Ep 2. Francesco Rugeri

Okay, so I'm here with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker.  Hello  and , this little segment is we're gonna give you a, the secret how to remember the difference between Francesco Rugeri and Giovanni Baptista Rogeri

Antoine Lespets

can you talk about your memo technique? I fun for remembering the difference between Rogeri and Rugeri

Yeah. I say memo technique, technique? or just a memo technique?

Oh, I thought, no, it's a memo technique because it's for memory, right? It's to remember.  So memo technique.

Yeah. All right. So my memo technique to remember the difference between Rugeri and Rogeri. It's a very simple one. Um, I just think Rugeri with the U is rude because he stays in Cremona.

So he's, that's his, um, Rugeri is in Cremona and Rogeri, goes rogue with a O  to, so he goes to Brescia, he leaves Cremona and he goes to Breescia. So Rogeri in Bresecia because he goes rogue and Rugeri in Cremona because, because he's, he's so rude. He never wants to leave Cremona.  Yes. 

Yeah. So it's not necessarily true, but the whole idea of a memo technique is just to remember.

Yeah. Don't worry if you're in Cremona, I've got nothing against you and you don't have to write there. And you can stay in Cremona like all you like. You might not be rude. Yeah. You don't have to. It's just a technique to remember. Rugeri or Rogeri. Thank you Antoine. You're welcome.  Rogeri in Brescia, Rugeri in Cremona.

Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles. A podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting, violin makers of history.  I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French violin making school some years ago now and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Lutherie in Mirecourt.

As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with, and in particular, the lives of those who made them.  So often, when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect, but here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture.

So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, famine, and war, but also of love, artistic genius, Revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning, and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin. 

Welcome to this episode on the life of Francesco Ruggeri. In previous episodes, we have looked at various families living in Cremona, in particular, the Amati family and their incredible craftsmanship, innovation, and influence on all things violin.

So many of the great makers were influenced by this family, and Ruggeri included. In this show, we will be looking at the life of this maker, Francesco Ruggeri, where he learnt to make instruments, how he fits into the story, and I will talk about something quite innovative Francesco did that today almost everyone will give the credit to Antonio Stradivari for.

Francesco returned to his workshop in San Bernardo after his wedding, and over the years, with his wife, they would have a large family. The very next year, 1653, their first son, Giovanni Battista, was born. The couple would go on to have at least six more children. In these same years, Nicola Amati, newly married, would also have children, and the two families would have known each other well, along with the Guarneri kids and the Gennaro children, all living in the same neighbourhood.

Niccolo Amati was even the godfather to one of Francesco's son,  Giacinto. But in the following years after the weddings of Francesco Ruggeri and Andrea Guarneri, the Amati household has no record of any apprentices living with them, and yet the workshop was producing many instruments. Could Niccolo have had other makers such as Ruggeri and Guarneri working for him still during these years, even though they were no longer living with him?

1. E. Hill and Sons note. And I quote, “The unmistakable handiwork of Francesco Ruggeri can be found in certain of Niccolo Amati's works”. End quote. Francesco Ruggeri, working in his place in San Bernardo, could have been working for Niccolo, but also was building up his own clientele. His instruments definitely went at a cheaper rate to those of the Amatis, and his workmanship was less precise than that of his competitor. But he was able to run a successful business and he found himself experimenting with models and in particular bass instruments. And here is where Ruggeri was doing something a little bit different.

Jason Price. That's probably his most lasting contribution is, uh, are the really excellent cellos that he made, which are of modern usable size.

Linda Lespets

Yes. Because often when people talk about the modern cello, they'll say it's Stradivari. They'll say, oh, he's, he's B model, but, um, but actually he was inspired by Ruggieri. 

Jason Price

You're totally right. You're totally right. I mean, it was all, I'm sure it was all happening sort of organically and without exact, you know, influence and stuff. But, uh, You know, monster basettos that people are making and they work and so he made a lot of them that yeah, Ruggieri figured it out sooner. And a lot of this, you know, has to do, had to do with, um, obviously what clients wanted, that there's a reason why he was making them small because people wanted them. But it also has to do with string technology. And, you know, this is the end of the 17th century is when people first started wrapping strings in metal, the lower strings, and that, that lets you have a, an instrument which is functional at a much smaller body size, and I'm sure that's one of the factors that was going on here that, that led to his making smaller cellos. You could have that lowest string not be, you know, the width of a pencil.  Because, and not super floppy, because you could reinforce it with metal.

Linda Lespets

Now you see, musicians playing on a bass instrument often had to manoeuvre around large bulky basses with wide gut strings. The instrument's response was, Often slow, and so it was difficult to play fast paced compositions and were mostly relegated to simpler bass parts.  But in the last few years, a new technology had changed things. Large gut strings were beginning to be wound with metals which gave them more tension, and this meant that the instrument did not have to be so long and wide. to accommodate the strings that would play the same note. This new string technology is really pivotal in the story of the cello and one of the reasons for its success as an instrument and Ruggeri's renown, and perhaps even his motivation in making this instrument.

I asked Dan Larson from Gamut Strings about the history of strings and why they are so important in determining the size and playability of an instrument. 

My name is Dan Larson  and I run a business called Gamut Music Incorporated. And I'm a trained violin maker. I also make Baroque guitars and lutes of the Baroque and the Renaissance variety, and I have a workshop in Duluth, Minnesota that makes musical strings, or gut strings, for musical instruments.

The 17th century actually is a very exciting time for many, many things. There was a burgeoning market for everything at that time.  There was a lot of technology being brought to the world in many ways, and there was a lot of people beginning to experiment with things. And that was back in the day when a guy could get an idea, and he could make something, he could invent something, and he could, uh, recognize a new, law of nature, and  that's just what educated people did back in those days in the 17th century.

Up until  the mid 17th century, when you had strings, You had only one choice of string material, and that was gut. There was, sheep gut was used, there was beef gut that was used, there were some other,  allegedly, some different animals that were used for gut. But primarily it was sheep gut, and secondarily it was beef gut. Those were the two primary materials that were used. Largely because that was the material that was available. People at that time ate a lot of sheep.  And not so many cattle, but they had a certain number of cattle that they had with slaughter for various reasons. So, the only choice that they had for strings was gut. String making in itself was a whole industry and in 1656, just a few years after Ruggeri married, Paris had its first guild of Boyadieu. That's the French word for gut string makers. Their workshops were near the slaughterhouse in the Faubourg Saint Martin.

Dan Larson.

What were the main, uh, places that strings came from?

Were, there sort of string making centres or did people make strings everywhere? Would musicians make their own strings? 

No, they wouldn't.  It was too complicated a system and the material was very carefully controlled by the people that made strings. Strings tended to be made in centres.  And they were geographical areas were, were primarily designated as certain areas where strings were made. And, and it was usually in large population areas where a lot of animals were killed because the, the animals would be the source of the material to make the strings.  So, he ended up with a lot of string making in Paris, for instance, uh, Lyon. There was an enormous and tremendous development of string making in Markneukirchen in Germany, in the Saxon region there. And they, had an international industry where they would gather gut from all over the eastern Europe and bring it into the city to be processed into gut. The gut string making was an international business. It was an international concern. The transporting of the material was very specialized, so it wouldn't, uh, it wouldn't go bad in transit. And preserving it was a very specific thing that had, they had to develop different ways of carrying it to preserve it, so it wouldn't go bad.

And how, sorry, how did they do, how did they do it? How did they carry it without it going off?  Uh, they made these special boxes.  And, uh, they were just big thick boxes that would protect the, the strings from not, not only the cull, but from animals because the, the little critters like to get into it. I think the biggest, the biggest threat to transporting gut was the, was the critters that would want to get into it. A lot more than the cold and thing, but it was usually, they were usually transmitted dry. Right. Okay. So they were transported dry. So they would, in the source where they were taken, the gut would have been dried out and then put in these containers and the containers were, I don't know if they were just particularly heavy or they were reinforced with metal or something, but they would, they would be very heavy.

