Ep 10. The Amati Brothers ”Fraternal Fallout: When Brothers Collide” The age of the Viola.

The Violin Chronicles Podcast

Continue listening to the tale of the Amati brothers to help understand who made which instruments from now on.

Is the violin making center of Italy the most boring city in the world? Well, we will see what 16th century tourists think in this episode continuing the story of the master violin makers that are the Amati Brothers. Violin maker and expert Carlo Chiesa talks to us about the Amati Brothers and why they had such a big falling out as does Oxford based violin expert Benjamin Hebbert. We hear from Ilya Isakovich violinist in the Australian Chamber Orchestra who plays on an Amati Brothers violin and the history of that particular violin.

Transcript

  In the autumn of 1441, in the city of Cremona, a great wedding was taking place between two powerful families. The bride, 16 year old Bianca Maria Visconti, was the daughter of the Duke of Milan, and the groom, 40 year old Francesco Sforza, was a brave warrior and trusted advisor to the Duke. As the wedding feast was being prepared, disaster struck. A great drought had struck the land, and the city of Cremona was left without the necessary ingredients to create a grand dessert for the occasion. The cooks and chefs frantically searched for a solution, but to no avail. Desperate, one of the chefs had a brilliant idea. He decided to take what little sugar and almonds they had left and mix them together with some honey. He cooked the mixture until it became a soft, chewy confection that could be cut into small pieces. He then shaped the nougat, or torrone, into the form of the city's famous Torazzo bell tower. When the wedding guests were served the nougat, they were amazed at the sweet, nutty flavour and chewy texture of the new dessert. They exclaimed that it was the most delicious treat that they had ever tasted, and they begged the chef to reveal the secret of its creation. From that day on, the recipe for the nougat was passed down from generation to generation, becoming a beloved part of Italian culinary tradition. The nougat was said to have been a symbol of the ingenuity and creativity of Italian chefs, who could turn even the most meagre ingredients into something truly magical.

This is the legend of Cremona's Nougat, and to this day you can buy Nougat shaped as the Torazzo Tower.

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 of Mirecourt some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine Lespets, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthier, 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.

Welcome back to the story of the Amati brothers. In the last episode, we left them in the midst of a busy and productive period in their lives. Girolamo Amati, the youngest brother, is now a widower after his wife Lucrenzia died shortly after the birth of their daughter Elizabeth. The brother's father, Antonio Amati, has passed away and Cremona, being Cremona, was insanely busy with its influx of merchants and soldiers passing through, and never far from drama and disaster, as we will see.

Because of continual war and armies marching through the town, the walls were in a sorry state, but life ploughed on as usual, and no matter how bad things got, people still wanted music, and musicians still needed instruments. Towards the end of the 16th century, 1583, Cremona was described as a city filled with sumptuous buildings, both private and public. There were an abundance of temples and monasteries, wide and spacious streets. The walls of the city have almost completely fallen to the ground due to the numerous wars in the region, and the villages around the walls were ruined. One traveller to Cremona at the time was a little bit nonplussed by the place.

This is an excerpt from a 16th century tourist writing what appears to be a type of lonely planet guide. His name is Maximilian Mission and his book is ‘A New Voyage to Italy Together with Useful Instructions for Those Who Shall Travel Hither’.

We followed the course of the Po at some distance. Until we came over against Cremona, where we crossed over the river in a ferry boat. There are no bridges on the Po below Turin. Cremona is seated on the left bank of the river in the Duchy of Milan. It is a pretty large city, but even poorer and less populous than Piacenza. There is nothing at all to be seen in it, though its tower and castle are very much extolled. One of their authors has the confidence to tell the world that the Tower is reckoned to exceed all others in height, and for that reason, esteemed one of the wonders of Europe. And that the castle is the strongest and most formidable citadel in Italy.

