A university setting for violin knowledge

[Rue]

If you are young and want a profession in the business - you can attend.

But what about the rest of us? I can't pack up and leave my job and family to indulge in what is for me...a hobby.

But I could sign up for the basic classes. Maybe -if I had those under my belt ...and I retired...I could attend school then. It would save me time (which I have less of each year).

Just tossing out ideas.

The hobby makers really aren't competing with the professionals so it should all work.

[Ben Hebbert]

Back in the last century, what was once London College of Furniture in its also defunct guise as part of London Guildhall University offered a Single Honours Bachelor of Science degree in 'Musical Instrument Technology'. The late-1990s were a bit of a golden-period, the course offered violin making, piano, woodwind, early keyboards, viols, guitars and lutes as well as just as many options of electronic music thingumys. Most people who did the degree took electronic options, so for what it's worth I am actually one of an extraordinarily small number of people who has a proper university degree in instrument making, and after graduating I was on faculty for a number of years. 

 

One of the real problems with the degree course was that the academic requirement took time away from the bench, to the point that it was unofficially recognised that if you were really serious about being an instrument maker, the two year Higher National Diploma course that ran alongside was the better option - an 'inferior' academic credential, but lacking the essay writing, exams and lecture attendance to a large part, it allowed people to concentrate fully on workshop time, and a degree wasn't exactly a prerequisite for getting a job in the industry any way. Infact, there was a loophole in the system where if you failed your final year you could retake, so there was a whole colony of people on the HND course - mostly guitar makers - who would serially fail the course each year so they could get another year of free workshop space, tuition and machines. In fact the state of affairs was so bad that having enrolled as a violin maker, where the teacher had too many students to teach in too few hours, I transferred onto harpsichord making because the teacher was full time and didn't have any other students, figuring I'd learn more about the violin that way

 

However, the B.Sc (Hons) syllabus was fairly close to many of the ideas being put forward. As I recall, in addition to a workshop that was open from 9am to 8pm each day it was something along these lines. 

 

1) Musical Instrument History

2) Technical Drawing

3) Design Analysis

4) Mathematics

5) Acoustics (for 2 years) 

6) Small Business Management 

7) Material Science

8) Conservation and Restoration

9) Electroacoustic Measurement Techniques

 

as well as a load of cross disciplinary things that were either useful - such as metal work, wood carving, and a whole unit on working with terrifying industrial machines from the furniture trade - being made to make Klemsia clamps using industrial spindle moulders and oversized circular saws just to scare the crap out of us and make us respect machines. 

 

Or not useful such as introductory electronics, and things revolving around the recording industry which we could duck out of after the first year. 

 

The sad thing is, I don't think it really achieved anything more than the conventional violin making schools in terms of the aims , and where craft-skills were concerned it manifestly offered less, not just because of the time away from the bench in lectures, but because there was a whole department's worth of staff supporting the course, the instrument making tutors were only paid for one or two days in the week, so there was nobody to ask if something went wrong (and that applied to the HND as well). At the end of the day, I'm honestly not sure that the academic elements of the course, run through the necessary criteria of a university, really gave any greater value to the majority of students than if they had remained working at the bench instead.  

 

The people who really did well out of the course were the people who went the extra mile and took the initiative upon themselves to use it as a springboard to further knowledge and experience, but in a particularly tricky environment, the students who drifted onto the course drifted away from it having made a few guitars during their excuse for a university education. On paper the course gave a massive edge against the syllabuses offered by Newark, West Dean, Leeds, Merton and the Welsh School of Violin Making, but the reality is that the cost of lost bench time was enormous and a greater proportion of people trained at the other colleges have gone further in the industry despite the unique and special potential that this promised. I'm still glad I went though

 

This isn't exactly the proposition that Stephen is putting forward, but I think I can demonstrate enough first-hand experience of the tensions between academic study and instrument making to explain my misgivings.  

[duane88]

 

 

Teachers and performers are generally qualified to evaluate tone and playability, but there are not many who take time to learn the market and evaluate price, and even fewer who have the talent and motivation to learn how to do their own adjustments. Most of them just don't "get it".

