Ep 2. Gio Paolo Maggini

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, 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.

Welcome back to the story of Giovanni Paolo Maggini. In the first episode about this maker, I have briefly covered his life story. We don't know all that much about this maker during his lifetime, but his influence and style is definitely long lived. And the sheer number of copies of his instruments that have been made in the intervening 400 years is simply staggering. And so in this episode, I will be talking to two experts about why and how Maggini instruments were and are such hot stuff.

To begin with, In these conversations, the mention of the Hills book comes up quite a lot. Let me quickly explain why.  W. E. Hills and Sons, if you don't know, was one of the great English violin workshops in London, only to be rivalled by J& A Beares. A bit like what Batman is to Superman. Big players.  Did you, did you know, by the way, that Bruce Wayne, Batman's alter ego, is actually the owner of the Daily Planet newspaper, who employs Clark Kent, making Batman technically Superman's boss. I find this fascinating because this is kind of what happens in the story of the Beares and Hills companies, but I digress. 

The Hills Workshop was founded by William Ebsworth Hill, 1871 to 1895. He was the son, grandson, and great grandson of violin makers. But when he founded W. E. Hills and Sons, he really took things to the next level. The man's energy was boundless. Under William's direction was the company's workshop, of course, that was producing new instruments and bow makers making bows.  They would also deal in older instruments and were well known for their quality restorations. They had a line of accessories as the workshop continued to be run by his sons, and these included rosins, cleaning polish, chin rests, shoulder rests, bridges, instrument cases, strings, little tuning pipes, peg paste, if your pegs got stuck, the pegs themselves, music stands, and the list goes on.

Whatever product pertaining to the violin you could possibly think of, the Hills made sure there was a Hills version of it.  If this sounds like a handful, then hold on to your seats, because not only was W. E. Hill a violin maker and musician, he was also interested in photography and astronomy. And let's not forget his family, because it is Hill and Sons, so he obviously had children. Nine, in fact, somewhere along the line.  But to really prove oneself as an authority in the field, what better way to do it than to write a book? And to make a splash, the first one was on the wonderful Brescian maker, Gio Paolo Maggini, published in 1892. And this is the book that we often refer to as the Hill's book in our discussions about Maggini.

To make this book, research was made from archives and really to date, this book still stands as one of the only works documenting exclusively the life and work of this maker. Even though research has continued over the years, this is still a book makers keep coming back to. And so now you know a bit about the Hill's book, or more precisely, it's called The Life and Work of Giovanni Paolo Maggini, the author of which is a woman named Margaret Higgins, who is fascinating in her own right.

I spoke to Florian Leonhardt, who is a London based violin maker, dealer, restorer, expert, and owner of Florian Leonhardt Fine Violins.  We spoke about Brescia, the city Maggini lived and worked in. Brescia was a, was a city that, had a very rich musical life. It was completely devastated by the invasion of, was it the French?

The French? Yeah, the French sorry about the French so they invaded, and ransack the city completely. And then the venitians took it back, took control over it and then there was another battle. It was ransacked again. And, you know, it was really, really destroyed. But Brescia didn't benefit from a big rich duke  that, that would kind of, control the cultural life of the city. Unlike most other big cities, like Milan and Florence and Rome. But even Venice had a lot of wealthy people who kind of had demands  on their cultural life. And Brescia, interestingly, had a big, probably middle class, intellectually interested, that furthered music making in a big way. And particularly, instrumental music making, or opera, that is not just singers and so on, but had lots of different musical instruments. And these Brescian makers during Gasparo Da Salo's time, particularly in his earlier time, were cittern makers, they made the plucked instruments, as well.

So they were busy doing those things as well, but actually you had in Brescia, you had already the word Violin for Violin Maker. And Gasparo Da Salo's time before it's a Pellegrino. Zanetto's, Micheli's, family time. You already had the, term violino or violini maker, but we don't know exactly what that thing looked like, whether that was actually the violin. Because, you know, something that looked a bit, uh, better than a Rebek and different to a, to a viol, maybe it was called that.

It's kind of on the way. It's on the way, yeah.

I'm Ben Hebbert, I've got a workshop in Oxford. Occasionally I sell violins. I do a lot of writing about them and a lot of research and a little bit of expertise as well.

Okay. And where, where can we find your, um, where can we find your writings? 