If I had not been accustomed to the lofty and hyperbolic expressions of the Italians, I should have been strangely surprised, after all these rodomonts. To find nothing at Cremona worth observation. The castle is an old, shapeless, and half ruined mass, which in its very best state deserved not to be compared to a well contrived fort, but perhaps might have been reputed tolerable in the days of crossbows. And the tower is neither handsome nor very high, but inferior to a thousand that are not so much as mentioned. It was built by Frederick Barbarossi in the year 1184. There is a tradition that the Emperor Mondi and Pope John the 23rd went up this tower with a certain Lord of Cremona who repented afterwards as he several times declared that he did not throw him down from the top to bottom, merely for the rarity of the thing. And perhaps it was this story that gave the first occasion to the reflections that had been made on the height of the tower. The inhabitants of Cremona boast much of the antiquity of their city, but they produced not any monuments to confirm it. The antiquity of Cremona has a very near resemblance to that of the Po. In the distance of 14 miles from Cremona to Mantua, we saw nothing but hamlets that deserved not to be named. Only Bozzolo is a sort of little city enclosed with certain works which pass for fortifications. It gives title to a duke who, besides his place, is sovereign of a territory that extends four or five miles. We passed Oglio in a ferry boat, and great and rapid. Apparently boring as it was. The city was doing okay, but the effects of war were beginning to show. The walls might have been in a bad state, but in town there was a movement amongst the monasteries and local congregations towards creating new foundations. These included orphanages. There were colleges for youth education, boarding schools, a conservatory opened in 1587 to welcome young girls in danger, that is, who did not have a dowry and risked therefore to take a bad path. The Jesuits built a magnificent new church in 1602. The Church of St. Peter and Marcelino. For women, there were sisters who taught in the schools and boarding schools. They dedicated themselves to the education of young girls who belonged to the most distinguished and wealthy families of Cremona. These nuns were not pushed into seclusion. They are interesting in that they were free to go to the local church, leave the buildings when they wanted to, and embark on charitable works in the community, such as looking after the poor schools. This gave a particular atmosphere to the city, with many in the religious orders out and about. In the spring of 1584, Girolamo Amati married for a second time. His first wife, Lucrenzia, had died shortly after the birth of their daughter, Elizabeth. And now, Laura Medici Lazzarini, niece of a prominent nobleman, and a distant cousin to the famous Banking Medici's.

At the time of Girolamo Amati and Laura's wedding, the city of Cremona was thriving. The factories in town were working at full speed, especially in the textile sector, where wool and moleskin employed a large part of the population. The city was growing as the factories were expanding, and the nobles and rich merchants were building palaces and stately homes. The Amatis were now a well respected family. Andrea Amati had finally been able to buy their house a few years before his death, and now his sons, the brothers, Antonio Amati and Girolamo Amati, had inherited both the house and a prosperous business. They made instruments for important people, nobles and royal families.

Girolamo Amati’s marriage to a member of the lesser nobility shows an overlapping of the respected artisan class and the more wealthy noble class. Laura's dowry would have helped as well, but as with his first wife Lucrenzia, Girolamo Amati had to share Laura's dowry with his brother Antonio Amati as he was now head of the family.

I spoke to Carlo Chiesa, researcher, author, and violin maker in Milan.

Why is he called Hieronymus sometimes, and it's a Latin name, Hieronymus is the Latin from Geronimo. So I use the Italian, but it's the same name.

And on, on his labels it's, Hieronymus. He uses a Latin form, Hieronymus. Is it always Hieronymus?

No, sometimes it is Geronimo but the reason is that if you use the Latin name, it is Hieronymus. So for foreign, not Italian speaking people, I understand Geronimo is a bit difficult to remember and Hieronymus is much easier because it's also German and the English form for Geronimo.

So I think that's it. It's just is Latin.

No, come on. We are speaking of four generations, five makers, you know. We're set. We're the Brothers, Amati. Why do you think there was such a large age gap between, between the two brothers? Yeah, we don't know exactly. Apparently Antonio Amati, but we consider that is just a theory that Antonio Amati was born much Many years before Girolamo Amati.

So Gerolamo Amati was much younger. Antonio Amati was apparently an old man, a middle aged man when Geronimo was a boy. So since this I supposed at some point that they were half brothers because perhaps there was a second wife, could they have had Antonio Amati and then had a bunch of girls, because I feel like sometimes they just don't say if they're girls.

There are three, three sisters.

Oh, in between?

Yes.

Oh, I mean, so it's possible. I mean, if you're like 18, when you have the first kid and then 28, 30, 38, 40. Yeah, you can do that. It's possible.

