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.