Dear P,
A colleague of mine who does long term restorations of important instruments has been bringing back to life the instrument the great cellist Pablo Casals used for most of his career – Casals the musician most often credited with bringing the cello from the section to center stage, solo. Made in Venice in the early 18th century by Matteo Gofriller, it is a fairly plain thing compared to others; here not the flashy wood he used in other instruments, and cut down like so many originally larger cellos when the size was eventually made more easily manageable as string technology advanced. So it is a fairly odd thing in a way, compromised, unintended. But as I was studying it, I was taken by surprise somehow, how humble it seemed – unassuming, altered – but that it was the instrument that delivered the first recording of Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello played by one of the greatest cellists of all time. This struck me as incredible, the historical importance of it as an object, a reminder of a moment beautiful, difficult, virtuosic. Picture this: Pablo Casals as a teenager searching the backstreet music stores of Barcelona with his father where he finally comes across Bach’s Suites until then considered perhaps just etudes; then practicing them for decades; then performing them for a decade more; and then finally recording them during the 1930’s – the start of which, lights up, marked the birth of the Spanish Republic, the end of which marked its violent curtain and the beginning of Franco’s despotic rule, a house gone dark. Casals’ recording concluded – a testament to beauty and dignity in art and life – then began his exile made in protest to madness, the most famous cellist the world has ever known facing execution if he were to return home having finally shared this piece of music the world had never known. I haven’t been so inspired by an instrument in some time and I thought it a good New Year’s prayer, that something broken can be restored; that music can be shared after great changes or upsets; that composers, musicians, makers and mechanics can remind each other of this. So here’s a couple of notes, a tracing of the scroll, a rubbing of one of the ff’s, and a wish that the New Year brings you peace.
Dear A,
Hermeneutics and Violin Making,
One of the more entertaining challenges of violin making is not that of being a good maker but that of being a good reader. You’re a good story teller so maybe you’ll know what I mean. Insofar as it is a craft or art form or tool making, it is one that had its origin a long time ago, which may have not been a problem for the originators of the thing (and which only exist for us now trying to give an origin to it today) and was a process or an undertaking or coalescence of an ongoing meditation on a form or the achievement of a conversation or the innovation of a particular family of makers who pretty much owned the most successful iteration of its production for two hundred years, a form of intellectual property that has no modern day equivalent at all in terms of its in-house development. To ask how something came to be then, say this instrument by Stradivari before us, is not such a simple query. What is this thing? Something that has at least a bit not to do with the instrument as it left the Stradivari workshop due to the fact that it has been imprinted by a few hundred years of players and restorers, what are we doing when we appreciate it? Are we appreciating it as a work of a particular individual? Could this even be the case? Anyone at all familiar with the way in which any renaissance era workshop conducted itself knows that the name of it named its master, not necessarily those whose hands were laid upon it. But this is just one example of the layers of meaning to a thing which we and a market have applied after the fact. Yet it still is a fact, there sitting before us, so the question is not dissolved at all, but it is made more interesting.
Ask any violin maker worth his salt today whether or not he or she is as good as Stradivari and they will bow their head before the great master in obeisance. But consider who they are in competition with and their humility should be dismissed as playing down their cards before a great bluff. It is not their fault. But consider what they are up against. Not an instrument as it was but as it has come to be. And this is a huge thing. The instrument they look to for inspiration is as much a product of a particularly well developed and informed workshop under the direction of a craftsman who had all the benefits of an uninterrupted conversation about the workings of his craft, but also something that has been affected by the many great players and master restorers working for these players for over two hundred years. Add to this the material changes that time and use have affected in the instrument at hand – all of which needs to be appreciated or understood by a modern maker so that his or her creation can measure up at all – and we start to see that a maker today has his work cut out for him in a radically different way than the maker who originated the piece; and that her success requires an approach involving a whole host of skills that Stradivari may never have anticipated and who may indeed, were he to visit our current moment, bow to touch our feet before we have a chance to touch his.
Appreciating the affects of aging oil; of stiffening of wood over time; of the particular liabilities of an instrument’s performance being taught out of it by the most subtle and professional players of this age and all the ages since the instrument’s creation; of the amount of attention paid to particular things over and above other things, and we start to see that the project of the modern maker is a complicated one indeed and has little to do with making something considered successful at a time long ago.
It simply is not enough to understand what Stradivari might have done. In fact the whole idea of some sort of secret has been debunked for some time now. Still, we live in a time when an artist exists or is invented because a market demands it. I mean not to sound at all bitter about this appreciation, though it is not at all rare for the compelling story to find its way to the stage of makers only after their passing. This not my issue at all. But a note about when things become what they are. The stories are fine. Used usually to good effect for the maker in question, the objects produced. And whether or not it is too late to have benefitted them at the time of their making activity is either besides the point or enough in line with our own aspirations for life and fame that it rings true in a romantic sense, appealing to that almost ironic tension between hope and loss that does so much to describe our own position, our own courage. Or it might make us inquire instead about what it is we know and what it is we ask when we wonder to ourselves or amongst our colleagues or before our dealers or our players, what would Stradivari do?
