Myth Guarneri

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myth of Guarneri

The Chicago company Bein & Fushi, one of the most reputable companies that sell musical instruments, auctioned Guarneri violin, made in 1741. The tool is remarkable not only a record price, but its history: this violin played by the great artists of XX century Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. These auctions occur infrequently and always attracts public attention, which the tool itself is usually unjustly deprived. After all, people who apply to the classics, above all choose what to listen, sometimes - in whose performance, but very rarely pay attention to what instrument played by the musician.
This violin, named after the famous Belgian violinist and composer Henri Vieuxtemps XIX century, was made Kremonsky master for three years before his death. Before Vieuxtemps, who played her in the last 11 years of life, a violin owned by a French master Jean-Baptiste Viyom, who bought it from a certain Dr. Bentsigera from Switzerland in 1858. After the Vieuxtemps violin belonged to the Belgian Eugène Ysaÿe, then, already in the XX century, to play it the Englishman Philip Newman. Tools bought for his cousin, a businessman and founder of one of the colleges of Oxford Isaac Wolfson. After the death of Newman in 1966, the violin became a philanthropist and music lover Ian Stutsker to which it belongs so far.

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This is one story, actually. In fact, the names of those who could not only extract the aesthetic pleasure from the possession of an instrument, but also to share it, playing this violin, known far better than those listed above. As it happens, most of the owners themselves on her violin did not play and in general were not musicians, but lent them tools. So at the Menuhin, Perlman, Zukerman, Kreisler and many others - famous or not - soloists an opportunity to use the "Vieuxtemps" as a concert instrument.

Price is the violin Guarneri easily surprised, because this is the stereotype, for any educated person standard violin - an instrument of Antonio Stradivari. It's stupid to argue with the fact that this artist was one of the best artisans of Cremona, but his best violin experts compare with vanilla ice cream, while the Guarneri del Gesu instruments in the culinary definitions comes closest to a good dark chocolate. And life Guarneri, who died at 46 years was half the length of life of Stradivari, and the world remained only about 140 of his violins - a few times smaller than the tool of his more famous rival.

Dessert compare quite accurately reflects the difference between these two violins famous Italians. If Stradivari - is primarily a lively, easy, articulate and able to make the slightest change in tone sound, the Guarneri instruments sound, in comparison, deeper and heavier. Maybe that's why one of the Guarneri violins (perhaps the most famous) Il Cannone Guarnerius was a favorite tool of Niccolo Paganini, who lived far from rosy life, until his death. Paganini, who, incidentally, owned and several Stradivarius violins, also played an important role in popularizing the name Guarneri, who after his death was virtually forgotten.

In one of his letters by Yehudi Menuhin confessed that he prefers "Vieuxtemps" in which he managed to play his own violin Stradivari in 1714. In addition, the maestro owned by another tool Guarneri - Violin "Lord Wilton" in 1742. Preference artist of such magnitude as Menuhin - is no small evidence of the true price of a violin, expressed not in monetary units. Because any outstanding tool, as well as an outstanding piece of music, in the hands of the artist rather than a means of transformative signs in the sounds, how much, on the contrary, the music itself, for which the performer is only a means. And the nature of the tool often depends on how it will execution.

Of course, the scientific community has never had much confidence in what can not be explained, including the presence of metasoderzhaniya several glued together pieces of wood and stretched over them lived. Stradivari, Guarneri, Viyom, da Salo, tools XX century, XXI century - all the same, if the problem is approached from a scientific point of view. Since the violin repertoire was rich enough to fiddle could be one of the main solo instruments, do not stop sophisticated tests designed to determine whether there is between the tools of some distinction. Besides these tests, which involve musicologists, experts and virtuosos, as a rule, end the fact that even the best experts confused, where Stradivari, Guarneri where, and where just a good factory violin.

To justify the uniqueness of a particular instrument, scientists are trying to explain the sound quality by any objective argument. The sound of old violins, for example, ascribed to a very high density of wood, from which they were made. There are also theories that the special sound of violins XVII - XVIII centuries, attaches special adhesive composition, the trees from a particular geographic region, artful paint and so on. To ascribe the dignity tool exceptional craftsmanship of its creator, scientists prefer the very last step.

Over the years, become available and more new tools to prove the scientific assumptions: X-ray, dendrochronology, biochemical analysis, laser vibrometer, and more. However, even though scientists still right and good violin a good violin is really no discord, there is another aspect, the aesthetic. Why, after all, Paganini played it on the violin Guarneri.

Any excellent tool produced by any master or even the factory has a history of creation, for it is always worth a reputation, and thus the character of a person or company. Moreover, many well-known manufacturers began to make musical instruments when they have not yet acquired a modern look, and formed their own hands. But why the piano Steinway & Sons pianos and Bluthner will differ from each other, as will differ, for example, guitar Greg Smollmena from Jose Ramirez guitars.

Of course, if you want easy to call this myth for another, non-scientific, reasons: from the establishment of such differences is directly dependent income of the owner of a rare instrument. (As rightly observed that there would be an accuser of the world famous classical music, Norman Lebrecht.) As a human being, however, it means the negation of the differences of tools with different character, created by people with different characters. Play for which to be too dissimilar people.

Therefore, it will be very sorry if "Vieuxtemps" Guarneri, at risk of becoming the most expensive musical instrument in the world, do not buy any too fond of the music patron, and a Japanese museum. And for visitors to the museum the value of this violin will be reduced to the audio in the headphones, once paid for her $ 18 million, and two paragraphs of text on the label describing the exhibit.

Alex Kadanerhttp://www.lenta.ru/articles/2010/07/07/instrument/

P.S. Hungarian violinist Kristof Barati plays the violin, Vieuxtemps "ballad" Forest King "by Franz Schubert, arranged for violin and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst: