. He's like, look, I'm going to Brescia, and he goes to Brescia. He would have definitely been part of this movement of skilled workers and artisans to Brescia at that time, sort of what happening as well. So, you know, there's all sorts of heavy tolls on movements of goods and things like that. And essentially it collapses. And they were, and they were heavily taxed as well. Yeah, definitely. Definitely.
It was the fabulous city of Brescia. He had heard stories of the city's wealth, art, music and culture, famous for its musicians and instrument makers. But the plague of 1630 had wiped out almost all the Luthiers and if ever there was a good time and place to set up his workshop, it was then and there. So bidding farewell to the young Girolamo Amati, the older Nicolò Amati and his household, where he had been living for the past few years. The young artisan set out to make a mark in Brescia, a city waiting for a new maker, and this time with the Cremonese touch.
Almost halfway between the old cathedral and the castle of Brescia, you will find the small yet lovely Romanesque church of San Giorgio. Amidst paintings and frescoes of Christ, the Virgin and the Saints, there stands a solemn yet nervous young couple, both in their early twenties. Beneath the domed ceiling of the church, the seven angels of the Apocalypse gaze down upon them, a constant reminder that life is fragile, and that plague, famine and war are ever present reminders of their mortality. But today is a happy one. The young Giovanni Battista Rogeri is marrying Laura Testini. And so it was that Giovanni Battista Rogeri moved to Brescia into the artisanal district and finds himself with a young wife, Laura Testini. She is the daughter of a successful leather worker and the couple most probably lived with Laura's family. Her father owned a house with eight rooms and two workshops. This would have been the perfect setup for the young Giovanni to start his own workshop and get down to business making instruments for the people of Brescia. He could show off his skills acquired in Cremona, and that is just what he did. Since the death of Maggini, there had not been any major instrument making workshops in Brescia.
Florian Leonhard
Here I talk to Florian Leonhard about Giovanni Battista Rogeri's move to Brescia and his style that would soon be influenced by not only his Cremonese training, but the Brescian makers such as Giovanni Paolo Maggini
I mean, I would say in 1732. The Brescian violin making or violin making was dead for a bit, so until the arrival of Giovanni Battista Rogeri, who came with a completely harmonised idea, into town and then adopted features of Giovanni Paolo Maggini and Gasparo da Salo. I cannot say who, probably some Giovanni Paolo Maggini violins that would have been more in numbers available to him, have influenced his design of creating an arching. It's interesting that he instantly picked up on that arching because Giovanni Battista Rogeri always much fuller arched. The arching rises much earlier from the purfling up. Right. So he came from the Cremonese tradition, but he adopted the, like, the Brescian arching idea. He, he came from Niccolo Amati and has learned all the finesse of construction, fine making, discipline, and also series production. He had an inside mould, and he had the linings, and he had the, all the blocks, including top and bottom block. And he nailed in the neck, so he did a complete package of Cremonese violin making and brought that into Brescia, but blended it in certain stylistics and sometimes even in copies with the Brescian style.
For a long time, we have had Before dendrochronology was established, the Giovanni Paolo Magginis were going around and they were actually Giovanni Battista Rogeris.
Brescia at this time was still a centre flourishing in the arts and despite the devastation of the plague almost 30 years ago, it was an important city in Lombardy and was in the process of undergoing much urban development and expansion. When Giovanni Rogeri arrived in the city, There were efforts to improve infrastructure, including the construction of public buildings, fortifications and roads. The rich religious life of the city was evident, and continued to be a centre of religious devotion at this time, with the construction and renovation of churches in the new Baroque style. The elaborate and ornate designs were not only reserved for churches, but any new important building projects underway in the city at this time. If you had yourself the palace in the Mula, you were definitely renovating in the Baroque style. And part of this style would also be to have a collection of lovely instruments to lend to musicians who would come and play in your fancy new pad. Strolling down the colourful streets lined with buildings covered in painted motifs, people were also making a statement in their choice of clothing.
Another thing that the very wealthy women were wearing are these shoes called Chopines, which are like two foot tall. And so you've got like this really exaggerated proportions as well. Very tall. I mean. Very tall, very wide. So taking up a lot of space.
I'm trying to think of the door, the doorways that would have to accommodate you.
Yes.
How do you fit through the door?
So a lot of the time women would have to stoop. You would need to be escorted by either servants. And then you'd just stand around. I did find some discussions of fashion in the time as well. Commentators saying, well, you know, what do we do in northern France? We either, in northern Italy, sorry, we either dress like the French, we dress like the Spanish, why aren't we dressing like Italians? And kind of these ideas of linking national identity through the expression of dress in fashion. So, we're having this
But did you want to, was it fashionable to be to look like the French court or the, to look like the Spanish court.
Well, yeah, it was, it was fashionable. And this is part of what people are commenting about as well. It's like, why are we bowing to France? Why are we bowing to Italy? Sorry. Why are we bowing to Spain? Why don't we have our own national Italian identity? And we do see like little variations in dress regionally as well. You know, people don't always. Dress exactly how the aristocracy are dressing. You'll have your own little twists, you'll have your own little trimmings, you'll have your own little ways and styles. And there are theories in dress about trickle down, you know, like people are trying to emulate the aristocracy, but they're not always. Trying to do that. Well, yeah, it's not practical if you're living, you know, if you're and you financially you can't either like some of these Outfits that we're talking about, you know with one of these hugh like the Garde in Fanta worn by Marie Theresa that outfit alone would have cost in today's money like more than a million dollars You can't copy these styles of dress, right? So what you've got to do is, you know, make adjustments. And also like a lot of women, like you, these huge fashion spectacles worn at court. They're not practical for working women either. So we see adaptations of them. So women might have a pared down silhouette and wear like a bum roll underneath their skirts and petticoats and over the top of the stays.
And that sort of gives you a little nod to these wider silhouettes, but you can still move, you can still get your work done, you can still, you know, do things like that. So that's sort of what's happening there.
Okay, so now we find a young Giovanni Battista Rogeri. He has married a local girl and set up his workshop. Business will be good for this maker, and no doubt thanks to the latest musical craze to sweep the country. I'm talking about opera. In the last episodes on Francesco Ruggeri, I spoke to Stephen Mould, the composer. at the Sydney Conservatorium about the beginnings of opera and the furore in which it swept across Europe. And if you will remember back to the episodes on Gasparo Da Salo at the beginning of the Violin Chronicles, we spoke about how Brescia was part of the Venetian state. This is still the case now with Giovanni Battista Rogeri and this means that the close relationship with Venice is a good thing for his business. Venice equals opera and opera means orchestras and where orchestras are you have musicians and musicians have to have an instrument really, don't they?
Here is Stephen Mould explaining the thing that is opera and why it was so important to the music industry at the time and instrument makers such as our very own Giovanni Battista Rogeri.
Venice as a place was a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk. Everything was there, and it was a very, it was a very modern type of city, a trading city, and it had a huge emerging, or more than emerging, middle class. People from the middle class like entertainment of all sorts, and in Venice they were particularly interested in rather salacious entertainments, which opera absolutely became. So the great thing of this period was the rise of the castrato. Which they, which, I mean, it was, the idea of it is perverse and it was, and they loved it. And it was to see this, this person that was neither man nor, you know, was in a way sexless on the stage singing and, and often singing far more far more virtuosically than a lot of women, that there was this, there was this strange figure. And that was endlessly fascinating. They were the pop stars of their time. And so people would go to the opera just to hear Farinelli or whoever it was to sing really the way. So this is the rise of public opera.
As opposed to the other version.
Well, Orfeo, for example, took place in the court at Mantua, probably in the, in the room of a, of a palace or a castle, which wouldn't have been that big, but would have been sort of specially set up for those performances. If I can give you an idea of how. Opera might have risen as it were, or been birthed in Venice.
Let's say you've got a feast day, you know, a celebratory weekend or few days. You're in the piazza outside San Marco. It's full of people and they're buying things, they're selling things, they're drinking, they're eating, they're having a good time. And all of a sudden this troupe of strolling players comes into the piazza and they start to put on a show, which is probably a kind of comedia dell'arte spoken drama. But the thing is that often those types of traveling players can also sing a bit and somebody can usually play a lute or some instrument. So they start improvising. Probably folk songs. Yeah. And including that you, so you've kind of already there got a little play happening outside with music. It's sort of like a group of buskers in Martin place. It could be very hot. I mean, I've got a picture somewhere of this. They put a kind of canvas awning with four people at either corner, holding up the canvas awning so that there was some sort of shade for the players. Yeah. That's not what you get in a kid's playground these days. You've almost got the sense. Of the space of a stage, if you then knock on the door of one of the palazzi in, in Venice and say to, to the, the local brew of the, of the aristocracy, look, I don't suppose we could borrow one of your rooms, you know, in your, in your lovely palazzo to, to put on a, a, a show. Yeah, sure. And maybe charged, maybe didn't, you know, and, and so they, the, the very first, it was the San Cassiano, I think it was the theatre, the theatre, this, this room in a, in a palace became a theatre. People went in an impresario would often commission somebody to write the libretto, might write it himself. Commissioner, composer, and they put up some kind of a stage, public came in paid, so it's paying to come and see opera. Look, it's, it's not so different to what had been going on in England in the Globe Theatre. And also the, the similar thing to Shakespeare's time, it was this sort of mixing up of the classes, so everything was kind of mixed together. And that's, that's why you get different musical genres mixed together. For example, an early something like Papaya by Monteverdi, we've just done it, and from what, from what I can gather from the vocal lines, some of the comic roles were probably these street players, who just had a limited vocal range, but could do character roles very well, play old women, play old men, play whatever, you know, caricature type roles. Other people were Probably trained singers. Some of them were probably out of Monteverdi's chorus in San Marco, and on the, on when they weren't singing in church, they were over playing in the opera, living this kind of double life. And That’s how opera started to take off. Yeah, so like you were saying, there are different levels.
So you had these classical Greek themes, which would be more like, you're an educated person going, yes, yes, I'm seeing this classical Greek play, but then you're someone who'd never heard of Greek music. The classics. They were there for the, you know, the lively entertainment and the sweet performers.
Yes. So the, the, the Commedia dell'arte had, had all these traditional folk tales. Then you've got all of the, all of the ancient myths and, and, and so forth. Papaya was particularly notable because it was the first opera that was a historical opera. So it wasn't based on any ancient myths or anything.
It was based on the life of Nero and Papaya. And so they were real life a few hundred years before, but they were real. It was a real historical situation that was being enacted on the stage. And it was a craze. That's the thing to remember is. You know, these days people have to get dressed up and they have to figure out how they get inside the opera house and they're not sure whether to clap or not and all of this sort of stuff and there's all these conventions surrounding it. That wasn't what it was about. It was the fact that the public were absolutely thirsty for this kind of entertainment. Yeah. And I was seeing the first, so the first opera house was made in in about 1637, I think it was. And then by the end of Monteverdi's lifetime, they said there were 19 opera houses in Venice. It was, like you were saying, a craze that just really took off. They had a few extra ones because they kept burning down. That's why one of them, the one that, that is, still exists today is called La Fenice. It keeps burning down as well, but rising from the ashes. Oh, wow. Like the, yeah, with the lighting and stuff, I imagine it's So, yeah, because they had candles and they had, you know, Yeah, it must have been a huge fire hazard. Huge fire hazard, and all the set pieces were made out of wood or fabric and all of that. Opera houses burning down is another big theme. Oh yeah, it's a whole thing in itself, yeah. So then you've got These opera troupes, which are maybe a little, something a little bit above these commedia dell'arte strolling players.
So, you've got Italy at that time. Venice was something else. Venice wasn't really like the rest of Italy. You've got this country which is largely agrarian, and you've got this country where people are wanting to travel in order to have experiences or to trade to, to make money and so forth. And so, first of all if an opera was successful, it might be taken down to Rome or to Naples for people to hear it. You would get these operas happening, happening in different versions. And then of course, there was this idea that you could travel further through Europe. And I, I think I have on occasion, laughingly. a couple of years ago said that it was like the, the latest pandemic, you know, it was, but it was this craze that caught on and everybody wanted to experience.
Yeah. So you didn't, you didn't have to live in Venice to see the opera. They, they moved around. It was, it was touring. Probably more than we think. That, that, that whole period, like a lot of these operas were basically unknown for about 400 years. It's only, the last century or so that people have been gradually trying to unearth under which circumstances the pieces were performed. And we're still learning a lot, but the sense is that there was this sort of network of performers and performance that occurred.
And one of the things that Monteverdi did, which was, which was different as well, is that before you would have maybe one or two musicians accompanying, and he came and he went, I'm taking them all.
And he created sort of, sort of the first kind of orchestras, like lots of different instruments. They were the prototypes of, of orchestras. And Look, the bad news for your, the violin side of your project, there was certainly violins in it. It was basically a string contingent. That was the main part of the orchestra. There may have been a couple of trumpets, may have been a couple of oboe like instruments. I would have thought that for Venice, they would have had much more exotic instruments. But the, the, the fact is at this time with the public opera, what became very popular were all of the stage elements. And so you have operas that have got storms or floods or fires. They simulated fires. A huge amount of effort went into painting these very elaborate sets and using, I mean, earlier Leonardo da Vinci had been experimenting with a lot of how you create the effect of a storm or an earthquake or a fire or a flood. There was a whole group of experts who did this kind of stuff.
For the people at the time, it probably looked like, you know, going to the, the, the first big movie, you know, when movies first came out in the 20s, when the talkies came out and seeing all of these effects and creating the effects. When we look at those films today, we often think, well, that's been updated, you know, it's out of date, but they found them very, very, very compelling.
What I'm saying is the money tended to go on the look of the thing on the stage and the orchestra, the sound of the orchestras from what we can gather was a little more monochrome. Of course, the other element of the orchestra is the continuo section. So you've got the so called orchestra, which plays during the aria like parts of the opera, the set musical numbers. And you've got the continuo, which is largely for the rest of the team. And you would have had a theorbo, you would have had maybe a cello, a couple of keyboard instruments, lute. It basically, it was a very flexible, what’s available kind of.
Yeah, so there was they would use violines, which was the ancestor of the double bass. So a three stringed one and violins as well. And that, and what else I find interesting is with the music, they would just, they would give them for these bass instruments, just the chords and they would improvise sort of on those. Chords. So every time it was a little bit different, they were following a Yes. Improvisation. Yeah. So it was kind of original. You could go back again and again.
It wasn't exactly the same. And look, that is the problem with historical recreation. And that is that if you go on IMSLP, you can actually download the earliest manuscript that we have of Papaya. And what you've got is less than chords, you've got a baseline. Just a simple bass line, a little bit of figuration to indicate some of the chords, and you've got a vocal line. That's all we have. We don't actually know, we can surmise a whole lot of things, but we don't actually know anything else about how it was performed.
I imagine all the bass instruments were given that bass line, and like, Do what you want with that.
So yeah, it would, and it would have really varied depending on musicians. Probably different players every night, depending on, you know, look, if you go into 19th century orchestras, highly unreliable, huge incidents of drunkenness and, you know, different people coming and going because they had other gigs to do. Like this is 19th century Italian theatres at a point where, you know, It should have been, in any other country, it would have, Germany had much better organized you know, orchestral resources and the whole thing. So it had that kind of Italian spontaneity and improvised, the whole idea of opera was this thing that came out of improvisation. Singers also, especially the ones that did comic roles, would probably improvise texts, make them a bit saucier than the original if they wanted for a particular performance. All these things were, were open.
And this brings us to an end of this first episode on Giovanni Battista Rogeri. We have seen the young life of this maker setting out to make his fortune in a neighbouring city, alive with culture and its close connections to Venice and the world of opera.
I would like to thank my lovely guests Emily Brayshaw, Stephen Mould and Florian Leonhardt for joining me today.
As far as business went, the demands for violins were still strong from home and abroad. Whilst Nicolo Amati’s career was in full swing. North of Italy, a Dutch scientist had just invented the first pendulum clock, and this would forever have an impact on music, as it would lead to equal temperament. Simplified, that really just means that everyone agreed on the speed of the music being played, more or less. Music was being written about and innovations were being adapted to help musicians and the musical environment. There was the printing press that was making it possible for music to travel, opening up exciting new horizons for musicians. And in the eye of this musical storm, slowly but surely, our violin makers, cutting, scraping, plaining and gouging away, were making instruments for this new market. Music was on the road to becoming standardized. Equal temperament and a printed score. You could play a piece of music in London, Paris or Florence and it would be more or less the same, hopefully. While Italy and France were often at odds, the dance and music loving King Louis XIV could only have helped the industry of instrument making with his famed 24 violins in his royal court.
Benjamin Hebert, expert and dealer in Oxford.
1661 is when Lully comes to the French court, and he creates the Petit Band, where he gathers around for the first time since the Valois dynasty, Italian musicians playing, playing French music informed by the new Italian ways of thinking, and there is one of these French court Amatis, where we can absolutely say that the new front, the restoration, is right on the nail for Lully taking these things out of the cupboard and saying, hey, we've already got some great instruments to do this with. By which time, you know, the smoke has cleared. It's history that these have got Valois connections, and it's not as offensive as it would have been to the Huguenot king and his court of people who'd been, you know, routinely assassinated and murdered and genocidal maniac by, uh, Catherine de Medici's henchmen.
Yeah, I was, I was reading that about three million people died in the wars of religion. And I sort of did the equivalence for today for the French population, and that would be like today, nine million people dying in France. Like it's,
it's huge. It's pretty, it's pretty huge. Um, sorry, the corners. talking about that it softened. It's because like they were in a line and you didn't want to get poked by the violin next to you.
Is that it?
I did a project years ago where some people in France produced 24 violins and they didn't do any bows. And what we ended up with was a bow, which is about a foot long. Maybe, you know. Maybe 14 inches or so. Really diddy bow. And actually what we decided, we then subsequently found that Pochette, so French dancing master's fiddles in the Victorian Albert Museum, there's one in a beautiful red leather case with its bow which we actually took as a kind of prototype for everything and then it suddenly hit us, the reason why a Pochette is the size that it is so that it's the same size as the bow. And the bow is the same bow that you'd play on a proper violin if you're doing dance stuff. And the way that you've got to imagine it is that everybody in France in the court has got these incredibly tight costumes. The rudest thing that I could do to you if we're French is, instead of sticking two fingers up at you or whatever, is to actually raise my elbow sharply in your direction. Because it means, it means eff you so much that I'm actually willing to rip my, my costume in order to, in order to show my anger towards you. So that's how the courtiers dress, the musicians dress the same way. It's like, like, in like those Shakespeare things where they rip their shirts off, like, Like that.
Pretty much, yeah, exactly. So, I mean, you know, all stuff is so expensive, but you're absolutely corseted into these things. If you, if you think about, you know, kind of having your elbows down against your rib cage and trying to play a violin that way. on both, on both sides. And then here's the thing. If you, if you let your, your wrists go upwards so that your thumb sits nicely on the hair, then actually get this very staccatoish playing position where you've got short notes, you've got a lot of tension. Rather like playing a viola da gamba, in the way that the bow is twisted onto the string. And it just, each note is explosive and short. And you look at this early French stuff, and it's often got a drum, and you've got the same staccato that the drum is able to give you. Just, you know, short, tight notes. And so everything came together. And then the icing on the cake was the very few images that we saw, had people so close together that you couldn't stick your, you just couldn't stick your elbow in somebody else's face because, because there's not the room to do it. So it all, it all sort of magically came together that, you know, there's a really specific idea. And even an idea to, to the point that, you know, We know that the French had a unique sound and that, you know, this was something which was highly revered. But we also know, I mean, the Talbot manuscript in England in the 1690s, 1710s, it actually gives two measurements for a dance bow and a dance flute. Sonata bow. And, you know, I can bet you that Lully and his mates, after an exhausting night doing, doing, uh, you know, French court music, probably just loosened off their blouses, went down to the pub, picked up their sonata bows, and really let rip the way that they wanted to, because this was the difference.
But this is what I think emerges out of You know, right out of that start.
Emily Brayshaw, fashion historian.