With regret, that usually doesn't stop them from declaring that the price is too high or the post isn't in the correct place.

 

Presently, the only places that you can get the advanced education that is being asked for is in a high-volume shop, working for an auction house or a bigger dealer. Even then, you have to be an autodidact. Many with knowledge don't release it freely and easily.

[Jeffrey Holmes]

If you are young and want a profession in the business - you can attend.

But what about the rest of us? I can't pack up and leave my job and family to indulge in what is for me...a hobby.

But I could sign up for the basic classes. Maybe -if I had those under my belt ...and I retired...I could attend school then. It would save me time (which I have less of each year).

Just tossing out ideas.

The hobby makers really aren't competing with the professionals so it should all work.

 

There are summer programs available at varying levels.

[skiingfiddler]

Yes of course, when we die the knowledge (and nonsense) in our heads is no more, unless it is passed on in some way.

 

All of the experts that I know are, first and foremost, passionately enthusiastic lovers of violins.

 

You say that the experts are 'not pouring their knowledge into writing' , but what about the Hills, Eric Blot, Carlo Chiesa, Charles Beare, Sacconi, and the dozens of others who have taken the time to publish the very best of what they know, just for the love of it? And do you really think that their books are their most important legacy?

 

All through the world centres of excellence spring up, always around these enthusiasts,  invariably in workshops, where, through intimate contact with the instruments, they teach the next generation who become the custodians of our violin heritage. 

 

These are the people who can, because of the trust they have earned with the instrument owners, put together the marvelous exhibitions where we can see the very best of the various schools, and learn from them. The great museum collections too, open for all to visit and study, have been put together with their advice and support.

 

I sometimes think that there's an uncomfortable feeling abroad that all this violin expertise is something of a closed shop, and that these people are feathering their own nests by keeping their knowledge to themselves, and between some elite group of insiders. This is not my experience at all. Most of those I've met are just like the rest of us. They love to talk about fiddles, and share their knowledge with enthusiasm.

 

Do you really think that a university course could ever hope to equal this school?

 

Concerning "the Hills, Eric Blot, Carlo Chiesa, Charles Beare, Sacconi, and the dozens of others":

Yes, there are violin people who publish an article here and there, even a complete book, and they do it without much financial support, maybe none.  Imagine what those people could do if permanent institutions existed where that kind of research were their main activity, not just a side interest, and they were in fact appropriately paid for their production.  Imagine them lecturing on a weekly basis, eight months a year, instead of a few times every few years.

 

Concerning the Hills:

I think the 1902 Hill book on Stradivari is ground breaking violin information.  It's absolutely mandatory reading for anybody interested in violins, and in the Dover edit it's very inexpensive.  The Hills did a great service for the violin world in putting out that book and the subsequent Guarneri book.

 

But that Hill book on Stradivari has a surprising short coming.  A fundamental tenet of that book is that Antonio, right up to the end of his life, got very little substantial help from anybody else, including his sons.  That Hill book would lead you to believe that the work you see in an authentic Antonio Stradivari, regardless of year, is the work of Antonio's hands, and sons Francesco and Omobono contributed very little to the finished appearance of those instruments.  From the posts of Ben Hebbert, along with Roger Hargrave's writings and statements in Toby Faber's book, I gather that's just not true.  For example, the hand of Francesco is, apparently, visible in numerous works.

 

Why did the Hills miss that? This is a guess based on an interpretation of others' postings as I remember them:  The Hills, at the end of the 19th century, had an interest in portraying Antonio Stradivari as an extraordinary maker.  They had a steady supply of Strads to sell and giving Antonio's sons the credit they deserve would have detracted from Antonio Stradivari, the name on the labels.

 

Or maybe the Hills missed the importance of the sons' work in the shop for some other reason.

 

Whatever the reason was, the point is the Hills missed it, and it took the better part of a 100 years to correct it, to properly recognize the sons' contributions to the instruments we regard as Antonio Stradivaris.

 

If the environment for research and questioning and validation of expert opinion in the violin world had been more open, maybe it wouldn't have taken 100 years to correct that rather glaring oversight.  A university setting can give us that objectivity.