Absolutely. Everything is possible. And I really, I also think it was not so important at that time, probably because the family was a family in which if the head of the family was a strong man.

It was not possibly so important if he had a second wife and the sons were not sons but half-brothers.

I spoke to Benjamin Hebert, expert and instrument dealer in Oxford.

They overlap, like the fathers and sons, obviously. But as you were saying with the Amati brothers, their lives were quite different to Andrea Amati, I imagine, in that they were in Andrea, even though They were, my understanding is they were occupied by the Spanish, but it was quite peaceful and, and orderly life.

And then they go into this period of, like, like you're saying, like, being basically trampled and then getting up and getting squashed and then getting up and getting trampled again, the city of Cremona. Yeah, it’s, I mean, it's one of the things you go around. I mean, you obviously go around Florence and Pisa and places like that, and it's full of wonderful stuff.

And, gosh, I found a mid 17th century account of Cremona by an English traveler, which is just where he basically says this is the most boring town in the country there is nothing to see here, there is nothing of note. And he actually sort of gets a bit angry about it, and he says, you know, they boast that they've got the highest tower in the whole of Italy, but, you know, even that's not true. And, The poor guy really is beside himself that he's gone all the way to Cremona and there's just nothing to see. You know, they're even sort of famous for having a bridge, but they don't have a bridge. And but All of this was, you know, the relative poverty of the town and all of that kind of stuff, you know, is because it was changing hands so repeatedly and being, not just changing hands, but because it was having, you know, it was being garrisoned by people who would then be leaving and other people would be garrisoned and so forth.

It can't really develop economically. So, so the, the investment in a better cathedral or whatever, I mean, the cathedral's great and but it's, it's really kind of interesting to hear in English. I mean, in the 1650s, really, really sort of giving a real one-star trip advisor.

As for the roulette of childbirth at the time, Laura was luckier than her predecessor and seemed to have no trouble having babies. One was probably on the way by the next year when things started to get a bit worrying. The weather had been terrible not only around Cremona but in the whole region. News was trickling through that crops had been ruined yet again.

One year of spoiled harvest was bad enough but several years in a row spelled disaster. Prices for bread and basic food items were rising in the marketplace. There was simply less and less to sell or buy. It was now eleven years since Antonio Amati had passed away, and the workshop had been busy. One of the characteristics of the Amati brothers work was the variety and willingness to experiment.

At this point, instrument sizes were not standardized, and the workshop was exploring different possibilities, making varying sized violins, some very small, others larger. Cellos with four or five strings. Violas of differing dimensions. Sets of vials and other stringed instruments. But living and working with a sibling can take its toll. The budget was strained at home and tensions were rising between the brothers. Antonio Amati was at least 13 years older than Girolamo Amati, and he had grown up working with their father, much longer than his little brother. But differing characters, living in the same house, and working together was getting too much.

There were financial stresses, and Girolamo Amati had a family and children. He may have resented having to share both his wife's dowries with his older brother. Four years after marrying Laura, and with famine looming over the region, the brothers were no longer speaking to each other.

Yeah, I find it, I find it hard to, there's not that much about the Amati brothers to go on. Although, you know, they do have that fight, the famous fight,

the famous fight. They sort of know that the thing they're most well-known for is fighting. Yeah. I mean, Antonio Amati is a lot, you know, his 21, you know, We think he's born around 1540. Girolamo Amati, we think, is born in 1561. I mean, really, you know, they're well and truly old enough to be father and son. And, they're having sort of, yeah, put up with each other that way. And, yeah, so, if Antonio's probably about You know, in his twenties, by the time that Andrea Amati, his father, is making these instruments for the French court, he must be complicit with him. And then this guy who's twenty years younger than him suddenly comes along and, you know, by 1600 we see the same, you know, we suddenly see the edge work that We see right the way through the Amati dynasty, we see, you know, even to Strad and so forth, and, you know, the, the birth of, you know, the final birth of the Cremonese violin as we know it is something that happens. I don't know when, I don't, I don't know what the earliest instrument I'm going to find with it, but it's closer to 1600 than it is to even 1591. It's, there's a lovely viola in the Ashmolean Brothers Amati and it's still, it's still a prototypical one as opposed to a typical kind of, kind of Amati. And so, between Andrea Amati and, you know, perhaps his son, maybe we should give him credit as part of it, you've got something where they've figured out the mathematical structure of the instrument. They've, they've actually done revolutionary things which differentiate these from, from other instruments. They've actually seen them as a, as a kind of architecture and, and they've got a model which they're happy to go on with for over 30 years. And then the other son that's 20 odd years, years, years junior, seems to rise up and says, No, that's, that's not good enough. We're going to do it differently. And actually it's Girolamo, Girolamo Amati, I think, this little son, who for whatever reason, you can, I, I can see it as, is that breath of fresh air that figures things out. Or that little such and such, who's just, has no respect for tradition and makes a pain of himself in the workshop.