Okay. uh, specifically made to resist the influence of the, of the animals that wanted to get in and eat the gut. Right, right.  There's also different traditions. The German tradition is very different than the, the Italian tradition, which is very different than the French tradition. And the French and the, and the Italians tended to use more fresh gut, where they would take the, the gut from the animal and turn it into a string pretty much immediately. The Germans had this process of drying the gut so they could transport the gut over great distances, and then they could also make the gut into strings at their leisure,  which was, uh, just suited them better. Right.  It was, uh, an international industry.  It was a very sophisticated industry, as it continues to be even today. And it varied from one country to another. Every, each country had their own particular ways of going about it and, and therefore the result of the different strings had, uh, different reputations. You know, the, strings from Italy had a reputation. for really good top strings, and the French had a really good reputation for lower strings, and the Germans had a really good reputation for inexpensive strings, and you know, just everybody had their own little niche that they worked into the market.

If you were a string maker, where did that put you in, uh, was that a sort of a sort of a lower  class thing or were you a proud craftsman? Do you know what their position in society would have been? 

Oh, the, the string makers were the richest men in town. They were quite prosperous in Markneukirchen and literally the richest people in town were the people that owned the string making factories.

Emily Brayshaw

It's really interesting that you talk about this idea of the wire wrapped around the gut to make strings because that has long been, by this time, a technique that is used  Um, in textile production, in that you would have like a thread and literally wind gold or silver wire around it. And that's how you get gold and silver embroidery thread.

And um, depending on the thickness of that, you can get like Super fine for embroidery or you, and, and weaving, or you can perhaps get thicker for fringing and things like that. Part of me wonders, and maybe somebody out there will have the answer, whether, you know, these textile techniques influenced this technique of string making.

Was that everywhere that we're using this around? Everywhere. Everywhere.

Yeah. Yeah. So you had this mixing of technologies and Cremona is a city, you know, bursting with textiles. Yeah, it could well be. I mean, it, there's so much overlap and, you know, we remember, remember as well, like it's a small place. It's by the end of the plague, it's 17, 000 people. Everybody has to know everybody else.  You know, everybody knows everybody else. Mm right. That's kind of how these places work. So you do get these kind of pots of ideas too, you know, that that are happening. And I think this is really sort of a fascinating thing,

Dan Larsen

So the only choice that they had for strings was gut.  That works well if you have an instrument that has only one string. It works really, really well. When you have an instrument that has more than one string, you have to start playing around with the design of the string, because you have strings that have to have different pitches. So, you have to figure out how to get the different pitches. And more importantly, you have to figure out what size the instrument needs to be to get the pitches of the playing gut strings to work as efficiently as possible. And they developed some science around that. There were various people that were instrumental.

Mersenne, for instance, developed a series of laws about  gut strings and how it should work and how the strings should be calculated so they would have this the same amount of tension based on a given length. You could have a six stringed instrument and all the strings would have the same amount of tension, but they would be at the different pitches that they were supposed to be. So he developed a whole A whole system of laws and rules,  uh, to govern those things. Uh, Galileo's father was very much into figuring out strings, and in fact, Galileo's, one of his first experiences in science was to help his dad make strings. tests the strings. He had this sort of setup where they would hang a hook on a string and then hang a weight on it and then change the lengths and they would figure out what the pitch of the string would be given different weights on it and different masses and different, uh, tensions and so forth. So there was a lot of that going on. They were trying to figure out how strings worked and how they could bring the design  into it. That works all right. It works fine. But it does mean that you end up with some, with some very thick strings on the bottom, because the instrument has to be, it has to be scaled such that you can get the first string up to the pitch that you want the first string to be. So it's really the first string of the instrument that dictates the size of the instrument, and that's why we get You know, that's why the violin is the size of a violin, isn't it, the size of a cello is the size of a cello is, and so on and so forth.

It is also around this time that the first references to The gut strings were generally wrapped in silver, but also in copper and brass. Thanks to these strings, makers such as Rugeri could make smaller cellos for musicians, and that was just what he did. Not only could you buy yourself a more manoeuvrable instrument, but composers, especially such places as Bologna and Naples, had composers writing music for the cello.

Jason Price.

I made a, a nickel harper once, which is like a Swedish violin. Cool. Often people will put cello strings on them. And that's when you see that it's not ideal. Like really the, uh, Savarez, you could say, I want this length and I want this note for this length and they make the perfect string and it sounded so much better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It is funny to think of what this. You know, string industry looked like in the, in the 17th century. I mean, obviously you didn't just go on Amazon and get some strings delivered to your house.  You know, you probably, I'm sure it was butchers out the front door and then fishing line and violin strings out the back.

Yeah. It's kind of funny. And in your, an article you wrote that's in the, I was, I'm going to say Cossio Archive, but that's not right. It's the Tarizio. You were talking about, uh, composers in the second half of the 1600s. There were people actually writing specifically for cello. Yeah. That's really when the cello became, uh, considered as a solo instrument at the end of that 17th century and early 18th century. And that's when you see Gabrielli start writing for these really, like, complicated, uh,  lines for solo cello, and then obviously Boccherini did it. 30, 40 years later. And, um, yeah, that's obviously the makers had to, had to step up their game and make instruments that could handle that for sure. Yeah. It's like, I feel like it's a chicken or the egg.

I'm like, Oh, they're writing for solo cello. And yes. And is that because then they did, they make smaller violin cellos or  they discovered that they have these smaller good sound like cellos that were responsive. Cause they have to be.  Quite responsive to write more virtuously music for. Yeah, absolutely. A chicken and egg, but like a four part chicken and egg with like musician, composer, instruments, string. Um,  I imagine there were a lot of factors that were sort of, yeah, all coming together and, and, uh, it didn't all happen at once, but that's, that's the period in which. In which cellos became smaller because musicians wanted them to be smaller.

Dan Larsen.

The instrument has to be, it has to be scaled such that you can get the first string up to the pitch that you want the first string to be. So it's really the first string of the instrument that dictates the size of the instrument. You know, that's why the violin is the size of the violin, as in the size of the cello is, and so on and so forth. And then when you have the, when you have established the string length based on the pitch of the top string, then you have to figure out what the other strings are going to be, because theoretically you should change the length of those, like on a harpsichord. You can use, you could use the same diameter of string, the same type of string, just make it longer, and you would get the different pitches, and it would It would sound good and it would work well, but on a fixed length instrument like a violin or a cello, you can't do that. You can't have multiple lengths of strings. So they had to develop a system that became known as foreshortening. So they would change the mass of the string. Which would allow them to put, make the string shorter, and maintain the tension that the instrument needed to be, the string needed to have on it to sound properly. Because they had only one material, the only thing they could do was to add more gut and make the strings thicker.  to add mass to the string for the lower strings to get the tension that they required on it. And that, that works fine. They, there were different types of strings that they developed with, with different twisting technologies that would, uh, the string would be flexible enough to, to play at those relatively low tensions at the, the thicknesses that they were, that they needed and so forth. But, the end result wasn't 100 percent satisfactory for them.

Sorry, are you saying that, um, so for Andrea Amati, for example, when he made his violin, which is sort of what we go on today, he, he had to already have had the strings were already like developed and he made it, he had to make it so that it could accommodate those strings.

Exactly. Yeah. Ah, so the strings come before the violin.  Oh, the strings come before the violin, yeah. The strings come before everything. Do you think he would have, um, used, they would have used, say, lute strings? Would they have been the best strings then? Like, if you were a maker in the 16th century, what would you have taken?

I think the string makers at the time were making strings for everything. The violin was a very popular instrument. Okay. And there were string makers that made strings specifically for the violin, and I think that most of the string shops probably made strings for lutes and strings for violins. Some, some of the string gauges would double over and be useful on, on, on both, but not so many because the violin had tended to have a lot more tension than the lute does.