Yeah, so the, the, the King's 24 violins, they would have, um, livery. They had that paid for them. Yes. Um, I don't, maybe they had wigs. Yeah, they would have. They would have definitely had wigs, um, their shoes, everything. So what's interesting with livery too is that, um, in a lot of these eras, It was, uh, super expensive, so if you could afford to dress all your servants in livery, you would often do it in these luxury fabrics. But what, uh, we, we have examples that, uh, extend in museums. What would happen though is they would deliberately cut them and make them. Um, so by cut, I mean like pattern and construction and stuff to be outside what was fashionable. And that meant that the servants, uh, Couldn't wear them on their days off. So you had to wear your livery because, you know, otherwise you'd be there in the tavern or whatever. And it's like, oh, you're going out in your work clothes.
Yeah. It was like a uniform.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, you're paying for these specific garments as well. Closer to home, opera was taking off like a frog in a sock. Forget the French and their ballet, the Italians had opera and all the trimmings that came with it. And so, work was plentiful. Girolamo was happily working away in the knowledge that one day this prestigious workshop would be his. Cremona had by this time been under Habsburg Spanish occupation for three generations. Foreign taxes were high and the town's once prosperous and internationally renowned textile industry was in decline. Nicolo Amati continued to be the sought after maestro and workshop assistants came and went. Some spoke the Cremonese dialect, others Paduan, and a few even came from Germanic countries. Antonio Stradivari and Giovanni Battista Rogeri were never recorded as apprentices in the census, living in the Amati household, but if they were locals, they would not have needed to be lodged with the master. They may have learnt under Nicolo in the Amati workshop, and that would be a logical explanation for their making style. In all, Nicolo Amati had about 18 apprentices over a 40 year period and mostly from other instrument making cities such as Padua, Bologna, Milan, and Venice. Those who could would return to their homes and continue making in the Amati style, transforming it into a standard or school of making.
Girolamo Amati II assisted his aging father until about 1670, when Nicolo Amati was in his mid seventies Leaving his son to continue working without him, but still using the Nicolo Amati label. He would do this over the next 14 years until his father's death. in 1684. Niccolo Amati's instruments around this time are most likely the work of Girolamo Amati II, but to know for sure, you would need an expert.
When Nicolo Amati was 79 years old, he was still a wealthy man. His daughter Teresa married and he provided her with a 5, 000 lira dowry. To compare with his colleague Andrea Guarneri, when his daughter married, he was only able to give a 1, 300 lira for her dowry. So there. In 1677, Girolamo II was now 28 years old. He married the 14 year old Angela Caritoni, and in the following years, they would have two daughters and a son. Some historians think she could have been older, which would make it a little less creepy. But in any case, Girolamo's story is a bit of a sad one. When Nicolo Amati died in 1684 at the age of 87, things started falling apart. Instruments with Girolamo Amati II label after his father's death are rare. The following year. His wife, Angela, died, and then two years later, his three year old son, also called Nicolo Amati, tragically passes away. His wife and son are buried close by, in the monastery of Corpus Christi, where his eldest daughter will soon begin her novitiate. He seems to have lost his enthusiasm for work. His family were dying, the market for violins was not great, well, not for him anyway. Antonio Stradivari, who had bought a house just around the corner from theirs a few years before his father died, looked like he was doing just fine. And then there were the Guarneri's, also taking whatever business that was left over, leaving him with practically nothing.
Carlo Chiesa, expert and violin maker in Milan.
We know that, uh, Girolamo Amati II was a very good maker, I like as a maker, but, uh, He had, uh, you know
rivalry.
Yeah, rivalry. He had some people working next door to him in the same, the same block, not just the same neighbourhood, but in the same block. And their names were Giuseppe Guarneri and Antonio Stradivari. I’m not sure I would be happy to have Antonio Stradivari working close to me. And that was the situation.
Before that, the Amatis were the only workshop in Cremona. So their economic success was, of course. Also from the fact that they were the only workshop in the year 1690, if you were to take a walk in the parish of San Fustino down one particular street, you would pass the well known Amati house and workshop. Keep going, and you would be at the casa Guarneri a little further on Lived and Antonio Stradivari, who was still working in the Amati style, but really starting to make a name for himself, all open for business. What a street.
In a relatively small city, that is a lot of competition. And Girolamo Amati II just seemed to sink. He quickly spiralled into debt. He had a brilliant plan with one of his brothers to try and sell some of the family's property and goods to pay off said debt. But another brother, Dom Nicolo Amati, obviously appalled that they were running the family business into the ground and then trying to save the sinking ship by selling off the family silver was incensed enough to take them to court and commence bankruptcy proceedings against them. Girolamo and his brother even owed money to one of the Stradivari boys. The family's fortunes had definitely turned.
Benjamin Hebbert.
So I think the story there is, it's almost a story more of Stradivari. And I've, I found a wonderful quote by a guy called Edward Chamberlain in 1683, which is just the year before Nicola Amati dies. And he says, uh, that Cremona violins have not been fetching the prices that they did previously. And it's not a very big quote, but it's like, you know, unfortunately, you know, we've been claiming that Cremonese violins have never, never lost value since they were made. And in 1683, there's an Englishman who's complaining that he can't get the price for them. There's a guy a few years later in about 17 Around 1710, William Corbett, who travels to Cremona, does a deal with Stradivari, brings a load of instruments for the London market, and has to return them all because no one's prepared to pay the prices. And I think there's a lot of economic stuff that's going on. You know, you've got the problem that your biggest competition is your own second hand residual market.
By 1684, when Nicolò Amati dies, there's a heck of a lot of second hand instruments on the market. And you've got to kind of ask why, why bother make another violin at that point. And so Girolamo Amati kind of limps through, but I think limps through because, I mean, I'm sure that the Amatis ran a guild in every sense of the word, because anything that you do, in Italy at that time, is run by a guild. So although there's no formality about any guilds existing, let's be clear about that. You know, here's the head honcho, and he's able to sort of control what everybody else does. And there's this, there's this guy called Stradivari, who is precocious. He makes these decorated instruments, even when, when Nicolo Amati is alive, which are taking the decorative aspect of an instrument to a far greater level. And I think he's probably able to do that because maybe Girolamo Amati II isn't very interested. Niccolo Amati, knows he's getting old and it's like, look, you know, the market's done. It's over. If you think you can make a difference, make a difference. You know, well done you. You know, you see Rooker's harpsichords with been and done by the 1660s. Bolognese lutes were been and done by the 1580s. You know, it keeps on going, you know, things have a cycle. And I think Stradivari is already there to say, I'm going to beat the cycle.
Yeah. So, okay. So you had that lull in the market before. Exactly. And then Stradivari kind of. He's already sort of going, well, I think he's seeing the lull in the market, he's seeing an opportunity for himself, and he's creating things which are more decorative than anything else before because he thinks that there is a market, he can pick up new buyers, he can put himself at that, you know, at the front position of the Cremonese market, and he can largely do that because Girolamo Amati II isn't interested, it doesn't really matter what Nicolo Amati says because Nicolo's already very old. When he passes, Stradivari will be able to do his thing. Maybe things don't whittle off as badly as we think they do, because actually, Girolamo Amati II has the biggest, you know, he's got the biggest access to the second hand market. So, quite what he does. I feel, you know, I tend to feel that my colleagues who research this are very, very reluctant to speculate about what the second hand market might be, and we just think of people purely as craftsmen. But instruments from the 1630s wouldn't exist till now unless someone in the 1680s was taking care of them, let alone at any other time. And to me that, you know, that's got to be a very clear part of, part of, uh, the history. And that gives him a new market. So Girolamo Amati disappears off into the wilderness and then, you know, we don't know what he did. He probably had a super successful career. Violin dealer, but you know, that's not sexy or romantic. And then he, once he's sort of sold too many of them or whatever, he comes back and starts being a maker again, as far as I see it.
Aged nearly 50, Girolamo Amati II, drowning in debt, left Cremona. The year was 1700, and Stradivari was about to enter his golden period of production. It would be another 20 years before Girolamo Amati II returned to Cremona. His motives for leaving were probably varied, and no one knows for sure why he left town. What we do know is that he appears to have left his family, the workshop and the network of instrument makers who undoubtedly benefited from knowing his father, one of the most important teachers in the history of violin making. Where he went was Piacenza, around 40km west of Cremona, a small town near Parma where The local count commissioned various instruments from him between 1700 and 1715. During Girolamo's absence, the city saw many changes, which included Antonio Stradivari's workshop becoming the most dominant and financially successful force in Cremona. In 1707, the Habsburg Spanish occupation lost its power to the Austrian Empire, so Austrian soldiers soon occupied the town. Again. Over the last 150 years, the city's population had halved from 40, 000 to 20, 000 people. In 1705 and the next year in 1706, the Poe flooded multiple times and the crops were ruined. There was disease and armies were back in town. Things were pretty miserable. Girolamo Amati does eventually make his way back to Cremona around 1717. The family home was now in the hands of one of Nicolo Amati’s daughters, Then was handed down to Girolamo's second daughter. Notice that the Amati ladies are not trusting the Amati men with the house.
Emily Brayshaw.
Yeah. And then there's, this is this kind of handover, Nicolo Amati ends up having another son called Girolamo Amati II, who is the last in the Amati dynasty. And it's sort of, his life is a little bit sad and it's a bit of a, he fizzles out really with Girolamo. But at the same time, you have this, you have Andrea Amati and Uh, Antonio Stradivari is five years older than Girolamo Amati. They're sort of the same, they're the same generation and they probably went to the same school because these children did go to a local school to learn to read and write. They would have known each other really. So you have this, it's sort of across that you can see the curve of the Amatis going down and then you have this other curve of all this, this group of Cremonese makers taking off, sort of thanks to Nicolo Amati, you've got The Guarneri family, the Ruggeri family, uh, Stradivari, uh, and it's sort of an explosion of instrument making in Cremona at this time.
Yeah, okay. And that is in, so Strad was, wasn't he 1644, I think? To 1737. Sorry, he would be 40, 50, 60, in like the 1660s, 1670s. You could imagine that's where he was, um, you know, a young man about town. Yeah. And he'd be wearing You know, he'd be wearing the same thing that Girolamo Amati would be wearing. Yeah, definitely.
So. Um, so it's the fashion from the second half of the 15th century of tradesmen. Was it, and that would have been quite different to nobles as well. Well, again, again, they did follow the same cut. And they did follow the same silhouette as the nobility. But without the spangles. They didn't, well, they just didn't have as much bling, you know, like, um, and they didn't have all the money, all the time to be able to spend. So, you know, their dress is a little bit more sober, a little bit more professional. Um, you know, we've talked about black, for example. But they, so, but they want, when they would go to the opera as well, they would be this kind of class that's kind of in between ish. Nicolo's mother was actually, um, his father's second wife and she was from sort of the lower gentry. Her, she was called, um, Laura Medici Lazzarini. And so. She's thought to be a distant cousin of the banking Medici's and she was the niece of a prominent nobleman. So you have, I find that interesting. You have this, the social position of the Amati family was such that it was possible for him to marry into. Sort of these wealthier families. Yeah, there's another strata. Yeah, look, and certainly, you know, we do sort of have, um, different classes as well. It's not just the super wealthy and the super poor, you know, we've got increasing merchant classes and, um, maker classes and master craftsmen and again sort of with dress, you know, they are going to be dressing very well. They'll, they'll, have servants themselves and they'll be dressing better than the servants again and they'll certainly be keeping an eye on the latest fashions and trends and because they are moving in these worlds with the super wealthy. By the token to the super wealthy don't expect that these people will be as well dressed as they are either. As long as you're dressing well, you're not expected to be like dripping with pearls like the queen or some of these mind bogglingly wealthy royal dukes and these sorts of people. Yeah, but and I'm thinking maybe in, um, in society they would overlap. So, so maybe there was also this, uh, like a way of speaking and a way, the way of, um, interacting they would.
They're in this sort of middle area where they're dealing with. Yeah, I feel like there is. You certainly have to show difference. That goes without saying, I think though that technical discussions, like people like, um, you know, the Duke Gonzaga, for example, he's, he's a cultured man, right? These are really cultured people and they want to be talking and having these discussions about art and music. And so there will be seeking out the experts to converse with, to have these discussions as well as. Running state, making diplomatic connections. Girolamo Amati II. He comes home an old man and at the age of 70 in 1719 and makes his last surviving violin. In the years following, the city of Cremona is once again affected by yet another war involving the French.
In 1733, 12, 000 French troops were garrisoned in Cremona who had a population of 30, 000. This weighed hugely on local resources and sent prices soaring. The city looked fondly back at the relative law and order provided by the Spanish compared with this new French army. Cremona's economy plodded on nevertheless. Music was still highly regarded into the mix of dance teachers, instrument makers, textile merchants, junk dealers, moneylenders, printers, booksellers, and jewelers, fur merchants, and of course, shoemakers. The French did eventually leave town, and a few years after this, Girolamo Amati II died in relative poverty in February of 1740 at the age of 90, nonetheless.
We don't know of any instruments from this later period. It is thought that he was suffering from mental illness and with no male heirs to carry on the trade, the story of the Amatis ends. Although this is the end of one violin making family, great though they were, this is in fact only the beginning of another exciting chapter in the violin. While Girolamo Amati lay dying, a golden period is about to burst forth in Cremona, and the end of the Amati story is really the beginning of one of Cremona's most industrious and golden periods of violin making ever in its history. It's the story of Stradivari, of Guarneri. When we talk about great Cremonese masters, it starts now. This is the period people are talking about, and the story will get a whole lot more complex because there are a lot of people to keep up with. Are you ready? Well, I hope you are because now we're going to be looking at many, many masters, and I hope you'll stay with me for the next episodes of the Violin Chronicles.
I'd like to say a big thank you to my guests, Dr. Emily Brayshaw, Benjamin Hebbert, and Carlo Chiesa. And if you have liked the show, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That would really help out with the making of the podcast so I can continue to bring you more episodes. Be sure also to head over to Patreon forward slash The Violin Chronicles. If you would like to support the podcast and become a Patreon, there are extra episodes, and I would particularly like to point out a new series called My Encyclopedia of Luthiers. That little podcast I do with my husband, Antoine. In it, we summarize each maker in under an hour and describe all the little details to look out for so you can recognize that particular maker's work.
And maybe you can become an expert yourself one day. I hope to catch you next time on the Violin Chronicles. Goodbye for now.
He gives up depending on family members to help him in the workshop and starts to employ apprentices who come and live and work with him, notably two teenagers. Andrea Guarneri and Giacomo Gennaro. He also starts to make his grand pattern violin. It is surprising that by making something a few millimetres bigger and slightly changing the outline and archings of the violin, he really does change the potential of this instrument and lay the groundwork for the very well known violin makers to come after him.
Niccolò Amati's clients were often noble families and the church, much like his father and grandfather had. And he would even sell instruments that were not his, such as a local priest and musician, Don Alessandro Lodi, whose family turned to him when he died to sell his collection. Here we see Nicolò Amati’s instruments fetching a good price, where others were selling their instruments for 5 ducati Nicolò's violins were going for 15 ducati and 22 for a viola. The double bass he sold from the priest's collection that was not his. It could have been a Brescian instrument, was only 13 Ducati. From the high prices Nicolo Amati demanded for his instruments, we can clearly see that he was not a lowly craftsman, but was an educated and literate member of his community, having gone to school before learning his trade with his father. It would have been important for him, in dealing with his noble clientele, to have a certain level of learning and a knowledge of business, mathematics, and accounting, as would many of his artisan colleagues. At this time in Cremona, schools were attended mainly by children of merchants and nobles, but not only. At school, they would learn. In addition to the traditional subjects of Geometry, Arithmetic, and even Astrology, subjects such as Geography, Architecture, Algebra, and Mechanics, both theoretical and applied.
Carlo Chiesa, violin maker, expert, researcher, and author from Milan.
It is also worth noting that the Amatis at that point, they were wealthy enough people. This is very important because It means they, the kids had an education. They were able to go to school, to be trained properly, not just in the workshop. And they were artisans of a high level anyway. So the daughters of Andrea who got married, they usually got married with good doweries with the people who were from the same social status, and that is also worth noting important because they were not. It means that they were not working for low class musicians, but usually their commission went. to noblemen or high-class customers, which they were able to deal with. That is also another of the reasons for the success of cremonese making, because the artisans were able to deal with the high class.
Nicolo Amati was a product of the Cremonese system. He was not only a talented artisan, but also had a level of education that enabled him access to the upper echelons of society. And this appears to have always been where violin makers sit. Never being part of the nobility as they were in trade and part of the merchant class, yet their product interested and sometimes fascinated the noble classes, somehow giving them a form of access or small door into their world being almost acceptable. As for Nicolo's workmanship, he had always shown a spirit of innovation and thought. He was experimenting in different sizes of instrument in an effort to improve his product and this reflects the time and place he lived. It was, don't forget, the renaissance, and as their world was a relatively small place, he would certainly have known fellow artisans in town, such as the very interesting Alessandro Capra and his sons. Cremona was renowned for its engineers, both civil and military, who published books on their work. They were, after all, on a military highway. What better place to have your shop window? Alessandro Capra, architect and plumber, had opened his workshop in town where he would display his inventions and offer his services as either a military or civil engineer. He also carried out teaching activities for apprentices interested in learning science, art, maths and geometry. From his workshop, he would obtain commissions from various parts of Italy for machines and inventions. In his domestic artisans workshop, he displayed his machines and various models. Lining the walls were precious books filled with information on land surveying, perspective, applied geometry, arithmetic, and merchant accounting.
These were handbooks written expressly for craftsmen, artisans, artists, and technicians. They were not for a specific trade but information for people involved in these activities. and were practical guides on how to go about business. The printed works of Capras were like professional development manuals. They were presented as a collection of craft and commercial problems useful for the training of future generations of craftsmen and traders, land and real estate owners. It also advised landowners on how to earn more money and lower income earners on how to manage better their real estate. It was a 17th century version of how to make friends and influence people. Alessandro Capra also mentions the benefits of following military campaigns, scientific skills linked to the solution of problems, fortifications, ballistics, engineering, mechanical and hydraulic, management and organization of people. Cremona was a great place to be for this as it was continually in the midst of military campaigns and would have facilitated this scientific environment.
But back to the Casa Amati. Nicolo had two assistants living with him that I mentioned earlier and they are actually quite important to our story. They made a team in the workshop and Nicolo trusted them not only with the work on it, instruments but also in his business dealings and everyday life. They were legal witnesses on legal documents and even civic occasions such as his wedding. These two assistants were of course Giacomo Genaro and Andrea Guarneri. Andrea Guarneri is the first in the great family of the Guarneri makers of Cremona and here we see his close relationship with his master.
Carlo Chiesa explains.
And, and then did Andrea Guarneri did he go on to, his instruments, were they based on the Nicolo's Grand Patten?
Sometimes and sometimes also on the other side, Andrea was was a good maker, intelligent maker. And he also, and I'm sure he went on working for Amati also after he moved to his own workshop because their workshops were very close to each other in the same block. And there was a back alley in which they both had a door. So that through the back alley, the two workshops were very, very close to each other.
They could pass a violin.
There's a customer here. I have not a violin finished. You've got one. Yeah, I'm finishing that one. Take it. Take this one. Put your label in.
In 1640, Nicolo Amati stops using the brothers Amati label. It is now almost as if he is truly affirming himself, starting a new chapter in his life. By using the brothers Amati label, his father's, he was in no way trying to deceive people who knew very well that his father was dead, but rather that he had built this instrument in his father's style. Even though he had made the instrument, it was in essence an Amati Brothers instrument. After his father's death, he did indeed create a different model, his grand pattern, and started putting in his own label. This design he owned in his own right a name.