N,
On colors found and lost,
There was a violin that a colleague and I had a chance to study a decade ago. Made by Francesco Ruggieri, one of the great classical Cremonese makers of the 18th century, it was rendered even more precious by its untouched varnish. Of course it had gone through a bit of wear in the usual spots – under the hand, shoulder, and chin, places of contact, of affection – exposing the ground in places, but it had escaped the usual French polishing that many a restorer feels his duty to perform in order to shine things up after each bit of maintenance, or as an improvement, or as a coverup. This polishing – in a combination of adding varnish and melting it in order to achieve a high and glossy sheen – alters the finish of the original and there are very few examples of an untouched instrument in this respect. This was one of them though and we devoured it with our eyes. Resting them periodically by looking outside, resting them on the sky or on a white wall, we talked about the richness of the red coating tending towards a lush burnt orange depending on the light; committing to memory its transparency, its closeness to the surface of the wood, its subtle texture, its warmth, its beauty. The next year was spent trying to imitate the color on my instruments with the type of progress that is only possible in pursuit of something which inspires a desire to bring the inspiration closer, possessing it as your own. My colleague and I would talk about the color often, looking at things and comparing them to what we both remembered, our memories confirming the color in each others mind’s eye, solidifying it. Indeed it was a goal more than a memory, a color to be achieved. Imagine our surprise when two years later we saw the instrument again that it was not the color we remembered it being at all! What had changed? Not red! Who would call this red? Burnt orange? In a way yes, but more golden than we remembered, coppery, shimmering, and the overall impression was of something bright, something which was emitting light, something which couldn’t be called a color at all. And yet it had a color. It was remembered as one, no? And quite clearly remembered. And not just by myself. But by my colleague as well. How strange.
How wonderful.
Out comes the walk around the block! Out comes a bottle of wine. Out comes the reconsideration of memories held dear or which are still a burden – of their color, their veracity; of their agreement with someone else or their disagreement and argument. A fight, an accusation – you didn’t say that at all! And its defense – the damned and desperate defense. Others: A kindness or caress; the way the sun tangled your hair; the warmth of hands; your absence. Your absence. And out comes the re-reading of messages sent and the invention of those which should have been sent, words which should have been said. And out comes what we are affirming anew in the presence of each other, the color not again but as it is now. A gift. A birthday. A kiss. A storm. And out comes the books.
The books? Out comes the cup of coffee, away the wine, and then the books. On color theory, by Goethe, by Itten, and by Albers, on colors interacting – important, dear, instructive. On what happens to the eye when it perceives color; on impressions – indelible as ink or as the mark of teeth on skin. So what? So there you are and it’s not exactly a color at all. It’s some sort of event. The performance of which is different depending on the circumstances and the performance of the parts which also perform as a company, in concert or out of tune.
How do we frame this? Chattoyance, luminescence, dichroism, chiaroscuro. Additive color versus subtractive. Depth of penetration, reflectivity. Transparency, opacity. Mass tones and glazes. Primary colors and secondary. Combinations. Layers. Grounds. Nearness or distance from the ground. Underpainting and varnishing. Coating. Exposing. Patina. Boundaries light or dark. Backgrounds in white, grey, green or black. The attitude of light. Northern or southern exposures. Incandescent or florescent. Eyes rested or saturated. Evening or morning.
And how do things change? Are colors mixed before application or do they develop only after assuming their place? Are they allowed to change or prevented from doing this? How much certainty do we require? How much risk do we allow? Are we comparing what we are making to something as it already is or do we consider how it got that way first and present the possibility for ours to change as well, to be influenced and make its own demands? If there is a point, is it and, or or? A process or an achievement?
I’ll remember here a sunset. Grant me this, as silly as it may sound, treat it the same, a matter of deflection. Of the scattering of light. Of how much particulate matter or aerosols in the air, the filters that act the stain. Is this the same as an extender in varnish? Apparently we need not be concerned with the interference of refractive indices if the particle size is small enough. But what about it? We all love a good sunset, but is it rendered more beautiful by an eruption of a certain size? Too much ash in the air obscures the sky, but the right amount of interference, of cloud, of debris, and we see something beautiful if as well dangerous. My eyes now have wrinkles around them which show more when I smile but there from a squinting at the sun, at something that hurt, from not just joy untroubled. They are marked by age, by deterioration, framed by it. And yet I see through them, hardly notice these wrinkles. But you did. Once with a kiss.