My writings? I've got, uh, violinsandviolinists. com is my blog.

And, uh, it sort of everywhere else, occasionally in the Strad magazine and things like that. Chapters of books. Things.

Nuggets of wisdom. 

Something like that.  Um. Page fillers.

All right. So today I wanted to talk about, uh, Maggini. Actually, I did have a, I did have a thought, about, the difference between Cremonies and Brescian instruments. And that was, we looked at, you, you said how, was it Virgil that went to school?  In Cremona. And Cremona was well known for its schools and it had a very, educated, merchant class.

And I was wondering if it wasn't for the education level in Cremona and the fact that an artisan like amati could have a Renaissance education, would, the violin have the shape that it does today if it wasn't for  school? 

Oh, yes and no. Uh, I think it's the answer. When we look at, when we look at Amati, we're looking at something which is architecturally wonderful, and it works. But if you go backwards in time, so there's some amazing frescoes in Ferrara by a guy called Cordenzio  of Ferrara, and, they show musical instruments, bowed instruments of every single, you know, imaginable shape,  and including some things which may actually be purposefully wrong, because they're being held by angels, but, within those there's one or two instruments which are violin like, and at the end of the day, what, you know, what is a violin shape?

Well, it's, it's the biggest, it's the biggest amount of surface area and volume in order to make a good sound.  And yet, at the point where the bow crosses the strings, it's got to be narrow enough that the bow can touch each of the strings individually without you know, having a bit of a road crash.

So, the violin as we know it,  you know, might have appeared around 1500.  There could well be instruments which are even older than that, which are quite like the violin. In fact, 14th, uh, 13th century, uh, precursor of the violin tend to have a sort of jellybean kind of shape to them, again with this narrowing at that point.

So, the shape is in the ether one way or another, but just the shape in terms of you know, what an instrument has to be.  But I think, you know, one of the things that an architect can do, whether we're talking about a violin or a shed, is, you know, there's a whole difference between sort of sticking some sticks in the ground and sticking a roof on it and architecturally designing a shed. And I think that's kind of where someone like Amati comes in. He says, with all of this Renaissance knowledge that I've got, this thing is already working. It's already a perfectly good thing for doing what it does. But I'm going to, understanding the necessities of it, the string length to get pitch the, site, the, volume of it. In order to get the sort of sound, the narrowness and all of this, I’m going to make a beautiful architectural version of what already exists. I mean, I'm thinking of the difference between the Bressian violins and the Cremonese violin.

Yeah. I think, uh, I mean, Bresians aren't without a geometry of their own and that's very clear. But I think, I think they're using sort of slightly sophisticated, you know, further thoughts. And, you know, rather than just, you know, again, we can take this analogy and, you know, the Brescians  have got a number of geometrical rules which will work in order to render the thing workable. But the Cremonese They're taking it to this further level of perfection. And we see that, you know, by the 1630s, we've got Galileo,  who's writing to, Father Micanzio Fulgnensis,  or whatever his name is, who's writing to Monteverdi, who's writing to his  unknown Cremonese makers, who must be Amati. And we're hearing about Amati's being worth about four times what a Brescian instrument is worth. And obviously, you know, they're having to do something to justify the, premiums that they're able to charge.

Florian Leonhardt.

You know, like anything you do in life, everything's quite complex. And the deeper you look, the less  simple you can just, make the story. So Andrea Amati for me, of course, is a giant. Because he has, unlike the Bresian makers, created a design that could be replicated for centuries,  more or less unchanged, incredibly well conceived with Renaissance principles  and in a Baroque shape. If you want. So, construction method, golden section. He has, also construction sequence that was  maybe derived from the lute makers  from Fusen who came, in droves, to Italy because Italy had a great big market, of interest in music making.  But to cut away from now, the Amati and Cremona, coming to the Brescian, which is your topic about Gasparo Da Salo, if I understood right that of course is for me the hero of the city,  Brescia, because he has created Maggini, if you want. Coming to your question, why, you feel that  Maggini in some ways might overshadow in fame even Andrea Amati.  And Gasparo Da Salo might be due to the fact that, one, he made many more violins than Gasparo Da Salo, and the violas always a little bit the suffering, joked about instrument in the orchestras in our classic music world. So the violas were less important in some ways, and less, less easy to, talk about in big numbers. So, Maggini made many more violins than violas.  While Gasparo Da Salo made very few violins and many more violas. But Maggini continued in the footsteps of Gasparo Da Salo, and he seamlessly continued the tradition working and the method.