Yeah, so Girolamo Amati’s instruments are quite, you see them as being quite different to the Andrea Amati I think, I think the simplest thing is if you lie a violin, you know, imagine lying at the back of a violin, as flat, and you take a marble and you let the marble roll off in any direction then the marble is going to just carry on like a ski jump, straight out into everywhere. And it does that because for the whole of the surface area of the back or the front, everything is unrelentingly mathematical. It's following a Curtate Cycloid, which is a fancy piece of mathematics, and there's nothing that's going to stop that. Girolamo Amati basically puts the edges on the tray. And, but those are really interesting because they reinforce where the ribs meet. Meet the back and the front, and they actually allow the whole thing to be a little bit more flexible just on, just on the inside. So if you take a Girolamo Amati and roll a marble down it, I'm not suggesting you do that with a real Amati. Then it won't fly straight off. It’ll It either skip over or it'll sort of fall, fall into that sort of trayishness of that nice round thing. And that's one of the things that makes an awful lot of difference. The instruments actually become far more unified at that point. You know, there’s far more predictability in how they look. There's just all sorts of refinements. He obviously loves what's been done before and it's very interesting. So the brothers Amati, their labels actually say Hieronymus and Antonius, they used the Latin. Their names are Antonio and Gerolamo. Hieronymus and it then says that they're brothers. And then it also says that their father is Andrea. And even despite all of these fights, Girolamo Amati, you know, Antonio dies in 1607. Girolamo Amati’s got another 23 years to go before he dies. And he still labels his stuff, whether his, whether his brother's in the company or not, whether his company is dead. He, right up to 1630, he carries on labelling his instruments as the Brothers Amati, who are the sons of Andrea Amati.

And because of the plague, and everything that's going wrong, and the uncertainty of the market, when Niccolo Amati comes in, it's still the Brothers Amati, and even when Girolamo Amati is dead, and Niccolo Amati is the only one that's left, through the 1630s, there's instruments that he makes entirely, and he doesn't quite have the courage to put his own label on them, he just pretends that the Brothers Amati is still going.

So there's something there's something very human and touching about that. There's also something about the importance of brand, and how they wanted to be identified as this continuation. So when Girolamo Amati, and later Niccolo Amati, his son, are making things which are different from what Andrea Amati is, there's still every label that they write is communicating that they are part of that tradition which goes all the way back. I think musically speaking, Andrea Amati is looking for something which is loud and brash and harsh. Because of what he's been asked to do, even by the 1590s, the Amatis are trying to make something which is softer and more, more of a mixing, you know, instruments that mingle better.

In 1588, Girolamo Amati wanted out, and he demanded Antonio Amati return his share of both Lucrenzia's and Laura's dowries. Probably knowing full well he was in no position to do such a thing. They would split the workshop between them, and no longer live under the same roof. As Antonio Amati could not afford to repay the dowries, he handed over his share of the family home and moved out. But not far, just down the road. That was probably a bit awkward. Anyway, they still had nothing to say to each other, and winter was coming on, so lawyers drew up a document on the 20th of December stating that Girolamo Amati had to divide up all the tools, instruments, moulds, and other items in the workshop and on the following Thursday, Antonio Amati would come and choose which pile he would take. Antonio Amati could use the workshop for another two months, but then he would have to leave and never set foot in the building again.

