Old Violins by H. R. Haweis

The violin proper is an Italian creation. It comes from the north of Italy. Stainer, it is true, is an early maker, and he bore a German name, but his date is after all 1621-83, whilst that of Maggini is 1590-1632; and if you visit the frontier village of Absam, near the town of Hall, where he lived, you will observe that he dwelt on the high-road between the Tyrol and Italy, and that his training, his talent, and his market were Italian.

But Brescia was really the home of the violin, and there is possibly something in the heavy salt seasoning of the Tyrolean pines which specially favours that peculiar resonance, sensitiveness, and durability for which the Brescian and Cremonese schools are famous.

The name of Gasparo di Salò (Bertolotti was his real name), now chiefly famous for his double-basses and violas, must ever be revered by students as the master of the great Maggini, who was in reality the father of the violin, in the sense of having clearly, at once and for ever, differentiated the instrument as a distinct type.

Salò is a lovely spot on the shores of the lake of Garda, in the province of Brescia, and about twenty miles from the big town. It was early famed for its culture. Foreigners went there for the sake of its schools, and the Corporation records show that sacred music especially flourished there. It is now certain that Gasparo migrated thence to Brescia and worked in that town. Maggini was as certainly his pupil. This is proved by a legal document, dated 1602, which has lately been discovered, bearing the joint signatures of Gasparo and Maggini, who is termed his "garzone," or apprentice.

Gasparo's share in violin-making proper could not have been very great, as the earliest violin orchestral music appeared in Italy in 1608, and Gasparo died in 1610 or thereabouts -- a fact which, taken in connection with the extreme rareness of any Gaspardian instruments which can be called violins, seems to argue that the piccolo violino which was presently going to be master of the situation was only just creeping up.

I have seen and played on one very fine Gasparo violin, the property of Lord Amherst -- D and A strings rich and pure, 1st and 4th rather muffled, but on the whole the tone is mellow and powerful.

This almost unique Gasparo violin is still bulgy, but a great improvement on the old viol build; the head is long and quaint-looking, but lacks that finish and character which later masters put into their scrolls. Gasparo's basses are still much sought after, and Dragonetti possessed more than one.

A giant specimen, known as the Duke of Leinster's bass, may still be seen at the South Kensington Museum, and I exhibited it at the Royal Institution in 1872. His work is heavy and lacks refinement, but his tone is grand and full-bodied.

GIO. PAOLO MAGGINI was the child of his father's old age, and born at Botlicino, near the town of Brescia, which afterwards became the family headquarters.

Brescia was at this time a strongly fortified place, and a print as late as 1764 probably gives us a fair notion of what it looked like between 1560 and 1632.

Swift brooklets ran down the streets, and outside the walls were spreading woodlands and ploughed fields. It boasted of a splendid brick palace, the Broletta, and a massive belfry of rough stone (Torre del Popolo), a Castello, and an old Duomo; the streets were adorned with frescoes. The Cathedral of San Pietro de Dom was famous for its music, and had an organ and full orchestra. The viol-makers and the monks were then, as they have since been, in intimate relations, and it was a couple of monks who befriended Gasparo when he was down in the world in health and fortune, and sadly needed it.

The princes of Italy at this time (1512-1630) were great patrons of art, letters, and especially music. Brescia in 1600 was under Venetian rule. The town or fortress was from its very position constantly in the midst of wars and rumours of wars, and was appropriately famed amongst other things for its manufactory of swords and armour.

It is surprising how little military commotions seem to have affected, either at Brescia or at Cremona, the manufacture of musical instruments. There seems to have been an uninterrupted line of viol and cither and lute makers at Brescia from 1300 and onwards.

But when it is remembered that war does not interrupt the functions of religion or diminish the importance of the clergy (nay, often enhances both), we can understand that the musical instrument makers might have been as much in demand, in the stormiest times of the Visconti and Medici, as druggists, soothsayers, or mountebanks; and they probably made impartially for friend or foe -- for any one, in fact, who could afford to pay.

Up to within the last few years very little was known of this man Gio. Paolo Maggini -- Magino or Magicino. As he put only the name and place, but not the date, on his labels (all dated Magginis are therefore frauds), it is not easy to assign fixed dates to any of his instruments, and the personal information to be squeezed out of them is of the meagrest description. He worked in Brescia; few of his instruments survive. His violas are as rare as Gasparo's violins, but he distances all other makers in the attention that he gave to that newfangled and suspiciously regarded instrument, the true violin.

His handwriting, some of which survives, would lead one to suppose that his education was very moderate, but the signatures of illustrious princes of this period are no better. Recently, however, the State Archives of Brescia have revealed some interesting gleams of information which enable us to show him in his workshop with one apprentice, Franchino, and a young wife, aged nineteen, Maddalena Anna, who brought him a dowry, and afterwards children.

A picture of his house in the Contrada del Palazzo, Vechio del Podesta, lies before me. It has but two storeys, and the family lived upstairs, surrendering the ground floor to the violin business.