Yehudi Menuhin's Foreword:
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The Art of Violin Making |
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Foreword to The Art of Violin Making by Yehudi Menuhin |
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" This very comprehensive treatise on an art cherished as much by the professional as by the amateur, will be gratefully acclaimed by both. Exhaustive in its detailed exposition of the actual process of construction (and beautifully illustrated), conceived, as it is, by two disciples of a distinguished English achievement - The Newark School of Violin Making - it carries the inspiration and authority of that commitment to perfection, which is the supreme beauty of sound, aspect and touch of a violin. I believe that the British inborn love for wood, the superlative excellence of its craftsmen and great artists in the creation of some of the world's most beautiful furniture, together with the cultivation of the human voice in song and choir and with that exquisite sense of texture in the caressing and dramatic painting of nature as of people, bringing together the visually aesthetic, the living vibrations of sound, and the "feel" of something we love, are all three responsible for the great number of amateur makers, often of excellent quality, and the establishment of the Newark School. Because of the inbuilt, inescapable demands of an object which must satisfy these three essential elements, the art of violin making had always been served by dedicated human beings who have placed their work ahead of their pocket. Of course, the market place today is a favourable one, for almost no violinists can afford the ever-rising prices of the past masters of this European art - in Italy especially, but also, importantly, in England,in France, in Spain, inBohemia, and in Germany. The good violin maker of today can finally actually make a living but always, and forever, remains true to himself (now also herself). The "luthier" (violin maker) remains an artist. We should also remember that while the skill of violin making became a commanding art form, the violin remained an instrument of the people in regions as removed from each other as Russia, the Ukraine, Bohemia, Scotland, Norway, and the blue Mountains of America. A remarkable museum in Moscow is witness to this folk-art. The exhibits reveal a rough-hewn assembly of shapes and sizes as odd and diverse as possible, but all are violins (fiddles) shaped to allow the use of a bow over four strings, and are playable at outdoor village and castle festivities in every kind of inclement weather and every degree of temperature. (Chagall has immortalized these Klesmer.) The violin has accompanied dancing from the armadillo-backed instruments of tribes in Senegal to the eighteenth-century "pochette" violins of European dancing-masters. (It seems to me that we must have evolved at least in one way since 1769, when Lord Chesterfield described the world of music thus: "fiddlers, pipers and id ganus omne, most unedifying and unbecoming company for a man of fashion".) The violin is truly the most immediate instrument of human motion, as of human emotion. As a perfect instrument it cannot be otherwise. I know that, aided by this book, it will continue to fulfil the demands of composers, of interpreters, of our improvisers, and of our publics in the same way as it has served the dances and the stylized dances of Bach's day, and the waltzes of Strauss's Vienna, and our great classical heritage, as it still serves the heartfelt dictates of gypsy and Jew." Yehudi Menuhin (London 1999)
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