Chapter VI: Violins in Germany

Of course, by this time, “every schoolboy,” to use Macaulay’s famous phrase, knows that most things--including, alas! violins--can be made in Germany faster and cheaper than anywhere else; and if we trust to German writers like Dr Schebek, we might almost believe that viols, not to say the violin, originated in Germany.

I am quite willing to leave the viol origin an open question. If, on the one hand, Albert Dürer and his father-in-law both made violins and dated back to 1500, Benvenuto Cellini tells us that long before 1500 his father made the finest Italian viols at Florence; and an ingenious writer has now unearthed a print by Maso Fineguerra, the father of engraving about 1460, in which Thalia is represented playing on a small violin pochette or kit--which, by the way, has rather upset the idea that the kit was a reduced violin, but seems to show, on the contrary, that the violin followed the kit instead of the kit following the violin, the kit being in reality a small violin. It is thus triumphantly argued by Mr Fleming that even the predecessor of, and every suggestion of, the violin came from Italy; but in his ardour he fails to notice that although an Italian print shows a woman playing on a kit, the kit she plays on might all the same have been “made in Germany.”

If I see an English picture with a tomahawk and a boomerang, I do not assume at once that the objects depicted were necessarily “made in England.”

But, as far as this book is concerned, such questions are of quite secondary importance. It is sufficient to notice that the first instruments possessing the distinctive features of what we call the viola and the violin, as distinguished from the viol tribe, came from Brescia and Cremona; and that the greatest, if not the earliest, German maker, Jacobus Steiner or Stainer, is commonly reputed to have studied at Venice, or, as some say, learnt his art under Nicolo Amati at Cremona.

As we approach the great figure of Stainer we are in the presence of a man who stands only second in popular estimation to the greatest of the Cremona masters. Indeed, so great a musician and eminent an authority as Sir John Hawkins writes in 1776: “The violins of Cremona are _exceeded_ [_sic_] only by those of Stainer a German whose instruments are remarkable for a full and piercing tone.” The popularity of an English maker, Duke, who followed the German Stainer model, and whose fiddles were all the rage when good Sir John wrote, may have a little blinded his eyes to the Cremona _chefs-d’œuvre_--few of which, if any, he had ever seen. But it is no small tribute to the power of the German that for at least a hundred years he retarded the due recognition of the Cremonas and gave a faulty direction to the violin pattern throughout England, France, and Germany.

The arguments in favour of Stainer having visited Cremona in his early life rest a good deal on romance--the story of his having been a pupil of the great Nicolo, whose daughter he is said to have refused to marry, is unreliable. Whether he went home or stayed at home and married the village belle whom he appears first to have compromised, and who bore him seven daughters and one son after marriage and one daughter before, it matters very little to us.

Poems and novels have been written about this unhappy child of genius, but, as far as I can gather, the only reliable facts seem to be these, and they have been quite recently unearthed and sifted by Herr Ruf, who died at Hall in 1877:--

Jacob Steiner or Stainer was undoubtedly born at Absam, a village not far from Hall. The townlet lay on the high-road between the Tyrol and Italy, and doubtless nothing that went on in the northern cities of Lombardy was long in finding its way to Hall, for mules and pedlars constantly carried all sorts of merchandise--viols, and violins, and lutes amongst other things--to and fro. The great argument against Steiner ever having received early instruction at Cremona seems to be that he affected the tubby raised bellies and deep side-grooves of the old German viols; but it must be remembered that if as a boy he came under Nicolo Amati’s influence, it was at a time when Nicolo himself approached far more nearly the raised viol form than he did later on when his own model improved. The Steiner pattern is therefore consistent with all these theories:--

Firstly, that Steiner adopted the raised pattern which he found at Cremona, and which was then common throughout the violin-making world; that, returning early to Absam, he adhered to it, and, perhaps from motives of national pride, accentuated it _Germano more_.

Secondly, that he visited Cremona later, when his own model was already formed, and was too proud to alter it.

Thirdly, that German he was, and German he remained, and never went to Cremona at all.

* * * * *

All these questions, upon which much ink and paper have been spent, remain more interesting to the antiquarian than to the collector. Still, an indescribable interest and a deep human pathos seem to cling about the meagre facts of this remarkable man’s life.

Stainer’s popularity was so enormous that ten times the number of violins he could ever have made have been attributed to him, and his name has been forged quite as often as that of the great Stradivari.

Stainer married in 1645, and was appointed one of the Archducal servants, 1669; he advanced rapidly in favour, became violin-maker to the Emperor’s court, and was turning out instruments as fast as he could make them, forming such admirable pupils as Klotz and Albani, when he fell a victim to the _odium theologicum_.

Heretical books were found in his possession, or heretical opinions were expressed by him, or both. He was, in fact, a Lutheran, and a Lutheran in Absam was far too near to the preserves of Mother Church, and very soon, like a hawk on a pheasant run, he was shot down. Stainer was also miserably in debt, and perhaps somewhat litigious, as people of genius and independence of character are wont to be.

