In the delightful monograph of this maker’s life—already mentioned—among the excellent summary of the instruments made by him, there is an interesting description of a quartet of instruments generally known as the “Dumas Set,” from its having once belonged to a family of that name. In an ancient château near Lyons the members of the Dumas household passed through the terrors of the first Revolution and saw the establishment of the Empire. They were enthusiastic musical amateurs—friends of Beethoven—and inspired by a genuine love of chamber music they collected together four magnificent examples of Maggini’s skill. Of the four instruments—i.e. violin, viola, violoncello and double-bass—which comprise the “set,” the violin and viola are of the most characteristic and perfect type, although the violoncello is also excellent. According to Lady Huggins’s description of the last, “it has two lines of purfling, but no ornamental device. The bottom circle of the sound-holes is smaller than the top. There is the same under-bevelling of the inside edge of the sound-holes, as in Maggini’s other instruments, the same arching of the model. The wood of the back and the sides is cut on the slab” (parallel with the growth of the tree—a favourite practice with the ancient viol-makers). “The back is joined, also the belly, the latter having the wood the ordinary way of the grain, the coarse grain being outside.” As we look at the instrument, the thought involuntarily rises in us—“to Maggini we owe our modern violoncello.” What a curious mixture of the “old” and the “new” is to be found in this instrument. The back cut on the “slab”—in accordance with the long-standing custom—and the belly cut in the improved manner. Maggini, although a great innovator, and the first to cut the wood in the new way—i.e. wedge-ways from the tree—was evidently in a state of uncertainty when he made this violoncello. To balance matters he mingled the divers ways, yet, in spite of his hesitation, he came nearer to gauging the most equitable proportions for the violoncello than any other maker of his time. It would be of great interest if it were possible to discover by what means Maggini and his predecessors arrived at their conclusions. Whether it was in the manner of old Mrs Tibbins, who made a fiddle by means of a blunt knife, a piece of glass, and a bent file, or, on the principles of Monsieur Felix Savart. If the ancient luthier planned his work on the latter’s scientific basis, then he was accurate in every detail, for no more satisfactory experiments on the construction of bow instruments have been attempted. The idea of these experiments was suggested by a guitar-shaped violin made by Stradivarius and owned by the elder Chanot. Imagining that so eminent a maker would not have constructed such a violin without good reason, Monsieur Savart—a doctor of medicine—threw up his profession for that of science and interested himself in organising a series of tests in the first half of the nineteenth century. As a result of his labours luthiers were at last confronted with the astounding assertion that an arched surface vibrates less readily than a plane one: that there are points where the vibrations are greatly reduced, and that the aggregate vibration is least at the sound holes and at the corner blocks of a violin or violoncello.
Starting from this groundwork, M. Savart constructed a violin entirely made of flat surfaces and straight lines with narrow rectilinear slits for sound holes (so as to cut as few of the fibres of the wood as possible) and no tailpiece, the drag of the latter on the tender part of the belly being considered detrimental to the instrument. The most astonishing part of this fiddle was that it passed the test of comparison with a Stradivarius victoriously. The members of the Académie des Sciences formed a council and, assisted by such eminent musicians as M. Berton, Catel le Sueure, and Cherubini, sat in solemn judgment. The merits of the instrument were considered by them at several meetings, and the gifted violinist, M. Lefebvre, was requested to play alternately upon a chef-d’œuvre of Cremona and the Savart “box-fiddle,” in an adjoining room. The decision arrived at by these gentlemen was that the square fiddle was every bit as good in tone—if not better—as the Cremona violin. Of course this was most flattering to the inventor, yet it is a question whether such excellent results would have taken place had the Savart fiddle been in less skilful hands. The great violinist Remenyi maintained that he could produce just as good a tone out of an eight-shilling fiddle as out of a 1000-guinea one. Monsieur Lefebvre’s handling of the “box-fiddle” was doubtless superior to the fiddle itself and,—as Voltaire said of Duport’s violoncello playing,—he made the council of impulsive Frenchmen believe in miracles “by making a nightingale out of an ox.”