In 1642, the year after engaging his assistants, Niccolò employs a maid, Catarina, along with his two apprentices living in the house, there was his sister and niece and also an 18 year old cousin, Marilina Urbana, who comes to live with them as her parents have died in the plague. Two years on, business is good for Nicolo. He is comfortably well off and the decision to take on a second servant to help out was necessary because now there were two more of the Urbana cousins, Marilina’s little brother and sister Benedetto, who is 12 and his little sister Valeria is only four years old. Along with the assistance that makes nine people living in the house. As time went on, Giacomo Gennaro left the Amati workshop to go off on his own, but Andrea stayed and was particularly close to Nicolò. He was his right-hand man, and Nicolò was now almost 50. He had no children, and perhaps Andrea would inherit the workshop one day. Nicolò is looking more and more like a confirmed bachelor, and then, boom, it happens. Nicolò falls in love. In 1645, he meets the lovely Lucrezia and thinks maybe it's not such a bad idea to get married after all. But here is the catch. At this moment, in Nicolò's household, there are no less than 10 people. That's right, 10 people. There is his 66 year old sister and her daughter, Elisabetta and Angela. There are his two assistants, Giacomo and Andrea, who are 21 and 19, much closer in age to Lucrencia than Nicolo himself. Three orphaned cousins in his care, who really are children, they are 12, 6 and 3 years old, and two servants to help look after them all. Lucrencia would be a brave woman indeed to marry this man, but Nicolo had a plan. One week before the wedding, he gifts his niece a small property with a house in the parish of San Nicolo. In doing this, he discreetly removes his niece and his sister, who will have to go and live with her daughter because she can't live alone. And this move makes way for his new bride, Lucrezia. In the spring of 1645, on the 23rd of May, the 48 year old Nicolo married the somewhat younger 26 year old Lucrenzia Pagliari. Andrea Guarneri was the witness, and her uncle the priest who married them. Their first child, Giolamo, was born the next year on the 6th of February. Just under nine months later. No scandal there. And if Guarneri thought that Nicolo was not going to have anyone to inherit the workshop, he was wrong. Because over the next 15 years, Lucrencia would have three more sons and four daughters. That is a child every two years for 15 years. A year after their first child, Lucrencia has a little girl they named Teresa. Now at this point, something quite dramatic happens to the city of Cremona. There was a siege, and it was because of a war called the 30 Years War. It was such a vast and complicated thing. thing that they probably just ended up calling it the 30 years war because it went on for, well, 30 years. It involved most of the major European powers and during this war Cremona, which was located in the Lombard region of Italy, was a strategic city and was occupied by the Spanish army, as we know. In 1648, the French army, under the command of Maréchal Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, laid siege to the city in order to expel the Spanish. The siege lasted for several weeks and resulted in its eventual capture by the French army. Sadly, Nicolo and Lucanza's first child, Girolamo, died at the age of three, just after the siege in September, so this really was a bad year for them. But the next year, on a freezing February morning in 1649, their third child was born, and they named him, wait for it, Girolamo, like the first son. Their little girl Teresa also died around this time, and a year after the second Girolamo was born, the Amatis have another little girl, whom they name Teresa. Around the time Niccolò married Lucrezia, he made a cello that would end up in the collection of the Grand Prince Ferdinand de Medici, son of Cosimo III. From this we see that the calibre of his instruments are such that nobles would desire them in their collections. This instrument is described in an inventory of 1700, along with 100 other instruments for his private use and that of his chamber musicians. In this list are a number of instruments made by Niccolò and also by the Amati brothers. He must have truly appreciated their instruments and regarded them as items of value. They have come down to us today because they have Throughout their existence, being thought of as such and being looked after carefully. After Niccolo and Lucrenzia's first child was born, Andrea Guarneri, who had been living with them for years, moved out. Maybe noticing that he was the third wheel here. But a few years later, just after Girolamo died, The second was born. Andrea Guarneri was obviously having some problems with his housing situation and moved back in with the Amatis. Ciao! I can imagine Nicolo's wife maybe hinting to her husband to find Andrea a wife. 1650 is also a time when Nicolò starts to use his grand pattern violin more and more. His instruments now show all the classic characteristics of his work, the use of the grand pattern model, his golden yellow varnish, and his archings, which are less scooped than the Amati brothers models.
Andrea Guarneri was one of Niccolò's favourites and thought maybe it was time he got married as well. Nicolò happened to know that one of their clients, the talented musician Giovanni Pietro Orcelli, had a young orphaned cousin from a well to do family. She would be perfect for Andrea. Anna Maria Orcelli had grown up just around the corner from the Amati household. She had lost her family, most probably in the recent plague, and so, in 1652, the 29 year old Andrea Guarneri married Anna Maria. They stayed living with the Amatis for a few more months. But by this time, Ana Maria was pregnant, and they were in the process of moving into a house she had inherited just a few doors down from Nicolo Amati and his family. Anna Maria, as part of her dowry, had a house that was so close to the Amatis that their back entrances were almost next to each other. The relatives living there were proving difficult to move on. Finally, the Relos moved out and Andrea and his pregnant wife could move in. Here, Andrea was able to set up his own business with his new family living upstairs, starting a new chapter in his life.
The number of instrument makers in Cremona was on the rise. Niccolo's instruments from this period are only getting better acoustically and it was the instruments Nicolo made in this era that Antonio Stradivari would go on to copy in what we call his Amatis period. In 1653. The workshop is a busy place and many instruments are being produced. Nicolo, who is 57 at this point, has at least four apprentices working for him and living in the family home. In this busy household lived 12 people, and in the summer, Lucrenzia and Niccolo have their fifth child, Giovanni Battista. Sadly, the Amati's youngest child, Giovanni Battista, would die in infancy when he was two years old. Now living with them were their two children, Servants. Apprentices. There were also three boys who would work for the shop and lived with them. They were called the Malagamba brothers. Giuseppe was 20, his younger brother Giovanni Battista, 17, and Giacomo, the youngest, only 10 years old. They most likely made accessories for Nicolo and will work with him for years to come. In 1655, things were looking up in the Casa Amati. In July, Lucrenzia has a daughter, they name her Anna Maria, and Giovanni Battista, one of the Malagamba brothers, who make accessories for Nicolo Amati, marries a local girl, Apollina. The young couple are both 18 years old and they continue to live with Niccolo and Lucrenzia.
Fun fact about the Amati workshop at this point is that there is an apprentice. In the shop at this time, he will go on to have an interesting career after leaving Cremona. His name was Bartolomeo Cristofiori and he would invent the pianoforte when he was working for the Medici family in Florence.
In 1657, Nicolò Amati has his Seventh child. It is a boy, so they call him Girolamo. This youngest child of the his would have been born into a lively, close knit community. The parish they lived in was a small one where everyone knew their neighbors and their business. The Guarneris are just around the corner and four houses down the road live the Ferraboschi family, including their daughter. who would, in a few years time, marry Antonio Stradivari. And across the road are the Capras, whose nephew would be Francesca's first husband, before Antonio. In 1661, the Amatis last child, a daughter, was born, when Nicolo was almost 65. Her name was Euphrosia Scholastica. His many children shared a busy household with extended family members, cousins, aunts and uncles, workshop staff and servants. At one point there were 11 people living in the home.
Nicolo's wonderfully crafted instruments were in high demand and some would consider them to be some of the most elegant violins ever made. In the workshop, they had apprentices and two or three servants, or hired hands, who would be making accessories such as pegs, fingerboards, bridges, bassbars, and even scrolls. Going to mass on a Sunday, or the town market, the Amati children would have bumped into any number of aunts, uncles, cousins, or neighbours. Around the family lived their friends, enemies, godparents, in laws, landlords, tenants, witnesses at weddings, and legal documents. So from the 1660s, Nicolò's instruments create a standard for the Cremonese makers to aspire to. They are tonally powerful and, from a craftsmanship point of view, masterpieces.
But even before this period, Nicolò Amati had changed his instruments to adapt to the musical demands of the day. The Baroque period in which he lived was producing composers and music that demanded more sound volume from its instruments. This movement was particularly strong in Rome, where compositions needed instruments able to compete with whole choirs to be heard. Monteverdi didn't just double up the violins, giving them the same notes as the singers. The violins were now being written specific musical parts for themselves. To shine and to shine. You had to be heard and to be heard, you had to be more powerful. It is also from the 1660s that over spun gut strength started to be made and used by musicians increasing the tension and power of instruments. Nicolo Amati made two sized violins, big ones, and small ones. The larger ones measure between 354 to 358 millimetres. That is regarded as a standard today, and the smaller ones back length are 352mm, which makes them on the smaller side, but that's not the end of the world.
The smaller ones were often, if you dare, referred to as ladies violins, but really not because women were 5mm smaller than men, apparently, but they were referring to the rooms in which they were to be heard. So a smaller violin would be played indoors. It didn't need to be so powerful and Heaven forbid a lady would play outside, preposterous. And this reminds me, and I know I'm getting off track here, but women's clothing at the time didn't have integrated pockets in them because they thought, when I say they, this is presumably men, they thought that women would fill the above mentioned practical storage spaces with charms and poisons to befuddle the menfolk. And to be fair, that was my first thought when discovering pockets in my clothing, so I'll give them that.
In 1680, the Amati home is still a busy place to be. The children have grown up, and Girolamo, whom we call Girolamo II, not to be confused with his grandfather, Girolamo Amati, who was one of the Amati brothers. Gerolamo II is married and living in the family home with his wife, Angela, and their first child, Vittoria. At the moment, she is pregnant with their second child, and most of Nicolo's apprentices over the years were not from Cremona and have moved home. Some of them have set up workshops in town and some like the Malagamba Brothers have moved just a few doors down the street. And then on April the 12th, 1684, the 88-year-old Nicola Amati died. He would've been greatly missed by his family, friends, and the many pupils he had taught over the years. His legacy was vast, and he definitely changed the landscape of violin making in Cremona, leaving it a city of instrument makers. If it had not been for his willingness to take on apprentices outside his family, the history of violin making and the city of Cremona would have looked vastly different. The week after Nicolo's death, Girolamo II Amati baptized his son Nicolo, and a few months later, Anna Maria, that's one of Nicolo's daughters, and Girolamo's sister, who was already married it seems, finally moved out to live with her husband in the house next door. Who knows what was going on there. Anyway, although Niccolo is probably the most well known of the Amatis, it would have to be his son Girolamo II, the least recognized, and yet as we will see, his work and life is indeed significant in the story of the violin.
But what happened to Girolamo
and why was he the last of the illustrious Amati family? This, we will see in the next episode of the Violin Chronicles. And if you have liked the show, please rate and review it on Apple podcasts or Spotify. That would really help out with the making of the podcast so I can continue to bring you more episodes.
Be sure also to head over to Patreon forward slash the Violin Chronicles. If you would like to support the podcast and become a Patreon, there are extra episodes, and I would particularly like to point out a new series called My Encyclopedia of Luthiers. That little podcast I do with my husband, Antoine.
In it, we summarize each maker in under an hour and describe all the little details to look out for. So you can recognize that particular maker's work. And maybe you can become an expert yourself one day. I hope to catch you next time on the Violin Chronicles. Goodbye for now.
Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthierie in Mircourt. As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with. And in particular, the lives of those who made them. So often when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect, but here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture. So join me as I wade through tales, not only of fame, famine, and war, but also of love, artistic genius, Revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning, and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.
Before I start the show today, I would like to say a really big thank you to some Patreon members, Joe F.,Charlotte F., and Nicoree K. Thank you for keeping the show happening. And if you'd like to join them, head over to patreon.com.
So far in this series on the Amatis, we have seen Andrea Amati, the first big name to come from Cremona, making his mark by crafting a stunning set of instruments for the French court of Charles IX. Then the Amarti brothers, who were Andrea's two sons, carry on the family workshop amidst tumultuous times. They have a fight and split the workshop. The older brother, Antonio, moves down the street and the younger brother, Girolamo, stayed on in the family workshop. His son, Niccolo, managed to survive the plague and now here we are in the 1630s at the third generation of the family. This week, we find Nicolo Amati in his workshop making, making, making violins, and then he starts to change what he is doing, and the decisions Nicolo makes will start to transform the landscape of the violin forever. So stay with me as we work out what these changes were and how they rocked the violin world.
I speak to Benjamin Hebbert, expert dealer and author in Oxford. Normally when we talk about Amati, often people are actually referring to Nicolo Amati.
Why do you think he's so important and why, and how is he different from the others?
Well, I think the amazing thing about all of the Amatis is how things change. And you would have thought that once, once you've sort of set upon something like this, at least, you know, decade to decade, you'd have, you know, very, very little change. But when you look at Cremonese instruments, you know, even two instruments made in the same year have got some level of fundamental difference to them and you know, this, this idea, almost like a painter, uh, you know, the canvas might be restricted to making a violin, but, you know, a painter who has to paint a hundred portraits of the same king never stops being creative about each portrait, and that's sort of, that's sort of where you seem to be with violinists. Just through the late 16th century, 17th century, builds up ideas. But Nicolo Amati in about 1630, in fact the earliest Nicolos where he does this are, uh, you know, possibly late, late 1620s, are actually ones where he's still using his, his father and his uncle's label. But he produces a grand pattern of violin. This might not seem unfamiliar to us now, because that's what becomes the pattern of violin. You know, that's eventually what Stradivari adopts. It's what the violin in your case is. But that's, that's Nicolo's improvement.
Nicolo Amati is making his grand pattern violin. But what is so special about the grand pattern? So much is happening in his life and musically at this time. And up until this point, Nicolo Amati is still using his father's and uncle's labels, the Amati brothers label. And this is somehow very symbolic. He is still carrying on the tradition of his family, of his uncle and brother. He's not yet using his very own label, but this is about to change.
I talk about difference, but with Andrea Amati, I know we're talking about Nicolo here. Uh, Andrea Amati, everything is mathematical. He figures out the inside of the instrument as based on this geometry on, on, uh, what we call catenary curves, the arching, and he figures out the outside as curtate cycloids, which fit around that. The scrolls are absolutely perfect Fibonacci sequence. Scrolls like an ammonite, you know, everything's perfection. And I think as that travels through until the 1620s, everything is fixed. On the idea of the violin, the Cremonese violin, being an orchestral violin. And therefore you can't, you can't get away from that design which becomes bigger or smaller.
So Niccolo's Grand Pattern. To start with, if you can remember back to the episodes on Andrea Amati, we spoke about his order of instruments for Charles IX. In this order, there were 1st and 2nd violins, violas and cellos. The 1st violins are smaller than what we would today consider a full sized instrument, and the 2nd violins are what Nicolò Amati based his grand pattern on, and today is what we call a cello.
A standard full sized violin. There are still some of these smaller sized Amatis that we come across in the workshop from time to time. These are lent to very talented children and are considered seven eighths or three quarters. But it is interesting to note that these were not children's instruments, So the sizes of these violins, I'll start with the first violins, the little one, their body, their back length is 342 millimeters. That's 13. 5 inches for the, for my lovely American listeners. And for the larger violins, they're 355 millimeters. So 14 inches. And that's your standard violin today. So I just want to say that I realized that a lot of you listeners are actually American, and I've been using meters and millimeters and kilometers. So I'm sorry, I'm going to try and put in some imperial measurements for you. So why did Nicolo Amati make his grand pattern violin? What was wrong with the model Andrea Amati had developed and had been working perfectly well up until now?
sonatas, which the solo sonatas, which are appearing in In Venice, and Rome in particular, in the 1620s, the idea of having a more solo voice for the, for the violin emerges, and really what Nicolò Amati does is he says, well, this isn't so important. Sometimes we can make a violin wider. And that will have a miraculous effect on how the bridge is supported by, by the arching and that will create something which actually has a much, a much broader voice, something which is profoundly different. He's working with all the same ideas which, you know, which is inherited from 50 years beforehand. And by, but he's actually, The first person he's able to, and I suspect because the musicians are asking him to, to make the modern violin, the modern full size violin, which is wider and more Based on the second violin, because they seem to prefer second violins to first violins. We all do. Sure, Ben. So here we have it.
The modern violin. The grand patterns are the things which are absolutely absolutely wonderful, which happened from the 1620s right the way through to his death in 1684 and with increasing interest. So by the 1660s, that's almost all that he's making.
For some reason, Nicolo Amati survived the plague, but now being the head of the family, he had many responsibilities. Looking after the various widowed and orphaned members of the clan, running a business and a household. All this under the burden of grief and the economy at a standstill. Now, famine disease was sweeping through the countryside, decimating the population yet again. And if that wasn't bad enough, the occasional army would tramp through the city wanting to cross the Po on Cremona's convenient pontoon bridge, stripping the town of any supplies they had. It was hard, to say the least, for everyone, and the Violin trade would definitely have suffered. In these years, Nicolò Amati would do anything he could just to get by.
Today, we have instruments made by Nicolò Amati during these years. They include violins, cellos and gambas, all beautifully crafted. While the city he lived in was being ruined by this disease that would wipe out half its population, Nicolò and his family managed to survive. After the initial crisis of the plague and the subsequent famine that followed, Cremona with its fertile countrysides and the city were all solitude and desert.
Agriculture was abandoned and fields left uncultivated. The wealthiest citizens were able to avoid taxation and were not obliged to house soldiers garrisoned in the area. The tax collectors were sucking the farming peasants dry and their productivity was diminishing. In 1635 there are many houses in the city not lived in or abandoned. People started destroying their houses to make money selling the raw materials. And the Podesta ordered a fine of 500 scudi to anyone who deliberately destroyed their house and implemented corporal punishment to stop the slow destruction of the city's buildings. In a matter of months, Cremona had lost almost half its inhabitants. They were left with the skeleton of a city. One person describing it as “A spectacle of nothing but horror, squalor, misery and crime”. The fields were deserted and agriculture was abandoned, as were many of the buildings in the city. From this collapse, Cremona very slowly recovered, never fully reaching her former glory. Its population basically stagnated for over a century, but this does not mean that it was an unsuccessful city. Despite all this tragedy, a glimmer of hope existed. The plague of 1630 had not only wiped out most of Nicolò Amati’s family, it had also killed all of his competition in Brescia and everywhere else.
The Brescian violin making tradition came to an abrupt end with the death of Giovanni Paolo Maggini, the brilliant student of Gasparo Da Salo. Cities such as Milan, Genoa and Naples lost as much as half of their populations. But if you wanted one of those oh so desirable Italian violins, Nicolò Amati was your man. Literally, he was like the only guy left. After the effects of the plague had died down, business had come back slowly. People were obviously more concerned with avoiding starvation than music and buying musical instruments. Orders for luxury items such as cremonese violins were not the top of the list for noblemen and rich families. But judging by the surviving instruments, the output of the Amati workshop was quite substantial in the 1620s and 30s. It was drastically reduced. They were the plague years. But life gradually returned to normal, and the Amatis were still the most illustrious violin workshop in Italy, and probably the world at the time.
And, and it's in Nicolò Amatis life that they have this really huge plague in the 16th century. 16th century. 1630s, that wipes out basically all the Brescian makers, uh, Nicola's father, his mother, some sisters, like huge amount of family members. And then he's, he's sort of like at the end of it, he's just like, they're just left with whoever's left who's survived. And he has like a bunch of, um, like orphaned family members that he's looking after. And surprisingly he does make instruments this time as well. And things, I mean, and afterwards things sort of pick up. I mean, like all his competition has died. So. If you wanted a Cremonese instrument, he’s your man. He's like, he's it.
Yes. I'm Dr. Emily Brayshaw I'm an honorary research fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney in the School of Design. Um, I'm a fashion and costume historian and costume designer, but I also play viola, so I've definitely got an interest in the intersection of performance costume and theatrical costume. Yeah, so the Great Plague of London was 1665 and 66, and that was the worst outbreak of plague in the world. Um, England, for example, since, um, 1348 and, you know, London lost around 15 percent of its population. But what's happening at these great times of plague is that there are these incredible opportunities for social mobility for the survivors because suddenly you inherit absolutely everything. Or you can reinvent yourself. Um, there's a lot of material wealth left behind that you can access, can retrain and re skill. And so it's incredibly sad. And for Amati, there are even more opportunities for him that open up. Yeah. So the, in Italy, the big one, well, the big one that affected his family was the 1630, the 1630 And then seven years later, you have the world's first commercial opera house in Venice that opens up. So you still have this, um, it's like they hit the ground running after the play. You know, you've got the opera is still going. We're like, we're going to open a huge opera house. But interesting in the 1629, 1630s plagues, they were trying to contain it. And in Milan, next to Cremona, for example, they. They quarantined the city, they locked it down, but then the carnival season came and they're like, oh, we'll just, we'll just open it up.