But coming back to the fame, why you feel he's more known, there's another fact. So already in the early 1600s, early 17th century in Brescia.  Was immediately written about as the great maestro violin maker when he died, round about 17 30, 31, 32, during the plague, he had already achieved considerable fame and people started shortly after, already even naming themselves as pupil of Maggini, even if it wasn't necessarily true.

Right. Okay. Who wrote about the music? Uh, culture at the time. And that is actually also an interesting thing, which made, Brescia so famous  and because, you know, when I was a child, I grew up also with thinking, Oh, Maggini is the inventor of the violin which is obviously, I wouldn't say I wouldn't agree with that because obviously we know that Andrea Amati is before, and Gasparo Da Salo in some ways before, even though maybe, yes, arguably, Gasparo Da Salo came more from the violin making, viola making, bass instrument kind of making, and you had a more sonorous, warm, earthy kind of sound idea at the time, but also maybe possibly because instruments didn't sound much differently because it maybe didn't  in those archaic instruments, sound posts, etc.

That was one thing that he was already written about. So people could read now about Maggini and the importance of the maestro violin maker. And Maggini was also prolific in the production of the instruments and had La Franchini as well, who, who already worked for Gasparo Da Salo as his assistant.

Then we had the 19th century, eventually, a couple of hundred years later. And that's, I think, is  probably the biggest source of why we create, where we created a lot of romantic things, because the 19th century was the romantic era in the art history, in music making, in, painting and in sculptures and architecture. So it was the time where, where castles were rebuilt,  but wrongly rebuilt.

The, follies.

Yes, because they created some romantic middle, aged like looking castle, which  didn't actually look like that when it was first built. So they, had this romanticized idea and you know, Maggini.  Unlike Amati and everything that followed, because everybody admired Stradivari and Amati and Guarneri and Ruggieri, etc. So, Maggini and Gasparo Da Salo were a bit forgotten, because they looked so archaic, they looked  ancient, they looked primitive and simple in their making. And so In that romantic time, I think, I mean, this is only my interpretation, but I look at people like Vuillaume,  who now created Magginis  and he made lots of Magginis and he had this interesting idea about that extra turn on the scroll, in the volute of the scroll, to create this as a Maggini thing, which differs to all other violins that, were kind of produced by.

Was Vuillaume, oh sorry, was Vuillaume the one to add the extra?

No, there are some, there are a few.  Magginis that have that extra turn because that, but maybe we talk later about stylistics.

But that must have been his model that he picked up on that model.

Yeah. He must have seen one scroll that, that exists by Maggini and maybe it wasn't Maggini who made it.

It wasn't Maggini. So we see later makers working in Paris, such as Vuillaume, who lived in the 19th century, copying Maggini in a romantic style, perhaps drawn in by this unusual looking model that really didn't resemble anything like the classical Cremonese instruments people were used to.  Benjamin Hebbett. 

There were people like Di Berio, one of the great early 19th century players who had a Maggini, Ole Bull had a Maggini, and those, those start to get copied. Actually it's Gand et Bernadelle in Paris, Nicolas Francois Vuillaume. Brussels really sort of start the way in copying, and then you get the German cheap, cheaper copies, which always seem to come from those Forms and those Bernadelles.  Now we see things orbiting around Parisian musicians and violin makers, who at this time were the influencers of the 19th century on these things.

Florian Leonhardt. 

But I have still haven't, um, finished your, your The original question because there's another  aspect to Maggini. So once Vuillaume created, picked up on this  archaic looking instrument to make another romantic looking thing, because here you also he also had a, Tiefenbroecker, you know, so he, they liked those sudden ancient looking instruments with heads  and different heads and different F holes.

But of course, Vuillaume didn't understand Maggini at all because he built it with an outside mould, built it very square and in you know, more what, what they learned in violin making at the time. And also like all violin makers in the 19th century, they no longer constructed with that form within, they drew around things and copied them  and kind of idealized it, but didn't really build.

What, was the, the real, intention of the maker at the time? And so he now created the Maggini model next to his Guarneri model, next to the Amati model, next to a Guarneri del Gesù model.  So it became one of the five models.  So the whole world now knows Maggini, Amati, Stradivari, Guarneri. But, uh, so people had now those models and Maggini became one of them.

