Stradivari, and: Amico: The Life of Giovanni Battista Viotti (review)

Throughout most of the eighteenth century the violins by the makers Nicolo Amati and Jacob Stainer remained the most esteemed among performers and audiences, prized for their sweet, rounded tone. However, toward the end of that century the nature of concert life began to change rapidly, resulting in different demands on instruments. Not until late in the century did purely instrumental forms of composition assume a position similar to opera in public concert life. The music of Joseph Haydn offers a particularly clear demonstration of the shift, drifting from the domestic performance setting of the Esterházy court for the bulk of his compositions to the public concert sphere with his later works, notably the "Paris" and "London" symphonies. No longer publicly consigned to accompaniment functions for opera, violinists in particular came to require a stronger, more easily projected sound from their instruments in order to meet the demands of emerging instrumental forms intended for increasingly large public concert spaces.

A cadre of individuals, collectors, and instrument makers in particular effected several key changes to violin family instruments to meet the new musical demands. Stewart Pollens offers in his new book on Antonio Stradivari details of such changes in his fourth chapter, "Violin Fittings and Set-up." Nearly all older instruments were refitted with necks positioned at an angle from the top of the instrument, higher bridges were installed, and bass bars were increased in size, to name a few examples. More shockingly, the thicknesses of the top and back of most instruments were regraduated to serve newer expectations for sonority. Less invasively, the modern bow began to emerge in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, a development widely attributed to François-Xavier Tourte with influence from Giovanni Battista Viotti. The new bow allowed players to draw a stronger, more legato tone from the instrument without sacrificing the agility of earlier bow designs (see Stewart Pollens and Henryk Kaston, François-Xavier Tourte: Bow Maker [New York: Machold Rare Violins, 2001]).

In these closing years of the eighteenth century and at the dawn of the nineteenth, the vogue for Stradivari's violins began—and continues today unabated. Again, many have attributed this development to the influence of Viotti, though as Warwick Lister observes in his eighth appendix, "Viotti's Violins," the 1709 Stradivari violin now known as the "Viotti" came into the famed violinist's possession in the year 1810, well after he had retired from performing publicly. More objectively, the tonal characteristics that led to the favoring of Stradivari's instruments over those of Stainer or the Amati family of makers result primarily from the lower arching of the top and back of Stradivari's violins, which yields a more focused and well projected tone.

Serious studies documenting the life and work of both Stradivari and Viotti have remained wanting. The book on Stradivari written by the dealers William Henry Hill, Arthur F. Hill, and Alfred E. Hill published in 1902 has remained the standard work on the maker (Antonio Stradivari: His Life and Work [1644-1737] [London: W. E. Hill and Sons, 1902]). Numerous photographic volumes have also been published and articles and books abound which attempt to account for the beguiling sound of the "Strad." Viotti has recently benefitted from increasing attention, but scholarship in English still remains limited. Besides Lister's biography, the major works in English are a collection of essays edited by Massimilano Sala, Giovanni Battista Viotti: A Composer Between Two Revolutions (Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 2006) and Denise Yim's Viotti and the Chinnerys: A Relationship Charted Through Letters (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004). Of course, serious scholars studying either Viotti or Stradivari will need command of the sources and literature in numerous languages. The causes for this seeming lack of rigorous scholarship differ...