[jezzupe]

I think it's a noble idea, but I'm afraid in a university setting, with the absolutely inflated ridiculous overhead cost's that it would be very hard to put together. I think that the best shot for something like this is in private hands, and I think MN is the place to facilitate that.

 

For example, let's just say that Ben Herbert, Martin Swan, Roger Hargrave, and Jacob Saunders had the time and the monetary incentive to break away from what they normally do for say 2 weeks....and that in some imaginary world they had been talking among themselves  and said, "hey, were all here in Europe, let's put together a 2 week course related to everything about violins not related to building them", mostly as it pertains to id and applying that in the "real world". They would have time to organize and promote the future date, much like Oberlin does, and I'm sure that they could charge a pretty penny, and fill the class up.

 

But then the question of monetary incentive kicks in, their personal schedules, all that, so to get that level of knowledge from the top guys, we'd be paying big time, assuming something like that could get put together.

 

This really speaks somewhat to just how much of a miracle the Oberlin classes are, because you do get big time names like David and Jeffery and all the others, I'm sure their making some money, but I have a feeling their time spent there is more a labor of love.

 

Because really when it comes down to it there is no "Stevino Speilbergo" cheaper Mexican version { as the Mr Burns from the Simpson on Tv once said} of the guys that hold this knowledge....

 

So, experts would really have to have some incentive to break away from what they normally do....besides, Violins and their value are like a layer cake, with Amati, Strad and Del Gesu at the top, with all the layers underneath....The obtainable layer that MOST working professionals can get their hands on is pretty low on the totem pole when compared to the top layer.

 

Nah' I'm pretty sure there's not enough cake to go around for everyone and that frankly the best way into this is through nepotism. I'm sure there are plenty of guys who really had to work for what they have, on the other hand I think if people are really honest with themselves we'd see a richer established comforting hand behind the facilitating of success in the starting off of careers in this field. Or quite simply, established family business and connections will get someone exposure to these instruments early on.

 

It's not what you know, it's who you know, or perhaps more, who your dad knows in order to help you know. There's nothing wrong with that, it's the way the world works, people that benefit from it, just don't like to talk about it much....

[duane88]

The Hills didn't do the research on Strad for altruism or scholarship. They did it to have a leg up in the trade, and between the Strad book and the Guarneri book, they nearly bankrupted them.

 

The Hills allude to many things in the book. Why, or if, they missed certain things, we'll probably never know. They didn't give everything away. Their picture of the late Stradivarius shop might have been very different if they had been able to find Strad's Will.

 

The late Strad cellos seem to show, in the interior work, the distinct hand of Carlo Bergonzi. Do you see a movement to re-attribute any of those instruments to show the hand of Carlo? If something is Father with the hand of the sons, or a particular son, it's "worth" more, if it is a son showing the hand of the father, less, so why suggest, if you want to make lots of money selling them, that there were others involved in the construction?

 

I would love to see peer -reviewed, scholarly research published, but there are too few peers and too many secrets, as well as not enough funds. There's alot of hazy stuff that is difficult to confirm or prove.

 

Yes, a university setting would provide objectivity, but I don't think that this trade is ready for objectivity!

[Ben Hebbert]

This is getting onto a deliciously interesting topic - new post, anyone? 

 

It's worth taking a wider view on the art market. The Hills were absolutely correct about assigning a body of work to "Antonio Stradivari" with an enormous degree of integrity. But this was the time that the art market was fraught with reconsiderations of old masters, and it was inevitable that comparisons would temper the market with Rubens works being divided into studio and autograph works, Rembrandt's followers being increasingly understood with a wholesale debunking of his catalogue, as well as Raphael, and Leonardo coming under significant scrutiny. 

 

I think the Hills were looking to simplify the market considerably, because at the end of the day, the consideration of additional hands in his work is not remotely as vital as it is in a Rubens painting. This rethinking all happened very quickly in the 1890s. If you read the monograph on the 1690 Tuscan Strad (1889) the whole point of it's incredibleness is because it is entirely the work of the vibrant single maker, praising the early period as his best with an open admission that later instruments were the work of multiple hands. They changed their tune a little bit within a year, and the rational for the Messiah (1890) at times contradicts their claims in order to uphold the French idea of the Golden Period, and by 1904 they supposed that the sons made cases and did a bit of varnish work... bundled out the back door. 