Yeah. And would he have gone and said, I'm making an instrument this size, can you make me a string to fit it? And the string makers would have gone, okay, yeah, all right. 

Sure, sure. And they would have had standard sizes that they were using. Okay. You know, he would just say, I need, I need, uh, you know, five violin E strings and six A strings and two D strings and, and 18 G strings.

And that's, they would have said, okay, but that's what we'll get for you. So anyway, the, concept of the fact that there was only one string material is really important in understanding the development of the instruments and the size, especially the sizing of the instruments. Uh, that's, really important to understand that they were limited by this material. And on the other hand, they were sort of fortunate enough to have only one material. It made things a little simpler in many ways. You know, there weren't that many options for sizing. If they were sticking to that one principle of the, well, in the lute world, when they talked about tuning an instrument, they would say, tune the top string to the point where just before it breaks, which is always a  fun thing to know. If it breaks, okay, you went a little bit too far. You shouldn't have gone that far. It's like trying to prove a negative. You can't always do that so easily. The violin strings tended to be bigger and heavier anyway, so they probably didn't have so much of a problem with that. But in the 17th century, in the mid 1600s, something happened, and we don't know exactly where. I suspect it happened in France. There was a popular book written by John Playford. It came out in 1664 with the addition that has this article that specifies a new type of string that was available for violins. It says specifically that it has silver wire and the wire was twisted or gimped onto silk or gut to make this string and this string was specifically used for the violin G string. And of course, this string is, has marvellous properties and is the most wonderful string ever invented by man and so forth, as, as most salesmen would say. And, uh. The best string in the world. In a good unregulated market, you know. 

I love how, um, a lot of some string brands will like have these claims for it being the best, you know, the best E string in the world. Oh, sure. That one's actually made in Australia. I have the packet. I have the best E string in the world.  Yes. From about, it's about 100 years old.

Yeah, they're, they're, well, I guess if you stop and think about it, if you, if you're not going to make something the best in the world, why do you even bother?

What's the point?

You never, no one ever says, this is the best. Third, but maybe, maybe fourth, the third or fourth best thing in the world. You know, it never happens that way. There was this new type of string that came available that was advertised in 1664. So that indicates to me that this technology had been developing for quite some time before that. Nothing ever comes out. Nobody ever invents something and then advertises it the next day. That's just not the way things work. So probably by the 1630s or 1640s there was this experimentation of combining the wire With and with the string material.

This brings us to the end of this second episode of Francesco Rugeri, a man who lived with the times embracing new technologies and innovating his instrument. Cello players everywhere can be a little bit thankful to him and his influence on other makers in perfecting this instrument.  That incredible cello playing you've heard throughout the episode is by Timo Viekko Valve from the Australian Chamber Orchestra, playing on his wonderful Amati Brothers cello made in 1616.

If you would like to hear the fascinating sound Story of his cello and the man who made it. You can go back and listen to episodes nine and 10 about the Ammar Brothers and this cello in particular,  but the story of Ruggeri is not over for now. I'll say goodbye and I hope you will join me for the next episode of the Violin Chronicles.

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Ep 3. Francesco Rugeri

Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting, violin makers of history.  I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthierie in Mirecourt. As well as being a luthier I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with and in particular the lives of those who made them.  So often when we look back at history I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect. But here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture.

So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, feminine war, but also of love. Artistic genius. Revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning, and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.

 This week's show is sponsored by Tarizio Fine Instruments and Bows, and I just happen to have bumped into Mr.Jason Price.

Hello, I'm Jason Price. I'm the founder and director of Tarizio, Tarizio was started 25 years ago in New York City, and now we have offices in London and also Berlin. We do auctions, we do private sales, and we also are the maintainers and curators of this thing called the Cozio Archive.

I just wanted to say from personal experience as a violin maker, over the years we've bought instruments from different auction houses and you guys have been very straightforward to work with and

I'm happy to hear that.

And I'm not going to say that everything is perfect for everyone, but us personally,

of course, of course, of course,

We have never had a problem with you guys.

And we're happy to hear it.

So it's just been a pleasure working with you.

You know, we work really hard to make sure that our attributions are correct, that our condition reports are 100 percent accurate, and that what we're selling is reliable. 

Say I'm a musician and I'm looking for an instrument and I come to you, how does that process work?

Well, Our brick and mortar offices are in New York, London, and Berlin, and we put together three auctions a year in each of those locations, so that's nine auctions total, and we invite the public in for a full month before each auction. And we encourage you to bring your friend, your teacher, your standmate, your grandmother, anybody who can help you make a good decision, and we want you to spend as long as you can getting to know these instruments.

For people who listen to this podcast, something that you might be thinking when you're, when you're listening to me telling the stories of violin makers is you would really love to see pictures of the instruments that they make. And for that, you have the perfect resource. 

The Cosio Archive. We now own it, maintain it, and are continually adding to it. It's an incredible amount of instruments. Over 100, 000 instruments in the database.  Over 4, 000 makers, which we are following and tracking. 200, 000 auction prices. An incredible number of photographs. It's really quite cool to have access to all these photos.

What's the process to subscribe? The annual subscription is a hundred dollars and allows you unlimited access to as many makers and as many instruments as you want.

So there you have it. If you would like to subscribe to the Cosio Archive, read a Cartegio article or browse the auction catalogue, go to Tarizio.com. And now back to the show.

Welcome back to this series on Francesco Ruggeri. We find ourselves in Cremona, a city in Northern Italy on the Lombard plains. Yet this relatively small centre had a far reaching reputation for the production of fine instruments in many European cities.  Over in England, the country just could not keep a monarch on the throne for very long, and this had been going on for quite a while. Whereas France, another superpower, had a lot of stability with their sun king, Louis XIV. Lully was in full force and ballet and opera and ballet operas were all the thing at Versailles.

Well, now it's all about the cello and it's this little guy's time to shine.  Rugeri's workshop may have been on the outskirts of Cremona, but it was an industrious hub of activity with instrument after instrument being produced. He was beginning to get a reputation for his fine sounding cellos that he made to a smaller and more manageable size. Their rich sound meant orders kept coming in. His workshop would have been attached to his house where you could find Ippolita and their ever growing brood of children. Francesco's boys were too young to help out in the workshop, so it seems logical, with the quantity of instruments emerging from the Ruggeri workshop, that there were apprentices, or other hands helping him out.

Although Antonio Stradivarius's apprenticeship has often been assumed to have been in the hands of the Amatis. Even though there's no actual proof of this, here we find Antonio Stradivari in his mid teens, and from a biographical point of view, he is the right age to be apprenticed to Ruggeri, given also that some researchers think his work resembles more that of Ruggeri in his early work, stylistically and technically, than Amati's. So there is always a possibility that this young maker was working with Francesco Rugeri in the shop churning out instruments.  W. E. Hill and Sons concede that they, quote, “failed to find the hand of Stradivari in any of Niccolò Amati's work, although the unmistakable hands of Andrea Guarneri and Francesco Ruggeri are evident”, end quote.

In the previous episodes, I spoke to Dan Larson about the evolution of gut strings, and now we are at a point where, as Dan will explain, the wound gut string will enable makers such as Francesco Ruggeri to make different sized instruments and how that was possible through new string technologies. 

Dan Larson.

What we had was the invention of the concept of changing the mass of the string.  Because, as I mentioned before several times, up to that point, there was only one type of material that they had, gut.  And if you wanted to lower string, you had to just add more gut. But if you had the technology to combine materials, then you could start putting heavier materials together with the gut  and have a thinner string,  which meant that you could start to control the weight of the string,  as well as control the size of the instrument and the size of, you know, the pitch that you were using and so forth. And I think that the important thing about this concept of the gimped string, whatever it was, the important thing is that it gave instrument makers the ability to control the weight of the string and that opened up a whole new world of, of instrument design for them. It meant that they weren't restricted by the, the fundamental laws that Mersenne talked about. About length and pitch and, and tension and so forth. That they could change the length. And they could make it shorter, for instance, and just make a heavier string. They could make it a little bit longer and use a lighter string. And I think that opened up a tremendous amount of, of possibilities.

So people think that Strad was sort of copied him, his smaller instrument model, his B model cello they think is based off of Francesco Ruggeri's, who was doing this 50 years before. So we often say Stradivari made this, the modern standard cello, but Francesco Ruggeri was doing this. At this time, when the strings were making it possible to make a smaller instrument, and would it also have made, at this point, violins more, more sort of powerful as well, with that, those strings?

Dan Larson.

Not necessarily. I've heard a lot of instruments with all gut strings that are pretty powerful, especially if they're all gut strings is strong and equal tension. They can be, they can be quite powerful indeed. So, no, I don't think that would necessarily mean it would have any more energy in it than it, than it would with a plain gut string.

Yeah, so before was it that they had to also you get a lot of very wide, cellos  before?  And that would, was that sort of dictated by the strings as well? 

It could be. It could be. I know I certainly prefer wide instruments myself because I have a tendency to use primarily gut strings. And I find with gut strings that having that width gives a more fundamental tone then it tends to reduce the upper partials of the note  and the tone and sort of reinforces the fundamental of the of the note. So, you know, it could be, but that's just total anecdotal thinking on my part because that's what I like.

As time goes on for the Rugeris in the 1660s, the couple has two more sons, Vincenzo then Carlo.  And here is where things will start to get confusing, because it is now that the young Giovanni Battista Rogeri, who will eventually move to Brescia, starts his apprenticeship with Niccolo Amati in town, around the years 1661 to 1663. Matters are not helped by the fact that Francesco's eldest son, who is about 10 years younger than Giovanni Battista Rogeri, is also called Giovanni Battista, which makes him Giovanni Battista Rugeri. 

Here is Duane Rosengard, who we spoke to in the previous episode.

In that interval from 1653 to 1666, Francesca Rugeri's four sons are born, and you can probably pretty easily imagine that once they were of a certain age to help, and it could have been 12, it could have been 11, could have been 13, depending on their personalities and physique, they got involved in father's business  and they lived out there in the country  and had room to roam and, not at all like life in a medieval city. As it were.  It's really, that's the first, the first chapter of the book. As I see it, a Francesco is his obscure origins in the province, his connection to Amati, and then starting his own family and having  so many children.

Yeah, and his children would have been the same ages as  close to Niccolo Amati and Andrea Guarneri's? 

Yes, that's a very excellent point, right? The children of Francesco are roughly the same age, even almost the same age spread as Andrea Guarneri's two sons, or three sons. One, Andrea Guarneri had one son who was a priest and two who were violin makers, and of those, Pietro Guarneri, the older son, seems to have been as occupied with music at playing instruments as he was making them. So yeah, they were all in that, let's call it two generations after the Black Death, let's call it.

Life, music, art, and architecture around them is changing. We are firmly in the Baroque period at this point, having left the Renaissance. The way music is played and composed has a direct impact on the violin makers of Cremona, and one of the moving factors for this movement that the Ruggieri's find themselves in comes from the Reformation. If you haven't already, go back and listen to Episode 5 of The Violin Chronicles, where I talk about what the Reformation was and the profound impact it had on the city of Cremona, and the way music was composed.  Well, after the Reformation, there was the Counter Reformation, and that was the Catholic Church's response to Protestantism. While the Protestant churches decided to remove statues and artworks that risked looking like something resembling idol worship, to end up with very simply decorated buildings, almost even austere in some places, the Catholic Church's response was to go literally Baroque.

Now, the movement we call Baroque, as I mentioned, emerged from the Reformation and started in Rome with the Catholic Church encouraging this style to really contrast to the simplicity of Protestant architecture, art and music.  Baroque anything is pretty full on, but some characteristics to help recognize the style in art, for example, are the use of deep colors, movement, lots of flowing fabric, intense emotions, and contrast. Think of Caravaggio's portraits for contrast and emotion with the clairobscur, and Peter Paul Rubens for movement and flowy fabric. There's a lot of drama, asymmetry, and the use of primary colors and allegory. This meant that there was often a story being told in the image, that would often involve windswept clothing consisting of meters of fabric flowing around them.It was intense. 

Take Judas Slaying Holophane by Artemisia Gentileschi. There's emotion, almost spotlight lighting. There's fabric galore and a story to be told.  Buildings were characterized by exuberant detail and grandeur. There's a crowded, dense sense of ornamentation. There was always room to stuff in sculptures of baskets, of fruit, of flowers, trophies and weapons into an already loaded structure. The more the merrier. And you couldn't get any further from the Protestant ideal of simplicity. But that was exactly the point.

The Baroque period went from about 1600 to 1750 and our violin maker Francesco Rugeri lived from 1629 or 28 to 1698. That places him slap bang in the middle of the Baroque. 

Emily Brayshaw.

I was just thinking, so we've come from the Renaissance where it's this like explosion of colors and textures and, you know, stripes and things, and we're coming into the Baroque era. Is it still very colorful?

Oh, absolutely. And yeah, it absolutely is. For men and women.

Often I have this idea that it's all blacks and greys and browns and regions.

No, no, no. So the thing with blacks of course is you still do have a lot of black and that's coming out of Holland a lot of the time and because it's quite a protestant thing to be wearing black with these Dutch merchant classes. So with the Reformation maybe like just wearing colors you were like I'm definitely not Protestant. You know, with the Spanish Inquisition, maybe you could, it was a bit like hairy there for a bit. You didn't, you really didn't want to be Protestant in Cremona. You were being,

yeah. Okay. So maybe with your clothing, you could say, well, the thing is though, like not all blacks are created equal. And the thing about this Dutch merchant classes is  as well, like for a long time black.  is associated with wealth. A really good quality black dye is actually very expensive to make, one that's stable and fast, and so not all black clothes are created equal. And so you can still express, you know, like luxury and wealth through black and black materials. And you can also you know, express that, you know, this lack of Protestant sobriety, you can also express, you know, decadence and extravagance  through black, not all black textiles are created equal, so you can do that. Yeah, definitely. So we're still seeing these colors. What's happening though, is particularly in the Baroque era, we're moving into an era where. It's more about the primacy of the textile. And so particularly in the UK, you’re seeing more of these one color silks, and it's about the quality of the silk and the cut of the silk, and it's being trimmed like with things like laces. And also in the Baroque too, by, you know, the 1660s,  you have the rise of really incredible lace trimmings.  And you've also got ribbons, like, because ribbons are incredibly expensive to make, because you've got to set it all up to make these incredibly thin strips of luxury silk textiles. And so if you can, the more ribbons, you know, the richer you are.

Right, so ribbons are a big thing, and of course you can have ribbons in all sorts of different colours, and this is also a nice trimming that kind of can filter down, you know, so perhaps you've got a poorer woman who can afford one beautiful ribbon in her hair, versus again, you know, these Baroque courtly leaders who have, just have ribbons for days. Like they have ribbons, like the men will have ribbons on the bottoms of all their breeches  and adorning their coats and, you know, just all over the shop, like it's a ribbon city. 

In little women, they're always going, Oh, I'm going to, going to go and buy some ribbons. And they're always off to buy, they're always off to the shop to buy some ribbons.

Yeah, and the great thing about ribbons too is that, and I mean that's part of why little women are talking about it as well, but it's a really cheap well not cheap, but it's a really simple way that you can change up your outfit really quickly.

So this is what people were wearing at this time, when the young Ruggeri was running his workshop with his burgeoning family. Okay, so he wasn't wearing the chains and ribbons and fancy pants. And let's face it, high heels are just not practical in the workshop. Believe me, I tried. But he was definitely making instruments for some of these people and would have come across these fashions in downtown Cremona.

