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The Italian job  MALCOLM
ROGERS travels to Cremona, home of the violin.
Cremona, deep in the Po Valley, is a long way from Tipperary.
It’s a long way from Clare to there, for that matter.
Yet the most famous product of the city found a ready home in Tipp, in
Clare and indeed in every county in Ireland.
The very nature of Irish music was profoundly affected by the development
of the violin in northern Italy.
The tuning of the fiddle became standardised here in Cremona and this
had a crucial impact on the melody lines of your average reel or jig.
Not only is the violin the most influential instrument in western music,
it was mission-critical in the development of Ireland’s tradition.
The violin has just celebrated its 500th birthday in show business —
musicology’s best guess is that the ‘modern’ instrument
emerged at some point around the turn of the 16th century, virtually the
same design as that used by today’s top professionals.
It is the ultimate rebuke to the arrogance of the modern age: Science
does not have all the answers; ancient technology sometimes cannot be
bettered.
The fiddle (it’s exactly the same as a violin) and its sister instruments
continue to dominate the orchestra.
No debate remains about the most famous maker of all time — perhaps
the most celebrated craftsman in history.
From Omagh to Omaha, the taxi driver will ask you as you struggle to get
in to the cab with your violin case: “Got a Stradivarius there?”
The Cremona man’s reputation for excellence remains unchallenged.
Cremona, cradle of music
You don’t have to go to Italy to see the world’s oldest surviving
violin.
Instead, head for Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.
There, in the Hill Room on the first floor, you’ll see an exquisite
piece of workmanship.
It’s not a Stradivarius — this fiddle was made in 1564 by
Andrea Amati of Cremona, the pioneering craftsman of the mid-16th century,
who preceded Antonio Stradivari by some 100 years.
The Civic Museum in Cremona has one of the same set, made in 1566.
Its latest official valuation some four years ago came up with the figure
of £7million.
Oxford has many attractions, not least the Amati Violin in the Ashmolean,
or for that matter the Annals of Inishfallen.
This 13th century guide to Irish and world history, in Irish, resides
in the nearby Bodlean Museum.
Despite these twin attractions, for any aficionado of fiddle music, a
visit to Cremona is the essential homage.
We don’t know why this Lombardy town emerged as the historic centre
for violin-making.
Possibly its traditional flair for wood-working (check out the cathedral)
gave it a head start.
Also, the city has always been intensely musical, the focus of organised
musical activity since the late Middle Ages.
Today ensembles and orchestras for Renaissance, baroque and chamber
music perform at fancy musical bashes every week, maintaining Cremona
in the position of Italy’s musical A-lister.
Fiddle city
Cremona is to violins what Waterford is to crystal, or Eccles to sticky
buns.
The city has been home to three of the most celebrated names in musical
instrument-making history: Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari (aka Stradivarius).
The old workshops of the families were reduced to rubble in the 1930s.
Stradivari’s place is now a McDonald’s — who says capitalism
doesn’t have a sense of humour?
This lack of reverential sites, however, means that Cremona avoids the
tweeness of, say, Mozart’s Salzburg, or the commercialism of Cong
and The Quiet Man.
This is a business-like neighbourhood dedicated to the supreme duty of
making violins.
Some 100 makers, hunched in concentration over their wares, produce instruments
for the top players in the world, cheek by jowl with tourist shops selling
every conceivable form of violin-related tat.
Don’t expect to see Nigel Kennedy buying an exploding plastic violin
or miniature cigarette lighter bow — but you could well see him
or Ann Sophie Mutter emerging from a discreet terraced workshop.
The Town Hall in Cremona is home to several million pounds’ worth
of well-seasoned timber, fashioned into the world’s most breathtakingly
beautiful instruments.
Polished spruce and maple, the staple elements of the fiddle, glint in
the dim light and a pungent smell — mostly linseed oil — suffuses
the air.
A 1715 Stradivari is on show — fingers itch just to try the Mason’s
Apron on it.
A 1734 Guarneri Del Gesù, the type favoured by Paginini, face our
Amati from 1566, standing nobly in another corner.
Here’s a good tip — every morning the curator plays these
priceless instruments just to keep her goin’ Patsy; and he’ll
let you listen, by arrangement.
Mind you, he doesn’t do requests.
 Glad
to be Strad
All that music evidently makes you thirsty and hungry, because Cremona
is coming down with restaurants, cafés and bars.
Having duly refuelled, depart the Town Hall for the Stradivari Museum
to try to make sense of the whole string thing.
The unique expressiveness of Stradivari’s fiddles seems likely to
be down to the varnish but experts are still at odds over the exact ingredients.
One theory is that the wood was seasoned above cattle sheds.
In other words the riddle of the fiddle lies in the smell of the cow manure
wafting through the wood.
On the other hand Paganini believed that Stradivari used only “the
wood of trees on which nightingales sang”.
Others have more prosaic suggestions — that the timber was soaked
in brine, or that it was of unusual density due to the freezing conditions
of the 17th-century ‘Little Ice Age’.
Some argue that Stradivari’s wood was endowed with special properties
while being floated down river from the Alps in the form of logs.
The other conundrum of Cremona, highlighted by the museum, is that of
Antonio himself.
Little is known of Stradivari — his appearance, place of birth,
upbringing, or where his earthly remains lie.
Even more mysterious is the man’s genius — how a semi-literate
boy in a tiny northern Italian city could have emerged as the greatest
instrument maker of all time.
Antonio Stradivari was a remarkable man.
He lived to be 93, fathered 11 children and made over 1,000 instruments
— mainly violins but also cellos, a few violas and a single harp.
He brought the tradition of instrument-making in Cremona to a peak of
perfection.
But he was also a member of a community striving to improve and perfect
the violin.
Music is the ultimate joint enterprise to which composer, performer and
instrument-maker all contribute equal skills.
The museum in Cremona — which plays, naturally enough, exquisite
background music — can only make you stand back, look out at the
green fields of Lombardy, and marvel at this musical majesty.
Fiddling about, with a cheese side-order
Kudu Travel is currently offering an Italian odyssey with more music than
you could shake a fiddlestick at.
The tour includes two performances at the 25th annual Monterverdi Festival
(which also includes music by Mendelssohn and Bach); a recital on some
of Cremona’s historic violins (including, of course, Strads); a
visit to a violin workshop as well as the Stradivarius Museum; and guided
tours of Verdi’s birthplace.
Other highlights include the castles, churches and private art collections
of Lombardy, as well as a visit to the fortified city of Sabbioneta.
Now you may be wildly interested in art, architecture and violins but
at this point in the tour the serious gastronome becomes very excited
— because the next town on the itinerary is Parma and Parma is to
pigs what Cremona is to violins — indeed in Parma they say that
the pig is like the music of Verdi: There’s nothing that can be
thrown away.
You’ll see how the ham is made; further up the road, well sated
by porky goodness, you’ll learn about the making and ageing of Parmigiano
(Parmesan) cheese.
You’ll also scoff Italian cuisine in selected ‘slow food restaurants’.
Starting May 17, the cost is £1,550 per person, twin-share, inclusive
of seven nights’ accommodation in one three-star and two four-star
historic hotels, all meals and wine, private transport, entrance fees,
all tickets, plus the services of a specialist tour leader.
Tel: 01722 716 167, e-mail: kuduinfo@kudutravel.com web: www.kudutravel.com |
