Violin History

espanolDependemos completamente de la iconografia para conocer los antecedentes del arco del violin. El analisis de los que aparecen en las pinturas de Hans Memling muestra que en el periodo en el que se empezo a gestar este instrumento, los constructores realizaban unos arcos mas cuidados y desarrollados que la creencia mas extendida, siendo sus obras una de las mejores referencias para conocer los precursores directos de este aliado, tan frecuentemente olvidado pero indispensable, dentro del binomio violinarco y que a su vez han sido fuente para organologos y constructores de instrumentos. EnglishWe are entirely dependent on iconography for our knowledge of the ancestors of the violin bow. The analysis of bows appearing in paintings by Hans Memling, shows that in the period that began to take shape this instrument, makers did better and more developed bows than widespread belief, and it serves as source of knowledge to this frequently forgotten ally but essential into the pairing ...

We are entirely dependent on iconography for our knowledge of the ancestors of the violin bow. The analysis of bows appearing in paintings by Hans
Memling, shows that in the period that began to take shape this instrument,
makers did better and more developed bows than widespread belief, and it
serves as source of knowledge to this frequently forgotten ally but essential
into the pairing violin-bow, and in turn source of inspiration to organology
and instruments construction.
Keywords: Memling, violin, bow, iconography, organology

A survey of the lute in Padua during the sixteenth century: makers, lutenists, composers, especially during the lifetime of Pietro Bembo (d. 1547) and in conjunction with humanist tendencies. It highlights the presence in Padua of German luthiers from the Füssen area such as the Tieffenbruckers, and lutenists such as Antonio Rotta, Melchior de Barberiis, Giovanni Pacolono, Valentin Bakfark and Giulio Cesare Barbetta.

As a matter of fact the first instruments looking like violins appeared in Italian paintings during the very first decades of the sixteenth century, while – when considering the set of instruments made by Andrea Amati (or at least attributed to him) – the earliest preserved instruments date back probably to its second half.
Over many years of study of medieval bowed instruments, I have developed my own rather original approach to this mid-sixteenth century period.[3] Borrowing from the former techniques and aesthetics, I propose to leave aside our contemporary violin makers’ knowledge bases, forgetting all the acknowledged conceptions about construction, internal arrangements or acoustic matters, and I will simply trace the record of the historic evidence. When we observe closely what the documents show us chronogically, admitting every new technical feature only when the proof of its existence is established, some preconceived ideas about the violin can be seriously challenged.

Keman yüzyıllar boyunca üzerinde yapılan değişikliklerin sonucunda bugünkü formuna ulaşmış bir çalgıdır. Çalgıdaki bu değişim, ses kapasitesinin yanı sıra icracının tekniğini de etkilemiştir. Dönemsel farklılıkların yaratmış olduğu birbirinden ayrı stilistik özelliklerin de ön plana çıkışıyla kemanın bu değişim süreci tınısal bakımdan da daha belirgin bir şekilde gözlemlenebilmektedir. Kemanın değişim süreci, çalgıdan ses üretimini sağlayan yayın da değişimiyle koşut bir biçimde seyretmiştir. Yayın 17. yüzyıldan itibaren süregelen biçimsel değişimi en belirgin bir biçimde François Xavier Tourte’un modern yayı keşfiyle aşama kaydetmiştir. Tourte’un yay üzerinde yapmış olduğu değişikliklerle beraber birçok yeni yay tekniği gelişmiş, yay boyunun uzaması sebebiyle de rezonans süresi daha da artmıştır. Bu denli bir değişim sonucunda elde edilen ses sayesinde müziğin de farklı bir yöne doğru evrildiği değerlendirilmiştir. Keman yayının değişim sürecini inceleyen bu çalışmada nitel araştırma yöntemlerinden doküman analizi yöntemi kullanılmış, elde edilen veriler dönemsel özellikler göz önünde bulundurularak değerlendirilmiştir. Çalışmanın amacı keman yayının süreç içindeki değişiminin ortaya çıkardığı yenilikleri saptamaktır. Araştırmanın sonucu itibariyle keman yayının biçimsel değişimi ve yapılan yeniliklerle birlikte yeni yay tekniklerinin icra edilmeye başlandığı ve böylelikle kemanın solist bir çalgı olarak biraz daha ön plana çıktığı belirlenmiştir.

The nondescript seven-story brown brick apartment building on the northeast corner of 96th Street and Broadway in Manhattan (Tax Block 1868, Tax Lot 20) is identified on its awning in block serif letters as The Ancott, 231 West 96th Street. A solid hunk of a prewar building built in 1925, many of the twenty-seven apartment units in the building remain on the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal's coveted roster of rentstabilized apartments. Apartment 4B, a south-facing, labyrinthine four-bedroom unit, falls into this category. A neon violin suspended in the lower pane of the double-hung corner window on the fourth floor, facing 96th Street-clearly visible to pedestrians emerging from the 96th Street exit of the 1 train station at dusk-provides a clue as to its occupant: the master luthier Lukas Wronski. "What is a luthier?" she asked… A luthier, dear child, is a craftsperson who constructs and repairs stringed instruments. This term derives from the French word for "lute," and was originally used to describe makers of lutes, but the term gradually came to mean makers of most bowed instruments, including violins, violas, cellos, and double basses. Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) of Cremona, Italy, is likely the most well-known luthier; his instruments are considered by many as the world's finest, with about 500 extremely valuable Stradivari violins surviving today, each worth millions of dollars. Itzhak Perlman plays the Soil Stradivarius (1714), Joshua Bell plays the Gibson Stradivarius (1713), and Anne Sophie Mutter alternates between two Stradivari: the Emiliana (1703) and the Lord Dunn Raven (1710). But never mind that Strad interlude. The Upper West Side classical music community is abuzz. The Ancott, purchased by the real estate company ABS Partners in 2019, is slated for demolition, and its occupants duly evicted. That's the only way to extract rent stabilized tenants from a building: tear it down, and replace it with another with more units. The New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal regulates this tactic: owners must provide evidence of their financial ability to "demolish" the building (demolition can mean anything from gutting the interior to razing the building to the ground), produce approved demolition plans from the city's Department of Buildings, and comply with payments to current tenants to support their relocation costs. The luthier Lukas Wronski, who has operated both his workshop and resale shop, Lukas Violins, from his apartment at The Ancott since 2014, is a man on the edge, facing demolition eviction. Where will we go to flatten a warped bridge, repair a loose fingerboard, close a seam, install a Stahlhammer cello endpin? And what will it be like to lose Lukas's extraordinarily opulent and old-world

