Chapter IV: Violins at Cremona

Cremona! Amati! two words making melody with their very syllables, and a deeper harmony still for the lover of music, from the association of ideas which they excite.

With the assumed immigration of makers from Brescia--the emergence of the Amati family (the name of Amati is not found in the Brescian archives), and their final residence at Cremona--begins the classic period of the violin.

Cremona, ancient city of strife, which, owing to its very situation (κρι μόνος, “high rock” and “alone”), was the battle-point of the middle ages from the days of the old Goths and Lombards down to quite modern times; Cremona, with its stately cathedral so little known or visited, yet possessing two of the finest red lions couchant, supporting portico columns of one of the noblest cathedral façades in Italy; Cremona, with its antiquated back streets, its drowsy quiet life gliding on apart from the beaten thoroughfares of travel--truly, Cremona town is a place to set one dreaming!

I have narrated elsewhere my pilgrimage to the place which so ungratefully forgets almost the very tradition of the Amati, Stradivari, and Guarnerii, whose fabrics alone have given it a musical immortality, and whose names are hung up high like the stars, which no discords of the middle ages, sieges, or brawls can ever reach.

Let us now try and come face to face with these immortal makers.

Andrea Amati (_père_) settled at Cremona, and made violins from 1520-46. He brought with him his brother Nicolo (not the great Nicolo, afterwards master of Stradivari, _Italian_, or Stradiuarius, _Latin_).

Andrea Amati had two sons, Antonio and Geronimo, who made violins jointly as well as separately. When Antonio married, the fiddles of neither seemed to improve. The brothers ceased for a time at least to work together (there being, it is said, a period in which there are no joint reductions); but as there are much later violins bearing their joint names, it has been assumed that they again collaborated. If we trust some of these late labels--the brothers being born about 1555-56, and one of the joint violins being dated 1687--it would follow that the venerable artificers were still making violins at the age of 136 years, which beats Stradivari himself, who only worked till he was ninety-three.

Geronimo, according to one writer’s account of his labels, went even one better, for there is a Geronimo violin dated 1698; so if this Geronimo, brother of Antonio, was born about 1556, which is tolerably certain, he went on working even longer than Moses, with his eye undimmed and his natural strength unabated, down to the age of 148!

The confusion has arisen from confounding Geronimo, brother of Antonio, with Geronimo, son of the great Nicolo (born 1649, died 1740). But if there exists a signed Geronimo and Antonio dated 1698, which seems very doubtful, it would be certainly easier to believe that, as the demand for Italian instruments by makers of repute had well set in before 1700, the late Antonio and Geronimo label was stolen from the old workshops--the last two figures of 16--being filled in, and the label clapped on to cover the fraud; whilst any Geronimo violin dated 1698 would be by Geronimo, son of Nicolo; or at most, one made up by some enterprising pupil out of the débris of the elder Geronimo’s workshop--perhaps about the time that Nicolo the Great, son of Geronimo and grandson of Andrea, was working with his pupils, Stradivari and Andrea, Guarnerii, and his own son, the younger Geronimo or Girolamo Amati.

But with this Geronimo Amati, son of Nicolo (born 1649), and a certain Don Nicolo Amati, an Italian priest, we need not trouble ourselves beyond recording their names.

A good deal has been said about Andrea Amati and his violins. He was certainly the founder of the family, but not much is known about him except that he probably, almost certainly, acquired from Brescia the Maggini type, and that his violins are somewhat smaller, arched in the belly, with a varnish that runs out of the Brescian brown into the mellow and brilliant gold and ruddy tints common to the Cremona varnish; the later Amatis have a tendency to revert to the browner hue.

That Andrea made some choice violins for Charles IX. of France--twenty-four violins, twelve large, twelve small pattern, known as “les petits violons du roi”--there can be no doubt, but they disappeared from Versailles in the political disturbances about 1790. The arms of France, we are told, were painted on the backs, and they are said to have been of beautiful workmanship.

A ’cello, “Andrea Amati Cremonentis faciebat, 1572,” was sold amongst some others belonging to Sir William Curtis, May 1827. This is known as the “Bridge’s viollo.” Its history is romantic, it having been presented by Pope Pius V. to Charles IX. of France, and surnamed the “King.”

The Amati characteristic, which culminates, along with other qualities of sonority, in the great Nicolo, 1596-1684, is sweetness of tone; but a certain want of power is noticeable, especially on the fourth string. The “A” is beautiful, the “E” soft and delicate, and the third very full and round--qualities which are also conspicuous in the brothers Geronimo.

But if Amati tone is of cabinet, not concert quality, its quality is of a kind unequalled for charm and sensitiveness, and although not loud, some violins made by the brothers have a considerable carrying power.