Carlo Chiesa. And in fact we see that the brother Amati developed the outlines. Of the instruments by Andrea Amati, and then Nicolo Amati again developed the, the outline of the instruments by the brothers. And then when we arrived to Antonio Stradivari at the end of the 17th century, that is more than a hundred years after the death of Andrea Amati. At that point, Antonio Stradivari goes back to make something that is much more similar to what Andrea Amati made as a start. That's my idea, at least. Maybe I'm, I'm wrong, but if you compare the instruments, our time of instruments from Andrea Amati made in the 1560s to the instruments made by Antonio Stradivari after 1705, that is after the period of the long pattern instruments, then they perfectly fit.

Through notarial documents, we know that the Amati ran an important workshop in which there were many people working, not just Andrea Amati first and then his two sons later, but we know that at some point the two sons of Andrea Amati, the so called brother of Amati, they split in 1588.

And Antonio Amati went on working on his own, while Girolamo Amati went on working on his own. So, also when we say the production of the Brothers Amati, in truth, all of that comes from one or the other of the two brothers and then Antonio Amati died in 1607. Meaning, before many of the instruments made by the brothers Amati were made.

They did work together at some point, didn't they? The brothers?

They worked together until 1588.

It was a bad, bad break up?

A bad break up, of course. And but, but a bad break up, but Antonio Amati stayed to live in the same street, which is a street about 30 meters long. So it's and he should

That's awkward.

Yeah. I don't know. Divorce are always sometimes. Painful. So, and then, then what happened, it was that the Girolamo Amati had a wife and son, Nicolo. At that time, Nicolo Amati was just four years old. But then Girolamo Amati went on working hard, and Nicolo Amati joined him at some point. And I'm sure that while Antonio's workshop was a small workshop. The important part of the Amati workshop was the Girolamo Amati workshop. And at some point Girolamo needed also more people working with him. And since he had only one male son but he had daughters he hired the husbands of his daughters. Antonio Amati set up his workshop and from now on was known more as a lute maker than anything else but was still used from time to time the Amati Brothers label, as did Girolamo Amati.

The brand, Amati Brothers, was still lucrative, it seemed. And documents we have no documents speaking of his marriage and we just have his death record in which he's called Antonio Amati De Iliuti, not De Violini, meaning that maybe he was going on making mainly plucked instruments and not bowed instruments, because I'm sure they made also all, all of these makers.

Down to the Guarneri's, at least, we have documents in which, by which we know that they made also plucked instruments. All of them are lost. Of course, they had workshops in which they did not make just violins. So maybe, maybe, Antonio Amati specialized in plucked instruments and Girolamo Amati in bowed instruments. But that's a theory. And as for the other part, if I have no family records, but we have no, no records for daughters or sons for Antonio Amati, so maybe he never married.

Okay. Was, would that have been unusual?

Not particularly. It happened, so. Don't ask me if there's I don't know. Also, with Stradivari, that's much better. Think of Stradivari. He had many, many sons. He had many sons. He had at least four or six children, and just one of them got married when he was a boy of 30. Francesco did not marry, Omobono did not marry, Giovanni Battista did not marry, and the two other, Alessandro and Giuseppe, both of them went to be priests.

So that's an interesting In town there was a group Girolamo Amati would have definitely known about, called the Accademia degli Animosi. In Cremona, there were not many places to perform music outside the church, and as there was no noble court, what they had was the animosi. It was a group of people who met in a nobleman's palace, the Marquis Camillo Estanga.

One of their purposes was to meet once a week and give a talk on moral or natural philosophy. All the important stuff. Before or after which there would be a musical concert. They had a violinist, a lutist, and four singers they employed for the gathering held on a Thursday. Monteverdi writes in a letter about the gatherings, as he has some of his compositions performed there. In a recount of one gathering, there was a rich reading of poems by some academics, followed by music with selected voices, turbos, violins, and bass vials, who entertained the whole audience very joyfully. Vast amounts of music were composed for the Accademia Degli Animosi over the years, but none has survived. We do have descriptions of some events, such as the election of a cardinal, where the party was described as being lively, with lighting of fires, music for two choirs, drums, dances, and choreography of various kinds.