And therefore, from the Brescian makers,  he became  the archaic, the oldest and most ancient looking one. So it became interesting. And then the hills in 1892.  wrote their famous book on Maggini, which again is also the Hills did an enormous job in doing research, quite good research. And they found also in that book, you find lots of beautiful evidence and, people who ordered instruments from them in.

Have you in the Hills book where it has sort of a, a guide to faking a Maggini almost it tells you how to make a fake Maggini well, it talks about Magginifying instruments.

I've got my, copyright here. Fifty-seven or so. Fifty-six, fifty seven. There's a whole load of, uh, pointers for connoisseurs.

A very successful Maggini copy was made by Bernard Fendt, Jr. Naturally, the first necessity for the Maggini forger was to obtain suitable violins on which to operate and consequently all violins of large dimensions and antique appearance were sought out and their fitness for adaptation thoughtfully considered. Two lines of purfling were needed and as but few violins possessed this feature. It had to be added. French violins of the Bouquet Pierret, period. 1700, 1740 and German violins of all periods were easily Magginified as regards purfling and the elongation of the sound hole. When the violin to be adapted was sufficiently large and of suitable model, the inner line of purfling was inserted. When of smaller size or unsuitable in form, the original ledge and purfling were removed, and a new rim of wood, about three quarters of an inch, three quarters? Three eighths of an inch in width, added all around, which was joined to the old part by an underlapping joint. This new edge was then slightly hollowed and purfled. The groove for the inner line of purfling being made over the joining of the old and new wood effectually hid it.  Clover leaves were inserted in the top and bottom of the back, and the central device of Maggini at the middle of the back. The scroll was also worked on, but here the peculiarities of Maggini were not mastered.And the scroll was invariably turned too far. 

Yes, it tells you how you can forge. I like how they give you like, uh, just the tips. Just, just a bit too much, isn't it?  And like, and how they say like, in every German violin, because you know how those German trade instruments are often big, so yeah, okay. 

Yeah, I mean, the Maggini book's written at exactly the same time that people are sort of getting into their Sherlock Holmes and stuff like that, so. There is an element of it of, sort of giving, giving the Hills. the voice of the expert.  Yeah. It's, it's, it's quite a good point to, you know, give, away all, of the secrets because actually you don't often see Magginis or Maggini fakes. So they, they can say everything about expertise and it won't, it won't really affect their bottom line.

But returning to Brescia and the Brescian style. Florian Leonard talks about Maggini's assistant, La Francini, and the style of Maggini's scrolls compared to the work that was being done at the same time in Cremona, and the different construction techniques that the two schools of violin making used.  Because La Francini in particular he was as far as I remember he was a Carver and, furniture maker, who also, supplied the, or restored the local church furniture or, you know, whatever it is.

And if you look at the scroll, the scroll is made like this furniture.  So it has a kind of leaf, structure that goes around. When you look at the scroll from the front, it's wide. And it's all tapered back, the peg box as well, and everything. There's a completely different idea to the Cremonese idea.

There's not a chamfer structure on the scroll. It's a kind of like a leaf with a fine edge that kind of rounded off over the past 400 years into something like a but it was kind of not thought to be like Amati, very clearly from day one, he constructed a spiral out of mathematical proportions  and then had to solve the problem how to end with the volute carving out  in the eye.

So you have a channel, which is the carved out channel part of the volute, but you have to end somewhere in the spiral.  And so that end is quite a complicated thing for young violin makers. They don't know how to do that. Do you have a gouge that kind of fits into there and meets the other gouge in the point?

Or how do you construct the point? Maybe with a knife cut? But you need to kind of arrive in a parallel. Buy the perfect gouge with the perfect curve.

I remember, um, I went to Mircourt and everyone's like, I found it. I found the gouge.

You see, there we go. You understand. But other people are there with a knife. Yeah. So you understand. So, so the, the Brescian didn't bother about this. So they just had a piece of paper that spiralled up into something and then you had an eye. And it's all undercut because the undercut gives a certain lightness to the design of that paper flow that's like, like, you know, the scroll or something. And the eye, because you didn't have much of a chamfer, could just end sometime whenever the gouge finished in their turn. And that is each time different, but the principle is similar,  but they were not trying to replicate like industry. The Cremonese created a system that is absolutely, until today, there to be replicated.

