The Stradivari Viola D’Amore

Posted on August 27, 2013 by DouglasR

Andrew Dipper DVA257 viola Andrew Dipper viola d’amore Andrew Dipper viola d’amore
d’amore front scroll back

In 1976 as part of my work translating Simone

Sacconi’s book, The “Secrets” of Stradivari into
English I was asked to review the holdings of
the Ala Ponzone collection of Stradivarian
material in Cremona. This collection consists of
the residue of forms and patterns that were once
part of the workshop materials of Antonio
Stradivari. Included in this material are a
number of forms and patterns for viola d’amore
type instruments. Some of these are
demonstrative of advances in the design of a
novel instrument based on the format of a viola
d’amore.
Giuseppe Tartini holding his viola d’amore
and bow

Antonio Stradivari’s new concept of a corner-

less viola d’amore was designed after 1700. The first existing paper patterns
for the first instrument are dated 1716 when the master was over sixty years
old. This flourishing of new designs is interesting since Tartini was active in
Northern Italy as solo violinist and director at St. Antonio in Padua (from
1721 through 1723). Tartini returned to Padua in 1726. Two years later he
founded a school of violin playing, which became known as the School of the
Nations. A portrait of him at his time exists in which he is shown playing a
fourteen stringed viola d’amore. (See illustration.) A second new model was
designed, probably by Antonio and Francesco Stradivari in 1727, and yet
another in January 1728. One has to wonder if the impetus of the new
designs came from the activity of Tartini and his search for new violin tones
and new bowing techniques, an activity for which the viola d’amore would
have been a perfect research tool.

This first dated instrument had a body length of 372 mm and was reminiscent
of earlier forms of instruments from the Brescian school. The necks of these
instruments, for which there are multiple patterns, were finished in a simple
volute that terminated in a shield-shaped finial. This shield volute applied to
bowed instruments is a particular Stradivarian concept and diverges from the
normal classic spiral volute of the violin. Some other instrument makers such
as Gaspar Bourbon from Brussels used this same design detail but its use was
restricted to pochettes, mandolins and soprano lutes. It can occasionally be
seen on instruments by the Milanese and Nuremberg makers and was copied
much later by the Viennese.

The late Stradivari violas d’amore are

Stradivari’s sons, viola d’amore
usually designated as twelve strings
models, six metal wire strings running
under the fingerboard and six plain gut
and over-spun gut strings running on the
fingerboard, whereas the earlier models
often only have ten peg holes designated
and may have been divided unequally
with only four sympathetic strings. The
tailpiece was attached, violin style, to a
tail button inserted in the end-block, and
the wire strings were probably attached
to the saddle area or perhaps to wire
hooks on the underside of the tailpiece.
If these wire hooks were used, the
attachment of the tailpiece was achieved
with a wire loop in order to keep the
tuning of the under-strings stable, which
it would not be with a tail-gut of natural gut. In rare circumstances, as with
the viola d’amore made by the sons of Stradivari in 1727[1], the tailpiece was
attached in the English manner by a wooden post which ran through a square
hole in its lower end.

Stradivari viola d’amore altered in the 18th century into violin form. The pegbox altered and corners added.

A notable characteristic of these Stradivari corner-less instruments is that

during construction, the ribs, which were usually 5cm high, were pinned to
the internal form at the waist position and the two little holes caused by the
pins were subsequently filled with a small disc of maple about 2 mm in
diameter. The reason for this pinning procedure was the lack of corner blocks,
which ordinarily hold the waist of the instrument to the internal form. The
pinning was usually done with a gut thread that was tightened by way of a
small block that held a hand tightened tapered peg. This filled pin hole at the
waist of the instrument can be seen in the two surviving instruments of this
type. One of these violas, in the collection of Charles Beare, is illustrated in
S. Sacconi’s book[2]. The other was once owned and played by Joshua Bell.
Both of these instruments originally had a rib height of 50 mm but this was
cut down in order to make them conform to violin family dimensions. The pin
in these cut down ribs is usually 2.5cm from the upper edge.
 Stradivari pegbox with center dividing wall (ex-Gibson viola d’amore)

The chamfers of the shield volute were darkened with ink in a manner similar
to Stradivari’s later violins, which must have given these instruments a
somewhat funereal look when they were new. This ink lining can be seen
perfectly in the head of a viola d’amore which is in the collection of the Paris
Conservatoire. This peg head has the unusual feature that the peg-box has a
dividing wall running down its center, either to enable the wire under-strings
to be kept separate from the gut playing strings, or to allow more pegs to be
placed in a smaller pattern of peg-box. This feature is sometimes found on the
instruments with sympathetic strings known as Baritone viols.
It is strange to think that Antonio Stradivari, who was responsible in part for
the design of the modern violin, should have designed other types of
instruments of which there are few traces left. It seems logical that his genius,
when applied to other instruments should have produced superb instruments
but we have only small scraps of paper to identify the instruments that were
in the design process or for which samples only had been produced.