Back in the Amati house, Girolamo Amati and Laura's family was growing, which was nice, but actually not so great, it turns out, because it looked like the food shortages and famine were only getting worse as they had more and more mouths to feed. It was harder to buy basic provisions for the family. Prices for food were going up and up as supply was diminishing. The markets were emptying out of sellers simply because they had almost nothing to sell, and what they did have was costly. During this time, Girolamo Amati made a violin that today is played in the Australian Chamber Orchestra here in Sydney.

I speak to Ilya Isakovich about what it's like to play on this Amati Brothers violin.

My name is Ilya Isakovich and I play in the violin in the Australian Chamber Orchestra for nearly 19 years now. At the moment, I'm extremely lucky to be the custodian of this amazing brother's Amati violin. It's kind of a dream come true. I think for every musician, especially violinist, you sort of grow up and hear the legends. About Stradivari, Guarneri, Amati. Those three names mostly come up as the greatest violin makers of all time from Cremona. So, I never actually imagined that. I will be playing one of those three makers violin. I was born in Ukraine, and of course those instruments are incredibly expensive and difficult to obtain, but I always dreamed about it, and I, I was kind of imagining what it could be like playing one of those. Yeah, so it's very emotional.

And here you are.

Yes, here I am. Yes. Well, there is in my mind, there is such a thing as the Italian colour of sound It's kind of like a pedigree a noble timbre to the sound, which you hear the violin, you know, and you say, oh, this is Italian. Usually, I would associate it with kind of very deep, deep sound, and at the same time, very, So usually you play those instruments and even not so much under your ear, but if you are in a larger space, they project incredibly well on the whole. But this instrument the Amati Brothers, you kind of play and people say, wow, it just, It just speaks. I think there was some kind of secret those makers possessed that allowed them to make instruments that, work incredibly well in large spaces. I'm not even sure what it is. Maybe something with the geometry or something with the timber.

Yeah. And how does it how does it blend with the other instruments in the orchestra? Oh, we, it blends incredibly well. The interesting thing about the ACO is as lots of people are saying, we are essentially an orchestra of soloists. So it does not only have to blend with the others, but everyone has got his own personal voice, which really matters in, in the complex sound that we produce. There are only 17 of us, so everyone matters a lot. And we're extremely lucky. I don't know of any other orchestra in the world at the moment that has access to such an incredible array of instruments that we, so we got a Guarneri del Gesu and at the moment three Stradivarius, two Amatis, Guadagnini and also Joseph Guarneri.

So the, the best of the best. Da Salo.

Da Salo, exactly. Yeah, Vuillaume, you can tell, you can tell the whole history of the violin in this one orchestra.

Exactly, yeah. And it's quite incredible because It also makes such a substantial difference to, to the sound that the orchestra produces, that it makes us sound even more special.

You have incredible players and incredible instruments. Yes. You now have an incredible building. What else? We're looking, we're looking at the harbour bridge, out the window, the water. But yeah, do you, I know your other instrument is 17th century as well, but does it change anything playing on a, do you think playing on an instrument that has a history as rich as an Amati Brothers violin, for example?

Of course it does. Yes. This I think this violin is actually 16th century because it was made in 1590. Yes. So it's it's the second oldest instrument in the orchestra after Max's Gasparo Da Salo and it's quite incredible to know that some actually pretty famous people have played on it. I know there was a amateur violinist called Lady Cecil.

There's a Strad called the Cecil. Yes. Is that her as well, do you think?

It might be. I'm not 100 percent sure. There was also some a Dutch writer. Roon who also owned this instrument. So yes, you, you kind of, you played and you feel incredibly lucky to be kind of connected to all those people as well, lay their hands on this. It doesn't take much effort at all to make it speak, the instrument, you know, and I am hoping as I said, I'll play it for as long as, as possible.

Yeah, so in 1590, what's interesting is that there was a famine in Lombardy. Yes. In Cremona, and it was actually the worst famine that Italy ever had. It was very severe. And there was just torrential rain and it wiped out the crops and the farmers couldn't like several years in a row, so they just couldn't bounce back. And so it's interesting to think that. His wife, Nicola is not born yet, but like they've got other children and there's this.

It must have been quite a stressful situation.