The Amati heads or scrolls retained a certain simplicity and antique Brescian look even after the finish and form of the body of the violin had left the Brescian school far behind. The double purfling of Brescia is also gone, but the brothers purfled very beautifully, with a bend of perfect regularity and smoothness.

The violins of Antonio are better than his brother’s, but the joint violins are the best, and have been oftenest forged.

The brothers indeed made excellent violas, but, as the fashion then was, too large. They have been sometimes cut down. Sir Frederick Gore Ousely once had a fine specimen, which I remember playing upon many years ago at Tenby--tone very full and mellow.

Richard Blagrove, a brother of Henry Blagrove, the admirable early Monday Popular violinist, was a viola player, and used a reputed Amati, but it was really a Gagliano. Many of us (1897) can remember how richly it contributed to the triumph of a quartet, of which Joachim, Riess, and Piatti were often the other members.

Her late Majesty the Queen had a fine painted Amati, unfortunately cut down; and Miss Seton’s Geronimo Amati is a rare specimen, and from the MS. of Ascenzio, a priest at Madrid, we learn that it was a favourite violin of Charles IV. of Spain.

Geronimo, after separating from Antonio, reduced the arching of his bellies, but, singularly enough, without improving his tone-power. The over-arching of the early makers and scooped side-curves are generally supposed to be a vice in acoustics finally overcome by the gentle natural curve and flatter models of Nicolo, but it is perhaps possible to ride a theory too hard. I have certainly played on instruments deeply grooved, with rounded bellies, powerful Dukes and piercing Stainers, which, according to the orthodox theory, had no business to sound as loud as they did. It is well known that in both these Amati makers the late Cremona flat curve is conspicuous by its absence; and whilst I do not for a moment deny that the flatness of the Stradivari model is preferable, I think the superiority of the late Cremona tone may be due to a good many other things beside that. It will always be a question whether the man who makes possible the last perfection of an art or the man who actually achieves it is really the greater genius. Pietro Perugino or Raffaello in painting; Chaucer or Shakespeare in literature; Handel or Beethoven in music; Gasparo and Maggini or Stradivari in violin-making; but popular opinion generally plucks the blossom without troubling itself much about the roots, and the prices fetched by the finest Strad and the finest Gasparo, or even Nicolo Amati, practically settle the question as regards the violin-makers. £400 is an unusual price for a fine Nicolo (£250 is nearer the mark, 1898); £1000 is not an uncommon figure for a good Strad, and his finest specimens command £2000 (1898).

Nicolo, the great son of Geronimo, was born in 1596, and died close upon the seventeen hundreds, in 1684. Nicolo was quite aware that he resumed in himself the fine qualities of his distinguished family and improved upon them. It is true he did not trouble himself much with his grandfather Andrea, whom he probably regarded as a worthy old gentleman quite out of date. There could have been little in those small, almost three-quarter size, brown varnished, and sweet but feeble-sounding violins to attract the aspiring grandson; but there were qualities in the somewhat larger models of the famous brothers, Geronimo and Antonio, which set his hand and head agoing, when as a boy he fell to copying and carving backs and bellies, and twisting ribs and throwing scrolls, in his father’s little workshop at Cremona, opposite the west front of the Saint Dominic Church.

Nicolo the Great doubtless followed and imitated his father Geronimo, but wishing to miss nothing, and perhaps labouring under a sense of obligation or merely out of genuine affection, his labels embody an immortal acknowledgment of indebtedness to both masters. They run thus:--“Nicolaus Amatus Cremonem Hieronymi Fil, _ac Antonij Nepos_ fecit, 1677.” (The italics are mine.)

Nicolo the Great’s smaller patterns made in his father’s workshop are not unfrequently to be met with, and can be picked up for between £80 and £100, or even less.

But as we watch his dates, the touch of Nicolo very soon becomes distinctive. On the death of his father and uncle he found himself in possession of a workshop which inherited a great name, but which was destined to transmit to future generations the greatest violin names in the world. Among the pupils of Nicolo in 1653 sat the brothers Guarneri, Andrea Guarnerius having witnessed the marriage of his master Nicolo and signed the register; and by the side of Andrea Guarnerius sat a young man named Antonio Stradivari, or, as we usually call him, Stradiuarius.

Most of the Nicolo violins before 1645 are of the smaller pattern, but after this date down to 1684, the year of his death, the eye of a connoisseur will notice an increase in size, a finish in workmanship, and a more delicate purfle (never double). The model is still somewhat high in back and belly, but with an increasing tendency to get flatter; the side-grooving is less pronounced, whilst the corners are noticeably drawn out into finer points full of character, arresting the eye, lightening as it were the model, and giving the whole physiognomy of the instrument a grace and piquancy hitherto unattempted.