Oh gee, is that like what just happened with COVID around the world, you know? And then it's just like, That, that, when they opened it up and it went through and they lost, uh, in some of the cities, they lost 50 percent of their population. It was just huge. It's massive. Yeah. So, and also at this time people, so Cremona, like we said, it was often getting, getting, getting flattened by armies moving through. So if you had money, like today we would invest in safe property because we're not that afraid of an army coming and flattening, you Yes. But back then, maybe you'd invest, not, maybe you wouldn't want to invest in property, maybe, uh, and then a lot of people invested in, in items of value. Well, the thing is they're portable.
Yeah. You can pick them up and run. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, it's actually one of the reasons that, um, for a long time in Europe, Jewish people have been associated with the violin. Because not only is it an item of value that you can pick up and run with, but it's also, um, a way that you can support yourself and you don't need to necessarily learn the language. Yeah. So, you know, you, we've, we've got these, these wonderful things. So, and a particularly, you know, incredibly valuable instrument. If you have to sell it to survive, well, you've at least got something there. Things like jewellery as well. You invest in jewellery because you can pick it, take it up.
And Nicolo Amati has a brother in law, and when he dies, in his will, he has several houses, but also, uh, um, clothes, clothing.
Yeah. So that shows the, the, um, the value attached to clothing. Absolutely. And it was very, very common for people to bequeath clothing, um, textiles, bedding as well. Towels, linens, all of Manchester, all of these things, um, would be bequeathed. Sometimes people would leave items to their servants who could then on sell them or, uh, you know, or remake them for themselves as well.
It's interesting that we were talking about these Catherine de Medici productions as well because because sort of around a similar time in England, you've got sort of theatre, Renaissance theatre happening. And a lot of the time the theatre troops would use cast off clothing from nobility for their costumes.
They'd remake that as well because of the value associated with these textiles. Because sometimes, um, nobles would sell their clothes because they needed the money, you know? Yeah, it's like when you see like these really Sometimes you get like a really wealthy person selling off all their handbags. Yeah, exactly.
The Birkin bag.
The war that had caused all their hardship was still going on intermittently. But the people of Cremona just wanted to go about their daily lives. And Nicolo Amati was no exception. In the Amati household, Nicolo was juggling running the shop and family matters. His oldest sister, Elisabetta, and her daughter, Angela had moved back in since her husband had passed away in the plague. Another sister, Vittoria, and her husband, Domenico, were living with them, as well as various nephews and nieces. And yet another sister, whose husband, Vincenzo, had died, leaving Niccolo to execute his will, was living with them. This turned out to be more complicated than he had imagined. Vincenzo, his deceased brother in law, had debts. But he also owned property, and into the mix he owed Nicolo Amati himself for that time he had paid to secure his release from prison. Even dead, Vincenzo was creating problems. His older sister, Vittoria, had recently married Domenico and they were living in the Amati home. Nicolo and Domenico were getting on well, and so when he offered to help in working out Vincenzo's will, this seemed like a good idea at the time. And a solution to Nicolo's problems. Things were going so well, in fact, that Nicolo and Domenico went into business together. Three years on, things were not going so well. Nicolo and Domenico could not resolve their differences to whatever problems they were having and had to call in someone to arbitrate. This ended with Domenico leaving and never returning to the Amati workshop. Elizabeth, his older sister, had to give her approval, throwing her in the middle of this family dispute. But in the end, the brothers in law split the business, Nicolo Amati keeping all the items in the workshop and having to pay Domenico 600 lire, which he took his time repaying. The settlement dragged on for years.
Nicolo Amati was now the sole owner of the workshop and the family home. There was still a house full to look after even though he was not married himself and had no children. There were siblings, nephews, nieces, and small cousins to keep track of. A steady stream of instruments were leaving the workshop. More musicians were needed in orchestras as this new thing, opera, was taking off and Nicolò was as busy as ever. In 1637 the world's first commercial opera house opened in Venice playing to thousands. If the violin at this point was not a gentleman's choice of instrument. How did it get its big break?
Something very interesting happened to the violin between the period of 1640 to 1660 after the Great Plague swept across Europe that could explain why this instrument is so beloved today. Benjamin Hebert explains.
What happens geopolitically is René Descartes and all of that stuff and the beginning of the Enlightenment. I mean, you know, Descartes wrote all sorts of things about music, but I think, I think there might be a little a little less rigidity in what high art music is. And you know, through Monteverdi and everything, this high art music is always sort of referential to something, as it sort of frees up. And you know, the lute and the viol with their frets, the frets are actually about reference to universal harmony and all of that kind of stuff. And I think people just chill out. Really is the best way to put it and part of that chilling out is, you know, this really is the period that dance music, you know, morphs into sonata form and all of that kind of stuff. And it's a sort of breaking down of barriers. I mean, there's a book in 1598 by Thomas Morley, the plain and easy introduction to the, to the art of music. And. My goodness, is it, you know, it's such a snobbish, exclusionary thing. And then, you know, by the 1650s, we're talking about England, you've got Playford writing, you know, writing very simple books saying kind of basically music for dummies. So instead of this huge manual, just so long as you know these things, you'll be able to get away with it. Halfway through the 1600s, the violin gains momentum and kind of takes off in Europe. Even though, around Amati, instrument makers were dropping like flies, and he appears to be the only one left in his neighborhood. The rest of Europe is producing instruments in a big way, and the violin was coming into its own as a solo instrument.
There was always a demand for the violin to accompany dancing, and this conveniently sized instrument that was somewhat easier to tune than the viol family was coming in handy. If you're in the Renaissance, you're a humanist, you're looking at how you display your virtue. And ultimately, that's by, you know, what you're able to perform. And the lute is of, is very interesting for certain reasons, because of its precision. It's almost as the closest thing to universal harmony. And that makes it very important. Because every note is about, it's precise. So you, you put your note behind your mathematically created fret, and then you play a note where, because it's plucked, it stays, it's very pure. So it's as close to this kind of mathematical, universal harmony as it can be. The viol. with the way that that's bowed is actually closest to the human voice. So it's actually kind of an extension of your soul. Now there's a, there's an archbishop in Ireland, Narcissus Marsh, and he writes about, you know, Lord beseech me for loss of time in vain conversation, when he's talking about his viol playing when he was, Procrastinating from stopping people from killing each other. He is expressing that thing about the vial being some kind of utterly connected to his soul. Uh, dancing is another virtue as we know, and, but you can't do dancing without music, so the violin has always provided the dance music. Then the interesting thing is, is that the better the dance music, the higher the, yeah, the better the dancing will be, so in terms of your virtue, your virtue will be higher by the better dancing you do, so actually employing the, we actually get to a point where the Dancing Master Violinist In the French court and simultaneously in the English court.
At the time that James, I is looking for a, for a marriage for his son, you know, is actually the person who brokers the royal marriage, uh, and is paid hundreds of gold coins for doing it. Because, because actually as that professional violinist, you know, he is of such high virtue that the dance, which is performed above that is yet of higher virtue. So. So a violinist can never be the endpoint of virtue, ever, but there's always someone more virtuous than a violinist. By being the greatest musician that there is, that's the measure of, of, of the virtue of the dance which their, their music gives. So when we see this thing of, they were just lowly professional musicians, it's like, yes, but on the other hand, there's a whole other side to this. And, and over and over again, we see the extraordinary status in the English court, uh, violinists, you know, who are servants of the court. They're, they're not noblemen, they're not aristocrats, and they're certainly not princes and all servants have their place. And what, The marking between a servant and a nobleman is that the noblemen, the courtiers, they wear swords. And the musicians, who are Paid as servants, wear swords as noblemen. Yeah, that, that mustn't have been comfortable to play with you. It makes, yeah, I mean, you know. Excuse me. No, just, I'm just sitting. No, yeah, just don't mind the sword. I mean, I've had bows in my face as a musician. I've had elbows in my face. Having, having swords is a problem. It's Man, yeah, we don't realize the, the problems, the logistics that they had to go through with that. Um, yeah. And also, um, the dance masters, they were like, they were musicians. They were, you were, you're a dancer. Often you're a fencer. You, uh, had to be a good horseback rider. It was, it was a, it was a whole gig. Yeah. Um, I mean, you can't, you can't simply be good and virtuous at one thing. You have, in order to be virtuous at one thing, you have to be virtuous at all things. So, you know that, that idea of. Absolute specialism. You couldn't begin to specialize in one thing unless you were a master of many things. Then in 1640, 10 years after the plague had transformed Nicolo Amati’s life, he decided to invest money in a piece of land outside Cremona. Unfortunately, and somewhat predictably, shortly after the purchase, a military campaign led by the Duke of Mantua saw an army trample through his land as only an army can and destroy everything, including the farm. This was a disaster. He would be paying off the debt for the next 41 years. In 1641, Nicolo is now in his early 40s and a successful businessman, but he still has no children of his own to inherit the family business and continue the craft. In the workshop, he desperately needs help, and so for the first time, he breaks with tradition and looks for extra hands outside the family.
Yes, he does. So a year after having his land flattened by the Mantuan Duke, we find Nicolo Amati living with his sister, Elisabetta His niece, Angela, 31. And his two teenage assistants. Their names are Giacomo Gennaro, who is 17 years old, and Andrea Guarneri, who is 15. From now on, Niccolo's workshop would always have help from outside the family.
He was making more and more violins and other instruments from the violin family. He was using his grand pattern model on and off during this time, experimenting with different shapes and sizes, outlines and archings. The decision to take on apprentices from outside the family would have a profound effect on violin making in Cremona.
It would take it from being a one shop town to a hub of instrument making.
Niccolo gets over the plague, takes on apprentices, not family members because that never seems to work out, and then we start getting more and more skilled artisans and this thing grows and grows. And within 30 years you get to a point where he's taking on apprentices. where every city in Italy has got violin makers, every major city in Europe has got violin makers, and the violin has transformed, partially because covered strings have made it so much easier to play, partly because of the repertoire that's already been growing for it, which, to a point where, You know, by the time you get to 1660, it is, you know, the king of instruments.
It's, it's, it's something that everyone's playing. And that's happened, you know, within a lifetime, this thing's transformed into its popularity. This is a time when Royal courts were competing to have the best orchestras and violinists were being passed around the courts like footballers today in clubs.
So with Niccolò Martí, you know, he's the first to take on apprentices. We've had a long, uh, But the Ruggeri family, the Guarneri family, they're all, well the Guarneri family are certainly apprentices. Quite what the Ruggeri family are doing, they're not, they're a local family. And it might just be that they didn't have to live in the same house as him.
You know, why would they be on the census if they're doing that? And a whole load of other people seem to be coming in and out as apprentices who are not really, you know, very significant makers. We know that Niccolo had all of these apprentices because of the parish records made by the parish priests every year when they went from house to house filling out their census.
So, for example, we have records of people living in Amarty's home and working for him, but if If someone was a local, they would not be on the census paper because they would be living in their own home. So for this reason, there is some doubt as to a few names of those who were his apprentices, and one of those being a local boy called Antonio Storivari.
Possibly there, you know, there's Bartolomeo Cristofori, he comes over from Florence and he's mostly a harpsichord maker. He invents the piano and there's a few double basses that he made, but maybe spending six months in the Amati workshop were kind of useful, particularly if he was supposed to be looking after the Amatis in the Medici courts.
So there's all sorts of things happening, but with all these apprentices that we don't really know about, they're actually people going out to different parts of Italy and the world. They're coming out, marketing, essentially, helping people to understand the importance of what the Amati workshop is, keeping the Amati tradition at the top, and really allowing for, for prices.
In 1685, a year actually after Niccolo dies, there's a, uh, Vitali workshop. The composer has a, has a lawsuit against somebody who has bought a violin for because he thought that he bought a Niccolo Marti but there happens to be another label in it and it's actually by Ruggeri and he says, you know, I bought this and an Amati is supposed to be worth 12 pistolas and it's just a Ruggeri and they're only worth four pistolas and he wanted, you know, he wanted the difference back and we can look at that.
Was that straightforward fraud? Was that Amati who, he had a full load of books? He could say, it was from the workshop, I didn't say who made it, I said it was from the Amati workshop. Exactly, he might have had a full order book, he might have sold it for four pistolas in the first place. There's so many things, I mean, everyone writing about violin fraud has started with that as the outset.
So here we have it, the beginning of a boom. Although Niccolò had a painful past to contest with, he appears to be going full steam ahead with his many apprentices. The most enduring of whom is the young, fresh faced Andrea Guarneri, who will stay with Niccolò through thick and thin. Now, I hear you say, Guarneri?
But which Guarneri? Exactly. Well, the Guarneri family of violin makers are a story all in themselves. The lives of the Guarneri's, the Ruggeri's, the Amarti's and the Stradivari's are all going to start overlapping very soon. So hold on to your seat and stay tuned for the next episodes. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, we have some wonderful Patreons supporting the podcast.
And if you would like to join them, simply go now to patreon. com forward slash the violin chronicles, and you can sign up there. As a Patreon, not only will you have a warm, fuzzy feeling in the knowledge that you're helping to make things happen, but you will also have access to bonus episodes. We have a series of episodes on Patreon called My Encyclopedia of Luthiers, in which my husband, Antoine, and I recap episodes.
Each maker in under an hour, and we look briefly at their life and career and discuss all the characteristics of that particular luthier so that you have a checklist to start you on your journey to being an expert, or at least being able to tell a Da Salo from an Andrea if you have a chance to pick them up and look at them.
I have also posted other extra episodes that you can check out as well. If you want to peruse the page. Now, I would like to say a big thank you to my guests, Benjamin Hebbert and Emily Brayshaw for joining me today. And if you liked this show, please rate and give it a review. That is in fact very helpful, but for now, thank you for joining me and until next time on the Violin Chronicles.
Well, no more, because hopefully by now, if you've been following these episodes in order, because they are in chronological order, you will know that we are now at Nicolo Amati, Andreas grandchild, Girolamo's son, the golden boy. So stick around and we'll see together how a devastating pandemic pushed one to transform the world of violin making.
Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French violin making school some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthierie in Mircourt. As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with, and in particular, the lives of those who made them. So often when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect, but here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture. So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, famine, and war, but also of love. Artistic genius, revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning, and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.
Welcome back to another episode in which we will be looking at perhaps the most famous maker of the Amati family, Nicolo. So far I have spoken about the grandfather, Andrea, and his father and uncle, Girolamo Amati and Antonio Amati, the brothers. And now Nicolo Amati continues on with the family tradition by making fine instruments and waiting for middle age to get married and have a family. Except in Nicolo's case, things are quite a bit more dramatic for himself and his family, as you will see in this episode.
They were at it again, the Spanish, the French, the Germans, and the Piedmontese, fighting over who got what in yet another war, except this time, soldiers managed to spread the Black Death, and in 1628, Cremona was badly hit. Troops passing through, as they always did. to cross the Po River, were carrying and all too willing to spread the disease. This time it was the French and German troops that brought the illness with them and the effects were devastating. The plague was so deadly in this part of Italy in the years surrounding 1630 that it would have very nearly killed every violin maker in the city. This was indeed the case in Brescia where Maggini was working, bringing an end to the instrument makers there. And the history of the violin could have been very different if it were not for the genetically robust and freakishly lucky Nicolo Amati. Well, maybe not so lucky, as most of his friends and family died. But at least lucky not to die, and lucky for us, because thanks to Nicolo Amati’s survival, we have the violin that we do today. So what happened? Well, there was a war. The War of the Mantuan Succession. This was the war James Beck was talking about in a previous episode where everyone decided to invade Mantua after their Duke died, and there was a bit of a hoo ha about who it belonged to now. It was basically a war between the French and the Spanish about a highway. News from Milan was that people were falling ill with the bubonic plague and the city was quarantined. But over the carnival season, as you do, they loosened the restrictions and the disease took off again, spreading like wildfire. 60, 000 people would die in Milan, a city with a population of 130, 000. Things weren't much better in Cremona. In the autumn of 1630, Nicolo Amati’s father, Girolamo Amati, died, and soon after his mother followed by two of his sisters and other members of the family.
Benjamin Hebert, expert and dealer in Oxford, talks about how the plague spread and made its way to Cremona.
And one of the things that we learn about with the Amatis is the plague, which wipes out the brothers Amati. It's Girolamo Amati who survives until 1613, dies in the plague. All of the Brescian makers die in the plague. And actually, we talk about the plague as if it's one thing, like COVID has been over the last few years, but actually that plague was a result of Wars in Europe, where the Austrians Who are the Habsburgs, so Naples at the bottom of Italy, and they wanted to get their troops up through Cremona into Italy itself so that they could then go over to Austria to support, because actually more than troops, food to supply the troops from Naples is really important. So the French invade northern Italy. Northern Italy, in order to stop this supply line from the, from the south, and it's that huge change in population, which creates plague after plague, and also suffering, and a scarcity of resources because the army is there and Cremona is just the middle of a war zone. It's, it's one of the most important crossings connecting the two parts of the Habsburg Empire.
So the plague comes to town in 1630 and Discretion is not its middle name. But the city it hit was not the thriving Cremona that Andrea Amati and the brothers Amati had grown up in. By now, it was a city that was in a vulnerable and weakened state. It just wasn't going so well. We find Nicolo in his late 20s, working with his aging father in their family workshop. I spoke to John Gagne about the curious circumstances leading up to the devastating plague, and to understand what was going on, we have to zoom out and take a look at the big picture.
I'm John Gagné. I'm a senior lecturer in history at the University of Sydney, and I work mostly on European history from the 13th to the 18th centuries. The big context to put this all in is what scholars call the Little Ice Age, which starts in the 1550s. And this is in one way the catalyst for all of these events. The plague, the famine, the war, is that it's temperatures began dropping from the 1550s forward probably caused by a variety of environmental factors. It could have been, you know, the explosion of South Pacific volcanoes, which changed the global environmental pattern. It could have been, you know, changes to the jet stream. Whatever it was, it meant that Europe from the 1550s forward became colder than it had been in a thousand years. And this was, I think, the context against which all of these things were set, was that Europe was becoming colder and all the knowledge that had been built up for agriculture and disease prevention was now faced with a new problem, which was that things were collapsing. So in many ways, it does echo the world we inhabit today, where we're encountering more bushfires and more floods. They were encountering a similar, although different, different phenomenon in reality, but it was leading to grain failures, to, you know, crop failures, to animals giving, you know, less milk or producing offspring at different paces. And so the Little Ice Age just lasts until the 19th century, is part of the the big context of the sort of crisis that emerges around 1600, which is how do you support life in Europe when the environment is changing around you?
So we have climate change, pandemics, famine, it's starting to sound familiar, but ultimately things were not looking good for the citizens of Cremona at this point. How did the plague affect the lives of Cremonese people in the early 17th century?
So I guess the first thing to say is that the plague had been around, you know, for hundreds of years already and recurred frequently. So the, in northern Italy in particular, there had been a rise in plague from the 1570s. So there's the the so called Plague of San Carlo. In Milan, which is 1577- 78. The next big one was, you know, 60 years later in the 1630 plague. And that was even more catastrophic in terms of loss of life. Many of the, you know, Milan in particular lost a huge, a large portion of its population. And much of the rest of Northern Italy was, was badly affected too. I think there was a lot of death in Turin, in Venice, so across the sort of flatlands at the foothills of the Alps. It was, it was really traumatic. And that comes on top of a number of other factors. Famine that had started in the 1590s. So I think in a way the plague, Was attacking an already vulnerable population that had been suffering from a food crisis in the, in the 50, for several decades already.
So how did the plague affect, you know, Cremona was just what they didn't need because everyone was already sort of teetering on the edge of a, of a demographic crisis.