 

In the light of the environment that they worked in, I think they made the "right" decision, and in our generation, we benefit from the understanding that all Strads are out of the same stable. When we compare that to the way art historians have denigrated the people who painted at Rembrandt's right hand, or the Bernardino Luini's Andrea Solarios and Boltraffos who directly rendered so many of Leonardo's ideas into reality we see an agenda that has really destroyed a realistic understanding of their importance and standing. As time has moved on, unlike art historians who vacillate between Poorters, Brouwers Eeckhouts and Beverens (and about 30 others) when a Rembrandt's not a Rembrandt, we are in a position where 'A Strad is a Strad', and it becomes secondary to understand exactly who was involved in creating it, and is something that we are beginning to learn in this generation without prejudicing the fact that these were made to be sold as Strads as part of the enterprise of the workshop that Strad ran and to the quality that he would found acceptable and would have made himself if it wasn't for the slowly emerging fact that he didn't have to. The fascinating exception to this is Bergonzi, and it's interesting to see how far he follows behind Strad in the market as a result of a historical lack of connection. 

 

I see no difference in the relationship of Bernardino Luini to Leonard da Vinci as Francesco Stradivari to his father, but the art market and cultural expectations mean that there couldn't be too more differently regarded painters. The trajectory which the Hills followed is in fact the same as decorative arts. We don't dispute that Thomas Chippendale had a very very small part in genuine Thomas Chippendale furniture, because it could not have been produced by a single person. Likewise, clocks - especially Thomas Tompion and Daniel Quare (both Strads contemporaries) bring up exactly the same issues concerning the hands involved (no pun intended), with a full acknowledgement that a Quare is a Quare first and foremost, even if the mechanism can be ascribed to Tompion and the case to the standard trade suppliers of the day. The decision that the Hills took was in light of a very firm precedent, and they were ruthless in narrowing the field only to instruments that were genuinely of Antonio Stradivari's type.

 

They did a good thing in the light of their times, and the economic conditions that surrounded their market. It's much better that we are spending our time categorising genuine Stradivari work with a large and compelling body of instruments to work from, arguing the semantics of 600 instruments of which 400 or so appear to be not quite entirely by the single hand of the master. Than having divided and rejected them at an earlier point in time according to the ideologies of the old Master Painting market. 

[violins88]

I have not read every post in this thread, but it has not died yet. Maybe I can kill it.

 

It occurs to me that a lot of violin "knowledge" is really hype. The hype is necessary to support high prices of antique violins. A good university course would insist upon actual truth. There might not be a whole lot of truth to be found. Or at least not a lot of truth that people want know.

[Conor Russell]

You're a cynical lot!

[Ben Hebbert]

I have not read every post in this thread, but it has not died yet. Maybe I can kill it.

 

It occurs to me that a lot of violin "knowledge" is really hype. The hype is necessary to support high prices of antique violins. A good university course would insist upon actual truth. There might not be a whole lot of truth to be found. Or at least not a lot of truth that people want know.

 

 

Perhaps  

 

But then, you haven't spent much time around universities... Henry Kissinger, war criminal and arch political guru said something priceless once when he was president of Columbia university: "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." I couldn't agree more.

 

I'm curious though... going through authorities on the violin who have written texts on the violin who have university, or equivalent institutional positions, the reading list of the most up to date literature would be:

 

Dr Nicholas Sackman The Messiah A Reliable History

Stewart Pollens Antonio Stradivari

David Schoenbaum The Violin A Social History

 

Would anyone like to comment?   

[Carl Stross]

Perhaps  

 

But then, you haven't spent much time around universities... Henry Kissinger, war criminal and arch political guru said something priceless once when he was president of Columbia university: "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." I couldn't agree more.

 

I'm curious though... going through authorities on the violin who have written texts on the violin who have university, or equivalent institutional positions, the reading list of the most up to date literature would be:

 

Dr Nicholas Sackman The Messiah A Reliable History

Stewart Pollens Antonio Stradivari

David Schoenbaum The Violin A Social History

 

Would anyone like to comment?   