Of course, in the 19th century, it was no longer constructed like in the 17th century or 16th, 16th and 17th century in Cremona was clearly only constructed with dividers, callipers, proportions. And therefore you had the inside mould, you build everything around it and so on. The Brescians didn't have that idea.

They had a free, architecture. They had the back, they stuck the corner blocks on it and they put very thick ribs around it, starting with the cc bouts, then meeting with mitres. Relatively blunt mitres on the corners, open C bouts. C bouts are quite, open C's, because that's much easier to, bend, because these very thick ribs, when you see an original that hasn't been re graduated, and hasn't had, uh, linings fitted. Later by people in the 19th century who want to do better those instruments. Then you actually see that you had those thick ribs and, you know, to make these middle, very small red radiuses on a violin or viola is quite tough to bend without breaking it.  And so that they kept it quite blunt. And therefore the corners are not very long, unlike Zanetto di Pellegrino, before it's long corners, but also in Amati's time, of course, they had long corners. And that was a feature of the instrument, the corner, while in Brescia it was kind of an archaic thing that came from the viol.

Yeah, and the Hill's book on Maggini I like it I feel like it's really, it's very well done. It's like, you've got the, the biography and then you have these, like these tips on how to  make your own Maggini. Then it has a few anecdotes that are a little bit. Indiscreet as she like they name the clients, uh, involved.

And yes, the, the Fendt copy, which was made as an honest, honest copy, but it was bought by someone whose widow was then hard up and tried to sell it.  And in the end you have in the, at the end you have, the body, the measurements, the table of measurements that has, which is sort of a little bit confounding because the violins, it, it does like pre strad. It compares like a, pre 90, pre 1690 Strad, a long Strad and a Maggini. And then for violas, they totally changed to, a Da Salo and then an Amati and an, a Maggini they're comparing. And then they go back to Strad for the cello, which is like, it's confusing. And then they have all the little, the little notes and the explanation. I find it's quite, you know, it's all in there. And then it even has a thing on how to find Maggini’s house at the end.

We were talking about the woman who wrote it, Margaret Huggins, and she’s interesting cause she's like, she's a real fan. You can tell as you're reading it, it's like, she's a real fan of the Hills. And I find it interesting that they, they asked her to write. So, yes, she marries a guy called William Huggins, and he's an astronomer. And, but the fascinating thing is that she really seems to be the person who's into photography. So in terms of being able to record what he sees, it's her. And she becomes a pioneer in the 1870s of spectral astrophotography.

Spectropi I can't say it Spectropi Spectropsy?  She becomes really good at pronouncing it. Anyway, whichever one it is. That's taking is that was she actually taking photos of light? Like, sort of rainbows type thing? Like, you know, when you see a rainbow with the light.  Was that? I suspect so. Okay,  I'll have to check that out. I think there's a whole load of stuff which is going on about with, before, colour photography, actually, there's a lot of understanding of which light waves the camera works best at or, sorry, not the camera, but the process, so you can say actually, if we look at a lot of photographs of the time and compare them to ultraviolet or infrared photography, we actually see, you know, violin photographs, they're all opaque, because,  you know, what's a perfectly good spectrum for a black and white photograph of a person is actually a little bit on the ultraviolet spectrum.

So we're not able to see the wood underneath the varnish. Oh yeah, and then in this, in this book, there's amazing Yeah,  well not, you say the paintings are amazing and you're welcome to. You're absolutely right.

It is so hard to draw a violin. I am just really, you know, uh, admirable of anyone who can do a painting of a violin.

But to me, it's the, it's the photographs, which are absolutely, you know. Before I knew who Margaret Huggins was, seeing these photographs, which are  absolutely to scale, really done with precision, and then comparing them to other early, early violin photographs, and, and they're just astonishing. And I think that we might be seeing, you know, the same, the same eye and the same photographic skill on those as, you know, the inventor of Spekof, of stuff that we can't pronounce.

Spek Spektro Spektrop Spektroposi? Spek Spek Spek That one. Which is really, really important.