In 1677, having got out of prison, Jacobus petitioned the Emperor Leopold, whose protégé and employé he had been, and who was a great musical amateur, for money. Leopold lost his opportunity; unlike Ludwig of Bavaria, who won for himself an easy immortality by supplying Wagner with funds, Leopold turned a deaf ear to the immortal violin-maker.

Stainer seems to have dragged on a wretched existence for six years longer, overburdened with care and debt. The attentions of his wife and eight daughters did not prevent him from going mad with worry and want; nay, a helpless and incompetent family may even have contributed to this so unhappy close of a splendid but blighted career.

They show even now at Absam the bench to which the wretched man is said to have been bound when his paroxysms came on. He died in 1683, not only insane but insolvent. His wife died in great poverty six years afterwards, in 1689.

There seems no room in this sad life-story for his sentimental retreat into a monastery on account of his inconsolable grief for the death (?) of his wife. Had she been such an inestimable blessing, we might have expected her to have kept her gifted husband alive, managed his household more thriftily, rescued him from his debts, moved the hearts of his great patrons, or at least saved him from going mad.

But, on the other hand, eight daughters were doubtless a trial to a couple who seemed always hard up; and the one son, born in 1657 and dying in infancy, as we learn from a tombstone in the Pilgrims’ Church at Absam, deprived the great artificer of a coadjutor who might have been interested in building up the firm, and, perhaps, brought into it those business faculties without which the most brilliant abilities in every department of life so often make shipwreck.

A certain Marcus Stainer, whose reputed date is about 1665-69, and who called himself citizen and violin-maker, it is difficult to connect with the illustrious Jacob, although he has been called his brother, and some say he was a monk and actually assisted Jacob Stainer in the workshop.

The great violinist Tartini is said to have possessed two of this man’s instruments, called Peter and Paul.

Veracini, another eminent soloist, is said to have lost both of them in a shipwreck.

Herr von Reimer possesses a violin with label “Markus Steiner Burger und Geigenmacher, anno 1659” (not a very clerical label, by the way), and that is all that can be ascertained about this other Stainer; for of an Andreas Stainer, 1660, nothing but the name is known.

So everything tends to keep the ill-fated genius Jacob apart. Alone he remains as the one important rival of the Cremonese school; alone he stands at the head of all the Germans. Genuine Stainer instruments are rare; Stainer labels, copies, and forgeries are innumerable, and one of the greatest curses of the fiddle market.

The general look of a Stainer is so distinct from that of any maker except such as copied him, that it must arrest the attention of even a casual observer.

The Stainer belly is much higher than the back, the rise is kept up through half its length; the varnish is yellow (or as in the Elector Stainers), with a sort of pale-rose flush in it.

The early pattern, deep Amati side-grooves, the long-shaped, beautifully thrown end of the scroll, sometimes a lion’s head carved with the art of a Stradivari, the narrow purfling lying close to the sides of the strong, roundly moulded edges, the circular-topped sound-holes rather shorter than the Cremonese, peg-box often dark brown, contrasting with the palish-yellow belly--such are the leading characteristics of the great Jacob.

His earlier specimens bear varnish something akin to the Amatis; they are also of the smaller pattern. A good example of them is one in the possession of Mr Russell of Bedale, Yorkshire, dated 1645.

Jacob’s finest type may be seen in the famous Elector Stainer; of these he is said to have made twelve, one for each of the Electors. The popular legend refers them to his Benedictine monastery, but there is no shadow of proof that he ever was there at all; perhaps, however, if one Markus Stainer who is reputed to have made Peter and Paul was a monk, _he_ may have been a Benedictine monk, and as the obscure Guarneri who did get locked up seems to be responsible by transference for the great Joseph del Gesù’s legendary incarceration, so Monk Markus may do duty for J. Stainer’s reputed sojourn and residence in a Benedictine monastery. It matters very little when the Elector Stainers were made; most connoisseurs are agreed that the two quite authentic “survivals of the fittest” are miracles of workmanship, beauty, and the perfection of Stainer tone.

The Stainer tone! What is there about that tone, which for 150 years so fascinated the musical world as to dull the perceptions of so experienced a professor as Sir John Hawkins to the more exquisite timbre of the finest Cremonas? No one but myself is responsible for the following conjecture.

Perhaps there is less tonal difference between the early Amati and the later Strad than between the early Amati and the full-blown Stainer; and it may have been the sharp, pungent contrast--the type of tone that was _quite new_, as it were an original creation--which at once arrested and held the ear of that epoch. For, after all, musicians in the seventeenth century were only beginning to be cultivated in the delicate appreciation of tone _nuances_. The proof of this would not be far to seek. It is quite notorious, though to us amazing, that the differences between the Amati, the Strad, the Guarnerius, and the Bergonzi or Ruggerius, should not have been more clearly apprehended. When, for instance, a man--an orchestral leader, too--had bought a Ruggerius and paid for a Joseph, we do not find that he was dissatisfied with it until he discovered that the _label_ was false. The superb qualities of the great Joseph have been appreciated only since the Strad craze; but the world-wide cult of Strad dates from Tarisio, who began his work of violin exploration and discovery in 1827, dying only in 1854. But any tyro would be arrested by the clear, sharp, biting tone of Stainer. A violinist in the orchestra could make his Stainer cut through all the first fiddles, and once the taste for that sort of tone was excited, it would be to the ear what curry, or vinegar, or quinine bitter, or absinthe is to the palate. The Stainer tone is a sort of drastic, stinging stimulant to the ear, almost an intoxication; and the ear that has been once caught by it craves for it, and misses it even in the loud richness of Joseph, the exquisite velvety timbre of Amati, or the superb ringing brightness of the great Antonio.