 

Great post !

[Rue]

As I said...just the 'violin' is not enough to warrant a University degree.

A University historian can certainly write a book on the history of the violin. A University physicist can certainly write a book about the physics of sound using the violin as an example. But there is not enough weight, or interest or whatever you want to call it to make it a University subject. It could be part of a larger discipline (music in general) - but that's not what the discussion is about.

There are summer programs available at varying levels.

Yes! Exactly when intensive summer field research is peaking!

I need my job to pay for my hobbies!

[Craig Tucker]

 

Would anyone like to comment?   

 

Hmmm, interesting...

Well, violins 88 is entirely correct when he says;

"It occurs to me that a lot of violin "knowledge" is really hype."

 

But... "violin knowledge" taken as a subject, shows only one, extremely small facet of such thinking.

 

VERY common knowledge, or popular opinion, if you care to word it that way, often gains a sort of "solidity" that is extremely hard to break down or overcome. Even when many "proofs" have been given, that such knowledge is fallacious, it is not accepted, generally, by the population at large.

Oh well, so it goes.

The world we live in is so run by opinion(s), that are taken as 'factual', that it is often very difficult to say anything that goes against or in a contrary direction to them.

 

As, I believe, Albert Einstein found.

Even today, most people BELIEVE that Einstein was correct, simply because he was taken, publicly, by the opinion leaders of the time (leading scientists) as correct.

But in fact, most people do not, or have not, changed their core beliefs of reality, based at all on Einstein-ien principals, since the principals established before him, are still those that are almost universally accepted as a core reality. (again, only in my opinion - or, have I said that yet?) And in many ways it doesn't matter in the least, since such core beliefs are still a very "workable" theocracy....

Yes 'reality' is an interesting thing to study.

And 'beliefs' are also an interesting concept.

'Factual knowledge' - where does it REALLY fit into the scheme of things?

 

Well, it all depends, almost entirely, on 'who you are', and what the facts are, in your version of reality - in many very real and hard to alter ways.

[Craig Tucker]

Damn it!

Did I break into "theory" again?

Sorry. I'll go now.

[jacobsaunders]

I have not read every post in this thread, but it has not died yet. Maybe I can kill it.

 

It occurs to me that a lot of violin "knowledge" is really hype. The hype is necessary to support high prices of antique violins. A good university course would insist upon actual truth. There might not be a whole lot of truth to be found. Or at least not a lot of truth that people want know.

 

I have been ignoring this thread, since I have a heavy cold at the moment, and haven't felt well enough to insult anybody. Nevertheless, I think what you post is the exact opposite of reality.

Every couple of years, Ski introduces a thread on this subject, although he must know from the previous ones that it is a non-starter. One learns to tell violins apart as a youngster, should one have the natural gift and the opportunity. It is bad enough as it is having hoards of e bay “graduates” and the more blue-blooded ones from auction houses, pretending that they know what they are talking about without any real basis in fact. It would be even worse with pseudo intellectual ones, waving a piece of paper from some University from the middle of nowhere. To take one of those cited by Ben, David Schönbaum is a frustrated old man, with a personal political axe to grind, as one can tell immediately when one reads anything he writes, upon any subject. Does that have anything to do with “Violin Expertise”. NO.

[Conor Russell]

So pleased to see you're on the mend, Jacob.

[Rue]

How many youngsters have access to that many violins and a knowledge base to draw from?

 

You get an education and then you do something with it.

 

Your undergraduate degree/diploma/certificate in and of itself doesn't make you an expert.

 

A graduate degree brings you a bit closer...a post-doc or two closer yet...but yes...then you do need to hone your craft...

[Craig Tucker]

I have been ignoring this thread, since I have a heavy cold at the moment, and haven't felt well enough to insult anybody. Nevertheless, I think what you post is the exact opposite of reality.