Margaret Huggins was a pretty amazing woman. Born in Dublin in 1848, she was an accomplished astronomer and spectroscopist who made significant contributions to the fields of astrophysics. She was also a very talented photographer, artist, and musician.  In 1873, when she was 25 years old, She attended a lecture by a Mr. William Huggins, a prominent astronomer and spectroscopist on his research on stellar spectra. Oof, that's a tongue twister. Margaret, who was already captivated by astronomy and spectroscopy, was deeply impressed by William's lecture and sought an introduction to him.  After the lecture, her uncle, who was acquainted with William Huggins, organized a meeting between the two, and the spectral sparks were ignited. In 1875, two years later, They married, and together they conducted groundbreaking research in spectroscopy,  which is the study of the interaction between light and matter. It was a marriage of intellect and the heart. I find it really hard to say spectroscopy, spectroscopy. Anyway, in addition to her scientific contributions, Margaret actively participated in astronomical societies and institutions, which is kind of extraordinary for a woman at the time. She was a member of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Astronomical Association.  She was also involved in promoting women's involvement in science and was a member of the British Federation of University Women.  Margaret received recognition for her work throughout her career, and she was the first woman to receive the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1903, which was a remarkable achievement at the time.

She also received honorary degrees from the University of Dublin and the University of St Andrews, when this was still a tricky time for a woman to attend university. As to how she came to write the Maggini book for the Hills, apart from being one smart cookie. Her husband, William Huggins, was an avid amateur violinist and was friends with the inventive and nimble minded William Ebsworth Hill. William Huggins also possessed a golden period Stradivari, so this could have helped the connection.  This violin is now called the Huggins Strad. Today, it's lent to the winner of the Belgian Queen Elizabeth's violin competition. Because Margaret was also a very talented photographer, she helped in the production of the images of not only the Maggini book, but also others the Hill Workshop produced.

Today she's only really remembered for her scientific endeavours, but here I'd like to give a little shout out to her and her work on Maggini. You go girl.

So the Hill book was another book that put him on the map, Maggini. And the Hills also idealized him a little bit by, by saying he was the kind of establisher of the violin. 

Do you think the Hills book is still, uh, The reference book for Maggini? Yeah.

Today, is it still what they say, valid?  Um, the, the facts, the facts of the book are still valid because they, they did proper research in Brescia. And so they, looked at sources, they, found. This lady, um,  Oh, are you talking about Isabella D'Este? Isabella D'Este, thank you. Ah, okay, so I thought you were talking about, like, modern, okay, the Gonzaga court. Yes, that's the one. And so she was, of course, a patron of the arts, in that sense, yeah? And so people like her furthered this, and her demands were fulfilled by Brescia. And that's another interesting thing. Why did Brescia live so confidently next to Cremona, where Amati, of course, made instruments also for a big society throughout Europe. He became also famous, but they lived side by side, not influencing each other not that I can see that. And you can see that not, not rethinking, Oh, maybe they are doing something better than us. Let's change a little bit the style. No, Maggini confidently continued the style of Brescia Only at the very end of Maggini's life and career, you can see a little bit of proportioning, the scroll getting a little bit, more carefully made, et cetera, not quite so large and heavy.

Whether that is influenced from, and also linings are used suddenly,  whether that's influenced from Cremona or whether that's demand for musicians that have seen a Cremonese instrument or whether That is an evolutionary thing that just happened because those instruments had a relatively fast evolution in, in Brescia. Because from the very primitive, instruments, suddenly, the Micheli family and your other makers, and then Gasparo Da Salo was the big genius in many ways because he, transformed a lot and established things and you became very successful that he became wealthy as an instrument maker  and he could afford to have several employees and different premises to own.

So that's, that's quite an achievement as an instrument maker of the day. Yeah. So I think the Book of Hills  helped Maggini's name as well and then the mystery  of the earliest violin maker was of course In the ears of all the laymen about the topic, particularly if Hills also kind of supported this, uh, model of, that Maggini is the earliest, violin maker or creator of the violin.

Well, it's interesting because they don't actually say that. And in the Maggini book, in the front. You might have like one of the first editions, there's a paper that says, you know, we've got all this information about Gasparo Da Salo. So then they knew that about Gasparo Da Salo, but they brought out the Maggini book first  and the damage was done.

I think the damage was done and then they didn't want to peddle back too much. But I, but they did say in that book, I remember that they said that he is the person who established the violin, the modern violin. Oh yeah, so you have Gasparo. They don't say it's the inventor directly, but they said, I think they said established.

