It exist between 600 and 700 copies, scattered across the planet, held by foundations and museums, but also by a handful of privileged violinists. Stradivariuses are more than just musical instruments. Today they have the rank of a treasure… Their price bears witness to this! Year after year, auctions continue to soar for these legendary violins.
In a public sale organized in London in 2011, the instrument of “Lady Blunt”, the granddaughter of the poet Lord Byron, had tu 10 million pounds sterling (the equivalent, then, of 16 million dollars). Last June, in New York, another Stradivarius that belonged to the virtuoso Toscha Seidel, violin teacher of Albert Einstein, best known to the general public for having interpreted the soundtrack of the Wizard of Oztopped $15.3 million.
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In a beautiful book*, published by Editions de la Philharmonie de Paris, Jean-Philippe Échard, curator at the Music Museum, tells us the story of these legendary instruments which take their name from a family of luthiers from Cremona. A dynasty founded by Antonio Stradivari, a violin maker born around 1644 in this city which was then part of the Duchy of Milan. “Cremona is since the XVIe century a center renowned throughout Europe for the quality of the bowed and plucked string instruments produced there”, explains the author.
matter of prestige
“Stradivarius” (as Antonio likes to call himself) develops a prestigious workshop on site. “If the quality of his work is remarkable, it is because he benefits from the technological advances of four generations of craftsmen before him”, emits Jean-Philippe Échard. The “pioneer”, Andrea Amati (1505-1577), had forged the main characteristics of the Cremona violins. His grandson, Niccolò Amati (1596-1684), was also the master of both Antonio Stradivari and Andrea Guarneri, another exceptional luthier.
READ ALSOHow Ami Flammer celebrates the 300e birthday of his violinThe family workshop that Antonio founded in 1684, and where his sons Giacomo, Omobono and Giovanni worked, produced, in addition to a thousand violins, cellos (of which about fifty have come down to us), violas (a dozen still exist), guitars (three are known) mandolins and even harps (the Naples museum keeps the only example to have survived the ages).
From 1690, the reputation of the “strad” was so flattering that orders for instruments poured in from all over Europe. The reasons for this success are manifold. Antonio Stradivari took care of the comfort of his customers by lengthening the cases of the violins but also their handles. And the quality of the sides cut, the preciousness of the decoration of the soundboards as well as the extreme sophistication of the varnishes which gives them a beautiful red pigmentation… are unanimous.
“Powerful” Violins
From 1700, the stradivarius gained in power thanks to a slight modification of their vault. These improvements satisfy the musicians who have to perform in increasingly large concert halls. “One of the fears you can have when you’re a violinist is whether you’re projecting enough power. Since I have been playing on Château Pape-Clément (a Stradivarius acquired by Bernard Magrez in the early 2000s), this question no longer arises. I know that the sound comes through effortlessly,” smiles violinist Nicolas Dautricourt. “His” instrument dates from 1713. It is one of the masterpieces produced by the lutherie of Cremona.
Indeed, it was after 1709 that Antonio and his sons left their finest violins. Such as the Amédée Soil (yesterday owned by Yehudi Menuhin, today in the hands of violinist Itzhak Perlman) or the Dauphin (acquired by the Nippon Music Foundation and entrusted to the soloist Akiko Suwanai). During this period, the greatest European families solicited the Cremonese workshop: the Duke of Savoy, the Duke of Modena, the Medici family, the King of Sardinia, not to mention dozens of musicians, foremost among whom was Antonio Vivaldi.
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When we approach the question of the alleged acoustic superiority of these violins, Jean-Philippe Échard responds with caution. “It is certainly due to the quality of the materials used in the manufacture of these instruments and to the skill of the luthiers working with the Stradivari, but also and perhaps even more to historiographical reasons. This reputation was largely forged during the 19the century by the artists who performed them. They are the ones who made the Stradivarius name synonymous with excellence. »
A fabricated reputation?
Several studies conducted between 2011 and 2017 seem to prove him right. They mobilized several hundred people in various places (apartment, recording studio, auditorium and concert hall). All seem to demonstrate that listeners (even enlightened) are not able to differentiate the sound of a Stradivarius from that of a modern instrument. In the majority of cases, the sound of recent violins played blind (listeners and concert performers were plunged into semi-darkness, the instrumentalists even wearing welder’s goggles over their eyes) was preferred to that of Antonio Stradivari’s instruments.
“These studies do not matter, evacuates Nicolas Dautricourt. The part of dreams that the Stradivarius arouse remains immense. The phantasmagoria that this name deploys like the human adventure that binds the owner of this instrument and the one who plays it are inseparable from the beauty of these objects”, continues the musician, who has just recorded with his own a disc** bringing together compositions by George Enesco, Jules Massenet, Bela Bartok, Eugène Ysaÿe, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel but also by George Ioan Pais.
An indisputable aura
For Claudia Fritz, researcher in musical acoustics at the CNRS (attached to the University of Paris-6), at the origin of several studies on the Stradivarius, the prestige of these instruments is to be sought elsewhere: mainly in the representation that one s ‘in fact. “Auditory perception does not only depend on what you hear, but also on what you expect. Our knowledge and previous experiences affect how we listen. This is a phenomenon that has been widely studied in the psychology of perception. Something is happening at the neural level that leads to a real modification of what we hear, without this modification being based on an acoustic reality,” she explains.
By trying to understand the factors that have contributed to creating the aura that has surrounded the Stradivarius for three centuries, Jean-Philippe Échard offers us in any case a journey through magical time: from the violin “tenor” of Andrea Amati from 1568 , which appears as the great ancestor of these instruments, at Monnot, a “strad” bequeathed to the Paris Conservatory in 1897 by the widow of a music-loving soldier (the famous Commander Monnot, whose name it bears) and which mysteriously disappeared ! In doing so, he creates a group portrait that tells us a lot about the history of these exceptional violins.
*Stradivarius and the lutherie of Cremonaby Jean-Philippe Échard, Editions de la Philharmonie, 251 pages, €39.**The Enesco Projectby Nicolas Dautricourt, with the Capriccio quartet (Cécile Agator, Fermin Ciriaco, Flore-Anne Brosseau and Samuel Étienne), Maya Koch, David Gaillard and Benedict Klöckner, Label Orchid Classics, €14.90.