You know, they'll wear chains around their necks. These are men, you know, also men really have extravagant shoes as well. So you've got the rise of the Louis heel, the court in France, for example, you know, in the time of Louis XIV, you've got the red. What we've got though, which is really interesting in Cremona. So something that pops up is this sort of style of men's court called the Juste corps, which comes from France. And it's a really long outer coat, really, really long, with huge pockets.

Because today, the Juste corps is a singlet.

Which doesn't  That's hilarious!

Because they're like, why isn't your baby wearing a little juste corps. Yeah, so it's called a juste corps, just to call it, and it's a long men's over jacket, and this sort of like evolves over the Baroque period, and you'll get like the huge cuffs, which are you know, often embellished. It'll be in a very, very fine wool or velvet, depending what you're doing with it. On either side, we'll have incredibly expensive buttons and embroidery. And something that pops up in this period too is, as you probably know, is the pochette or the kit. Yes. Which comes from the, so these juste corps have huge pockets and we see the dance masters wearing them and with the kit that they can carry in their pocket. Yeah. Of the just decor. And this is where this is coming from. And we know, for example, that I think Amati made different styles of kits for the higher quality ones. And what we're seeing is what's really interesting is these dance masters have to dress in the most expensive clothing that they can possibly afford because their clients are nobility. Right? Or they're aspirational wealthy people who are looking to learn how to dance or get their daughters to learn how to dance so that they can marry well. And so you've sort of got like the dancing master dressing the very best he can to kind of try to fit in, even though these classes like they need his services, but they will still mock him because he's a type of dancer.

Yeah, he's another one of those people. I feel like with the instrument makers that are between worlds, they're, they're catering to the very wealthy their working class themselves, but they're kind of on the, on the upper end of these skilled artisans. Yeah. Like the skilled tailors.

This was the age of the pochette, or kit violin, that you could put in the pocket of your French juste de corps jacket, if you were a dance master. The word pochette means pocket, and these kit instruments, as they were called, were in fact tiny violins.  They were not proportionally small, they often had a full length neck and scroll on what looks like a tiny little shrunken body of a violin and their purpose was to play music as you practice dancing. A teacher didn't have an orchestra at his disposal at all times. And so he would pull this little thing out to play a tune for his students. There are some really stunning instruments made like this, and they would often come in little boxes or tubes to transport easily. There are pochettes made by Stradivari and Amati, amongst others.

In Venice and parts of Italy and it moves to France, you've got like the lace makers who are making these incredibly labour intensive, beautiful, handmade laces that become part of a garment that just takes off boom in 1660, known as the cravat, which revolutionizes menswear. Okay.

So that was during Ruggieri's lifetime as well. He lived through a really all this stuff was happening. So, from the 1640s to the 1660s, the violin sort of exploded. It became really popular. That's when it became so popular.  And before then, it was sort of the viola, and then it sort of, and then, and then the violin starts to take over now. And in the second half of the 1600s, we get over spun strings. So we have wire wrapped around the gut, which means that big bass instruments could be made smaller,  more manageable before they so you can play them without them going all you, you didn't need a giant gut string. You could make a thinner gut string. So Ruggeri, he, he made these smaller cellos. They were 10 centimetres smaller than what people were making at the time. And this was like, this was huge for violin makings. He was living in sort of this, this age of, of great change, you know, you've got the cravat.

Yeah. The, cello is, appearing. You've got the violin is taking off.  It was, I, it was, yeah, it was exciting they'd gone through this lull with the plague and now they were sort of, you know, revving up to. Trying to boost it up again. And again, you sort of see that in like Cremona trying to rebuild itself, you know, prop itself back up with these making raw silks, textiles, the flaxes, the linens, things like that. A lot of foodstuffs, even agricultural foodstuffs. 

So what did this mean for music? Because that is what is going to influence Francesco Rugeri more than flowy robes in paintings and baskets of fruit on facades.  Music, as with art and architecture, was creating a heightened sense of emotion. It was heavily instrumental. Composers were starting to use the keyboard and the violin more and more. And the Catholic Church encouraging composers to write music to appeal to the masses. Emotion evoking music. It was, it was to be dynamic and contrasting. Composers used counterpoint, or that that meant the layering of several melodies on top of each other, to create a supercharged piece of music. Into this mix, we see the rise of opera and the development of new genres such as the concerto and the sonata. 

I'm Stephen Mould and I'm an associate professor at the Conservatory of Music in Sydney. And I teach mainly in the areas of opera studies and conducting. Yeah, sure. Basically during that century from about 1600. Okay. Where we were, if you'd been alive then, you wouldn't have woken up one morning and said, Oh, opera's been born in any way, shape, or form. Opera like works have existed, well, since the ancient Greeks. Or even in the 16th century, there were lots of works, which if you listen to them today, you'd say, well, that's basically an opera. What happened at around 1600 was a group of noblemen got together and decided that they wanted to revive the ancient Greek notion of opera. So it's quite a self conscious thing. They were all poets.  An important aspect of opera is the Gesamtkunstwerk. That's what we call it today, which is this idea, which already comes from the Greeks that, that opera is a collection of different things, text, music, decor, drama, and that all of these, all of these particular areas come together in some mysterious harmony, To create a wonderful operatic work. It's the ultimate art form. Ultimate art form. It's a kind of alchemical sort of, it's an idea. The idea of opera got, if you like, kickstarted around 1600, because these noblemen got together and decided that they were going to revive this form. Now, being poets, they wrote poems. What for the time was, was wonderful poetry. And then they had it set to music.  Now already you've got a problem because you've got the poet with their wonderful text. And then you've got maybe a composer who is trying to write the next great tune. And so there's this, this question that runs through the whole history of opera. What comes first, the words or the music, or in fact, what dominates the words or the music? It's pretty clear you can't have, it requires a librettist to write the opera  and then a composer to set the text. So the person writing the music wasn't necessarily the person writing the story. Absolutely not. There's always been these two different, the poet plus the, the musician.  So you know, today, if we talk about any opera, if I say the marriage of Figaro, you'll probably say Mozart. Yeah. If I say Il Trovatore, you'll say Verdi. Yeah What about the poor old librettist? What's happened there? And, and so the way we talk about opera is extraordinary because a lot of modern opera goers couldn't tell you.  Who had written some of their favourite operas. Who had written the text for some of their favourite operas.

Yeah, that's extraordinary. We do just think of the composer and the whole idea of opera was that it was this mixture of dance music, poetry. And what I found interesting is the, the, the mise en scène, the, the, the decor. You don't really think of the person doing the decorations, but for them, it was just as important.

Absolutely. So it is this idea. I mean, today in modern terms, we'd call it an ecosystem that all of these very, very, very different areas find this magical balance. So Wagner created this word, Gesamtkunstwerk. He didn't create it, he kind of brought it back into the language, which means total work of art. Wagner was one of the great plagiarizers or borrowers of all time, depending on what era you live in. So he didn't invent that much, but he appropriated a lot of things to create something original. So he put this term out there basically as his own invention, which it wasn't.  So, this group of literati who wrote the Libretti, their idea was that the word was the primary thing. They wanted the person who set the opera to set it with very, very, very plain, syllabic settings  so that  the words were always clear. Audible. The words were almost always foremost in the audience's mind.

 The splendour of the Baroque age. It epitomizes grandeur and elegance. The music is mirroring other baroque works, such as art and architecture in Paris at the court of Louis xiv. Jean Baptiste Lully was in full swing. In Italy, Vivaldi and Corelli were soon to come onto the scene. Corelli was a master of the trio sonata, and that had two violins and a continuo. This was a very popular musical format. May account for the dip in popularity of the viola at this point and the rise of the violin and increased demand for the cello at this time, as the trio sonata would have two violins and a bass, which, which would remove the viola part. Courtly dances were the basis of many Baroque pieces. These came from Renaissance dances from Germany, France, and Italy. The Baroque composers took these dances and developed them into instrumental pieces without the dance. There's the Allemande, or the jig, the Sarabande, and the Carante.  The harpsichord became the backbone to most ensembles, and it formed the continuo with the cello. Flutes, oboes, trumpets without valves, and timpani were developing, and became established instruments into orchestras. And as the quality of instruments improved, composers continued exploring the capabilities of the orchestra, being able to use contrast, soft and loud sounds, and that would fit right into the Baroque aesthetic.