The plague of 1630 was a dark chapter in the history of Cremona. The city was one of many in Europe that was decimated by the outbreak, and its residents suffered greatly as a result. The streets of the city were deserted, grass was even starting to grow on people's doorsteps. No one dared to wander out unnecessarily, and when a family member fell ill, they knew that they might very well be next. At the height of the outbreak, the streets of Cremona were eerily quiet, as many of its residents had either fled or fallen ill. Those who remained behind were forced to confront the horrors of the disease, watching helplessly as friends, family and neighbours fell victim to the deadly illness. When Niccolo's brother in law started feeling unwell, the illness hit him so fast they had to send for the solicitor during the night to dictate his will. He died a few hours later. So also did two of his sons, Nicolo's nephews. When Elizabeth, his eldest sister, wanted to make her will, the solicitor refused to enter the house, so they had to dictate to him standing in the street for fear of the disease. She would eventually survive and recover, but her husband would not. The city's economy was brought to a standstill as trade and commerce came to a halt and many businesses closed their doors. The people of Cremona faced severe shortages of food and medicinal supplies, and many struggled to find the resources they needed to survive. And yet, despite the tragedy, in his family, Nicolo continued to make lovely instruments during this period. The likelihood of him selling them straight away would have been slim, but this was of little importance, he could always sell them in the future.
That's a bit like us, we were just making violins during the pandemic.
Unfortunately for the people of Northern Italy, the plague was not something new to them, to the point that they had systems in place for just this kind of event. But even the authorities could not have anticipated the power of this particular pathogen. Just to have an idea, Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague, has a mortality rate 200 times higher than that of COVID.
John Gagney.
This part of Italy was a, you know, economic hub of Europe. There's a lot of movement between, you know, Tradespeople pilgrims, that sort of thing. And interestingly, Northern Italy was in fact a European leader in terms of plague prevention. So there were strong measures in place for sanitary passes, for access to, you know, getting in and out of cities, for transit, all the kinds of things that we've had during COVID. It was, a lot of those things were generated in. this part of Europe between the 14th century and the 17th century.
Yeah, because the word quarantine is a Venetian word for the 40 days that the ships had to wait before coming into the port. Yes. To see that they had, didn't have a, was it the plague? Yes. And in fact, that's, that's one of the first measures just as we went into lockdown in March, 2020. In 1630, when the plague was discovered, much of northern Italy went into a form of lockdown, all the way from Florence up to the foothills of the Alps. Successively, obviously not at the same time, but as it was discovered, many of the cities went into 40 day quarantine. But as we know from our own experiences, that doesn't always, that's not a fail safe. And so it was only partially successful. So we're talking about something that Europeans were familiar with. Plague was never out of people's minds. In fact, if, you know, if you look through any of the centuries, the 15th century, the 16th century, the 17th century, and you look at any city in Europe, you're going to see recurrent patterns of plague over the course of, you know, could be two to three years.
It could be 15 to 30 years, but it's there. It's always percolating in the background. Okay, and so, in this particular bout of plague, a lot of people associate it with the, the Mantuan War of Succession, which brought soldiers from France and Germany, I believe. Yes. So in Spain, I suppose the, the, the broader context here is the 30 years war and maybe even the bigger, broader context in which the 30 years war fits is this ongoing European struggle between France and Spain, which had been going on since, you know, at least the 14th century had lasted through the 16th century in the Italian wars. We've talked, you and I have talked about before. And. Yeah. through transformations into the, into the 70th century was still lasting. The French and the Spaniards were still battling over control of Italy, and it was inflected in addition by Protestant Catholic conflicts. And that's, you know, the story of the Thirty Years War is a mixture of this political battle for dominance in Europe with a Protestant Catholic contest.
In 1618, the Thirty Years War is launched by a dispute between the Holy Roman Emperor, who was a Habsburg, and the Kingdom of Bohemia, which were Czech Protestant people. That led to conflict, and that conflict kept going for 30 years. Hence the creatively named Thirty Years War. So, but within those 30 years, of course, there are all kinds of subsidiary The story of the War of Mantua and Succession is interesting. Mantua was a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, so it belonged in theory to the Habsburgs, but had been an ally of France. at least since the 15th century. So this always put the Mantuan rulers at an unusual position because they were technically they owed their allegiance to the empire, but they had also married into the French aristocracy. So from the 15th century, the Mantuan rulers There are Gonzaga elites. That's the ruling house of Mantua, the Gonzaga family. Many of the Gonzagas married into French aristocratic families, including the Bourbon family, which, as we know, became the sort of, the dynasty from Henry IV in the 16, early 1600s forward. So that put the Mantuans kind of at the crossroads between these two warring kingdoms of France and Spain. And so what happens in the War of Mantuan succession in the late 1620s, Is that the last of the Gonzaga heirs dies, and both France and Spain claim to want to have the next So there is a kind of subsidiary Gonzaga who puts himself forward. There are, you know, there are all kinds of lower branches of that family. And so one of the lower branches says, I should go, I should inherit the the duchy. Whereas the Habsburg emperor has a candidate of his own who he And so the War of Mantua Succession breaks out because this can't be agreed in the, by the diplomats. And so they go to war over who will be installed as the next Duke of Mantua. This, of course, brings, brings soldiers from all over Europe, from the south of France, from Germany. up from other parts of Italy. It doesn't last that long. It's sort of like an 18 month, two year struggle. But it does, especially at a moment when the plague is, this is 1629 1630, right? So it's right at this moment when the when the plague is afoot. It's, you know, exacerbates the transmission of plague, most likely. That seems to be the theory of many scholars that this, you know, the conflict leads to further transmission. Yeah, because of all the, like, the to ing and fro ing and coming from different areas. Yeah. So Cremona is minding its own business. They are already stretched for resources. Next door everyone appears to be fighting for Mantua, but to get there they all seem to pass through Cremona. This would have been fine for the Amatis if the soldiers were picking up violins on their way to war, but instead they just brought gems.
The other thing to say about the War of Mantuan Succession is that the toing and froing was also very much a part of what's going on in Milan as a hub of commerce. So sort of Mantua belongs to Lombardy, which is part of the Duchy of Milan. All the Duchy of Milan belongs to the Habsburgs. So Mantua, you know, it's all subsidiary to the Spanish crown, basically the Spanish Austrian crown. And this part of Europe. Mantua, Milan, Genoa is part of what's called the Spanish Road, which is the hub of transit for soldier movement and money movement to fund the war effort. You know, already it's part of this kind of axis. It's a very strategic location. So, you know, the War of Mantuan Secession in a way takes place in the, at the crossroads of an already very busy part of Europe. And, you know, throw into this an increasing, you know, sort of demographic Challenge from a famine in the 1590s, the plague that's circulating in the 1630s, and the war that then breaks out. It becomes a kind of perfect recipe for demographic, yeah, perfect storm for demographic collapse.
Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's a very important city for the Spanish, but then I can imagine, I mean, I was imagining being French and you're feeling a bit of a squeeze because you've got the Spanish, they're down the south, they've taken that bit of Italy, they tried to get England with with Philip, Mary, Mary, but that was before.
They've gone over to the Netherlands, they've almost completely, encircled France, haven't they? The Spanish. So they're probably feeling quite threatened. Like in there, there's that one, that door in Mantua that they don't, that was traditionally allied with France.
Yes. I think this was the concern of the French and many other European states. I mean, what you described is exactly correct. Spain. The Hapsburg Spain was on the rise in the 16th century in a spectacular way. I mean, there had been a Spanish presence in Europe before, but this was immense, largely due to the success of Emperor Charles V in the first half of the 16th century, who was one of those rare emperors who inherits kind of everything in Europe. He was both king of the Spanish kingdoms and Holy Roman Emperor, was also the emperor who was seated when The Americas were brought into the Spanish crown. So, you know, his was the empire, the original empire in which the sun never set. And I think that concerned a lot of Europeans. So France felt itself being encircled, but also other parts of Europe were watching the Habsburg rise with trepidation because they knew that, you know, it was going to be possibly a complete domination of Europe by, by Spain. In fact, I would say by the, by the late 16th century, it effectively was a complete European domination by Spain.
And there was just this like, I can imagine from the Spanish point of view, there was this annoying France just in the middle of it. Like, it's like literally this big blob in the middle of there, what they'd conquered all around.
Now, amidst the stress of death and disease, something quite extraordinary happens. Nicolo Amati makes a violin and places an Amati Brothers label in it. It's a different model to the ones he has been previously making. He conceived a slightly wider soundboard than what they had been making before, the corners being a tad longer and turning just a little bit more. In his experiment to improve on sound and design, he created his grand pattern violin. Whether Nicola realised it or not, this was a turning point in the design of the violin and its future.
I speak to Carlo Chiesa, violin maker in Milan and prolific writer and researcher on many different violin makers. If you look in the front of a lot of books on different violin makers, there is a high chance you will see his name in the historical section, writing about their lives. One of the points is that because instruments, there are many.
By Nicolo, but there are not many instruments, many violence by the brothers. There are more violas by the brothers than by nicolo, probably for historical reason. There was a search for Violas until about the twenties of the 17th century. So about but after 30, the viola was not so important as a musical instrument as it had been before.
And from that point on, Makers went on making mainly violins, and Niccolo made many violins. So that's the first point. If there are many instruments around, you can are a more important maker than other makers who has not, have not so many instruments around. And then he was of course more modern than the brothers.
So his instruments are usually better sounding, in my opinion, for modern ideas than the brothers. And the other point is that he anyway worked a lot developing a new model, and he slightly enlarged, en longed the variant. He made the grand pattern which is the grand new pattern slightly bigger than before, and that gives you a better acoustic results than the brothers.
As a, as a rule, usually I would prefer. The quality of workmanship in the Brothers work, Nicolò's, but I must admit that as musical instruments usually Nicolò violins are better instruments than those by the Brothers for sounding properties. In a modern setup. In a modern setup. I have no idea about ancient setup because We have no idea how they were set up originally.
We have no original neck in an Amati instrument. So we have no idea what it was. And of course there was also a development of different way for necks and bridges and so on in a story of 150 years. So it would be also wrong to say there was a Baroque setup or a Cremonese setup because 150 years And I was wondering when Niccolo made the, developed the grand pattern was Andrea Guarneri working for him at that time?
It was possibly slightly before then then Andrea Guarneri arrived in his workshop. I'm not sure about that. We don't know when. Exactly, Andrea started working for Ola, but yes, it is around the same time, but at first we must consider that Andrea, together with Giacomo Janero, they were just pupils.
So they were probably making just the boys work of rough work in the workshop. And I'm sure that at time. The finishing of the instruments was in the hands of the master, as it was later always in the Amati, in the Stradivari workshop. So you see actually the hand of the master in all his production because he followed the making of every instrument and finished them direct.
And, and then did Andrea Guarneri,
Did he go on to his instruments? Were they based on the Nicola's Grand Patton? Sometimes and sometimes also on the other side. Yeah, that size? Okay. Andrea was a good maker, intelligent maker, and he also, and I'm sure he went on working for Amati also after. He moved it to his own workshop.
So here we see the violin taking over in importance from the viola and Niccolo making lots of instruments. He's also using his grand pattern that leads to good acoustics in a modern setting and these may be some of the factors that lead to his success as a maker we still know today.
There is also something to be said about the sheer number of violins Niccolo made as Carlo Chiesa pointed out. But also Niccolo's instruments were adapted to what musicians wanted now. And that was power. In this episode, we saw just how close we came to losing the Cremonese violin making tradition forever.
But be sure to join me in the next episode where we will see what Niccolo does to make sure this instrument he is making becomes a superstar. And we'll never run the risk of dying out like it almost did. I'd like to thank my lovely guests, John Gagneux, Benjamin Hebert and Carlo Chiesa for joining me today.
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The Hills Workshop was founded by William Ebsworth Hill, 1871 to 1895. He was the son, grandson, and great grandson of violin makers. But when he founded W. E. Hills and Sons, he really took things to the next level. The man's energy was boundless. Under William's direction was the company's workshop, of course, that was producing new instruments and bow makers making bows. They would also deal in older instruments and were well known for their quality restorations. They had a line of accessories as the workshop continued to be run by his sons, and these included rosins, cleaning polish, chin rests, shoulder rests, bridges, instrument cases, strings, little tuning pipes, peg paste, if your pegs got stuck, the pegs themselves, music stands, and the list goes on.
Whatever product pertaining to the violin you could possibly think of, the Hills made sure there was a Hills version of it. If this sounds like a handful, then hold on to your seats, because not only was W. E. Hill a violin maker and musician, he was also interested in photography and astronomy. And let's not forget his family, because it is Hill and Sons, so he obviously had children. Nine, in fact, somewhere along the line. But to really prove oneself as an authority in the field, what better way to do it than to write a book? And to make a splash, the first one was on the wonderful Brescian maker, Gio Paolo Maggini, published in 1892. And this is the book that we often refer to as the Hill's book in our discussions about Maggini.
To make this book, research was made from archives and really to date, this book still stands as one of the only works documenting exclusively the life and work of this maker. Even though research has continued over the years, this is still a book makers keep coming back to. And so now you know a bit about the Hill's book, or more precisely, it's called The Life and Work of Giovanni Paolo Maggini, the author of which is a woman named Margaret Higgins, who is fascinating in her own right.
I spoke to Florian Leonhardt, who is a London based violin maker, dealer, restorer, expert, and owner of Florian Leonhardt Fine Violins. We spoke about Brescia, the city Maggini lived and worked in. Brescia was a, was a city that, had a very rich musical life. It was completely devastated by the invasion of, was it the French?
The French? Yeah, the French sorry about the French so they invaded, and ransack the city completely. And then the venitians took it back, took control over it and then there was another battle. It was ransacked again. And, you know, it was really, really destroyed. But Brescia didn't benefit from a big rich duke that, that would kind of, control the cultural life of the city. Unlike most other big cities, like Milan and Florence and Rome. But even Venice had a lot of wealthy people who kind of had demands on their cultural life. And Brescia, interestingly, had a big, probably middle class, intellectually interested, that furthered music making in a big way. And particularly, instrumental music making, or opera, that is not just singers and so on, but had lots of different musical instruments. And these Brescian makers during Gasparo Da Salo's time, particularly in his earlier time, were cittern makers, they made the plucked instruments, as well.
So they were busy doing those things as well, but actually you had in Brescia, you had already the word Violin for Violin Maker. And Gasparo Da Salo's time before it's a Pellegrino. Zanetto's, Micheli's, family time. You already had the, term violino or violini maker, but we don't know exactly what that thing looked like, whether that was actually the violin. Because, you know, something that looked a bit, uh, better than a Rebek and different to a, to a viol, maybe it was called that.
It's kind of on the way. It's on the way, yeah.
I'm Ben Hebbert, I've got a workshop in Oxford. Occasionally I sell violins. I do a lot of writing about them and a lot of research and a little bit of expertise as well.
Okay. And where, where can we find your, um, where can we find your writings?
My writings? I've got, uh, violinsandviolinists. com is my blog.
And, uh, it sort of everywhere else, occasionally in the Strad magazine and things like that. Chapters of books. Things.
Nuggets of wisdom.
Something like that. Um. Page fillers.
All right. So today I wanted to talk about, uh, Maggini. Actually, I did have a, I did have a thought, about, the difference between Cremonies and Brescian instruments. And that was, we looked at, you, you said how, was it Virgil that went to school? In Cremona. And Cremona was well known for its schools and it had a very, educated, merchant class.
And I was wondering if it wasn't for the education level in Cremona and the fact that an artisan like amati could have a Renaissance education, would, the violin have the shape that it does today if it wasn't for school?
Oh, yes and no. Uh, I think it's the answer. When we look at, when we look at Amati, we're looking at something which is architecturally wonderful, and it works. But if you go backwards in time, so there's some amazing frescoes in Ferrara by a guy called Cordenzio of Ferrara, and, they show musical instruments, bowed instruments of every single, you know, imaginable shape, and including some things which may actually be purposefully wrong, because they're being held by angels, but, within those there's one or two instruments which are violin like, and at the end of the day, what, you know, what is a violin shape?
Well, it's, it's the biggest, it's the biggest amount of surface area and volume in order to make a good sound. And yet, at the point where the bow crosses the strings, it's got to be narrow enough that the bow can touch each of the strings individually without you know, having a bit of a road crash.
So, the violin as we know it, you know, might have appeared around 1500. There could well be instruments which are even older than that, which are quite like the violin. In fact, 14th, uh, 13th century, uh, precursor of the violin tend to have a sort of jellybean kind of shape to them, again with this narrowing at that point.
So, the shape is in the ether one way or another, but just the shape in terms of you know, what an instrument has to be. But I think, you know, one of the things that an architect can do, whether we're talking about a violin or a shed, is, you know, there's a whole difference between sort of sticking some sticks in the ground and sticking a roof on it and architecturally designing a shed. And I think that's kind of where someone like Amati comes in. He says, with all of this Renaissance knowledge that I've got, this thing is already working. It's already a perfectly good thing for doing what it does. But I'm going to, understanding the necessities of it, the string length to get pitch the, site, the, volume of it. In order to get the sort of sound, the narrowness and all of this, I’m going to make a beautiful architectural version of what already exists. I mean, I'm thinking of the difference between the Bressian violins and the Cremonese violin.
Yeah. I think, uh, I mean, Bresians aren't without a geometry of their own and that's very clear. But I think, I think they're using sort of slightly sophisticated, you know, further thoughts. And, you know, rather than just, you know, again, we can take this analogy and, you know, the Brescians have got a number of geometrical rules which will work in order to render the thing workable. But the Cremonese They're taking it to this further level of perfection. And we see that, you know, by the 1630s, we've got Galileo, who's writing to, Father Micanzio Fulgnensis, or whatever his name is, who's writing to Monteverdi, who's writing to his unknown Cremonese makers, who must be Amati. And we're hearing about Amati's being worth about four times what a Brescian instrument is worth. And obviously, you know, they're having to do something to justify the, premiums that they're able to charge.
Florian Leonhardt.
You know, like anything you do in life, everything's quite complex. And the deeper you look, the less simple you can just, make the story. So Andrea Amati for me, of course, is a giant. Because he has, unlike the Bresian makers, created a design that could be replicated for centuries, more or less unchanged, incredibly well conceived with Renaissance principles and in a Baroque shape. If you want. So, construction method, golden section. He has, also construction sequence that was maybe derived from the lute makers from Fusen who came, in droves, to Italy because Italy had a great big market, of interest in music making. But to cut away from now, the Amati and Cremona, coming to the Brescian, which is your topic about Gasparo Da Salo, if I understood right that of course is for me the hero of the city, Brescia, because he has created Maggini, if you want. Coming to your question, why, you feel that Maggini in some ways might overshadow in fame even Andrea Amati. And Gasparo Da Salo might be due to the fact that, one, he made many more violins than Gasparo Da Salo, and the violas always a little bit the suffering, joked about instrument in the orchestras in our classic music world. So the violas were less important in some ways, and less, less easy to, talk about in big numbers. So, Maggini made many more violins than violas. While Gasparo Da Salo made very few violins and many more violas. But Maggini continued in the footsteps of Gasparo Da Salo, and he seamlessly continued the tradition working and the method.
But coming back to the fame, why you feel he's more known, there's another fact. So already in the early 1600s, early 17th century in Brescia. Was immediately written about as the great maestro violin maker when he died, round about 17 30, 31, 32, during the plague, he had already achieved considerable fame and people started shortly after, already even naming themselves as pupil of Maggini, even if it wasn't necessarily true.
Right. Okay. Who wrote about the music? Uh, culture at the time. And that is actually also an interesting thing, which made, Brescia so famous and because, you know, when I was a child, I grew up also with thinking, Oh, Maggini is the inventor of the violin which is obviously, I wouldn't say I wouldn't agree with that because obviously we know that Andrea Amati is before, and Gasparo Da Salo in some ways before, even though maybe, yes, arguably, Gasparo Da Salo came more from the violin making, viola making, bass instrument kind of making, and you had a more sonorous, warm, earthy kind of sound idea at the time, but also maybe possibly because instruments didn't sound much differently because it maybe didn't in those archaic instruments, sound posts, etc.