But I think out of that established probably interpretations came and the people then made out of it, he invented. Yeah, because you jump quickly from established to invent. 

Yeah, you can imagine someone reading it and then telling a friend, Oh, you know, I read this book about the guy who invented the violin.

Yeah, I mean, I would say in 1732,  the Brescian violin making or violin making was dead for a bit.  So until the arrival of G. B. Rogeri, who came with a completely Cremonese idea  into town and then adopted. Features of Maggini and Gasparo Da Salo, I cannot  say who, probably some Maggini violins that would have been more  in numbers available to him, have influenced his  design of creating an arching.

It's, it's interesting that he instantly picked up on that arching,  because Rogeris  are always and,  Much fuller arched. The arching rises much earlier from the purfling, right? So he came from the Cremonese tradition, but he adopted the, like the Brescian arching idea. He, came from Nicola Amati and has learned all the finesse of, construction, fine, making discipline, and also series production. Get an inside mould and have the linings, and have all the blocks including top and bottom block, and nailed in the neck. So he did a complete, package of Cremonese Violin making, and brought that into Brescia, but blended it in certain stylistics and sometimes even in copies, with the Brescian style  for a long time. We have had, before dendrochronology was established, the Magginis, going around, and they were actually, G. B. Rogeris.

Right, yeah, we did a condition report on a, Maggini, and, it had an old  certificate, and,  And then we did the dendrochronology, and so I had to change the title to attributed to.

Yeah, and it might have been, you know, I mean, I have, I've seen  about three, three Rogeris that used to be Magginis.  Okay. Yeah, very nicely made. But you can see that the construction behind it doesn't have that more loose idea of creating that shape, but it was a constructed shape.

Okay, so how, how is  Maggini different to  and why do you think, Maggini is so much, better known than  Da Salo, or am I just making assumptions? I feel like a lot of people know, if you say a Brescian instrument, they'll be like, Oh yeah, Maggini. 

Benjamin Hebbett. 

Well, I think Gaspar much rarer than we sort of take credit for and actually, you know, they're also, I think when we look at Magginis, well, there's actually two problems with Magginis because there are the spectacular Magginis. And throughout his, throughout history until dendocrinology, that's, uh, tree ring dating came along. We, you know, we, saw these instruments, which were really quite one, you know, really quite wonderful, almost cremonese  quality,  which we kind of thought of as, you know, the, the, the best Maggini’s, but then what we discovered, and there's quite a lot of those, and quite a lot of those have become the very famous Magginis, but actually, then Dendrochronology comes along, and given that Maggini died in 1630, when these were coming up with Dendros of 1670, 1680, 1700, we, you know, suddenly, began to realize that these aren't by Maggini at all, but they're by somebody 60, 70 years on.

And, you know, stuff like the Prince Doria, So painted for Prince Doria in the 19th century, but, uh, but they're actually, you know, they're not, they're not even meas at all.

So you've got all of this stuff by Giovanni Batista, Rogeri.  He's a contemporary of Stradivari, making Maggini fakes,  which we still, you know, are associating with Maggini. Then you've got the real Magginis, which are  a little less refined. Then you've got the period where Maggini are working together. Maggini and Da Salo's workshop.

And those  are a little less refined again.  And then you've got the true Gaspar Da Salos, which are, you know, a small number and actually quite rough.  And then the problem is, is that, you know, I think so much stuff, you know, it's more likely that a Maggini will get reappraised into a Maggini Gasparo Da Salo collaboration than a Gasparo Da Salo coming into that. So essentially there's three different kinds of Magginis. And very little, unless you're into double basses, from Gasparo Da Salo.

So, uh, so one of my questions was, in the, was actually in the Hills book, uh, I don't know if it's her, it's a bit ambiguous when you're reading it, I'm like, is it, is it the Hills talking, or is it her talking about she actually has a funny story where she talks about clients and she actually names the client.

Um, it's, I love these old books where they're just like, you know, Mrs. So and so. Politically incorrect.  Actually, when you read the Hill book. It's kind of escorting everyone, you know, they give their own opinion.

And she'll be like, yeah, Mrs. So and so came in and it was clearly a fake and then she sold it as a real one. And then that guy came back and I had to tell him it was a fake and,  but she says, so she talks about, well, no, or the Hills, who knows about, Maggini, Stradivari, the idea that Stradivari was influenced in his long period of making by Maggini. What, what are your, do you think that's a relevant observation?