A few years previous to Monsieur Savart’s researches M. Chanot—a naval officer, and a member of the distinguished family of violin-makers of that name, being compelled to leave the navy on account of his staunch Royalist predilections—had turned his attention to constructing guitar-shaped fiddles and violoncellos. These were also subjected to similar tests by the members of the Académie des Sciences and—as in the case of the Savart fiddle—pronounced to be superior to the instruments of Cremona. There were independent experts, however, who considered them faulty in tone and only to be regarded as curiosities. In the midst of diverse criticisms, these instruments found a market for a few years, the violins and violas fetching 300 francs, while 500 francs was the price demanded for the violoncellos. Those who desire to pursue the subject of vagaries, will find much to interest them in Mr Davidson’s “The Violin,” and Mr Heron Allen’s “Violin-making as it was and is”; sufficient for present purposes is it to know that such grotesqueness as eighteen stringed violins played with a bow and producing the combined effect of the violin, viola, violoncello and double-bass: the combination violin and violoncello with piano which can be played by one person: the melephone, which was nothing more than a concertina enclosed in a species of violoncello, and other such fallacies, have been relegated to the land of oblivion. Certain it is that the ancient viol-maker never dreamed of such horrors. Once in a way he attempted such a mild invention as a detachable neck, which could be unscrewed and placed inside the instrument through a door in the ribs, like the viola da gamba in the Donaldson Museum, but otherwise his methods, like his varnish, were so simple that he made no fuss about them. He saw no necessity for rushing into print, or taking out patents, or wrangling, or arguing. The traditions of his graceful craft were transmitted by word of mouth and practical demonstration to his pupils, and the pupils, living in an atmosphere of lutherie, sucked in the unwritten lore as naturally as the earth absorbs rain. What need to cry out the sky is blue, when all the world can see it!
It was among such surroundings that the mighty Stradivarius learnt his art in the workshops of Nicolo Amati, grandson of Andrea Amati, who made “The King.” The atelier of this maker was a very nest of talent in the middle of the seventeenth century, for Nicolo Amati’s renown attracted all the most enthusiastic young aspirants of the art. It is easy to imagine the grand spirit of emulation, and even rivalry, which must have existed within the four walls of Amati’s premises in Cremona. An unrivalled master of his art at the time, bestowing care and thought on every part of his work, there is no doubt that he did much towards advancing the construction of the violoncello in the matter of experimenting with thicknesses, but he did not alter the dimensions of the violoncello which was at that time about 31 inches in length, if not longer. The majority of Amati violoncellos have been cut down, so that it is difficult to judge of their original size, but it is probable that they originally measured over 31 inches in length. The paramount influence of the Church in musical matters was responsible for the large dimensions of the violoncello at that date; it was looked upon as useful to reinforce the double-bass, or “bass-violin” as it was then called, for the big viols had already gone out of use in Italy in the middle of the seventeenth century. In “The Familiar Letters of Abraham Hill” (London 1767), his brother, Thomas, writing to him from Lucca, 1st October 1657, speaking of the instrumental music he had heard there, says that it “is much better than I expected. The organ and violin they are masters of, but the bass-viol they have not at all in use, and, to supply its place, they have the bass-violin.” According to Maugars in his “Reponse fait à un curieux ...” (1639) the viol was going out of use in Italy, quite twenty years before the above date. “Regarding the viol,” he remarks, “there is no one in Italy now who excels on that instrument, and even in Rome it is still little cultivated: I am very astonished at this, seeing that they had formerly one Horatio de Parme, who was a marvellous player.” The writer of these lines was himself a magnificent performer on the viola da gamba. He visited Rome, where he found the gamba, the theorbo, and harpsichord the most fashionable instruments, and, in spite of the numerous violins and violoncellos being made by Nicolas Amati in his busy workshops in Cremona, these latter were considered to be what Lord Chesterfield would have called “ungentlemanly instruments.” If by chance any enthusiastic amateur was rash enough to adopt the violin, he was careful to hide the fact from his friends for fear of being thought disreputable. This antipathy to the fiddle was just as keenly felt in England, when the encroachment of the new-fangled four-stringed instruments began to endanger the position of the viol. Anthony Wood, writing in 1653 at Oxford, says in reference to this: “Before the Restoration, gentlemen played three, four and five parts with viols. They esteemed a violin to be an instrument only belonging to a common fiddler, and could not endure that it should come among them for fear of making their meetings vain.” This prejudice against the violin is even felt to-day by many people. We ourselves remember an old lady’s astonishment when we confided to her that we could play the violin: “Why!” she exclaimed, “I thought such instruments were only played outside public-houses.”