That was one thing that he was already written about. So people could read now about Maggini and the importance of the maestro violin maker. And Maggini was also prolific in the production of the instruments and had La Franchini as well, who, who already worked for Gasparo Da Salo as his assistant.
Then we had the 19th century, eventually, a couple of hundred years later. And that's, I think, is probably the biggest source of why we create, where we created a lot of romantic things, because the 19th century was the romantic era in the art history, in music making, in, painting and in sculptures and architecture. So it was the time where, where castles were rebuilt, but wrongly rebuilt.
The, follies.
Yes, because they created some romantic middle, aged like looking castle, which didn't actually look like that when it was first built. So they, had this romanticized idea and you know, Maggini. Unlike Amati and everything that followed, because everybody admired Stradivari and Amati and Guarneri and Ruggieri, etc. So, Maggini and Gasparo Da Salo were a bit forgotten, because they looked so archaic, they looked ancient, they looked primitive and simple in their making. And so In that romantic time, I think, I mean, this is only my interpretation, but I look at people like Vuillaume, who now created Magginis and he made lots of Magginis and he had this interesting idea about that extra turn on the scroll, in the volute of the scroll, to create this as a Maggini thing, which differs to all other violins that, were kind of produced by.
Was Vuillaume, oh sorry, was Vuillaume the one to add the extra?
No, there are some, there are a few. Magginis that have that extra turn because that, but maybe we talk later about stylistics.
But that must have been his model that he picked up on that model.
Yeah. He must have seen one scroll that, that exists by Maggini and maybe it wasn't Maggini who made it.
It wasn't Maggini. So we see later makers working in Paris, such as Vuillaume, who lived in the 19th century, copying Maggini in a romantic style, perhaps drawn in by this unusual looking model that really didn't resemble anything like the classical Cremonese instruments people were used to. Benjamin Hebbett.
There were people like Di Berio, one of the great early 19th century players who had a Maggini, Ole Bull had a Maggini, and those, those start to get copied. Actually it's Gand et Bernadelle in Paris, Nicolas Francois Vuillaume. Brussels really sort of start the way in copying, and then you get the German cheap, cheaper copies, which always seem to come from those Forms and those Bernadelles. Now we see things orbiting around Parisian musicians and violin makers, who at this time were the influencers of the 19th century on these things.
Florian Leonhardt.
But I have still haven't, um, finished your, your The original question because there's another aspect to Maggini. So once Vuillaume created, picked up on this archaic looking instrument to make another romantic looking thing, because here you also he also had a, Tiefenbroecker, you know, so he, they liked those sudden ancient looking instruments with heads and different heads and different F holes.
But of course, Vuillaume didn't understand Maggini at all because he built it with an outside mould, built it very square and in you know, more what, what they learned in violin making at the time. And also like all violin makers in the 19th century, they no longer constructed with that form within, they drew around things and copied them and kind of idealized it, but didn't really build.
What, was the, the real, intention of the maker at the time? And so he now created the Maggini model next to his Guarneri model, next to the Amati model, next to a Guarneri del Gesù model. So it became one of the five models. So the whole world now knows Maggini, Amati, Stradivari, Guarneri. But, uh, so people had now those models and Maggini became one of them.
And therefore, from the Brescian makers, he became the archaic, the oldest and most ancient looking one. So it became interesting. And then the hills in 1892. wrote their famous book on Maggini, which again is also the Hills did an enormous job in doing research, quite good research. And they found also in that book, you find lots of beautiful evidence and, people who ordered instruments from them in.
Have you in the Hills book where it has sort of a, a guide to faking a Maggini almost it tells you how to make a fake Maggini well, it talks about Magginifying instruments.
I've got my, copyright here. Fifty-seven or so. Fifty-six, fifty seven. There's a whole load of, uh, pointers for connoisseurs.
A very successful Maggini copy was made by Bernard Fendt, Jr. Naturally, the first necessity for the Maggini forger was to obtain suitable violins on which to operate and consequently all violins of large dimensions and antique appearance were sought out and their fitness for adaptation thoughtfully considered. Two lines of purfling were needed and as but few violins possessed this feature. It had to be added. French violins of the Bouquet Pierret, period. 1700, 1740 and German violins of all periods were easily Magginified as regards purfling and the elongation of the sound hole. When the violin to be adapted was sufficiently large and of suitable model, the inner line of purfling was inserted. When of smaller size or unsuitable in form, the original ledge and purfling were removed, and a new rim of wood, about three quarters of an inch, three quarters? Three eighths of an inch in width, added all around, which was joined to the old part by an underlapping joint. This new edge was then slightly hollowed and purfled. The groove for the inner line of purfling being made over the joining of the old and new wood effectually hid it. Clover leaves were inserted in the top and bottom of the back, and the central device of Maggini at the middle of the back. The scroll was also worked on, but here the peculiarities of Maggini were not mastered.And the scroll was invariably turned too far.
Yes, it tells you how you can forge. I like how they give you like, uh, just the tips. Just, just a bit too much, isn't it? And like, and how they say like, in every German violin, because you know how those German trade instruments are often big, so yeah, okay.
Yeah, I mean, the Maggini book's written at exactly the same time that people are sort of getting into their Sherlock Holmes and stuff like that, so. There is an element of it of, sort of giving, giving the Hills. the voice of the expert. Yeah. It's, it's, it's quite a good point to, you know, give, away all, of the secrets because actually you don't often see Magginis or Maggini fakes. So they, they can say everything about expertise and it won't, it won't really affect their bottom line.
But returning to Brescia and the Brescian style. Florian Leonard talks about Maggini's assistant, La Francini, and the style of Maggini's scrolls compared to the work that was being done at the same time in Cremona, and the different construction techniques that the two schools of violin making used. Because La Francini in particular he was as far as I remember he was a Carver and, furniture maker, who also, supplied the, or restored the local church furniture or, you know, whatever it is.
And if you look at the scroll, the scroll is made like this furniture. So it has a kind of leaf, structure that goes around. When you look at the scroll from the front, it's wide. And it's all tapered back, the peg box as well, and everything. There's a completely different idea to the Cremonese idea.
There's not a chamfer structure on the scroll. It's a kind of like a leaf with a fine edge that kind of rounded off over the past 400 years into something like a but it was kind of not thought to be like Amati, very clearly from day one, he constructed a spiral out of mathematical proportions and then had to solve the problem how to end with the volute carving out in the eye.
So you have a channel, which is the carved out channel part of the volute, but you have to end somewhere in the spiral. And so that end is quite a complicated thing for young violin makers. They don't know how to do that. Do you have a gouge that kind of fits into there and meets the other gouge in the point?
Or how do you construct the point? Maybe with a knife cut? But you need to kind of arrive in a parallel. Buy the perfect gouge with the perfect curve.
I remember, um, I went to Mircourt and everyone's like, I found it. I found the gouge.
You see, there we go. You understand. But other people are there with a knife. Yeah. So you understand. So, so the, the Brescian didn't bother about this. So they just had a piece of paper that spiralled up into something and then you had an eye. And it's all undercut because the undercut gives a certain lightness to the design of that paper flow that's like, like, you know, the scroll or something. And the eye, because you didn't have much of a chamfer, could just end sometime whenever the gouge finished in their turn. And that is each time different, but the principle is similar, but they were not trying to replicate like industry. The Cremonese created a system that is absolutely, until today, there to be replicated.
Of course, in the 19th century, it was no longer constructed like in the 17th century or 16th, 16th and 17th century in Cremona was clearly only constructed with dividers, callipers, proportions. And therefore you had the inside mould, you build everything around it and so on. The Brescians didn't have that idea.
They had a free, architecture. They had the back, they stuck the corner blocks on it and they put very thick ribs around it, starting with the cc bouts, then meeting with mitres. Relatively blunt mitres on the corners, open C bouts. C bouts are quite, open C's, because that's much easier to, bend, because these very thick ribs, when you see an original that hasn't been re graduated, and hasn't had, uh, linings fitted. Later by people in the 19th century who want to do better those instruments. Then you actually see that you had those thick ribs and, you know, to make these middle, very small red radiuses on a violin or viola is quite tough to bend without breaking it. And so that they kept it quite blunt. And therefore the corners are not very long, unlike Zanetto di Pellegrino, before it's long corners, but also in Amati's time, of course, they had long corners. And that was a feature of the instrument, the corner, while in Brescia it was kind of an archaic thing that came from the viol.
Yeah, and the Hill's book on Maggini I like it I feel like it's really, it's very well done. It's like, you've got the, the biography and then you have these, like these tips on how to make your own Maggini. Then it has a few anecdotes that are a little bit. Indiscreet as she like they name the clients, uh, involved.
And yes, the, the Fendt copy, which was made as an honest, honest copy, but it was bought by someone whose widow was then hard up and tried to sell it. And in the end you have in the, at the end you have, the body, the measurements, the table of measurements that has, which is sort of a little bit confounding because the violins, it, it does like pre strad. It compares like a, pre 90, pre 1690 Strad, a long Strad and a Maggini. And then for violas, they totally changed to, a Da Salo and then an Amati and an, a Maggini they're comparing. And then they go back to Strad for the cello, which is like, it's confusing. And then they have all the little, the little notes and the explanation. I find it's quite, you know, it's all in there. And then it even has a thing on how to find Maggini’s house at the end.
We were talking about the woman who wrote it, Margaret Huggins, and she’s interesting cause she's like, she's a real fan. You can tell as you're reading it, it's like, she's a real fan of the Hills. And I find it interesting that they, they asked her to write. So, yes, she marries a guy called William Huggins, and he's an astronomer. And, but the fascinating thing is that she really seems to be the person who's into photography. So in terms of being able to record what he sees, it's her. And she becomes a pioneer in the 1870s of spectral astrophotography.
Spectropi I can't say it Spectropi Spectropsy? She becomes really good at pronouncing it. Anyway, whichever one it is. That's taking is that was she actually taking photos of light? Like, sort of rainbows type thing? Like, you know, when you see a rainbow with the light. Was that? I suspect so. Okay, I'll have to check that out. I think there's a whole load of stuff which is going on about with, before, colour photography, actually, there's a lot of understanding of which light waves the camera works best at or, sorry, not the camera, but the process, so you can say actually, if we look at a lot of photographs of the time and compare them to ultraviolet or infrared photography, we actually see, you know, violin photographs, they're all opaque, because, you know, what's a perfectly good spectrum for a black and white photograph of a person is actually a little bit on the ultraviolet spectrum.
So we're not able to see the wood underneath the varnish. Oh yeah, and then in this, in this book, there's amazing Yeah, well not, you say the paintings are amazing and you're welcome to. You're absolutely right.
It is so hard to draw a violin. I am just really, you know, uh, admirable of anyone who can do a painting of a violin.
But to me, it's the, it's the photographs, which are absolutely, you know. Before I knew who Margaret Huggins was, seeing these photographs, which are absolutely to scale, really done with precision, and then comparing them to other early, early violin photographs, and, and they're just astonishing. And I think that we might be seeing, you know, the same, the same eye and the same photographic skill on those as, you know, the inventor of Spekof, of stuff that we can't pronounce.
Spek Spektro Spektrop Spektroposi? Spek Spek Spek That one. Which is really, really important.
Margaret Huggins was a pretty amazing woman. Born in Dublin in 1848, she was an accomplished astronomer and spectroscopist who made significant contributions to the fields of astrophysics. She was also a very talented photographer, artist, and musician. In 1873, when she was 25 years old, She attended a lecture by a Mr. William Huggins, a prominent astronomer and spectroscopist on his research on stellar spectra. Oof, that's a tongue twister. Margaret, who was already captivated by astronomy and spectroscopy, was deeply impressed by William's lecture and sought an introduction to him. After the lecture, her uncle, who was acquainted with William Huggins, organized a meeting between the two, and the spectral sparks were ignited. In 1875, two years later, They married, and together they conducted groundbreaking research in spectroscopy, which is the study of the interaction between light and matter. It was a marriage of intellect and the heart. I find it really hard to say spectroscopy, spectroscopy. Anyway, in addition to her scientific contributions, Margaret actively participated in astronomical societies and institutions, which is kind of extraordinary for a woman at the time. She was a member of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Astronomical Association. She was also involved in promoting women's involvement in science and was a member of the British Federation of University Women. Margaret received recognition for her work throughout her career, and she was the first woman to receive the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1903, which was a remarkable achievement at the time.
She also received honorary degrees from the University of Dublin and the University of St Andrews, when this was still a tricky time for a woman to attend university. As to how she came to write the Maggini book for the Hills, apart from being one smart cookie. Her husband, William Huggins, was an avid amateur violinist and was friends with the inventive and nimble minded William Ebsworth Hill. William Huggins also possessed a golden period Stradivari, so this could have helped the connection. This violin is now called the Huggins Strad. Today, it's lent to the winner of the Belgian Queen Elizabeth's violin competition. Because Margaret was also a very talented photographer, she helped in the production of the images of not only the Maggini book, but also others the Hill Workshop produced.
Today she's only really remembered for her scientific endeavours, but here I'd like to give a little shout out to her and her work on Maggini. You go girl.
So the Hill book was another book that put him on the map, Maggini. And the Hills also idealized him a little bit by, by saying he was the kind of establisher of the violin.
Do you think the Hills book is still, uh, The reference book for Maggini? Yeah.
Today, is it still what they say, valid? Um, the, the facts, the facts of the book are still valid because they, they did proper research in Brescia. And so they, looked at sources, they, found. This lady, um, Oh, are you talking about Isabella D'Este? Isabella D'Este, thank you. Ah, okay, so I thought you were talking about, like, modern, okay, the Gonzaga court. Yes, that's the one. And so she was, of course, a patron of the arts, in that sense, yeah? And so people like her furthered this, and her demands were fulfilled by Brescia. And that's another interesting thing. Why did Brescia live so confidently next to Cremona, where Amati, of course, made instruments also for a big society throughout Europe. He became also famous, but they lived side by side, not influencing each other not that I can see that. And you can see that not, not rethinking, Oh, maybe they are doing something better than us. Let's change a little bit the style. No, Maggini confidently continued the style of Brescia Only at the very end of Maggini's life and career, you can see a little bit of proportioning, the scroll getting a little bit, more carefully made, et cetera, not quite so large and heavy.
Whether that is influenced from, and also linings are used suddenly, whether that's influenced from Cremona or whether that's demand for musicians that have seen a Cremonese instrument or whether That is an evolutionary thing that just happened because those instruments had a relatively fast evolution in, in Brescia. Because from the very primitive, instruments, suddenly, the Micheli family and your other makers, and then Gasparo Da Salo was the big genius in many ways because he, transformed a lot and established things and you became very successful that he became wealthy as an instrument maker and he could afford to have several employees and different premises to own.
So that's, that's quite an achievement as an instrument maker of the day. Yeah. So I think the Book of Hills helped Maggini's name as well and then the mystery of the earliest violin maker was of course In the ears of all the laymen about the topic, particularly if Hills also kind of supported this, uh, model of, that Maggini is the earliest, violin maker or creator of the violin.
Well, it's interesting because they don't actually say that. And in the Maggini book, in the front. You might have like one of the first editions, there's a paper that says, you know, we've got all this information about Gasparo Da Salo. So then they knew that about Gasparo Da Salo, but they brought out the Maggini book first and the damage was done.
I think the damage was done and then they didn't want to peddle back too much. But I, but they did say in that book, I remember that they said that he is the person who established the violin, the modern violin. Oh yeah, so you have Gasparo. They don't say it's the inventor directly, but they said, I think they said established.
But I think out of that established probably interpretations came and the people then made out of it, he invented. Yeah, because you jump quickly from established to invent.
Yeah, you can imagine someone reading it and then telling a friend, Oh, you know, I read this book about the guy who invented the violin.
Yeah, I mean, I would say in 1732, the Brescian violin making or violin making was dead for a bit. So until the arrival of G. B. Rogeri, who came with a completely Cremonese idea into town and then adopted. Features of Maggini and Gasparo Da Salo, I cannot say who, probably some Maggini violins that would have been more in numbers available to him, have influenced his design of creating an arching.
It's, it's interesting that he instantly picked up on that arching, because Rogeris are always and, Much fuller arched. The arching rises much earlier from the purfling, right? So he came from the Cremonese tradition, but he adopted the, like the Brescian arching idea. He, came from Nicola Amati and has learned all the finesse of, construction, fine, making discipline, and also series production. Get an inside mould and have the linings, and have all the blocks including top and bottom block, and nailed in the neck. So he did a complete, package of Cremonese Violin making, and brought that into Brescia, but blended it in certain stylistics and sometimes even in copies, with the Brescian style for a long time. We have had, before dendrochronology was established, the Magginis, going around, and they were actually, G. B. Rogeris.
Right, yeah, we did a condition report on a, Maggini, and, it had an old certificate, and, And then we did the dendrochronology, and so I had to change the title to attributed to.
Yeah, and it might have been, you know, I mean, I have, I've seen about three, three Rogeris that used to be Magginis. Okay. Yeah, very nicely made. But you can see that the construction behind it doesn't have that more loose idea of creating that shape, but it was a constructed shape.
Okay, so how, how is Maggini different to and why do you think, Maggini is so much, better known than Da Salo, or am I just making assumptions? I feel like a lot of people know, if you say a Brescian instrument, they'll be like, Oh yeah, Maggini.
Benjamin Hebbett.
Well, I think Gaspar much rarer than we sort of take credit for and actually, you know, they're also, I think when we look at Magginis, well, there's actually two problems with Magginis because there are the spectacular Magginis. And throughout his, throughout history until dendocrinology, that's, uh, tree ring dating came along. We, you know, we, saw these instruments, which were really quite one, you know, really quite wonderful, almost cremonese quality, which we kind of thought of as, you know, the, the, the best Maggini’s, but then what we discovered, and there's quite a lot of those, and quite a lot of those have become the very famous Magginis, but actually, then Dendrochronology comes along, and given that Maggini died in 1630, when these were coming up with Dendros of 1670, 1680, 1700, we, you know, suddenly, began to realize that these aren't by Maggini at all, but they're by somebody 60, 70 years on.
And, you know, stuff like the Prince Doria, So painted for Prince Doria in the 19th century, but, uh, but they're actually, you know, they're not, they're not even meas at all.
So you've got all of this stuff by Giovanni Batista, Rogeri. He's a contemporary of Stradivari, making Maggini fakes, which we still, you know, are associating with Maggini. Then you've got the real Magginis, which are a little less refined. Then you've got the period where Maggini are working together. Maggini and Da Salo's workshop.
And those are a little less refined again. And then you've got the true Gaspar Da Salos, which are, you know, a small number and actually quite rough. And then the problem is, is that, you know, I think so much stuff, you know, it's more likely that a Maggini will get reappraised into a Maggini Gasparo Da Salo collaboration than a Gasparo Da Salo coming into that. So essentially there's three different kinds of Magginis. And very little, unless you're into double basses, from Gasparo Da Salo.
So, uh, so one of my questions was, in the, was actually in the Hills book, uh, I don't know if it's her, it's a bit ambiguous when you're reading it, I'm like, is it, is it the Hills talking, or is it her talking about she actually has a funny story where she talks about clients and she actually names the client.
Um, it's, I love these old books where they're just like, you know, Mrs. So and so. Politically incorrect. Actually, when you read the Hill book. It's kind of escorting everyone, you know, they give their own opinion.
And she'll be like, yeah, Mrs. So and so came in and it was clearly a fake and then she sold it as a real one. And then that guy came back and I had to tell him it was a fake and, but she says, so she talks about, well, no, or the Hills, who knows about, Maggini, Stradivari, the idea that Stradivari was influenced in his long period of making by Maggini. What, what are your, do you think that's a relevant observation?
Florian Leonhardt. What do you think I would answer to that? I say very clearly 100%. 100%, no doubt. So, you know, the Brescia was plodding along with their style on their own and creating something that, yeah, they just were confident because the musicians wanted to have those instruments. They were busy. They got rich from it, you know, nobody was poor making those instruments. And they, which we can see in the archives today. So you can, you can see that they were successful. They had constantly musicians from all over the country to consult them because the musicians were the ones driving. what was in demand. You know, in parallel, in the parallel universe, Cremona supplied some other chords with their instruments, and they were successful within that, and that system worked very well. But I don't see much cross pollination there going on between those cities. So Cremona will have noticed that musicians like sometimes to have these kind of Maggini like instruments.