The sound-holes of Nicolo are pointed and somewhat narrow; the scroll is cut a little too flat for the later taste, but passes as the century wanes into a somewhat larger and bolder style. The wood seems to be chosen almost as much for its mottled or fine-grained beauty as for its acoustical properties.

The early Nicolo varnish is of brownish Brescian type, but later on it glows with the rich amber tints of Cremona, and those dragon-blood stains which give to some Strads and Josephs such warm and generous tints like the sunlit dashes of mellow red on a ripe nectarine.

Mr Somers Cocks (1898) has a most glorious Amati violoncello, “one of the finest ever seen or heard,” so said to me a distinguished connoisseur. Mr Marshall Bulley’s violoncello, a Jerome (the younger) Amati, is also a rare gem of tone and workmanship.[1]

The grand Amati violin pattern runs some of the Stradivari violins very hard, and is evidently the model on which the 1700-35 Strads are “calqué,” as the French say. The side-grooving, generally held to interfere with the volume of tone, whilst supposed by some to add to its sweetness, has not disappeared as in the Strad grand model, but it has become less pronounced. The tone is lovely and sensitive, and the Nicolo is truly delightful to handle. It is _par excellence_ the lady’s violin.

The one before me, where the varnish still remains, melts into light orange with clear golden gleams in it. If Joseph is the strong male, Nicholas or Nicolo certainly belongs to the softer and more yielding sex. The tone is most delicate, and of ravishing sweetness. It seems to leap out almost before the horse-hair has feathered the strings. It continues to sing on like a vibrating silver bell, as if intoxicated with itself, long after the bow has ceased its contact. In the sweet Nicolo the lover finds no bars, no obstacles; it is won almost before ’tis wooed (Plate V.).

We are interested to know that in his own time Nicolo’s work was carefully imitated, if not forged; whilst his supremacy over one of his best pupils, Francesco Rugereo, Rugieri, or Rugerius, was clearly acknowledged; for we find that a certain Tomaso Antonio Vitali, who seems to have bought a violin with a Nicolo label inside, and paid twelve doubloons (or about £12, 10s.) for it, complained bitterly that on removing the false label he had discovered the name of Ruggeri underneath it. The aggrieved Tomaso thereupon applied to his liege sovereign, the Grand Duke of Modena, for summary redress, avowing that he had given a higher price because the violin had a label of Nicolo, “who,” he adds, “was a maker of great repute in his profession, but now it was proved to be only a violin by Rugerius the pupil, a maker of less credit.” The violin, he said, was scarce worth to him more than three doubloons; the petitioner therefore prayed the Duke for redress. Whether he got it or not was no doubt very important to him, but of very little consequence to us. The fact that he made the application is the point.

The GUARNERII family must have made violas or violins as the sand of the sea in number, if the frequency of their labels may be taken as any guide; and in truth they were a long-lived and industrious family, and doubtless made a good many instruments, chiefly violins. But the reputation of Andrew and Peter, and above all the great Giuseppe (Joseph) del Gesù, led to the early fabrication of pseudo Josephs, and labels in numbers far beyond what all the great makers of Cremona together could have produced.

Andrea Guarneri (Andrew Guarnerius) the apprentice, as we have seen, was one of the witnesses to the great Nicolo Amati’s marriage in 1641, and Nicolo enters his pupil’s name in the church register as aged fifteen, which gives us the year of his birth, 1626. He worked on till 1698; in 1652 he married, and two of his sons, Giuseppe (not the great Giuseppe, his nephew) and Pietro, worthily sustained and improved upon their father’s reputation.

Many of the violins of Andrea Guarneri are of the smaller Nicolo pattern, but somewhat inferior, and not always well finished. The wood of his rare ’cellos, however, although plain in appearance, can boast of singularly fine acoustic qualities.

There is a well-known ’cello now (1897) belonging to Miss Theobald, of his finest workmanship.

Giuseppe, second son of Andrea Gianbattista Giuseppe, born 1666 to 1739, as distinguished from Del Gesù or “Jesus” Giuseppe, struck out a freer line of work. His narrow-waisted boldly-curved instruments, with their Brescian-looking sound-holes set low down, his rich, almost too profusely rich, varnish and fine wood, but not over-finished workmanship, give his violins quite a characteristic appearance, and in power of tone they are superior to his father’s. But next to the great Giuseppe del Gesù, Pietro Guarneri is the flower of the family, and most sought after by amateurs.

