Views of the string instrument making

The joy I find in violin making is personally rarely inspired from the romanticised images of the instrument.

To me a violin is one of the rare, if not primeval, almost archetype creation, which has practically not changed throughout the centuries of its history. It has kept all of its complexity of the best handicraft, the artistic attitude and the connoisseurship of materials and knowledge, preserved and lost, needed to make a good instrument.

What is more, a string instrument is to me an aesthetically-functional archetype, which has not been surpassed to this day. The musicians’ ideals, drawn in the sound and function of not always necessarily aesthetic ranges of the instruments of many old masters, even nowadays present a challenge to be taken on by modern makers.

Today in the times when a detailed technological analysis of every constituent part is possible, from the wood to the varnish, in the times of testing the acoustic features, the structure of materials, geometric shapes etc., most of the instrument makers humbly and modestly admit that the reasons for the sounds many instruments of the old masters produce are hiding somewhere else and not only in the knowledge we possess or in the scientific researches which deal with instruments.

Many people set on a quest of searching this ideal, completely imitating the old instruments, which is today possible from the technological point of view. The measurements of the old instruments are available, while the technology, many times supported by the technological parks for mechanical engineering, enables the shots of the thickness of sound boards, backs, ribs and other parts of a violin.

Although there are still some things in secrecy, the varnishes have been analysed to the possible boundaries and the materials for their rather exact reproduction are available.

Nevertheless, despite the scientific support, the technology and the preserved knowledge, the sound potential of the string instruments made by Guarnieri, Amati, Stradivari families etc. still represents the aim which every craftsman is trying to reach. No matter what our images of the meaning of a violin or any other string instrument are, the ones who are using these instruments are rarely looking for something else than the sound of the above mentioned geniuses of the string instruments. The reason for this quest can be found in a few hundred year old tradition of the best crafting and sound performance which can be offered by these instruments.

In my opinion, the ones who make the best instruments nowadays combine in their work above all the knowledge, based on experience of working with materials in the way this was done by the pioneers of this trade and an intuitive ability to do properly as many as possible of the enumerated treatment phases of the carefully selected wood and the final production of the instrument. Probably this ability is what we call talent. 

To me the production of string instruments presents a challenge and the test of my abilities to grasp and use knowledge which lies in determining, creating and producing the forms of the old string instruments by means of modest tools. 

Handcraft 

My personall belive is that the concept of handcraft is generally abused in trade and therefore the string instrument making has not been able to avoid it. This has resulted in a profound depreciation of the meaning of the true handcrafting abilities of tradesmen. The buyers, collectors, amateurs are aimed at the markets of the old and antique products, since they believe that there is an adequate market space, where they can buy what they want. The products which are the result of a tradition. Many products nowadays are not only the fruit of a tradition. Moreover, their makers put a lot of effort to revive this tradition, to hold it and to pass it on. However, because of depreciation and not knowing the true meaning of the traditional ways of production, they are often being overlooked and badly appreciated.

There are practically no boundaries between the machine work and handcraft. The use of machines and electric tools has become very widespread, since it enables bigger production of many hundred per cent. The use of this technology does not necessarily mean the worse quality of a product. Some machined products surpass many handmade products, but they have to be presented in a way which is not misleading for the market and the public and have to be clearly defined according to the manner in which they have been made.

I personally think that a strictly handmade production of the instruments is the most relevant learning resource of this trade. And the learning process in this trade lasts for a life time. This is priceless if we want to grasp the characteristics of the materials, the gradual acquisition of understanding the primeval elements of construction, the composition and response of the instrument and the correlations between the components which form a violin. That is why I believe this manner of production is one of the key components which can lead a violin maker to producing the best, high quality string instruments. Understanding the product is the key to a successful reconstruction of a primeval idea of a string instrument.

In my opinion, the interested public should not perceive the etiquette handcraft as a synonym of exclusiveness, prestige and necessary quality. It should be seen as a token of the tradesman’s work, who is trying to grasp and improve the knowledge needed to make an instrument by using traditional methods and to use this newly acquired knowledge on every instrument which is to follow. His instruments alone will speak for themselves whether he has been successful or not.

Some time in the future, after the years of work, before I conclude my tradesman’s era, I would like to leave to someone the most authentic knowledge about this trade. I do not see any other way of doing this than to produce my instruments in concordance with the tradition and in the way it was done by the pioneers of this trade. In time, the paper with printed instructions for the use of machines fades, but the knowledge stays. 

The price policy of the string instruments

The products of the most highly regarded modern masters still do not reach the prices of the antique instruments of the masters from Cremona, spinning around the sums of millions of dollars. However, some have already reached six-digit numbers and in the hands of their owners as well as in professional music circles they are gaining the meaning of exclusiveness and a status symbol.

Someone has once said and written: "The tone and production are not of much significance, what determines the price is the inscription, glued to the back of an instrument…"

If we ignore the market of the industrial and manufactured production and focus our attention only on the best handcrafted products, it is the fact that today the price policy of the market of new instruments mostly depends on the acquired reputation and the name of the tradesman.

To put it bluntly, the instrument of a certain quality, signed by the name of a maker who is appreciated and highly regarded in the circle of the interested public, can find a buyer for more ten or hundred thousands of dollars, while the same instrument of identical quality of an unknown maker reaches prices which are even up to fifty times lower. 

The power and reality of this finding does not give a string instrument maker, whose products may be of high quality and who is trying to succeed in the market, any other choice but to do his work qualitatively and gradually adjusts the price of his instruments to this marketing concept. In time his name will hopefully win the appropriate recognition and his instruments will reach the price which will come close to the level which will at least approximately show the real worth of the quality of his work.

The availability of my products will therefore for an undetermined period be the consequence of an unestablished name, but this does not mean that the quality of my instruments is worse than the quality of the instruments of many modern or a long time ago deceased masters. My efforts are, of course, directed into constantly improving the quality and consequently gaining the level of reached reputation.

violina bw