And Rogeri was already making such instruments as well, maybe visible for Cremonese violin makers, because they, the musicians would travel, because Brescia and Cremona is not that far apart. But obviously the, the link wasn't so established culturally, as you can tell from the violin making history. So, but Stradivari, who totally deserves his name as the genius of, of our he was constantly, from day one, from the earliest instruments, when we analysed him, you can see from the earliest instruments his strong character and drive to find out how to make it better. So I think from day one, he tried to see how can I improve this thing. And by 1690, he arrived by saying, let's radically change the design of the arching because, because the musicians talking about the sonority and warmth and depth of, uh, Maggini instruments and so he, he felt that's lacking. Let's try to find this out. And then he saw something and he said, let's try it. And he did it and it created some effect and he continued this. And so he did it for just under a decade, building those long pattern instruments because long Magginis were longer and they were fuller arched. And you see that in, in Stradivari's design.
But Stradivari still was bound by the very strong, incredible principles that the Amati have created in Cremona. So he had the discipline to build it beautifully with long, slender corners, with choice of wood that looks beautiful. Magnificent. And it's very, it's aristocratic in the way. So the Maggini model by Stradivari doesn't look like a Maggini, you know, so it’s a much more graceful, in design in my view.
He combined in the golden period, the two things. So his arching became fuller, which is the major change in Stradivari's. Design for the sound.
Yeah, there's less of that. Um, the, the scooped like towards the edges, it's less, the less, although, yes, I mean the, Amati brothers. I, I don't, yeah.
The brothers Amati were really quite full there's a view. It's, yeah. It's hard to tell. Since you mentioned the Amati brothers, the Amati brothers were more advanced in the arching from our modern perspective of, of ideal arching than Niccolo, because Niccolo exaggerated that deep, long, wide, wide channel, and therefore has nearly a slightly pinched arching, which you see in some Rugeris as well. And that influence you can clearly see also in Stradivari's idea. So there was something going on, but, but Stradivari was the most consistent to bring that forward.
So he took, uh, yeah, so it's a little bit of Maggini that made Stradivari.
Yes. You could say that. It's probably Maggini, um, that influenced that.
And, of course, the other big guys, Guarneri del Gesù was the other big guy and successful violin makers of all time. He also got influenced by that because you can see he made a wide breast, uh, Stradivari didn't adopt that, you know, he, he still saw an advantage in the arching, but he didn't want to deviate too far away from the established idea in Cremona.
While Guarneri del Gesù, he, he did that already 30 years later, you know, 30 years later, he started, he was in an, at a different time where the sons were already all rebels, you know, I mean, look at Stradivari's sons, I mean. What a disgrace. I'm telling you, dissapointment they must have been for him because how can the father achieve this level of workmanship and then you have those sons who just Don't give a damn about precision.
Well, it's the, you know, it's the father who makes the fortune and then the children who spend it. They were that generation. And so, Del Gesu grew up in that generation, but he grew up in a family that was already much rougher in making, you know, the Guarneri's, Filius Andrea, his father. Pretty rough, you know, so he didn't build like a Niccolo Amati in a sweet, beautiful, perfectly mannered and disciplined way. He left the tool marks, he didn't always bother about exact precision.
Thank you so much for listening to this final episode on Gio Paolo Maggini, but stay with me for the next episode as I return to Cremona. And I continue with the story of Niccolo Amati and his revolutionary practices in the workshop that would change the violin landscape forever. I'd like to thank my guests, Benjamin Hebbert and Florian Leonhardt for talking to me today.
Please do leave a comment and rating. And if you would like to financially support the podcast, that would be amazing. You can go to patreon.com forward slash the violin chronicles to do that. On social media, I have Instagram with the handle at The Violin Chronicles, and Facebook is The Violin Chronicles Podcast.
Thank you for joining me. And I hope you will tune in to the next episode of The Violin Chronicles.
King Eurytus witnessed this incredible feat. Finally understood the true strength and valour of Hercules, and he saw the hero's unwavering determination and boundless love for Calliho. Overwhelmed by the hero's prowess and the sincerity of his heart, the king relented. Being able to challenge the course of a river and chiselled features were obviously great husband material, it seems. But moving on. In a great celebration of their union, Hercules laid the foundations of a magnificent city. He named it Brixia. The Latin form for Brescia. It was a testament to his strength and the indelible mark he left upon the land. The city grew and flourished, becoming a beacon of culture, art, and prosperity.
And this is the legend of how the city of Brescia was founded.
The mighty Maggini In this episode, we will be looking at the oh so influential Gio Paolo Maggini. If you haven't already listened to the first episodes on Brescian makers, stop and do that now because to truly understand this maker, you'll need to know where he and his city came from. Episodes 1, are about his master Gasparo Da Salo and the Brescian school.
In the previous episodes of the Violin Chronicles, I have been looking at the Amati family, but it would be greatly remiss of me to bypass this Brescian maker. Living and working at the same time as the Amati brothers and Niccolo Amati, a mere 60 kilometers away. Now, remember the city of Cremona was still under Spanish rule and Brescia was part of the Venetian state, which made them quite different. And this is also seen in the production of their instruments, as we will soon see. So I'm taking a break from Cremona just now to travel up the highway to the land of guns and violins.
Hello, and welcome to the Violin Chronicles. A podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French violin making school some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine Lespets, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de lutherie, Mirecourt.
As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with, and in particular, the lives of those who made them. So often when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect, but here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture. So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, famine, and war, but also of love. Artistic genius, revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.
In the small village of Botticino situated in the hills an hour from Brescia lived the Maggini family. Zovan and Giulia lived with Zovan's father Bartolomeo Maggini and their two small children. Zorvan, somewhat like the Amatis, had taken his time in marrying and was in his forties when he eventually did find a wife and started a family of his own. As time passed, so did his elderly father, and it was all too evident that there was no future for their family in this small rural village. His children were getting older, and there were more possibilities and prospects for employment in Brescia. When Zolvan was 57, his wife, Julia, had just given birth to another child whom they named Gio Paolo, the star of our story.
He was born in the autumn of 1580. Zolvan's eldest son was eager to work as a shoemaker and so the family moved to the large city of Brescia to start a new life. Over the years, the Maggini family settled into life in the vibrant city of Brescia. The youngest son, Gio Paolo, does not seem to have had an extensive education, like his Cremonese counterparts, and when Gio Paolo Maggini was still very young, his father passed away.
When they had arrived in Brescia, Zoran, his father, had set out to make a shoemaking business and failed, and then went on to promptly die. Perhaps his death was not a surprise, but to make ends meet after his death, Maggini's mother sold land to keep them afloat. And it is around this time, in 1595, that the young Maggini becomes an apprentice of the well-known instrument maker, Gasparo Da Salo.
It would have been a big change for Gio Paolo Maggini to begin with, but his apprenticeship in the well-established workshop was a success. Despite his lack of education, he may have also been a musician or singer, as many of the early Luthiers were both. Life was looking good for Gio Paolo Maggini. He had a close relationship with his boss, Gasparo Da Salo. He trusted him in the signing of legal documents. His life revolved around the musical district of Brescia and his friends and acquaintances, including musicians, well known instrument makers, and other assistants who worked for Da Salo.
In 1602, he became friends with Paolo Virichi, who had returned from exile. Paolo's father was a close friend of Gasparo Da Salo, whom we spoke about in the Da Salo episodes. Still very young, in his early 20s, Gio Paolo Maggini, after 8 years of working with Gasparo Da Salo, was ready to head out on his own. He appears to still have had amicable dealings with Gasparo Bertolotti and his family, even though he did leave and set up a new workshop with La Franchini, Gasparo's other assistant, who came along with him. In 1606, when Maggini was 26 years old, he bought a workshop and house near Gasparo's. He paid slightly higher than its real value, and the noble Ludovico Seria feared for its payment. Maggini is able to pay with his mother's credit for her lands in Bottino. Thanks to the good old bank of mom and dad, this new workshop is very visible in front of the Piazza del Podesta, near Gasparo da Salo, and Annis. He's the organ builder. They're workshops, and it was in the prime instrument maker's quarters. In 1615, he is in his mid thirties with a well established workshop that has been running for nine years.
Gio Paolo Maggini married the young Anna Foresti, a furrier's daughter, in January of 1615. She most probably knew Da Salo's younger sister, Ludovica, who was also married to a furrier in Brescia. They undoubtedly lived in the artisanal district of the city, and Maggini was 34 and Anna 19 years old when they were married. The couple lived in the house in Contrada del Palazzo Vecchio de Podesta, opposite the old palace, and eight days after the wedding, Maggini's wife signed in the kitchen a receipt for her dowry given by her father. The witnesses included a carpenter and a bootmaker, and her husband's assistant, Giacomo Della Franchini, maestro di Violini, living in the house with them.
We can see that when he married, Maggini was in a comfortable position with a house, a workshop, a maid, and an assistant, running a thriving business. He had a good trade stock and paid his employees well.
Here I'm speaking to Christopher Moore, Principal Viola of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, who plays on a lovely Gio Paolo Maggini.
My name is Christopher Moore. I'm a viola operator. I I'm currently the Principal Viola of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and before that I was the Principal Viola of the Australian Chamber Orchestra for 10 years.
Yeah. And owner of a puppy that we can hear sometimes.
Sorry. That was actually my child. Both. One of them has a, has a pupil free day and the other is. Just not going to school.
Yeah. The teachers I know, they're like, why don't we have a teacher free day?
Well, yeah, they seem to have a lot down in Victoria.
So your principal viola and what viola do you play, Christopher?
I'm very lucky to be the, what would you call it? The, not the, I'm not the owner. I play a wonderful Giovanni Paolo Maggini. Viola from around 1610.
Custodian.
Custodian. There we go. It was made about around 1610. Of course, I was listening to some of your podcast earlier. And as we know, some of these, these Brescian makers didn't really date their instruments until. Later on. Yeah. It's tricky. Yeah. So they just have to go on the dendro. Dendrochronology. Dendrochronology? Yeah. The dating of tree rings? Mm hmm. And what, what's your dendrochronology? I've got it here actually.
So the report said that the youngest tree ring on the front is dated around 1591. So that puts the, yeah, puts the, the making of the instrument 10, 20 years after that. Mm. Yeah.
Cause that, yeah, it's, it's kind of complicated to understand, but the youngest tree ring would be on the outside of the tree and then it's not necessarily the one on the most outside, depending on what piece of wood they used.
Yes. So, so it's a guide, but you know, it can't be earlier than that or, yep. So, yeah and how long, how long have you been playing this viola? When did we get it? It was like 2014, I think, when I was Well, that was when it was procured, but I was sort of searching for a viola in the, in the Australian Chamber Orchestra for me to play around 2012, 2013. And we're comparing it to my wonderful instrument. It's a, it's a Arthur E. Smith from 1937.
Great Australian maker.
And we're comparing all these wonderful instruments to the Smith and nothing really stacked up until we found this Maggini, which had that sort of similar fruity viola tone that to, you know, to compete with the Smith. So then we'd, we'd actually sort of given up the search and this one sort of fell in our lap, the Giovanni Paolo Maggini. And we just tried it and we, we all fell in love with it. And so the anonymous benefactor who may or may not be the, enigmatic alter ego of Batman. You just don't know. Oh yeah.
I think of, I do think of Batman.
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so he's, he, he or she has purchased this viola for the ACO ostensibly. But anyway, then I left the ACO and viola stayed there for a bit. And it was sort of passed around a few hands, but then eventually the owner decided to give it back to me to play. So I'm, so now it's on loan to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. And I get to play it.
Excellent. Actually fun fact about, I do remember when you were trying, you were trying two Magginis actually, at one point. Yeah. Yeah. You tried both? Because I remember they were both in the workshop at one point and I think that was before we had this one. I can't remember. Because there was your, that one. I remember that one. And another one. Yeah. And I remember that time because the anonymous benefactor was in the workshop and I, I was actually very pregnant and I had gone into labor and I had run into the garden and I'd run up to see our child and the anonymous benefactor was there and he said, You still haven't had this baby?
Yeah.
And I just went, yep, I'm working on it. And then I ran back downstairs.
Gosh.
So I, I remember that time and then just a few hours later, had the baby.
Well, there you go. And then we had ours. We got ours. Anyway. Yeah, no, it was, it was a one interesting time. Wonderful.
Like when you, you could. When you play another instrument, and then you come back to your Maggini what, what's sort of the thing that stands out to you about your instrument?
Yeah. The thing that I think about these, feel about, about a lot of these Italian, old Italian instruments is this, it’s just got this sheen about the sound. It's not something necessarily that you'd, that you'd want to hear under your ear, close up. You it’s kind of got this penetrating tone that's not necessarily pleasant under the ear. But what you've got to be relying on is if you, you know, if you give it to somebody else and walk a couple meters away even, and then even further out into the hall, you then hear that what, what's coming, coming out to the audience, you know, and sometimes is lacking in, in other instruments. And it's sort of, when it's nice under the year, you go, Oh, this is great to play, but it doesn't translate to something beautiful in the hall. Whereas this thing, I know that it can, that it it's, it's sounding absolutely warm and rich and fruity out, you know, further you go back purely as a playing experience.
What I love about this one, I mean, it's just really easy to play as well. It's been doing,
shush, shush.
That's his little puppy making noise in the background.
It's been doing what it's been doing for, you know, 400 years now. So it's just like all of the, all of the bits, all of the atoms are aligned. I don't, I really just don't know. I can't, it just works incredibly well. It just does what you want it to do. without having to work too hard. And also, it's got a very thin neck, which makes it very easy to play. So, the last owner was Erwin Schiffer, who was a teacher and player, like the Haydn String Quartets and the Ducati and Tahoe String Quartets. So that was 47 years. So that, that was, that was owned by him for 47 years until 2011. Before that it was Louis Boday from about 1920 to 1964, who was a Parisian player. So we don't know anything before that, but I just sort of assumed that it was someone with a small hand. To make it easier to play, but I appreciate that. I don't have small hands, but just makes it easier to play, which is wonderful. Yeah. Well, that's good. Yeah. No, it's interesting having to, like you were saying, it sounds good in a concert hall setting and that's another consideration people have to take when. Choosing an instrument, like where they're going to play it and how it sounds.
Yeah, for sure. And is it a big viola? What are the dimensions?
It’s, I can tell you exactly. It's 43. 8 centimeters. Well, 17 and a quarter inches. Okay. So obviously that was cut down. Like all these instruments, they weren't sort of a, you know, standard size. When we talk about a standard sized viola, what we mean is an instrument with a body length, this does not include the neck, of about 41 centimetres or 16 inches to 16 and a half inches, which makes this one quite a large viola.
But anyway, so this has been cut down up at the c bouts. Seem to be original. That's about it. And it's got an original scroll, which is interesting as well. Which is sometimes, sometimes they don't. And it's quite rough, the scroll. It's funny. When you, when you hold it up to look at it both sides don't really match up.
Not symmetrical. No. Yeah. Not like, it's not like Stradivarius scrolls were something to behold, but this one's just a bit rough. It's tricky with Maggini. Like, Giovanni Paolo Maggini, we don't know much about him. His instruments aren't dated. But the 1610, that's like he in his life, he was pretty well established.
He was actually quite wealthy. And he was living in a he had a workshop. He'd left Gasparo Da Salo by this point. And he was in his own workshop with his own family making instruments and it was just him and his assistant. Yeah, right. So there weren't huge amounts of instruments but that's when he would have made this particular one.
Two years later, in 1617, Maggini now defines himself on a legal document as Master of Violins and owner of violins, wood and strings. Maggini's workshop was on the ground floor and the family would be living upstairs in the living quarters. Giovanni Paolo Maggini made various instruments like his master, Da Salo, but in this era, the violin was gaining popularity and he appears to have made lots of them.
He also made cittars, tenors and violoncellos. Musically we are moving into the Baroque period and the musical expression was emphasizing feelings and emotions. The violin was a good instrument for this.
In this earlier period of Magginis, we see the backs and scrolls and sides of the instrument mostly cut on the slab. The corners are quite short and his earlier works resemble quite closely those of Da Salo's. In the beginning of the 1620s, Maggini's family is growing. He has been married for five years and already has four children. One boy, Giovanni Pietro, and three girls, Giulia Barbera, Domenica and Cecilia Elana. Giovanni Paolo Maggini decides to move his family and workshop to a bigger premises, and they sell the old house and have now moved into a new house with his four children and assistants. Maggini's business was successful, even though his family life would become somewhat tragic.
The salaries and wages of his assistants and servants were increased over this time, and his trade stock was larger. In 1626, their new house was in the Contrada della Barca. Sadly, his first son and daughter died in infancy, but his wife had also had three more children, Giulia, Veronica and Carlo Francesco. So there were now five children. He also had a property on the hill surrounding Brescia of 10 acres with both a farmhouse and a residential house, and another property on the plains of about seven acres and even a third one closer to the estate of the heirs of the Giovanni Paolo Maggini at Botticino. He most likely inherited property and also had the dowry of his wife. All his wealth probably did not come from his instrument making as he only had one assistant. The properties of seven and ten acres were most likely came from his wife's dowry as they border on her father's properties. As his career continues his craftsmanship improves. Very slight hollowing from the edges and higher archings than his earlier work, and later work. Neater purfling and more graceful sound holes. The heads are more symmetrical and better cut. The bellies are never on the slab and the backs are very rarely so. These instruments could be comparable to Cremonese makers in craftsmanship but would be less fine. The Dumas Tenor is a good example of this second period.
Maggini continued making beautiful instruments, even as the hints of plague and famine were knocking at the door. In 1628, two years before he died, and at the age of 48, they had another son who would die the same year, and then in the same year that Maggini himself died, Giulia, his wife, had twins, Forstino and Caterina. Faustino would die after two months, but Caterina would live on. The characteristics of Giovanni Paolo Maggini's making in the years before he died were, according to the Hills, Maggini's third period. He had an even greater quality of workmanship. He may have seen and been inspired by the Amati brothers work, or done so on his own.
His arching is significantly lower with higher edges. Giovanni Paolo Maggini was one of the first in Brescia to use side linings and corner blocks. His earlier instruments had a browner varnish like Da Salo's, but his later instruments have a more brilliant golden orange yellow colour. His characteristic double purfling. And the sound holes are undercut like viols, not perpendicular like the Amatis and Cremonese school.
In 1630, Giovanni Paolo Maggini appears to have died. He was most probably buried in the common pit in the eastern part of town. During outbreaks of the plague, towns and cities acted differently. In Cremona, people were quarantined in their houses, and as we saw with Nicolo Amati, and in Brescia, the sick were taken to plague houses organized by the city.
This would explain the lack of information about his death, if he died in one of these places and was buried in a communal grave. In Brescia, during the plague of 1632, the city provided these houses that I spoke of to receive the sick and then throw the dead bodies into the streets. Giovanni Paolo Maggini may have died in a pest house, and this was why there is no record of his death.
He would have been about 51 years old. Gio Paolo Maggini’s wife and children survived him. Anna survived him and died in November 1651 at about the age of 58. Of Giovanni Paolo Maggini's sons, Gio Paolo II became a merchant, Carlo Francesco became a silk merchant, and his youngest son, Marco Antonio, became a priest. None of his children took up the trade of violin making.
In this episode, I have gone through the life of Giovanni Paolo Maggini fairly quickly, because it is Strangely now, after his death, that the biggest story of Maggini's career begins to unfold. And for this, I will be talking to two experts who will explain this fascinating story, Florian Leonhardt and Benjamin Hebert.
So join me for the next episode on Giovannin Paolo Maggini, one of the most influential Brescian violin makers, as we unravel the mystery to his posthumous bounding success. I'd like to thank my lovely guest, Chris Moore, for talking to me today. Thank you for listening to this episode. Please do leave a comment and rating.