Every couple of years, Ski introduces a thread on this subject, although he must know from the previous ones that it is a non-starter. One learns to tell violins apart as a youngster, should one have the natural gift and the opportunity. It is bad enough as it is having hoards of e bay “graduates” and the more blue-blooded ones from auction houses, pretending that they know what they are talking about without any real basis in fact. It would be even worse with pseudo intellectual ones, waving a piece of paper from some University from the middle of nowhere. To take one of those cited by Ben, David Schönbaum is a frustrated old man, with a personal political axe to grind, as one can tell immediately when one reads anything he writes, upon any subject. Does that have anything to do with “Violin Expertise”. NO.

 

 

Haven't felt well enough to insult anybody?

Man that must have been one hell of a cold.

 

I too am glad you're feeling better Jacob.

 

I will admit that I am arguing a 'theory only' position here, for a reason of my own.

I like to argue this one, from both sides of the issue - depending on the particular thread's direction.

As, a genuine 'fact' is extremely hard to establish in this specific direction.

Very often, what establishes "the facts", is an opinion leader, that has a strongly stated, and an openly opinionated voice, on the matter in question.

Who's going to argue that?

[franciscus]

Sorry, but I cannot appreciate this very much. I had and have so many times to struggle with all the damages caused by self-cut bridges and soundposts leaving big holes in the belly or broken pegbox walls from pegs fitted with the pocket knife or glass method. Maybe you learned to do it properly, but I won't recommend to encourage every student to maintain her/his instrument this way. Some can, many more can not.

I understand your attitude and I'd say that you are (mostly) right. But, I forgot to say is that I learned - back then - how important is to know my own limits. So, all my operations around the post have been limited to raising the fallen one. The first post that I made from scratch is not older than 15 years. And, I had no many options: the only one man able to set up the violin or make some basic repairs who has been available to me was my teacher. And this noble gentleman, let God bless his soul, had no many options too: to do everything that my violin needs (every time for free, because he always declined to take any compensation for his additional efforts), or to teach me how to do a few basic things by myself. 

[jacobsaunders]

How many youngsters have access to that many violins and a knowledge base to draw from?

 

You get an education and then you do something with it.

 

Your undergraduate degree/diploma/certificate in and of itself doesn't make you an expert.

 

A graduate degree brings you a bit closer...a post-doc or two closer yet...but yes...then you do need to hone your craft...

If you think about it, you learn to PLAY a violin as a child, some 10 or 15 years before you get anywhere near a University, by the time you go to university, you can play it already. If you started learning to play violin at university, you would hardly become a member of the Vienna Philharmonic. With other things, languages for instance, it isn’t much different. Ski has always wanted to be a “violin expert”, which he will never be in a million years, because he gets everything the wrong way around. If you tell him where he is the wrong way around, he just gets upset, so he will surely be a lost cause for any institution.

BTW thanks everybody for all the PMed cold remedies

[skiingfiddler]

I have been ignoring this thread, since I have a heavy cold at the moment, and haven't felt well enough to insult anybody. Nevertheless, I think what you post is the exact opposite of reality.

Every couple of years, Ski introduces a thread on this subject, although he must know from the previous ones that it is a non-starter. One learns to tell violins apart as a youngster, should one have the natural gift and the opportunity. It is bad enough as it is having hoards of e bay “graduates” and the more blue-blooded ones from auction houses, pretending that they know what they are talking about without any real basis in fact. It would be even worse with pseudo intellectual ones, waving a piece of paper from some University from the middle of nowhere. To take one of those cited by Ben, David Schönbaum is a frustrated old man, with a personal political axe to grind, as one can tell immediately when one reads anything he writes, upon any subject. Does that have anything to do with “Violin Expertise”. NO.

 

 

If you think about it, you learn to PLAY a violin as a child, some 10 or 15 years before you get anywhere near a University, by the time you go to university, you can play it already. If you started learning to play violin at university, you would hardly become a member of the Vienna Philharmonic. With other things, languages for instance, it isn’t much different. Ski has always wanted to be a “violin expert”, which he will never be in a million years, because he gets everything the wrong way around. If you tell him where he is the wrong way around, he just gets upset, so he will surely be a lost cause for any institution.

BTW thanks everybody for all the PMed cold remedies

 

Sorry about your cold.