Florian Leonhardt.  What do you think I would answer to that?  I say very clearly 100%.  100%, no doubt.  So, you know, the Brescia was plodding along with their style on their own and creating something that, yeah, they just were confident because the musicians wanted to have those instruments. They were busy. They got rich from it, you know, nobody was poor making those instruments. And they, which we can see in the archives today. So you can, you can see that they were successful. They had constantly musicians from all over the country to consult them because the musicians were the ones driving. what was in demand. You know, in parallel, in the parallel universe, Cremona supplied some other chords with their instruments, and they were successful within that, and that system worked very well. But I don't see much cross pollination there going on between those cities. So Cremona will have noticed that musicians  like sometimes to have these kind of Maggini like instruments.

And Rogeri was already making such instruments as well, maybe visible for Cremonese violin makers, because they, the musicians would travel, because Brescia and Cremona is not that far apart. But obviously the, the link wasn't so established culturally, as you can tell from the violin making history. So, but Stradivari, who totally deserves his name as the genius of, of our he was constantly, from day one, from the earliest instruments, when we analysed him,  you can see from the earliest instruments his strong character and drive to find out how to make it better. So I think from day one,  he tried to see how can I improve this thing. And by 1690, he arrived by saying, let's radically change the design of the arching because, because the musicians talking about the sonority and warmth and  depth of, uh, Maggini instruments and so he, he felt that's lacking. Let's try to find this out. And then he saw something and he said,  let's try it. And he did it and it created some effect and he continued this.  And so he did it for just under a decade, building those long pattern instruments because long Magginis were longer  and they were fuller arched. And you see that in, in Stradivari's design.

But Stradivari still was bound by the very strong, incredible principles that the Amati have created in Cremona. So he had the discipline to build it beautifully with long, slender corners, with choice of wood that looks beautiful.  Magnificent. And it's very, it's aristocratic in the way. So the Maggini model by Stradivari doesn't look like a Maggini, you know, so it’s a much more graceful, in design in my view.

He combined in the golden period, the two things. So his arching became fuller, which is the major change in Stradivari's. Design for the sound.

Yeah, there's less of that. Um, the, the scooped like towards the edges, it's less, the less, although, yes, I mean the, Amati brothers. I, I don't, yeah.

The brothers Amati were really quite full there's a view. It's, yeah. It's hard to tell. Since you mentioned the Amati brothers, the Amati brothers were more advanced in the arching from our modern perspective of, of ideal arching than Niccolo, because Niccolo exaggerated that deep, long, wide, wide channel, and therefore has nearly a slightly pinched arching, which you see in some Rugeris as well. And that influence you can clearly see also in Stradivari's idea. So there was something going on, but, but Stradivari was the most consistent to bring that forward.

 So he took, uh, yeah, so it's a little bit of Maggini that made Stradivari.

Yes. You could say that. It's probably Maggini, um, that influenced that.

And, of course, the other big guys, Guarneri del Gesù was the other big guy and successful violin makers of all time.  He also got influenced by that because you can see he made a wide breast, uh, Stradivari didn't adopt that, you know, he, he still saw an advantage in the arching, but he didn't want to deviate too far away from  the established idea in Cremona.

While Guarneri del Gesù, he, he did that already 30 years later, you know, 30 years later, he started, he was in an, at a different time where the sons were already all rebels, you know, I mean, look at Stradivari's sons, I mean.  What a disgrace.  I'm telling you, dissapointment they must have been for him because  how can the father achieve this level of workmanship and then you have those sons who just  Don't give a damn about precision.

Well, it's the, you know, it's the father who makes the fortune and then the children who spend it.  They were that generation. And so, Del Gesu grew up in that generation, but he grew up in a family that was already much rougher in making, you know, the Guarneri's,  Filius Andrea, his father.  Pretty rough, you know, so he didn't build like a Niccolo Amati in a sweet, beautiful, perfectly mannered and disciplined way. He left the tool marks, he didn't always bother about exact precision.

Thank you so much for listening to this final episode on Gio Paolo Maggini, but stay with me for the next episode as I return to Cremona. And I continue with the story of Niccolo Amati and his revolutionary practices in the workshop that would change the violin landscape forever.  I'd like to thank my guests, Benjamin Hebbert and Florian Leonhardt for talking to me today.

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