And if you would like to financially support the podcast, that would be amazing. You can go to Patreon forward slash the Violin Chronicles to do that. On social media, I have Instagram with the handle at the Violin Chronicles and Facebook is the Violin Chronicles podcast. Thank you for joining me. And I hope you will tune in to the next episode of the Violin Chronicles.
That's pretty quick if you were wondering. And this is the story of the life of Sant Omobono, who is not only the patron saint of Cremona, but also the patron saint of merchants, textile workers, tailors, business people, and entrepreneurs. Some might say that the real miracle here is that Omobono was an honest businessman. But he is also remarkable in that he was the first person canonized despite being both a layman, not in religious orders, and a father of a family. He was neither a martyr nor a king. And speaking of Omobono, there is a podcast for violin makers or violin enthusiasts, if you would like to discover it, called simply Omo. You really should check it out. That podcast is named after one of Antonio Stradivari's sons, Omobono, who was probably named after this Omobono. But now on with the podcast.
Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School of Mirecourt some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de lutherie in Mirecourt.
As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with, and in particular, the lives of those who made them. So often, when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect, but here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture. So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, famine, and war, but also of love, artistic genius Revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.
Nicolo Amati was born in 1596 into a country ravaged by famine and disease on one hand, but on the other it existed in the midst of artistic endeavour, exploration and invention. Cremona, the city Niccolo Amati was born into, was not an out of the way sleepy village, it was a crossroads literally for traffic and ideas from across Europe, filled with merchants and artisans. Take, for example, the case of Sofinisba Anguissola, a Cremonese girl who was one of five sisters, all accomplished artists, having been schooled in the Cremonese fashion. She was taken to the Spanish royal court to paint portraits and led a fascinating life. Worthy of an episode in itself. The question to this day remains as to whether she painted the famed Charles IX instruments made by Nicholas's grandfather.
During this time, and in Cremona as well, musically there was instrumental music bursting forth such as the Canzona, the Ricciare, the Fantasia, and dance inspired compositions quite different to vocal music. In France there was ballet, and in Italy, opera. Music was an essential part of civic, religious, and courtly life in the Renaissance, and Cremona was no different. In Casa Amati, Nicolo Amati was a middle child, born into a sea of children, about ten. He was probably number six. His oldest brother, Roberto, joined the army, and his second eldest brother became a priest. He had six sisters, and his youngest brother died presumably as a child, leaving Nicolo Amati the only son to carry on the family business. Nicolo Amati would become the godfather of the modern day violin. He would have attended the local parish school until the age of about 12, and then in 1610 when he was about 14 years old and truly starting his apprenticeship with his father, news came that his uncle Antonio Amati had died. Niccolo Amati’s father and his brother used to have a workshop together that they had inherited from their father. But before Nicolo Amati was born, the brothers had had a disagreement and split the shop, each brother going his own way. They may not have been particularly close, especially if the rift between the two brothers was still a thing, but perhaps 22 years on, Girolamo Amati and his brother may have patched things up. Especially as they were still both living in the same street. Moving on four years, a sad event affected the Amati household once again. The 18 year old Nicolo Amati and his family received the news of an accident on the Po River near Vigivano. Roberto, his older brother, was killed in an exercise during his military service. Nicolo Amati would have felt the responsibility to continue helping his father even more now that there was one less brother to help out. In 1616, the Amati workshop, with Girolamo Amati and Nicolo Amati working, produced two five stringed cellos. Nicolo Amati was About 20 at this time, so we can easily imagine him helping his father with these instruments.
353 years after they were made, in 1969, they were acquired by the Fleming family in England. And today, one of these cellos is played in the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
I spoke to Timo Veikko Valve, Principal Cellist in the Australian Chamber Orchestra, about this instrument and what it's like for him playing on it.
My name is Timo Veikko Valve, and I'm the Principal Cello of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. I've been in that role for the past 16 years, and I come from Finland originally, but I guess, Sydney and Australia is now my home. So at the moment I'm playing a 1616 Brothers Amati cello, which I have had the privilege of playing for the past Five or six years. I'm a very lucky owner of this quite, quite special cello, in many ways. I used to play a Joseph Fillius Guarneri cello before that. Which I thought was the ideal cello. And in some ways still, It's a very, I guess, softly spoken and chamber music kind of has a character of chamber music in, in its kind of personality. Whereas the Amati is a more robust and more, assertive and actually can be quite loud. So when I joined the orchestra in 2007, one of the first things that I was asked to do is to go cello shopping. So I found the Guarneri for myself, and uh, so it was my Not bad. No, it was, it was really amazing experience actually to kind of go into that world, which I obviously hadn't visited before, you know, going instrument shopping of that level in London and yeah, funnily enough, the first instrument that I saw on that trip was the Guarneri. It was a bit of love at first sight, but I mean there were a lot of, a lot of other instruments that we tried on that trip, you know, um, Stradivarius, uh, Montagnana, so like Really top end cellos, um, worth much more than what the Guarneri is actually worth, but, uh, but still somehow it's just, it sounded like me.
So anyway, that was my first relationship for 10 years. And now I'm enjoying life with the Amati. Originally, it was built as a five string cello. It was modified into a normal conventional four string cello in the mid-1900s. It was previously owned by a British rather famous cellist called Amaryllis Fleming. Well, she was I guess a superstar of the, of the time. So she owned, a Guarneri, and two Brothers Amati. And both of those Brothers Amati were actually five string cellos. I've met the other one, which still today remains as a five string cello in its original uncut form, which is amazing. So it's a, type of cello that was more common during that time. Nowadays it doesn't really have a, it doesn't get played often. I mean, there's a very limited kind of Baroque repertoire that utilizes the five string cello, but, unfortunately. That's why a lot of those five string cellos have been converted into conventional four string cellos.
Easier to sell.
Easier to sell, yeah. So that's what happened with this one. But what I think is also quite amazing about this particular, my cello is that, and perhaps this is because it was a five-string cello, so it wasn't played so often after it was built. It was, I don't know, perhaps it has sat in a collection somewhere for a long time, but I think in the, certificate, they describe it as a unprecedented amount of original varnish. So if you look at the cello, it looks actually, it has a bit of wear and tear, but it looks relatively healthy and new, you know, given that it's been built around 1616. To have so much of original varnish, especially in the back, um, is quite amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's. It's quite rare.
I remember the first time in the workshop, it was just the instrument and I walked in and I just said, Ooh, what's that?
Antoine was like, Oh, that' Tipi’s. Like, it's quite striking. Like you kind of stop and look at it.
There's another element, I mean, I guess, so like a lot of, a lot of instruments, they would have been cut down, and this one was cut down as well at some point. I guess there's no concrete date for this particular instrument, but the dendrochronology says that, um, that the latest are from 1612, but they can also say. Based on that research that same, same word from the same tree was used in other Brothers Amati instruments, another viola and another cello. So there's, there's, um, kind of a concrete link, which is quite fascinating that they can do that.
Yes. Yeah, it's cool. And it has, it has double purfling, doesn't it?
Yes. Yeah. Which, which I guess is, as far as I know, is not normal for an Amati instrument. But that would have been added when it was re edged. Someone, someone said that it's probably been done to kind of give a visual kind of distraction of the, I mean, the edging work is fine. Perfect. Like you, you can't really see anything. It's, you know, you really have to look in, you can see a couple of spots where you can see seams, but it's done so well that, yeah, I don't know. It's probably just a trick of an eye. When the instrument was introduced to us about six years ago, I wasn't particularly looking for another instrument because I was, you know, I was in a very happy relationship with the old one.
Then the orchestra decided, oh, it's, you It's a great opportunity let's just go for it. Purchased it without a clear view who would play it and but it came quite obvious relatively kind of naturally that it's a cello that kind of needs to sit in the principal cello role or the principal cello seat kind of has the ability to well as a soloist or as a leader to kind of rise above just in kind of power rise above the orchestra if needed.
I really enjoyed the collaboration with the Guarneri, it kind of, it taught me so much about what's possible, what's actually possible on a cello, but on the other hand, that particular cello was very moody. It was very fickle at times,
It, would come unglued a lot. Yeah. I remember that. It would, it would, yeah, it would, it would react to the environment a lot.
It's quite sensitive. Yeah. So for traveling, it would, it would have a lot of bad days and, and then it would have good days as well. Once I met the Amati, things are really easy with this, like, and I can just trust it and kind of let it go. It's kind of almost doing all the hard work for me. So that was also, that was obviously, um, an aspect that was, was, um, kind of appealing. It's a colleague that kind of is making my life very easy at the moment, you know, it's just allowing me to do, I guess, even more things because certain things are just, just easier. And it might be just that physically I have to do less because the power of the instrument, the natural power of the instrument is so generous.
Just play it lightly. Let it happen.
Yeah, it's interesting you've got, like you were saying, there's your personality, your role in the orchestra, the instrument's personality, and then how your instrument fits in with the other instruments. That's right. There’re all these relationships.
Exactly.
Happening. And the bow as well, that's another.
Absolutely, yeah. You know, it definitely, there has to be a, like, it's so obvious if there's no link between the player and the instrument, regardless of what it is, if it's, you know, the best instrument in the world. If there's no chemistry. You can't force them to be friends.
So it's almost instant. Like you can sometimes when we try instruments, you just know directly that, you know, this particular violin that Hayley picks up, it just wouldn't fit her at all and then it would be fine, you know, played by Richard or someone else, but yeah, so it's definitely. I think it's very important that the instruments are, that you forge a relationship with the instrument yourself and find a kind of a comfortable place with the instrument and 'cause it's your, it really is your partner in crime.
So, yeah, I think we, you know, we're obviously very lucky to have all these instruments and kind of being able to go about it in that way that we, we are not, someone just buys a instrument X and then gives it to the orchestra and say, Hey, you have to play this. Sometimes it happens like that, but often it's us looking for the perfect instrument for the player, for the organisation, for the, you know, with the sound of the group in mind and the sort of values that we want to emphasise.
You're auditioning a new housemate.
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Oh, and, and it's not like this is an orchestra where there's like one amazing instrument. We're not anymore. No. And it's like, you've got all these. Yeah, it happened. It happened actually relatively quickly. I mean, it used to kind of be like that.
It's it's obviously has to start from somewhere. The first instrument was a Guadagnini violin and that just opened the gates. And relatively soon after that, it became this thing in Australia that, you know, just people wanted to support arts in this particular way and buying instruments. So going from one instrument to what I think at the moment we're sitting at about 10 instruments all happened in relatively small time span, which is amazing.
Yeah, it's exciting. And you've got the new Strad as well.
There's a new violin in the family as well. Yeah, which is just good.
So I was wondering this, so this instrument, what's it like playing, um, music that if Say you're playing on a modern instrument, Bach, for example, or then you're playing Bach on an instrument that's written, like the time that it was made, do you think it adds something to how you play?
It's an interesting question, especially because, you know, in its original form, this cello, when it had five strings, one of the most prolific, The thing that the five string cello was meant for, or what it had in its repertoire, was the Sixth Suite by Bach. That would have been probably the biggest single work that that five-string cello would play.
It's interesting to kind of think that, you know, That's probably the music that's been most played on that cello. And also that when Bach wrote the cello suites, this cello would have already been 120 years old. It would have been an instrument that inspired Bach to write the music. Maybe it even met him at some point, who knows.
And do you set it up with gut strings? I do sometimes, yeah.
How does that go?
Well, yeah, I think all cellos love gut strings. Love to have gut on. At least I've kind of felt that every time I've been with different cellos, if I put gut on, I can kind of feel that they, they feel, the instrument feels happy. Like they, they're relaxed and often I feel that they just open up. Much more than what they would be in a kind of a more modern, tight setup. What I've found that even if you do it occasionally, It kind of, it just, it just gives the cello a bit of a holiday. And then when you go back to the modern setup, It's still kind of, the cello still feels refreshed. I encourage people to do that, Even if you don't want to play gut strings all the time, Or repertoire that you would play on gut strings all the time. It's really interesting to just try it and give your instrument a holiday for a couple of weeks.
A spa.
Yeah. A gut spa. Yeah. It's a weird thought, but it's really, especially with the Guarneri, I felt like the first time I did it, I learned so much more about the instrument. Even though, you know, neck angles and that sort of thing would have been changed from how they were. Originally, it's still kind of, it still feels like that just with changing the strings you're kind of, you know, time traveling with the cello into a place where it was previously like, you know, just jumping back two or three hundred years and meeting that same cello, again. So it's, yeah, it's interesting.
So you're going on a time travelling spa retreat with your cello.
Yes, yes, this is perfect. I should write a book. A time travelling cellist. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think actually another, another interesting aspect of the cello is that, of this particular cello, is that, so Amaryllis Fleming was half-sister of Ian Fleming, the famous James Bond author.
So, so there's um, I guess literature and that sort of stories are kind of linked to this, this instrument. And I guess, you know, potentially, well, not even potentially, I think, you know, because she was a cellist.
And a secret agent.
Well, that inspired him, Ian, to write, uh, I think it was, I don't remember what the movie is now, but, but there's a, there's a couple of scenes where Cello is, uh, is in a main role and I think even her name is mentioned and, anyway.
Yeah, there's always those play on words. Yeah. Girolamo Amati would have made your cello.
I guess I wanted to ask you that question, maybe you know better, because I find it weird that Antonio kind of stopped his affiliation to the business quite early on, but still the label says Brothers for another almost 40 years.
Yeah, so he sort of held back a bit and then when his brother died, he like started using, quite put the label everywhere, but he was still actually using the label before and people think it was more like a brand. Right. Even so, even though the instrument would have been totally made by. Girolamo Amati.
Yeah, it's like when you've got like a company and it'll break up, but they keep that. Yeah. So you keep, you keep the label. And I personally think that maybe he just couldn't be bothered getting more labels printed. Could be. Yeah. So I always thought that, you know, Oh, I mean, uh, that it feels weird that he wouldn't want to then kind of, I guess, advertise himself as the, you know, the prolific main maker.
We don't really know, but I, yeah, the main theory is that it was the brand. It was quite successful. Keep it that way. It would just be confusing. And people were like, actually, I ordered a Brothers Amati instrument, not a, what's this?
Yeah. What's that horrible name that I can't pronounce?
That keeps changing from Girolamo to Heronimous. Exactly. The Ian Fleming thing. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, that's a picture of her. And I think that's, that's the Strad that she's playing. But she, yeah, she had, like I said, she has had Stradivarius, a Guarneri and two Amatis.
So, they were like wealthy to begin with.
I think so. So, she would have been prolific just like the heart of her career would have been like between the worlds, I guess. So, I guess the market would have been a bit more different as well for instruments. And um, I think it says that she gave the German premiere of the Elgar cello Concerto. So very kind of big stuff and, but then was, was in a way shadowed by Jacqueline du Pre kind of stepping onto the scene. And at that point she felt like she needs to then do something else. You know, now Jacqueline is the new cello soloist and you know, I guess there's only room for one. And she started to tour the circuit and so Amaryllis Fleming was getting less, less soloist work than what she had before. One thing that she So what she then decided to do is to look into the, into the performance practice of the Bach suites in their original form.
So that's, that's probably why she actually acquired those two.
Yeah, that's when she bought those two cellos. I believe so. So that she would start performing the suites. I mean, the suites were already obviously being played, but mostly in a kind of a modern sense. And she was one of the first cellists that really looked into the, uh, performance practice and started performing them with instruments that were, yeah, more suited to them, you know, probably using gut strings and then definitely for the sixth suite to use a five-string cello.
That's nice to be able to go, look, I'm the Bach suite. Yeah. I'm going to buy myself two cellos. Two Amatis, please. It's quite, um, it's like, I don't, know if anyone today, like a musician, you know, regardless of, uh, regardless of how wealthy they may be, I don't think anyone today would own a collection of instruments, like a musician.
And she owned them outright. They were hers? I think so, the family, you know, so, so. Because often they're like lent. No, no, I think there's a mention in there that family was wealthy, but yeah, the family did acquire all those instruments for her and now subsequently they've been maintained by this foundation
In the years following the order for these two cellos the inhabitants of Cremona may not have realized the true state of affairs that were surrounding them there was a delayed arrival in the Spanish silver from the Americas to the Spanish court, so Philip II stopped paying his people in Milan.
Cremona made up part of the Duchy of Milan, and mucking up the market, they were in recession now, and then in 1627, the first signs of the dreaded plague started appearing in the countryside and in the larger cities. Nevertheless, as time passed, the Amati's business prospered, and Nicolo Amati enters his mid-twenties. He's living with his parents. His father, Girolamo Amati, is in his late fifties. Some of his brothers and sisters are still at home, and it is life as usual for the time being. Back in the workshop, instruments being produced clearly had Nicolo's hand in style, even though they are labelled with the Amati Brothers label. Their craftsmanship can be seen to differ. Nicolò Amati would make more elongated corners than his father, and his archings were conceptually different, being progressively less scooped inside the edges. He was different to his father also, in that he used maple with a pronounced flame, and the wood was less smooth.
Slab cut on the maple. This type of wood is often seen on the brothers Amati instruments. As Nicolo Amati was the only son helping his father in the busy workshop, they enlisted the help of the two husbands of Nicolo's sisters, his brothers in law, Vincenzo and Domenico. We're not sure what they did exactly in the workshop, but Vincenzo was still working in the shop into the late 1620s, when the lives of the Amatis would be changed forever.
Carlo Chiesa, violin maker, expert and author, living in Milan.
And at some point Girolamo needed, also more people working with him. And since he had only one, male son, but he had daughters he hired, the husbands of his daughters. Vincenzo Tili and Domenico Moneghini. We know their names and we know that they joined because at some point they split.
Nicolò Amati again divided his workshop with his brothers in law. And so since there exists these, notarial documents in which they divide the workshop or one, sells his partnership to the other, we know that before that they were working together. But this gives us an idea of how important the business was. It was a business in which there were three people, three serious, three partners.
So, after he split with his brother's in law, I imagine they stayed in the same street, too.
No, I'm not sure about that, because, they were all in the same street. Yeah, but, this was in the span, I'm, convincing a story that, comes out of a span of 40 years, so it's not exactly.
Okay. But we are speaking of men like we are today, so of course they work together side by side for years, and at some point, possibly, they say, I go, that's it. You want to be the owner, you keep it, but I go. I don't think we know exactly what, the husbands of the daughters, of Amati did, one of them was called the Dei Cornetti, which probably means he was a musician.
From the 1580s, things had begun to strain in Cremona. The cracks in the market could be seen to those who knew where to look. In the 1590s, with famine and economic downturn, it was a slippery slope. A series of setbacks and disasters had accumulated to create a crisis. Individually, they would have been overcome, but the one after the other was devastating to the economy. After the famine, there was a moleskin crisis. That was their textile industry. In the 1600s, there was a collapse of the wool guild. Another of their city's biggest industries. There were more famines in the 1620s, and then boom, in the 1630s, plague killed almost half its inhabitants. This came about with the War of the Mantuan Succession.
This was the war that James Beck was talking about in the Previous episode, where everyone decided to invade Mantua after their Duke died. And there was a bit of a hoo ha about who the Duchy belonged to now. It was basically a war between the French and the Spanish about a highway. This ended up causing the spread of disease and wiping out almost half the population of the country in some areas.
But this is a story for the next episode, where we will see the disappearance of many violin makers, but also the beginning of something big in the history of the violin. Please do go ahead and follow the podcast and leave a comment or rating. I'm always delighted every time I hear from listeners and every rating and comment helps the podcast to happen.
A big thank you to my guests, Carlo Chiesa and Timo Veikko Valve for joining me today. If you would like to support the podcast financially, that would be amazing. And you can head over to patreon. com forward slash the violin chronicles for that. There are bonus episodes I will be putting up on that platform also alongside all the current.
Also, if you would like to contact me, there is the Violin Chronicles at gmail. com. And I have Instagram with the handle, The Violin Chronicles. That's where I put a lot of images from these episodes up. And I'll leave you now with Tipi playing his 1616 Amati Brothers. Cello.