You can hear some of these very early operas for around 1600.  They're boring by modern standards. Some of them have had historical recreations in under certain settings, but they  would never, ever survive a commercial season in a modern opera house. They, they're all, they're very nicely written, but they are like poetry with a bit of music. Yeah. Things. This is very blunt tool, but sometimes the blunt tool is useful.  Tunes and divas. If you don't have both of those and, and they're not even part of the Gazant Kunstverband, but that's what keeps opera alive. The thing about Monteverdi was he was a great composer. He wrote. Fabulous music. So when, when certain intensity was happening in the drama, he knew how to turn up the, the harmonies and, and mirror what was going on stage with, with the right harmonic palette. And he also wrote great tunes.  He was what I would call a man of the theatre.  And we also have to contend with the fact that he was also the Maestro della Musica of San Marco in, in Venice. So this whole idea of secular and, and sacred is an interesting mix as well. There's a fascinating.  scene in, in Orfeo, who we always manage playing on it. Imagine playing on his lyre, where Orfeo is literally trying to sing himself or perform himself across the river Styx to get to the underworld to find Euridice.  Monteverdi takes a couple of violins to do all these flourishes and runs. And then there's also a harp involved. So it's this idea of using musical virtuosity that that Orfeo is not just, not just a musician, but one.

So Cremona's very own Monteverdi is getting into opera and giving the violin star parts in his operas. These companies coming out of Venice would tour around the country, and perhaps our violin maker Francesco Rugeri even saw one around this time. He would definitely have been in contact with musicians working in the theatre, and in the ever-increasing orchestras now being put together. And as time goes on, we will see in the up and coming episodes, how Francesco's workshop will flourish and grow with his sons coming on board. And with all this manpower, the production of incredible instruments is to come.

 I would like to thank my guests, Stephen Mould. Dr. Emily Brayshaw, Dan Larson, and Duane Rosengard.

Thank you also to the Australian Chamber Orchestra for permission to use their recordings of Timo Vekkio Valve playing the cello. And if you've liked this show and would like to hear bonus episodes, go to patreon.com/theviolinchronicles, or another way to support the podcast is to rate and review it on the application on which you're listening.

So stay tuned and I hope you will join me next time for another episode of the Violin Chronicles.

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Ep 4. Francesco Rugeri

In this episode we will be looking at Francesco’s most productive period of making instruments with a busy workshop and 4 sons helping him out. Jason Price from Tarisio fine violins and bows talks to us about Rugeris distinctive making style and his prolific production at this time in his life but things do not run as smoothly as Rugeri would like as he finds himself in hot water with court cases and grumpy children.

Thankyou to the Australian Chamber Orchestra for permission to play their music.

  Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history.  I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthierie in Mircourt.

As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with, and in particular, the lives of those who made them.  So often when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect, but here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture.

So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, famine and war, but also of love, artistic genius, revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.  This show is sponsored by Tarisio Fine Instruments and Bows. And right now, I would like to talk about a formidable database you can access today, if you wish, called the COSIO Archive.

For people who listen to this podcast, something that you might be thinking when you're listening to me telling the stories of violin makers is you would really love to see pictures of the instruments that they make. And for that, you have the perfect resource. Here is Jason Price, Director of Tarisio, to tell you about it.

Jason Price

Yes, the Cosio Archive. We now own it, maintain it, and are continually adding to it. Over a hundred thousand instruments in the database, over four thousand makers, which we are following and tracking, two hundred thousand auction prices. It's really quite cool. If I pull up the stats for, you know, a maker like Ruggeri, I get 336 instruments by Francesco Ruggieri.

It's a unique resource and we hope it's really useful.

Linda Lespets

 And so what I love is that often in some databases, you just get one, photo per maker, but in the Cosio archive, for example, for Ruggeri, you're able to look at the maker's whole career in photos and you see influences from other makers. You can see the dates where his sons are working for him and you can see examples of that work and the style.

They're similar. For example, you can look up Vincenzo Ruggeri and see how his style is similar to his father. Yeah. Yeah. There's a violin in your archive, uh, 1680  called the Milanolo, which is really beautiful. Yeah. Which is a small violin. So that would be an example of his work when he's working with his sons in when the workshop was very successful.

And then there's a violin from 1650, which was his earlier work.  I think maybe my favorite name for an instrument is the Admiral Buckle.  Admiral Buckle. That's wonderful. His life and his, it kind of reads like something out of a Jane Austen, book.  Wonderful. And then, uh, there's a 1673 cello, which is really beautiful, and the, the quality of the photo is amazing.

You can zoom right in and see the texture of the varnish. You can see the purfling. You can tell that the purfling's been tinted. Yep. There are examples of from 1692, so his later work, and 1695, right to the, the end of his making career, which is extraordinary.

Jason Price

Yeah, good. I'm really, really happy that you find it useful.

Linda Lespets

To have access to all these photos, what's the process to subscribe?

Jason Price

The annual subscription is $100  And allows you unlimited access to as many makers and as many instruments as you want to look at.

Linda Lespets

 Yeah. And I find the auction results quite helpful as well as a violin maker, because we're often having to research different prices and you have to look at a lot of different resources to get an idea of a market value of an instrument. And so that's just one of our, Tools that we use in that process. Yes. And so you have your auctions, the photos, the auction results, and there's also the Cartegio. We get the emails every, every week.

Jason Price

Good. The Cartegio, I love the Cartegio project. It's, it's something I really, I really enjoy. We try to make it long form discussions on things that are interesting, interesting corners of our world.

And we invite some of the, uh, some really distinguished people who write for it and have frankly, very, uh, I think, inspiring and fascinating things to say. You don't have to be a subscriber to the archive to have access to the Cartegio articles. You can sign up for them and that is absolutely free. So there you have it.

Linda Lespets

If you would like to subscribe to the Cosio archive, read a Cartegio article, or browse the auction catalog, go to tarisio.com.  Now back to the show. 

Welcome back to the Life and Times of Francesco Ruggeri. As we have seen in the last episodes, Ruggeri is living in an exciting time for musicians. There are advances in string technology, and Francesco's smaller model of cellos are selling like hotcakes.

Over in Venice, opera is taking off and it's just the best thing ever to go and see the latest arias.  Ruggeri's boys are growing up now and can start helping out with all the orders. Or are they sick of hanging around outside the walls of Cremona, where more interesting things are happening in town?

Starting from the late 1660s, the Ruggeri family is referenced in church and civil records with the nickname of Il Père or Detto Il Père.  He also puts it on his labels. No one really knows how he got this nickname or what it means. Perhaps it was to distinguish him from other Ruggeris in the area.  In their parish of San Bernardo alone, there were five other Ruggeri families and two of them were Francesco's brothers.

Duane Rosengard

My name is Duane Rosengard. And I'm a double bass player in the Philadelphia Orchestra.  One interesting document, I think we found, actually, I think it's actually in that parish church of San Bernardo, is A document of 1669  that pertains to a brother and nephew of Francesco Ruggeri. So it may or may not have anything to do with violins, but this document calls Francesco's brother Ruggeri detto il per, which means called the pair,  P E R, right?

And that document is from August of 1669 and that, up till now is the earliest written record of this, call it a nickname, call it a suffix, whatever you prefer. But that suffix or moniker or nickname was used to identify Francesco Ruggeri and his siblings. and their descendants. Why is that important?

Nobody, even if they spent a lifetime, could count how many Ruggieri families lived in and around Cremona. I wouldn't say it's as common as, not nearly as common as Smith or Jones,  but it maybe is almost as common as a name like Brown or Green. You know what I'm saying? It was, The amount of, um, material, just when I think back to the 1990s, that Carlo Chiesa and I sifted through, both in churches and in the legal records of notaries.