 

Yes, I have introduced the topic of the university as a place for violin knowledge before.  I think it needs to be brought up more often because the validity of knowledge in the violin world is the most important topic in the violin world.  People are paying huge sums of money based on that knowledge.

 

As far as being a non-starter, it's great to see some former supporters of the idea, here, again (Thanks, Ron), and some new support for the idea from those with stronger arguments than I am presenting. 

 

Jacob,

Get used to seeing this topic again when the occasion calls for it.  As I noted, the validity of knowledge in the violin world is the most important topic there is for the violin world.  And there are reasons to question it:

--People who authenticate are the same people who sell, creating a conflict of interest. 

--The opinion of a very small group of experts is viewed as fact, and the violin world wants to be collegial and not disagree, certainly not publicly.  It takes the actions as blatantly wrong as those of Machold to break that collegiality. 

--Getting something wrong in the violin world, as it's structured now, costs somebody money; so there's very little room for speculation.  Speculation in all the sciences is encouraged.  Wrong steps are part of taking the right steps in the sciences, and nobody's penalized.

--There have been a couple hundred years of writing about violins that is quite inaccurate, a point you often make, yourself.  How do you undo that tradition of inaccuracy?

 

As far as my personal feelings go, please cite the posts in which I've gotten upset.  I'll have no trouble citing those in which you've gotten upset.  Concerning my ambitions, I'm past retirement age and harbor no ambitions beyond getting a good night's sleep and losing weight.

 

To all,

I greatly appreciate the greater civility this thread has shown.  Hope we can keep it that way and deal with the facts and ideas of the issue and not poster's personal feelings and ambitions.  With that in mind, I'll retract my request to Jacob to support his claims about my personal feelings and ambitions.  Going that direction would really be a non-starter of no interest to anyone.

 

[bungling_amateur]

Shouldn't this come under the wider heading of "organology"? Some university offer masters courses in organology, e.g. Edinburgh. Isn't there value in studying violins alongside harpsichords, lutes, guitars?

[skiingfiddler]

This is getting onto a deliciously interesting topic - new post, anyone? 

 

It's worth taking a wider view on the art market. The Hills were absolutely correct about assigning a body of work to "Antonio Stradivari" with an enormous degree of integrity. But this was the time that the art market was fraught with reconsiderations of old masters, and it was inevitable that comparisons would temper the market with Rubens works being divided into studio and autograph works, Rembrandt's followers being increasingly understood with a wholesale debunking of his catalogue, as well as Raphael, and Leonardo coming under significant scrutiny. 

 

I think the Hills were looking to simplify the market considerably, because at the end of the day, the consideration of additional hands in his work is not remotely as vital as it is in a Rubens painting. This rethinking all happened very quickly in the 1890s. If you read the monograph on the 1690 Tuscan Strad (1889) the whole point of it's incredibleness is because it is entirely the work of the vibrant single maker, praising the early period as his best with an open admission that later instruments were the work of multiple hands. They changed their tune a little bit within a year, and the rational for the Messiah (1890) at times contradicts their claims in order to uphold the French idea of the Golden Period, and by 1904 they supposed that the sons made cases and did a bit of varnish work... bundled out the back door. 

 

In the light of the environment that they worked in, I think they made the "right" decision, and in our generation, we benefit from the understanding that all Strads are out of the same stable. When we compare that to the way art historians have denigrated the people who painted at Rembrandt's right hand, or the Bernardino Luini's Andrea Solarios and Boltraffos who directly rendered so many of Leonardo's ideas into reality we see an agenda that has really destroyed a realistic understanding of their importance and standing. As time has moved on, unlike art historians who vacillate between Poorters, Brouwers Eeckhouts and Beverens (and about 30 others) when a Rembrandt's not a Rembrandt, we are in a position where 'A Strad is a Strad', and it becomes secondary to understand exactly who was involved in creating it, and is something that we are beginning to learn in this generation without prejudicing the fact that these were made to be sold as Strads as part of the enterprise of the workshop that Strad ran and to the quality that he would found acceptable and would have made himself if it wasn't for the slowly emerging fact that he didn't have to. The fascinating exception to this is Bergonzi, and it's interesting to see how far he follows behind Strad in the market as a result of a historical lack of connection. 