Thus, in his own original way, Stainer met the crying want of his age for loud and piercing tone. He was the very antipodes of the tubby, muffled sound of the old viols. With a bound he reached the opposite pole. The coarse ears of the multitude were at once tickled and “grisé,” as the French say, by his wiry intensity; and soloists soon found that it was an immense help to wield a novel and stinging timbre which, without any special gift of theirs, awakened attention like the roll of a drum, or the blast of a cornet, or the tinkle of a triangle.

These considerations alone, in my opinion, account for the popularity of Stainer in all ages; the bulk of hearers belong to the musically untrained, who like pungency, and desire above all to have their ears tickled.

Just in proportion as music developed and the musical ear got trained to higher and higher refinement, so that specialities of tone became a cult for the ear, as specialities of colour for the eye, just in that measure did the great and subtle qualities of the Cremona school emerge, whilst the rage for Stainer, Klotz, and Duke declined.

I have no wish to disparage these last-named fine artificers. The increasing rarity of their instruments, and the really splendid qualities which we grant ungrudgingly to the best of them, must always make them much prized, and I fully expect that in a few years there will be a revival of the Stainer craze, and that his violins may then touch Cremona prices. I shall be very glad if they do; it will mean that at last we shall get something like a definite sifting of this great master’s best specimens, and that in this shaking in auction rooms, and in the cabinets of collectors, the forged parasites and impudent copies which have for years sailed under false colours--labels (libels, I mean)--will fall off into the limbo of violin refuse and other things “made in Germany.”

The best pupils and followers of Stainer were Klotz and Albani; but as it became the fashion to dub every one who made respectable violins in Germany about that time, and showed traces of the Stainer model, “pupils” of the great man, modern writers have grown properly cautious about dogmatising.

If all Stainer’s reputed pupils had really worked with him, they ought certainly to have married his eight daughters and relieved him of some of his heavy family responsibilities.

Sebastian Klotz or Kloz (1675) and his son Mathias (1696-1709) made excellent violins, and some prefer the son’s to the father’s. There were, besides, four other Klotz, relationship uncertain. Sebastian of Mittenwald visited Florence and Cremona; but although when he returned to his native town he announced his intention of making a second Cremona of Mittenwald, he and his family adhered mainly to the Stainer model, and reproduced very successfully the Stainer tone. Vidal says that his sons inundated Germany with false Stainers. Of the great violin manufactory which, on the suppression of the Mittenwald Fair in the seventeenth century, is said to have revived the commercial prosperity of the town, no trace now remains; but it is certain that, whilst the Klotz family lived and worked, a pretty steady stream of pseudo- (or _scuola_) Stainers poured forth from Mittenwald till about the year 1750.

The Albani family, like the Tecchler, stand midway between the Cremona and the Absam school, but Albani _père_ (1621-73) was certainly Italian, though he was born and lived at Botzen, in the Italian Tyrol, where he made German fiddles in the Italian style and for the Italian market, although his son Joseph was also bitten with the Cremona model. Albani’s violins pass for Italian; they are varnished red, and rival the Amati tone, and the Joseph Albanis are more highly esteemed than the violins of Albani _père_.

It is further significant of Albani’s popularity in Italy, that the most accomplished maestro and composer of the early part of the eighteenth century, Corelli, played on an Albani. This appears certain from an examination made by Mr Arthur Hill of the will of the late William Corbet, who had a large collection of rare fiddles, and disposed of them in his will, where mention is made of an Albani fiddle, which he left with the memorandum that it had _belonged to Corelli_. This is a very interesting example of a carefully excavated fact, and does Mr Arthur Hill great credit.

Tecchler, also called a pupil of Stainer, is perhaps most esteemed for his violoncellos, the best of which run the Strad ’cellos very hard. A very fine Tecchler ’cello is in the possession of Mr E. W. Hennell (1898), and there are several others in this country. Tecchler seems to have made few, if any, violins, which is strange, as his master made few, if any, violoncellos; he worked in Rome between 1695 and 1735. His instruments are sometimes rather cumbrous; his varnish is yellow, like Stainer’s.

The subsequent history of “violins made in Germany” is, to say the least, very mixed; nothing so good as Stainer was done there before him, and nothing equal to him has been done there since.

The golden age of German violin-making begins and ends with Jacobus Stainer.