There's many Ruggeri's, and some could read, and some could write, and some were illiterate. And sometimes they spelled it with R. Two Gs, one other times with one G, sometimes with one G and an I before the ERI. And, you know, it could drive you mad. 

Linda Lesepets

At this time, another maker with a very similar name of Rogeri was apprenticed in the Amati workshop for a few years. He was in his late teens, but soon over the next five years, he would move to Brescia. Get married and start a workshop in that city of his own.  In the 1680s, Francesco's eldest son, Giovanni Battista, was a witness at a wedding, and the priest writes his name as G. B. Per, with Per replacing his last name, Ruggeri, so that was the nickname that they put on the labels, remember?

So we can see that the family was well known by this name. It could also have been, to stop confusion, with Rogeri over in Brescia, but we will probably never know. The fact is that this name, Il Per, is on his labels and records from now on.  Before the Great Plague 30 years ago, Cremona was a city of about 30 to 40, 000 people.

Now, in the 1660s, its population is just 10, 000, and yet the violin makers, or lutei,  were doing well. The reputation of a Cremona violin meant that four industrious workshops were trading in town.  And as the years passed, Francesco's children grew up and the boys started helping their father in the workshop, making it a hive of activity. And the Ruggieri workshop, under the guidance of Francesco Rugeri, was distinguishable with its own style and way of making instruments.

Jason Price.

I was just going to say stylistically, that there really are some, uh, you know, you look at them from 10 feet away and there's some obvious similarities.

They're both an Amati model but when you start looking up close, you see some things that are different. The head of a Ruggieri is really distinctive, a tiny eye,  very, very small chamfer, the body of a Ruggieri. Um, tends to be a little bit more pinched in arching. The sound holes tend to be a little bit more sinewy and wiry.

Um, they don't, they don't tend to have the classical poise that an Amati does. And then they're missing some things like obviously the central pin, which is all the Amati makers, uh, and disciples had. Ruggeri, Ruggeri's do not have those. So they are, they're similar from 10 feet away, but quite distinct once you get up close.

Linda Lespets

When you say, they made a lot of instruments, is that, violins, cellos? What, are there a lot of? It's certainly not violas. That's for sure. And that's a, that's a separate topic all on its own, but. You know, why weren't people making real Unfortunately for you.

In 1677, Giovanni Battista Ruggeri, the eldest of the Ruggeri boys, married and moved out of home into another parish of Cremona with his wife briefly, but soon they would move back and continue to work with his father.  Giovanni Battista was good friends with Niccolò Amati's son, Girolamo II, Who was only four years older than him. And when Giovanni and his young wife had a child of their own, they asked him to be godfather. During this time in the 1670s and 80s, the Ruggeri workshop was at its most productive. Francesco had his four sons working with him, making many instruments.  In 1685, a year after Niccolò Amati died, the 56 year old Francesco Ruggeri found himself involved in a court case.

Rugeri was sort of got himself.  He got himself sort of mixed up in a situation, with a fake label in his instrument,

Jason Price. 

That's right. So this was, um, in Modena. So a musician appealed to the Duke of Modena  for relief or for some sort of, uh, you know, injunction against the person who had sold him a violin that was supposed to be an Amati because it had an Amati label, but turns out it had a Ruggeri label underneath that.

Yeah, underneath. It's crazy, huh? It's crazy. I mean, these old tricks, they never, uh, they've been there from the very beginning. Yeah. And the cool thing about this is it happened, like, just a couple years after Niccolò Amati had died that this was, that this came out, I think. I think it was, he died in 84.

And I think it was like in the 80s that that this happened. And, you know, the price difference between an Rugeri is what was at stake. I think that he asked for some sort of, um, either compensation or, or relief or something because, you know, the idea was an Amati is worth five times what a Rugeri is worth.

 I don't remember the actual numbers, but it's some, it's a ratio like that. I think, I think it was, um,  Pistoles, but in different, uh, accounts, they give different currencies. So, but then I, I was looking up to see how much a Pistole was worth and in one account, one Pistole could buy you a cow.

Oh, wow. Right. And an  Amati violin could buy like four cows, which sounds expensive to me.  Which is, that's amazing. It really tells you everything, doesn't it? Yeah.  That one, Amati was commercially that much more valuable and two, there was enough demand for Amati that people were either making counterfeits or selling counterfeits one way or another.

Yeah, and he got in trouble for it and I'm like, it couldn't have been him. He would have like ripped, he would have taken out the label or like not put, even put his label in and like, you wouldn't stick a label on top of your own label. I mean, if you're going to be fraudulent, you do it properly.

Jason Price

 I think that there are some examples in the 20th century where we're happy to put in whatever label you want them to put in there. 

Linda Lespets

So, um,  so you, for example,  you're an expert.  Yes. Absolutely. That's the, yeah. Um, so say, hypothetically speaking, someone comes to you, um, and they give you, they give you a violin.

And I say, look, I bought this. It's a, it’s a Vuillaume. And you can see from across the room that it's not a Vuillaume. What happens today in this setting,  uh, in that situation?

Jason Price

 In that situation, you, um, you make sure they're seated. Uh, so that they're, uh, you know, not wobbly.  Um, and then you, you try to see what they want you to tell them. And if most of the time they're coming to you because they want you to corroborate something they already know. And for me, I think you have to be super direct in these. Matters. You have to tell people what it is, but how you get there certainly requires some finesse that you don't want to, uh, you don't want to offend someone.

You don't want to make them feel like they've  made a bad purchase. You don't want to, you know, make them faint and fall over, but nine times out of 10, when they come to you with something that isn't something, this isn't going to be news that you're giving them. Yeah. You have to be gentle with these things, but super direct and super truthful.

Linda Lespets

There's this example I have of a story that, um, the, the vice chancellor of Sydney uni told me the first time I met him. And so, uh, so the story was that, well, it's a true story. This happened to him the first year he was, uh, the vice chancellor of Sydney uni, uh, an old, an elderly lady died, and she, she  In her will, the university received two paintings and one of them was a Picasso and the other one was a Miro.

So the Picasso, he said, first of all, they, they got someone to look at them and they said, well, yeah, this is a Picasso. These are Picasso. Um, you know, it's this and the university just, they, they couldn't pay the insurance to keep them for even a few months. So they, there were experts from two big auction houses in London. You could imagine who they were and they, they did like a Vuillaume, they, they jumped on the first plane. They came out to Sydney. They looked and it was a, his blue period. It was incredible. They sort of had this big. Kind of battle for who was going to sell it. Um, it was taken back to England. It was, it made the cover of the, of the auction catalogue.

It sold for a record price. It was huge record price. So the university is like fantastic, uh, like universities in Australia, they need sort of a lot of private funding. So heaps of millions, millions of dollars. Uh, the second painting was a Miro.  They're like, cool, we got the, the Picasso, we've got millions, and they said, well, actually, no, the Miro, we have to take that to Paris, because you have to have the right expert to, to be sold, it has to have the right expertise.

So they're like, sure, sure, take it to Paris, but they said, but we have to tell you that if it's a fake, it's going to be destroyed.  And so this is how it happens.

Jason Price

This is, I mean, this is absolutely, it's a, um, it's a movement in especially the contemporary art world. The Warhol Commission won't even look at something until you, uh, give them permission to destroy it if it's a counterfeit.

Linda Lespets

So either you get the certificate to say what it is, or you've agreed for its destruction. And they were like, well, if this is, this is okay. It’s, we’ve got the Picasso was real, right? Like the Miro, they send the Miro and  it was a fake.  And so it was destroyed. Uh, but their argument is, well, how, how can we know that someone isn't going to take this painting and sell it, uh, as a fraudulent thing?

And I was just wondering what would, what would the violin world look like today? If that's what  happened.

Jason Price

That's a very good question.  Very good question. What do you think about it? I mean, how would you, how would you see that?