 

I see no difference in the relationship of Bernardino Luini to Leonard da Vinci as Francesco Stradivari to his father, but the art market and cultural expectations mean that there couldn't be too more differently regarded painters. The trajectory which the Hills followed is in fact the same as decorative arts. We don't dispute that Thomas Chippendale had a very very small part in genuine Thomas Chippendale furniture, because it could not have been produced by a single person. Likewise, clocks - especially Thomas Tompion and Daniel Quare (both Strads contemporaries) bring up exactly the same issues concerning the hands involved (no pun intended), with a full acknowledgement that a Quare is a Quare first and foremost, even if the mechanism can be ascribed to Tompion and the case to the standard trade suppliers of the day. The decision that the Hills took was in light of a very firm precedent, and they were ruthless in narrowing the field only to instruments that were genuinely of Antonio Stradivari's type.

 

They did a good thing in the light of their times, and the economic conditions that surrounded their market. It's much better that we are spending our time categorising genuine Stradivari work with a large and compelling body of instruments to work from, arguing the semantics of 600 instruments of which 400 or so appear to be not quite entirely by the single hand of the master. Than having divided and rejected them at an earlier point in time according to the ideologies of the old Master Painting market. 

 

Ben,

 

I understand your post and your defense of the Hills in simplifying the market.  Their decision was correct from a business point of view.

 

How can we account for the fact that the Hills were very ready to attribute the hands of Andrea Guarneri, Francesco Rugeri, and JB Rogeri to the genuine works of Nicolo Amati (indeed, the Hills attribute entire instruments made by those three as genuine Nicolo Amatis), but couldn't attribute others hands to Antonio Stradivari?  How is the Stradivari situation different from the Amati one?

[Ben Hebbert]

Shouldn't this come under the wider heading of "organology"? Some university offer masters courses in organology, e.g. Edinburgh. Isn't there value in studying violins alongside harpsichords, lutes, guitars?

 

 

Organology... I hate the word. 

 

To paraphrase Shostakovich, ‘What's an organologist? I'll tell you. Our cook, Pasha, prepared the scrambled eggs for us and we are eating them. Now imagine a person who did not cook the eggs and does not eat them, but talks about them – that is an organologist.’

 

Having been amongst museums and at various organology conferences, I think that the major issue with this field is that it is essentially an extension of mechanics. People are interested in having a flute which has more keys than the one before, or is longer, or a harpsichord with a particular mechanical arrangement of bridges or mechanism. Essentially if you read issues of the Galpin Society Journal, or the Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society the majority of articles are on this level. Where stringed instruments are concerned, arguments will be based on size, putative string length, and number of strings, but you'll only rarely find anything published about viols, let alone other instruments.

 

As violin connoisseurs we are aware of all of that, but the mechanics - such as they are - are a very small part of what we are looking at, and there is the added problem that the nuances that our brains are able to recognise and differentiate are very very difficult to elaborate in speech. Not only does this make it difficult to write insightful academic observations (the varnish is redder than the other, the arching is more pinched, there is more colour in the ground, blah, blah, what does it mean?) but its a very different language to that of the common-or-garden-organologist. 

 

It is true that Edinburgh University and the University of South Dakota offer organology based graduate programs. From the point of view of understanding the difference between a Strad and Amati, calling them banal would be a whopping compliment. (A whopping compliment that I'd extend to the majority of museum curators in the musical instrument world).

 

Over the 50 or so years that Galpin and AMIS have existed, violin people have had more than sufficient opportunity to engage, just as the humdrum membership of these organisations - amateur collectors of unplayable flutes - have had the opportunity to outreach towards the many professional violin makers in the world. There's been occasional dialogue, but the results speak volumes, they are dichotomous.

 

Anyone whose got the new Ashmolean Catalogue should have a look at the part about the viols and see how the writing changes to an appalling micro-analysis of the irrelevant elements of the instruments, failing to really understand what they are because it's trying to conform to a pseudo-intellectual idea of the standards set out by 50 years of counting keys on clarinets.