I have bought a good few violins over the years. Several that were tiny fractions of the whole. They were all Chinese, of one make or another, and trundled backwards and forwards to school and music lessons. And then there was the European violin, from a German workshop. This one was a far finer piece of workmanship and the sound reflected this. Or, maybe, to be fair, it was also due to a great increase in skill and length of practice from the player.
I have always loved the look and the shape of string instruments, so maybe it is not surprising that the art work on the cover of ‘Lev’s Violin: An Italian Adventure,’ caught my eye in the bookshop. Blue and orange and with the violin depicted in a rather surrealist form reminiscent of Picasso or maybe Braque.
The book that I know by Helena Attlee is ‘The Land where Lemons Grow’ but I had not heard of this one. There seems to have been so much interesting, well written, non-fiction around of late, or maybe I am just rather more adventurous than I used to be. Anyway, this book was an excellent purchase. It is accessible and not too scholarly, but I am clear that I have learnt a lot.
The book begins with the author having a chance meeting with a violinist, after hearing him play some Jewish Klezmer music. He says that his violin was made in Cremona but he has recently been told that in terms of money it is worthless. ‘Cremona and worthless’ is rather an oxymoron as the northern Italian city is the historical home of string instrument making, having been the home of luthiers such as Amati, Guarneri and later Stradivarius. Thus the nub of an idea is born and the writer decides to venture on a pilgrimage to try and sort out the life of this particular violin and why it has become an anomaly.
There follow chapters on violins at the Medici court in Florence, on the foundations of the trade of which Cremona violins would become an international commodity and the modern science of dendochronology, which allows accurate dating of the wood used to make a violin, even showing where the trees were grown. One surprise was to come across references to Occitania and the Occitano language of the mountain valleys in the Piedmont. To me these terms belong in southwest France, around Perpignan and Carcasonne and of course strongly within the novels of Kate Mosse: Labyrinth etc. Anyway, troubadours and musicians travel of course and would have done so throughout Europe, very laboriously, even centuries ago. This seems to explain the cross cultural Italian/French situation.
The later chapter on violins for church musicians was fascinating. During the 17th and 18th century when the now famous workshops of Cremona were supplying churches and cathedrals in Italy, and increasingly across Europe, with stringed instruments for church orchestras, the ecclesiastical powers insisted that these instruments were not signed by the maker. There was already at that time a growing market for strings from the workshops of Amati, Guarnari and Stradavarius and several others that were flourishing in Cremona.
The church authorities were anxious that an inflated financial market did not grow up around these instruments that were supporting and encouraging church worship. This edict reverberates to this day as it has meant that there are many violins within circulation that were indeed built by the great masters but have to be carefully identified as such as they are in effect anonymous.
This chapter reminded me of Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy as it deals specifically with a church band in a little Dorset church which is ousted by the new clergy in favour of an organ and choir. I have over the years had a love/ hate relationship with Hardy’s writing. In the 6th form, studying The Mayor of Casterbridge for A level, I devoured all the novels and some of the poetry, loving it all. My literature group friends and I were adept at making full use of the town library and it was excellent at filling in the gaps left by the somewhat underfunded library at school. I made a friend of the librarian in charge. He attended the local Roman Catholic Church which in the 1970s was undergoing change that was not universally popular. We sometimes discussed matters theological and I have a clear and fond memory of him saying, in a rather distressed fashion, that he had to believe all would be well and that when he reached heaven the angels would indeed be singing plainsong in Latin. I hope it worked for him. But I digress. Decades later I revisited Hardy and found it no longer worked for me. It seemed unbelievably depressing and frustrating. The books gathered dust on my shelves. So having decided to read Under the Greenwood Tree again, it was with more than a little trepidation. However, I needn’t have worried. It was alright. Indeed, in some parts quite jovial. Admittedly this novel is an early one and it is short, only about 130 pages. Country English churches in the 18th and 19th century were reflecting political movements of the time and of course had little or no knowledge of the goings on in Cremona or indeed in Italy at all. Church bands were at times considered raucous and unreliable, maybe because they often visited the pub beforehand and if the clergy were of a more puritanical nature then they saw a choir and organist as more manageable and docile. Yes well, there are plenty of stories that could be told about miscreant choirboys … but we won’t go there.
Happy reading.