The grain of his bellies is often wide, the distance between the sound-holes is conspicuous, the sound-holes themselves are rounder and less Brescian, the scrolls are beautifully cut, and the varnish is superb, from golden tints to pale red, which has thrown some writers into rhapsodies about setting suns and the colours of the rainbow.

Passing over a lesser Pietro, son of the lesser Giuseppe, son of Andrea, who worked at Mantua, we come to the one man who, with the exception of the great Nicolo, is worthy to measure swords (or bows) with Stradivari. He came, singularly enough, from a side branch, and not in direct descent from Andrea or any violin-maker, being the son of one John Baptist Guarnerius, and was born at Cremona in 1683.

The father of the great Giuseppe was the son of one Bernardo Guarnerius, who was a cousin of Andrea, and therefore the great Joseph was nephew of Andrea Guarnerius, just as the great Nicolo was the nephew of Andrea Amati; but a distinguished fact separates our Giuseppe from all his illustrious kinsfolk, and it is this, that his father, Bernardo, does not seem to have been a violin-maker at all, so the young Giuseppe owed his teaching most probably to his uncle and cousins.

Most writers have speculated blindly enough upon his distinctive appendage “del Gesù” some talking about the Jesuits or a supposed religious bent. This is one of the many cases where sapient antiquaries, in seeking for recondite origins, neglect the simplest facts and ignore the easiest explanations. What can be more simple than for the great Giuseppe, conscious of his superiority to Gianbattista, son of Andrea Guarneri, as well as anxious to distinguish himself from Gianbattista, his father, and coming _after_ both, though _preferred_ before them, should call himself the “del Gesù” or Jesus, who followed after the John Baptist of the family? So far from indicating any particular reverence for religion, the assumption of this bold title seems to me to partake more of a certain irreverent levity; and if, as tradition says, the great Giuseppe or Joseph was somewhat of a free liver, and perhaps even a sceptic, he may have had small scruples in so lightly treating sacred names and subjects.

The question as to who may have been his master, and the influence (or otherwise) of Stradivari upon him, has also been involved, as I think, in needless mystery.

Since Del Gesù worked at Cremona and must have been, as a cousin and nephew, a good deal with his uncle and cousins, Andrea, Giovanni, and Pietro, who lived there, it is no great stretch of fancy to suppose that when he showed the family bent for violin-making, he should have been apprenticed to study the art with his cousin Giuseppe, son of Andrea, in which case he must have lived next door to where Stradivari was working all through his finest period; and though Giuseppe’s violins are rightly said to be in the style of his cousin’s Gianbattista, and he may have drawn his early inspirations from his cousin, it is impossible to suppose that so able a man could be in daily contact with and yet wholly insensible to the influence of the greatest maker who ever lived. Why, he not only worked next door to Strad, but probably met him every afternoon at the neighbouring café, and was doubtless often about his shop, year in year out.

Of course the differences in the work of the two great masters are obvious. The massive, bold, and original lines and less scrupulous finish of Joseph the Great, the powerful (almost brutally powerful) scroll, the loud trumpet-like imperious tone, all mark the masculine as contrasted with the sweeter and more feminine qualities of the gentler, bell-like Strad. The fact also before alluded to, that between the back and the belly of the Strad there is usually but one note, whilst between the back and belly of the Giuseppe del Gesù there are sometimes more, all prove sterling and distinct originality, as Rafael was distinct from Perugino or Michael Angelo from Leonardo da Vinci. But enough; for to draw these comparisons before describing the master may seem like putting the cart before the horse.

So let us now, without further ado, locate the great violin shops at Cremona and peep into workshop No. 6, in the Piazza S. Domenico, now Piazza Roma.

In about 1540, Andrea Amati had set up his modest establishment, trained his sons, and taken apprentices, bequeathing to Nicolo his plant and pupils.

Stradivari and the early Guarnerii then worked together, cheek by jowl; by-and-by Stradivari migrated to No. 5, next door, and the Guarnerii with Giuseppe del Gesù, who died in 1745, the latest and greatest of that family (surviving Stradiuarius, who died in 1737, eight years), then set up at No. 6.

As I have had occasion to remark elsewhere, these three names, Amati, the Guarnerii, Stradivari, there be none like them; these three shops opposite the big Church of S. Domenico, now demolished, there never were nor will be three such violin shops.

Here were made, in long, quiet years of peaceful labour, between 1560 and 1760, in steady and friendly rivalry, all the greatest violins in the world.