The good news is that Stradivarius are works of art that still produce what they were made for, a beautiful sound, and any violinist would love to have a violin that sounds like that. The bad news is that the Stradivari are few (about 500 worldwide), very expensive and around them there are strange interests. The question is: isn't 300 years of technological progress enough to enable us to build instruments that sound like a Stradivarius? Or are we but business is more important? Does the world of culture always have to wait for the beasts of profit to feed themselves? Meanwhile, are we hiding the Truth?.

The Stradivari violin had classical instrument manufacturing reach its peak and is also a landmark for consecrated creators and performers. Reproducing the unique sound has been a challenge for luthiers all around the world. At the same time preserving the sound quality and implicitly the instruments themselves remains a difficult task especially for the Museum in Cremona which has undertaken the responsibility of keeping a history page intact. An important step in this direction was taken in 2017, with the international project of the electronic library for the original sound of the Vesuvius violin, one of Antonio Stradivari’s gems. The technical team who successfully completed the project redefined high-quality sampling from a new perspective. Due to it, instrumental music composers can refine their creative discourse inspired by authentic, brilliant sonic material.

This is a scholarly article, but at the same time a plea for an urgent rewrite of the early history of the violin, this time unhampered by prejudice and entrenched ideas. To me, this is symbolic of the world we are now fighting for: a world where truth is sought in freedom, especially when it is threatened by arguments of authority and ingrained norms.

The Italian Violin Making reached its highest level of perfection in the days of Antonio Stradivari. Nowadays his stringed musical instruments have high prices and very few people can hope to buy one, but the contemporary Italian production is still the most appreciated by the market, a true economic success that endures along the centuries. Using modern technology it is now possible to fully understand and perhaps exceed the Stradivari's levels of perfection. The Santa Cecilia Conservatory of Music in Rome in 2011 founded a Lutherie course that is reaching these goals.

A study on performers and performing organizations active in Naples from 1701 to 1736, with specific attention to the presence of string instruments (violin and cello) and winds, and to the repertory of sonatas for three violins. Includes new information on the careers of Giovanni Antonio Piani, Angelo Ragazzi, and Francesco Paolo Supriani.

studi musicali . . . . . Questo volume è stato pubblicato grazie al contributo del Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo Progetto grafico Silvana Amato Impaginazione Raffaella Barbetti Composizione tipografica in Cycles di Sumner Stone

To understand how the value of cultural products is determined, one must consider how evaluations evolve over time and have an impact on the conditions supporting knowledge development. If evaluations do not fully recognize the potential value of a cultural product, the associated knowledge—especially tacit knowledge—may be lost rather than passed on, thus jeopardizing subsequent attempts to reproduce the valued product. We examine these dynamics by studying how value was attributed to Cremonese stringed instruments. The value the Cremonese masters created was first recognized in the 16th century, and in the early 18th century, new methods to strengthen instrument sound and sonority were developed. However, the value of these new developments was not widely recognized until the 19th century, when, in evaluating musical performance, performers, critics, and public audiences took over from royal courts, and they selected Cremonese instruments as the best for performing the emerging Romantic music. We consider how the dynamics of value determination over time have implications for knowledge management processes.

Part I is concerned with the human capital applied to the direction of the public banks, and discusses and analyses in particular the Governatori [Governors], the Segreteria, overseen by the Segretario [Secretary] and the Razionale [Accountant],
who headed the administration office, the executive body par excellence. Part II reviews the executive bodies, comprising the innumerable group of employees involved in the offices of the Ruota, the Notare in Fede, the Guardaroba dei pegni, the Revisione and the Archivio. In part III the organisation of the Monte dei pegni is considered. The banks' Soprannumerari [Low-level employees] are reviewed in part IV, especially in terms of assessing the possibilities for career development. The
influences upon wage and salary structures over time are identified in part V. The implications of this research are outlined in the concluding section - part VI.

This chapter-length monologue uses the principals exposed in Hobsbawm and Ranger's "The Invention of Tradition" (Cambridge, 1992) as a model to describe manipulations in the violin market that took place in the mid-nineteenth century Paris.

It argues that although violins by Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati already had a tradition that imposed high values upon them, their market value increased massively during the late 1820s when the violin maker and dealer Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume began to equate the market for originals and copies with a market that already existed for decorative arts. As the high prices in Paris caused the market to flood, Vuillaume created an artificial mechansim to inflate values. By relentlessly improving the quality of his copies he was able to justify increasing their prices, whilst fixing their value at one tenth of the price of a genuine antique example.

This essay examines the market up until the first world war, after which point, broader global interest in rare violins caused further stratospheric increases in price.

If you have a question relating to the content of this paper, or an enquiry about an instrument you either have or are looking for, please email me at: b e n j a m i n . h e b b e r t @ m u s i c . o x . a c . u k