There's no food and, and he's still. Making, you know, beautiful instruments.

Yeah, it's hard to imagine, actually, what it was like living in those times with having the, not having the basic things that we're used to so much now, like food and warms, electricity and, you know and still creating basically art you think of it's, it's kind of the same period as all the Italian Renaissance painters, you know, it's, for me, it's a piece of art. It's not just an instrument. to play and you think how much work goes to create such thing.

I mean, it's, it's not only art, I suppose, but it's all mathematical, it's thought out, it's geometry, it's proportions, it's, and, and an artwork at the same time, it's a whole, and they were also, at that time, kind of the violin as an instrument wasn't really very much kind of set in stone in terms of what it is, you know, and how it should look. So the dimensions, for example, and all the proportions kept changing all the time. And Andrea Amati, who was the father, is considered by many to be the kind of the father of the violin, as we know it. It’s actually a pretty different instrument to what Stradivari later produced and Guarneri changed it a lot as well.

So it was all kind of experimental at the time. And yet it works. And it works amazingly well. Yes, I think the, for example, this particular violin, the dimensions of it are quite small compared to, as I said, the more modern and larger models of Stradivari and Guarneri and then all the makers who tried to copy them.

It's even more incredible that it produces this kind of sound of that magnitude that it does. With a smaller body. Yeah.

Can we see it? Can I see it?

Yes, absolutely. I remember you brought it into the workshop a few months ago, didn't you? Yes, yes, yes. I, I had Antoine replace the bridge. Yes. How is it? It's beautiful, yes, and no issues since then.

Yeah, it's very delicate looking, isn't it? Yes, exactly. It's almost like ladylike. Yeah, and the scroll is very, like, fine and, very quiet, like, Pronounced archings, but it's still got that that's the typical Amati Brother’s scoop. Yeah. And it's kind of very high arching.

Yeah. It'll do the scoop and the, the bulge. And what's the, is there like a pin in the back here? That was, yeah, it looks like cause you know, they used to hang the violins in the shop. Ah, yes. And they would just drill a hole. Yes. Yeah. They would just drill a hole.

Do you know when that was, when they, like, at what period they did that?

I don't know. It's like, yeah, we know, we just drill a hole. Yeah, drill a hole, why not?

And it's also quite remarkable that you look at it and you think it was made in 1590. And it's in such amazing shape. Yeah. I mean, it's And the varnish is Varnish is, most of the varnish, original varnish is still there and no, no damage, no cracks, no.

You expect if you, yeah, so it's obviously been well looked after. Every owner has, exactly, every owner had the respect for the maker, which kind of leads to sort of a continuity of the idea that Amati was a good maker don't, like, don't, don't mess with it.

And here we leave the Amati brothers, each one going his own way. Their own way, but still staying in the same street nevertheless. And it is understandable from this point on, on the majority of instruments in the violin family are by and large attributed to Giolamo Amati, the younger brother. Antonio Amati, as Carlo Chiesa mentioned, appears to have veered towards the plucked stringed instruments as a future record of him as a lute maker appears.

Their standing as luxury instrument makers does not appear to have been affected as they continue to undertake orders creating beautiful instruments for wealthy patrons. But life has a way of being unpredictable and surprising, as the two brothers will soon find out as the next century approaches. So at this stage we are at the second generation of the Amatis, and Girolamo Amati is about to have a son, Niccolo Amati, who will do something quite extraordinarily different to his father and grandfather, and change the history of violin making forever.

So do stay with me for the next instalment of the Violin Chronicles. But for now, I'd like to thank my lovely guests on this episode, Ilya Izakovich, Benjamin Hebert, and Carlo Chiesa. If you would like to support the podcast, please head over to patreon. com forward slash the violin chronicles and do that.

It would be wonderful to have your support. And you will also have access to bonus episodes and the all you need to know podcast where we go through each maker and quickly detail their life and do a rundown of the characteristics in their instruments and how to recognize an instrument from each maker.

Do subscribe to the podcast or leave a review on Apple podcasts. And if you want to follow on Instagram, the handle At the Violin Chronicles. And what you're hearing right now is Timo-Veikko Valve play on a 1616 Amati Brothers cello. Until next time, goodbye.

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