The Giuseppe del Gesù on which Paganini played, now in the Town Hall in Genoa, the Stradiuarius on which Ernst, now Lady Hallé (1898), plays, Canon Percy Hudson’s violoncello, Joachim and Wilhelmj’s “Strads,” the Alard, the Betts, the Dolphin, the Messie, the Pucelle, the Tuscan, the Fountaine, the Rode, and the Viotti--these be the wonders of the violin world.

But in following the development of the Guarnerii family into the seventeen hundreds, the position of Giuseppe del Gesù, the king of the Guarneri, must be clearly defined before we describe the rise and progress of Stradivari, who ran parallel with, and who, in the estimation of most violinists, seems to combine in himself, the _ne plus ultra_ of all violin perfection.

Nothing about Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù is more remarkable than the determined way in which, after examining the Amati types, he deliberately went back to the Brescian Gasparo and Maggini models for inspiration. The time had come when powerful tone was wanted. The Amatis were sensitive, sweet, and weak; in the larger and more massive Brescians Giuseppe found the suggestion of what he was destined to make perfect. If only he could add their volume to the Amati sensitiveness--an hour more or less spent on the cutting of corners or neater purfling--what did it matter? Strength, power, was what he wanted, and the sentiment is thrown off in the bulldog type of his head or scroll, in the thickness of his boards so much criticised, in the boldness rather than the grace and delicacy of his curves.

He tried many experiments: flat make, full make, sound-holes cut almost perpendicularly, shortened, slanting, and sometimes disproportionately long. He was watching the effect on the volume and quality of tone, and when he had in his own way conquered that secret of grand sonority, whether empirically or by calculation, then, and not till then, his workmanship improves.

He was like a man who had no time to think of the delicate cooking till he had stayed his main appetite. His frequent habit of cutting the wood upon the cross, _à contre sens_, as in the case of Mr Alfred Gibson’s instrument (1897), a superb specimen of Del Gesù, shows up the coruscations of the grain, and brings out each pore and vein by the agate-like varnish--not agate-like in the sense of the French chippy varnish, but in its clear crystalline depth and transparency. Del Gesù’s varnish is never clotted, but is laid on thoroughly, yet with a light hand. Mr Ruskin used to say that Sir Joshua Reynolds’ touch was so light that he could paint on a gossamer veil; Del Gesù’s brush is also as light as a feather. Some of Del Gesù’s later violins, dating from about 1740, after the death of Stradivarius, are amongst his finest. The one used by Professor Sauret, and the other lent to Mr Ludwig by Mr Frazer, are particularly fine, and belong to this period. Paganini’s Joseph, now in the Town Hall at Genoa, Alard’s, in the Museum of the Conservatoire of Music, Turin, and Vieuxtemps’, now in the possession of Maurice Sons, also belong to this great period.

The life of Joseph Guarnerius is more or less enveloped in mystery. It seems, for instance, utterly impossible to get at the truth about the so-called prison fiddles. Whenever a Joseph or a presumed Joseph which is not up to Joseph’s standard comes into the market, it is dubbed a Del Gesù prison-fiddle.

The story runs that Giuseppe, being a somewhat reckless person, got into trouble and was locked up for many years, during which time the gaoler’s daughter got him any wood she could find, and he made these inferior pot-boiling fiddles, which she disposed of for such moderate sums as she was able.

I prefer to put this legend wholly aside. Del Gesù may not have held sacred things in high estimation, and he may have been somewhat of a free liver--this rests on the authority of Carlo Bergonzi’s grandson, who was not even a contemporary of Del Gesù--still he may have got the gossip from Bergonzi, his own father, who was Stradivari’s pupil, and doubtless a rival maker; and tongues may wag when interests are or seem to be opposed, and stories will come forth finely variegated when there is an extraordinary absence of reliable facts, as there undoubtedly is in the case of Del Gesù.

There is, however, no direct evidence whatever that Del Gesù was for years in prison and that he died there, as says the legend; but Canon Bazzi of Cremona has lately unearthed one Girolamo Guarneri who _did_ die in prison in 1715, and the names of two very different men, one illustrious and the other obscure, have before now got mixed up, to the detriment of the illustrious one.

Something similar is said to have happened to the great Athanasius, whose name has been confounded with that of the obscure Pope Anastasius, in whose presence a creed was recited by one Bishop Victricius, and the confession of faith thus recited by command of _Anastasius_ now passes as the creed of Saint _Athanasius_, since it emphasises the Trinitarian doctrine chiefly connected with the name of that illustrious doctor.

A Giuseppe del Gesù is much more difficult to find than a Strad--his output, as compared to that of Stradivarius, is as one to six; his life was shorter, and his working career probably more erratic. But he is placed on a level with the immortal Antonio by some who know how to handle him, and the prices of his wares have already reached four figures.