Linda Lespets

I think we don't often say,  well, I don't know if it's some, if it was sold as that and it was very, and I know there has been cases where things have accidentally been sold as something and they haven't seen a little iron mark in it saying it's something else and that's put the violin maker into a lot of trouble. Uh,  but I can, I mean, at the same time I can understand the art. The, laws surrounding it because they're like, this is copyright. This is infringement of copyright. You can't do this to a song. Um, you're selling this as someone else's work. They did that painting. And normally copyright is, I think it's 70 years after the death of the person, but then some people own the copyright.

I mean, like we, nobody owns the copyright to the Strad model.  So, yeah, I don't know, I was just a bit shocked by it. I was like, Oh, we're sort of, sort of in the same world. I find it fascinating and shocking at the same time.

Jason Price

 I think if you applied that to the violin business, there would be some things that would, um, well, it would miss all the subtleties of, you know, Völler copies from the late, uh, 19th century, um,  Vuillaume copies, uh, of a Guarneri that, um, You know, that  had a Guarneri label in it when they left his workshop.

But these are, these are not, they're not forgeries. They're not counterfeits. They're things that are made as, well, they're traded now with full knowledge of what they are. And it sort of would be a sad erasure of history if you had to do that, wouldn't it? Yeah.

Linda Lespets

 And I don't know, and there's always a part of you that might be saying, you know, maybe with the paintings, like maybe it was a real,

Here's what happened. There was a virtuoso court violinist and composer working for the Duke of Modena.  That's about 100 kilometres, or 62 miles, from Cremona.  His name was Tommaso Antonio Vitale, and being a well-known musician and composer, he thought he would buy himself a violin worthy of his station, and that could only mean an Amati would do.

They weren't cheap, but he had important things to play on this instrument, so he managed to find himself one of these famous Amati violins. Presumably he didn't go to the workshop himself, but acquired it in some other fashion. A travelling salesman or another violinist dealer, perhaps?  So anyway, he gets his violin and pays nine pistoli for it.

Now in one source I found you could buy a cow for one pistoli, which gives you an idea of the value of an Amati at the time. So whether it was nine cows or a herd of goats, we don't quite know. It was expensive in any case, and everything was going just fine until he saw the label inside his instrument peeling at the corner, and as the Niccolo Amati label was slowly peeled away, it exposed a Francesco Ruggeri Detto Il Per label. Shock horror! He had been scammed. This was bad news for Tommaso, who had just forked over a considerable amount of money for this instrument to find out that it was Okay, a violin from Cremona but a Ruggeri instrument. A Ruggeri instrument was only worth a third of that of an Amati.  Vitali, finding himself in a pickle, petitioned the Duke, his employer, to see if he could help get his money back, in this case a fraud. This story tells us a few things.  1. Niccolo Amati's violins were considered the cream of the crop, even during his lifetime, or in this case, shortly after.  Rugeri's instruments were considerably less expensive, but also well made enough to be passed off as an Amati to the unsuspecting. 3. You can't always trust what is on the label. And 4. That unscrupulous people wanting to make a quick buck have been around since the dawn of time.

 Jason Price. 

Have you heard of an author called Malcolm Gladwell? Yes, absolutely. And he wrote a really, uh, a book I love is called Blink. I don't know if you've read that. And he talks about, um, Blink, yep.

Linda Lespets

Yeah, I feel like he talks about a thing called the adaptive unconscious. Which is, it's everything that happens in a few seconds when you first see something that you can't explain. He often talks about people, uh, he takes an example of art experts having, they can't explain it. It's a feeling that they have when they see an instrument, uh, not an instrument, when they see a painting. And do you,  do you have the feeling when you see an instrument?

Jason Price

I think that sort of uncategorizable, um, experience of seeing something is, uh, is incredibly important. The instinct you have when you see something is incredibly important, but it's also equally important to corroborate that and to challenge that. That when you see something, when someone flashes a violin in front of you and you just, you know, Say, oh yeah, it's a Vuillaume. That's great. It's great that you have that instinct. It's great that you've seen, you know, 700 Vuillaume that you can recognize the 701st.  But the better expert is the The one that then unpacks that and says, hang on a second, let me just sit with this a little bit and make sure that all the parts check out and that it corroborates that, that I'm not, I'm not doing it out of posturing. I'm doing it out of actual, um, intellectual rigor of looking at the instrument, not just my instinct. And then it's also important to challenge that, to say, you know what, hang on a second. I saw the, um, Six months ago that didn't have this thing here. And why does this have that? Those two things are super important. You have to have the instinct, but you also have to challenge it. 

Linda Lespets

Yeah. And that, that adaptive unconscious, it's kind of like, it's, it's a lifetime experience. Cause he'll talk about people, uh, reading, reading people as well. And it's because you've spent your life. doing it. It's not, it just doesn't, you're not sort of born with it, or I mean, maybe someone is, but normally it's, it's thousands of connections being made from, from seeing thousands of instruments and which  I think AI could never really, AI can maybe categorize things and help with elimination, but they could never synthesize completely the, the entirety of The object, because for, he gives this example, um, in the, I think it's the Getty museum.

They were, they wanted to buy a statue and it was 10 million. And they did, I'm not sure if it was Getty, it was a big museum in America. Um, and they, they did all this scientific testing on it for the materials, where it came from, the, they did every scientific test you could do, but then when they put it in front of an art expert. They, they just said, I hope you haven't bought this. I have a really bad feeling. And they couldn't, they couldn't say why. And they, they couldn't go back to the museum and say, well, this guy felt a feeling. In the end, it was a fake, but every, it was so well done, uh, that it, it ticked all the scientific boxes. And that's,  and that would be your, your human,  Using their sort of little supercomputer, um,  synthesizing it all together.

Jason Price

No, you're absolutely right. It's that human judgment is irreplaceable and you certainly don't replace that with scientific evaluation for sure. Yeah, yeah. And it's, and it's something that's hard to quantify or explain because people say to you, how do you know? Like, how can you tell it's this? Uh, I, I, for me, I think it actually is almost more athletic than anything else. I think it's just because you've done the work that you've seen the previous, uh, 400 examples of that maker and you've actually studied them. You've, uh, made binders or you've made folders and you've, uh, compared one to another.

You know, the early period, you know, the late period, you know, the problematic ones. You know, the ones that, um, are accepted by some people, but not by others. That's, that's just doing the work. It's, that's like a, an athletic experience, not like voodoo. Part of our business, not our, not violin business, but in general, but the arts business  that I find a little bit dangerous is the sort of, um, you know, posing as expert. Uh, I am as I am expert because I beat my chest and say that I am. That doesn't work. You know, experts aren't fancy suits. Um, experts are people who can, you know, proclaim something, um, as a work of magic. They're doing it because they've studied it.

Linda Lespets

And it's hard to measure that. Um, depth of knowledge. So the next time you buy yourself a Niccolo Amati, be sure to go to a trusted source, and this is where an expert can help you.  And as in the art world, there are different experts who have expert knowledge on specific makers.  So there you have it. At the end of this episode, we leave Francesco Rugeri in a pickle with his instruments and his workshop is in full swing with his sons, the Ruggeri brothers.

I'm sure they were well known about town, strapping lads that they would have been. And next week we will see the shenanigans the boys get up to and some big moves for the workshop. And that will be the final episode on Ruggeri before we move into the wonderful life and career of Giovanni Battista Rogeri.

Thank you to my fantastic guests, Dr. Emily Brayshaw and Jason Price. And Dwayne Rosengard. And to end, here is some viola music for Jason. Well, viola and cello, actually. This is Liisa Pallandi and Timo- Veikko Valve from the Australian Chamber Orchestra playing the Sonata Representiva. You will hear how the composer is playing with the capabilities of the instruments, imitating bird songs. It's quite lovely. It was composed around 1669. So, so it's around about now in Francesco's life.  To support the podcast, you can leave a rating and review on your listening app, and I hope to catch you next time on the Violin Chronicles.