Violin-making - work in progress

Anatoly Leman, one of the most influential Russian violin makers in the early 20th century and an author of several books on violin-making, wrote that the sound of a violin "depends on how it is sculpted". However, sculpting is just one factor out of a myriad of factors, covered in Leman's books according to his personal artistic philosophy.

Master-violin-makers at every period tried to create their own systems because borrowing a feature of someone's system, such as a model created by another maker and reproducing it without filling it up with the rest of the content, that is, the remaining parts of the system - did not, unfortunately, result in the desired sound quality or aesthetic appearence or the personal artistic growth of the maker.

My own system has crystallized out of the research into baroque aesthetics and music. Dozen of years ago rather complex, it has finally boiled down to only a few simple but fundamental principles. Visit our website String Arts Studio for more information on my work.

P.S. Photograph by Dmitry Badiarov, assisted by Ivan Badiarov

Violin Making: form and content

There are two violins being made at this moment at our studio: one baroque and one modern.

The model I use for these two violins was developed by me several years ago in Brussels. Blai Justo recorded a CD on this violin. The CD should appear in the near future at RAMEE.

I always believed that a good model should sound well, no matter how it is made: like good music sounds always ripe even if it is greenly played.

Some of the old instruments have wonderful sound, despite the fact that they might have been roughly made or because they underwent drastic reparations and have lost their original outlines and thicknesses, lost much - except for the basic form.

I gave this model to my violin-making students at Daikanyama school of violin-making in Tokyo to try. One of them, Ms Yoko Yonezuka, has finished her first violin "in white". She would have to make a few dozens of instruments to master the technical side of instrument-making, however I was pleased to discover, that despite various difficulties with wood-working it still sounds well.

P.S. Photograph by Dmitry Badiarov

Violoncello da spalla: a proposition from Hamamatsu Museum of Musical Instruments

Last week we received an interesting proposition from Hamamatsu Museum of Musical Instruments to build a violoncello piccolo da spalla for their collection. Hamamatsu Museum of Musical Instruments is the largest collection of musical instruments in Japan.

The Museum is interested in my reconstruction of Bach's violoncello piccolo built for Sigiswald Kuijken (two instruments) and Ryo Terakado, Samantha Montgomery, Carlos Albuisech, Diana Roche, Ann Cnop and MrHatano. Kuijken and Terakado solos on violoncello da spalla can be heard on CDs which can be purchased at any local CD-shop and over the Internet. More information on CDs where my violoncellos da spalla are beying played can be found on this webpage. Violoncellos da spalla, modern and baroque violins are made at String Arts Studio, a violin-making studio first founded in St.Petersburg, then in Brussels, and now in Tokyo since two years.

J.S.Bach wrote the Suites for violoncello solo and the Cantatas in which he called for a violoncello piccolo when he was in his mid-thirties. The violoncello at that time was frequently, if not predominantly, smaller than the modern-day cello. Additionally, cellos could have been just the size of an over-sized viola. These small cellos were called "violas pomposa" in the end of the 18th century - the time when they became out-dated.

This kind of over-sized viola, normally called a violoncello or violoncello piccolo, can be found in Bach's household list. He was a prominent violinist. Therefore most likely he was the first performer of his Cello Suites, as well as violoncello piccolo solos in the Cantatas.

Complexities of any museum's administrative work are likely to cause Hamamatsu Museum of Musical Instruments move at glacial speeds. Therefore we might have to waight some time for their final decision regarding the time-line for the aquisition of our violoncello da spalla.

Violin-making - work in progress

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Violin-making: craft or art?

I like to think about every development in the history of the violin and its music and even more - about social significances of those developments. On one hand, I am devoted to the highest level of craftsmanship, on the other, I do not consider it the purpose: craftsmanship is at the service of the sound and the music, not otherwise.

I am devoted to the study of the culture that gave birth to the violin. This is the vantage point from which I approach the craftsmanship and the acoustic (musical) properties of my instruments. If violin-making is art, it must give birth or re-birth to the new forms of instruments. These, in turn, must inspire fresh forms of musical expression, or, in other words, have social consequences. This is what western artists have been doing anyway, be it within the domain of music or visual arts.

And what if violin-making is a mere craft? Or what about the balance between personal artistic liberties and clinging to certain tradition? After all, traditions survive mainly thanks to the conservatism and oppression of artistic liberties.

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Providence at Ginza's MAC

My new MAC crashed a few days ago and the infallible MAC service here in Tokyo's Ginza made a fatal mistake: they formatted my hard-disk instead of saving the data. How could this possibly happen at the infallible service centre famous for its efficiency! No fun to try to explain it rationally.

I suspect, the crash would not have happened if I deleted the long out-dated data myself. Was it the Providence who supervised the MAC service when I called them? The Fortune herself, who found no gentler way to navigate me but to crash the disk of my MAC. If so, then this was due to "my own fault" [famous thinker, p.2].

The more time passes since the crash, the more it looks like that. Agenda and live contacts retrieved from my memory were written down into an old-fashioned paper block-note. Lost are a few rare scientific papers on violin-research which I will have to recover in one or another way. Lost forever a few historical photographs taken with my digital camera. Luckily, some of the moments recorded in those images were also photographed with my medium format film camera, so the negatives are intact and archivaly stored together with other negatives inherited from my parents.

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Violin Making - a narrow path to subtlety

A teaching day is over and on the way home I was wondering how can a subtle thing such as the shape of a violin top or back be clearly explained in words or images: waves, cupids' bows, body shapes etc, taking into account character of the wood and the type of sound sought after...

One's vision intensifies with practice and things now invisible become evident, but for a beginner in violin-making - who watches eagerly but can't see - there is no other way but practice and study of masters' violins, violins - not their photographs and even not their copies.