The degree of excellence attained by such men as the Abbé Maugars, Hoffman, Sainte Colombe, and Marais, on the viola da gamba was certainly detrimental to the development of the violoncello. Maugars spent four years studying the gamba in England in 1620, and when he visited Rome, in 1639, his performances at the house of Signora Leonora Baroni, a famous Italian singer—who was herself no mean performer on the harpsichord and gamba—gained him the highest eulogies, which he recounts with no uncertain voice in the pamphlet already referred to (p. 138). In the face of the prodigies performed by gamba players, makers were content to follow the times and allow the violoncello to retain its large proportions. Even Stradivarius, who made the violin what it now is, did not occupy himself with the dimensions of the violoncello, but adopted the measurements of his contemporaries.
A complete account of this maker’s violins and violoncellos is to be found in Messrs Hill’s valuable monograph “Antonio Stradivari, his Life and Work.” In the chapter devoted to a résumé of Stradivari violoncellos, they make the interesting assertion that no violoncello by Stradivarius is known to them previous to the year 1680. The earliest dated instrument of the violoncello type known to them was made by the great Cremona master in his twenty-third year, 1667, and, although it has been considerably altered, it apparently originally contained many of the features of the viola da gamba and violoncello. They are of opinion that the instrument was primarily strung as a gamba, which was doubtless the case, for at that time it was customary to make gambas in two forms—i.e. with flat back and true viol-shaped upper bouts curving high into the neck, and also in the violin form. Christopher Simpson, the most renowned English gamba player of his day, gives excellent representations of both these forms of gambas (p. 80) in his “Division Viol” (Second Edition, London, 1667). He recommends the violin shape as superior to the viol form for playing divisions on a ground as “the sound should be quick and sprightly, like a Violin; and Viols of that shape (the Belleys being digged out of the plank) do commonly render such sound.”
Another violoncello by Stradivarius, which shows similar signs of alteration, belonged to Mr Leo Stern in 1902. Its proportions, although cut down by Dodd, are still of the largest, and the presence of a fifth hole in the head for a peg indicates that it was originally strung with five strings. No doubt this was originally an extra large viola da gamba of the form recommended by Christopher Simpson. Messrs Hill also give the interesting piece of information that they are acquainted with a viola da gamba by Stradivarius, or, to speak more correctly, with the material which once formed one. The often over-generous hand of the modern maker has employed itself in adding fresh wood in all directions with a view to transforming the instrument into a violoncello. Brought from France to Italy in its original state, it may possibly be the viol made by Stradivari in 1684 for the Comtessa Cristina Visconti, the patterns of which are preserved in the “Della Valle Collection.”
Still referring to Messrs Hill’s book we find that Stradivarius made about thirty large-sized violoncellos between the year 1680 and 1700 and that it was not until the latter date that he shows any signs of turning away from the violoncello of large proportions. Two instruments which bear evidence of this important change of construction are the Cristiani (1700) and the Servais (1701). The first of these measures 30-1/2 bare inches in length, while the Servais measures 31-1/8 inches, but even these proportions were large as compared to the violoncellos he made ten years later. The Cristiani is of particular interest at the present moment as it has recently become the property of the nation. It originally belonged to a charming lady of that name who gained repute as a professional violoncellist in the forties of the nineteenth century. Felix Mendelssohn paid her the compliment of playing her accompaniments at her concert at Leipsic, and dedicated one of his “Songs without Words” to her. She was not a great executant by any means, but the violoncello at that date did not count so many women players as it does in these days, and, then again, she was possessed of much personal beauty, so that her critics judged her in the same manner as they did the handsome Madame Catalani, of whom it was said that:
“If to her singing some few errors fall
Look in her face, and you forget them all.”