Stainer’s violins bear a rough resemblance to the Amati violins; but they are very much higher, and the f-holes are shorter and are very thick and clumsy. Stainer made twelve violins for the Electors of his country; and these “Elector Stainers,” as they are called, are his most famous productions. He died in 1683.
It is said that this old maker used to walk through the wooded slopes of the Tyrolean mountains with a hammer in his hand and that he would knock the trunks of the trees and listen to the vibrations. When he found a tree that suited him, he had it cut down to use in making his instruments.
THE HELLIER STRADIVARI
The question of wood was of the greatest importance. “The wood must be cut only in December and January and only that part must be used which has been exposed to the sun. You may cut up planks before you find a piece suitable for a really fine back, or belly. Witness the grain of a Stradivari or Amati violin; mark the almost pictorially beautiful health and evenness of its wavy lines, free from all knots, irregularity of growth, studded with symmetrical and billowy veins where the rich sap once flowed. And when the wood is cut it must be tempered and dried, not with artificial warmth but with the slow and penetrating influence of a dry, warm Cremona climate. For no customer, no market could the process be hurried. And the application of the varnish required corresponding care. It was to be perfectly wedded to the rare wood—a companionship destined to last for ages—to outlast so many generations of men and women, was not to be enterprised or undertaken lightly. In the spring when the air got clear and bright and the storms were past, the subtle gums and oils were mixed slowly and deliberately: hours to stand, hours to settle, hours for perfect fusing and amalgamation of parts; clear, white light gleaming from roads strewn with the dazzling marble dust of Lombardy; clear blue sky, warm dry air, and the skill of an alchemist,—these were the conditions for mixing the incomparable Cremona varnish. So deliberately was it prepared and laid on, just where the wood was fit to receive it—laid on in three coats in such a manner as to sink into the dessicated pores and become a part of the wood, as the aromatic herbs and juices become a part of the flesh that is embalmed for a thousand years. All through the summer did that matchless varnish, which some say contained ground amber and which, at any rate, was charged with subtle secrets, sink and sink into the sycamore and deal plates, until now, when age has rubbed away its clear and agate crust in many places, the violin is found no longer to need that protection, for the wood itself seems to have become petrified into clear agate and is capable throughout its myriad pores and fibres of resisting the worm and even damp and other ravaging influence of ordinary decay.”[7]
When Joachim was asked why he preferred a Stradivari to any other violin, he replied: “A Stradivari is a mine of musical sound into which the player can dig and bring out hidden beauties of tone.” And then he went on to say: “While the violins of Maggini are remarkable for volume of tone and those of Amati for liquidity, none of the celebrated makers exhibit the union of sweetness and power in so pre-eminent a degree as Giuseppe Guarnieri (del Gesù) and Antonio Stradivari. If I am to give expression to my individual feeling, I must pronounce for the latter as my chosen favorite. It is true that in brilliancy and clearness, even in liquidity, Guarneri is not surpassed by him; but what appears to me peculiar to the tone of Stradivari is a more unlimited capacity for expressing the most varied accents of feeling. The tone seems to well forth like a spring and to be capable of infinite modification under the bow. Stradivari’s violins affording a strong resistance to the bow, when resistance is desired, yet responding to its lightest breath, emphatically require that the player’s ear shall patiently listen until it catches the secret of drawing out their tone. Their beauty of tone is not so easily reached as in the violins of many other makers. Their vibrations increase in warmth the more the player, discovering their richness and variety, seeks from the instrument a sympathetic echo of his own emotions: so much so that these violins seem to be living beings and become, as it were, the player’s familiars—as if Stradivari had breathed a soul into them in a manner achieved by no other master. It is this which stamps them as creations of an artistic mind, as positive works of art.”
We have talked about the construction of the violin and of its great makers; now let us turn our attention to the actual playing of the instrument.
The four strings—G, D, A, and E—are made of catgut[8] and the lowest—the G—is wound with silver. These strings do not run exactly parallel but taper gradually from the bridge to the nut. The nut is a tiny, raised bar of ebony at the extreme end of the fingerboard; and on the nut the strings rest on their way to the pegs. Through each peg a tiny hole is bored. The string passes through that hole and is looped around itself; and then the peg is screwed up, or turned, until the proper note, or pitch, is found. The violin is tuned in fifths.
These four strings give what are called the open notes—G, D, A, and E. The lowest note possible to get from the violin is this open G.