7:24pm May 11, 2012

Why some people love our antique factory violins.

I’ve noticed a lot of people with violins roughly like mine (late 19th/early 20th century factory violins) being ridiculed by Serious Violinists for liking the way our violins sound. Or worse, for saying that we are so attached to them that we would prefer them over any other. The idea is that we’ve never heard a really good violin or we wouldn’t say that.

But to me it says something very important that over and over I see people saying they’re very attached to these kinds of violins, so frequently that I can spot a trend here at all. And I’m not talking about people who think they’ve found a long-lost Strad, or that being a Strad copy means anything about quality. (Although without any particular knowledge of this stuff, can you blame people for thinking that?) I’m talking about people who genuinely love their antique factory violins.

Personally I’ve heard a large range of violins. Including some truly amazing ones. As an autistic person, my ability to pick up sensory information, including sound, is much more detailed than most people. I love the amount of variety that exists in violin sounds. It’s the sort of thing where no two are alike. I would love to be able to try out different ones.

But if I had to only own one violin, it would be the one I have. Yes, in many ways it’s humble and unassuming. No, that’s not a bad thing. It also has its own kind of character and depth. Every violin has a personality. I am as much in love with this one’s personality as anything else about it. I like the sound of it because every single little piece of tone I hear points back to who it is. So does the pattern of tones put together. No other violin, no matter how renowned, could do that, because no other violin is this one. Those other violins are wonderful. There’s nothing wrong with them. But they have their own people to find.

I’m told by other musicians (who are less biased than me), that this violin actually has a fairly good sound to it. Certainly better than anything I’ll ever be able to afford. So it’s not just me. But for me it doesn’t stop at sound. It’s depth. It’s character. It’s personality. It’s history. It’s a bond between us that says it loves me back as much as I love it. That it’s willing to enter into an intimate, symbiotic relationship with me to try to express the best in both of us through sound.

Laugh all you want. I’ll just decide you’re an asshole, or a snob, or both.

I wonder about the people who made it. You hear about the history of Guarneri, Stradiveri, and other great violin makers. But you don’t hear so much about the workers who made violins in factories. Some of this is obviously because of the immense skill of the great violin makers. But some of it is because throughout a lot of Western history people have focused more on big names than regular people. Historians themselves often want to know about ordinary people, but they often have to piece it together because of who gets considered more important. I have searched for days and while I have found plenty of mention of violin factories, I’ve found only a sentence or two that could even vaguely count as being about late 19th or early 20th century violin factory workers themselves. All I know is that the instruments they made had a huge variation in quality level. I’d like to know more about the people, though. Not just what they did, but who they were.

I also wonder about the other people who played it. The first one was a twelve-year-old boy in Santa Cruz. Then later he gave it to his brother. Who gave it to the guy who fixed it up again. Who gave it to my grandfather. Presumably because he collected, built, repaired, and played a wide range of instruments.

I can’t describe how very lucky I feel to have shared all but six years of my life with this violin. That this whole sequence of events happened, leading up to such a beautiful relationship with an instrument. It may not ever be fancy enough for some people, but neither am I, and neither is anyone I have close relationships with. It’s perfect the way it is.

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