The paper patterns that make up the accoutrements used in the construction of
the instrument encode various details about the construction of the
instrument. The significant patterns for the viola d’amore that I made were
two paper body outlines and several paper outlines of necks and scrolls. What
intrigued me about the design was that it was a forward looking concept that
seemed to come out of the early part of the nineteenth century instead of the
eighteenth. The corner-less design reminiscent of the instruments of Chanot
and the neck patterns with shield scrolls similar to Viennese work of the
1800s led me to think that these forms represented a truly novel departure
from the normal Stradivarian concept and were a specific attempt to create a
new market for an innovative form of instrument.

The first question I had to ask concerning these paper patterns was regarding
their authenticity. Were they actual material from the Stradivari shop, or were
they additions to the collection from later makers such as Bergonzi,
Guadagnini or Ceruti?

The answer to this is complicated and it does seem that Stradivari’s use of the
shield volute for bowed instruments was a design first, even if it was used
some years later by Guarneri del Gesu on his small pochette and by Bergonzi
on a viol. There is of course the possibility that the templates represent
instruments that were planned but never made. This idea though is not
justifiable since there are a number of wooden forms in Paris at the Cité de la
Musique that seem to be from the Stradivari workshop that show wear
consistent with them having been used multiple times for the construction of
instruments. There are also two extant instruments from the workshop of
Stradivari that correspond to the corner-less body outlines of these templates
and there is a neck of a viola d’amore in the Cité de la Musique (E.484) that
has some of the characteristics of the paper patterns including a form that is
unusually short for the number of pegs that it must carry. (See illustration.)
There is another instrument in the Yale University Hill house collection by
Bergonzi that also has a corner-less outline as does a viola d’amore by the
Cremonese maker Lorenzo Storione that is probably a copy of an original
Stradivari instrument.
 Stradivari mandolin scroll patterns with shield-shaped finials

The first stage of the process was to review the original templates in Cremona
and determine if the paper on them was from the 16 or 1700’s. Secondly to
look for compass point impressions, pin holes, inked indications, impressed
lines and other features. This done, it was determined that the patterns for the
viola d’amore’s came for a period after 1700. Furthermore, the distribution of
peg-holes on the neck and peg-box design seemed to indicate that the few
existing templates were from a more extensive series that had been dispersed
or discarded, since there were indications on them of changes such as varied
peg positions that indicated a progression of ideas over time.
 Stradivari viola d’amore geometry analyzed from the original drawing

Based on my own research I believe that when the Stradivari shop started the
design work for a new instrument they would commence with a calculation
based on the projected string length and tuning of the instrument. A certain
string length would require a certain body length and air volume and so
on. In turn they would design the construction so that the instrument’s
equipoise fell on a certain position. The calculation of this equipoise
determined the principal width dimensions of the instrument, which was
arrived at through a simple geometric scheme. For the viola d’amore, which
differed slightly in its construction from the violin, the inside length of the
sound box was divided into three parts. Then with a series of compass arcs an
equilateral triangle 1/3 of the body length per side was constructed in the
bridge area of the plan. A circle drawn relative to the area of this triangle
determined the width of the instrument at its waist and the exact placement of
the eyes of the ffs. We are very lucky in this respect that the Museo del
Violino (Cremona’s violin museum) still has the construction drawings for
the ff-hole placement of one of the viola d’amores. In the drawing, which has
my construction overlaid on it, there are a couple of different placements for
the eyes of the ffs, one drawn by Antonio for an earlier ten string model of
the instrument and another rendered by Francesco for a later twelve string
design. (See illustration.) In the later model the eyes of the ffs marked B
have been placed closer to the outline of the instrument in order to allow extra
room for the wider bridge. This practice of placing the ffs close to the outline
was common with Francesco’s work on violins, especially after 1727.
Francesco’s placement of the bridge for the instrument is also slightly higher
than his father’s, presumably to keep the combined tension of the strings
similar to the longer string length of the ‘A’ version of the viola d’amore. We
find a similar construction for the central bridge area in most of the Stradivari
instruments. A further interesting design change proposed was the
lengthening of the lower end of the instrument to increase the air volume and
therefore the tonal response of the added lower string.
 Stradivari viola d’amore original paper pattern

The paper patterns were part of the material for each design in the Stradivari
shop and they were usually kept together in paper envelopes that signified the
model, form MB, etc, or in rare cases also the client for whom the instrument
was destined.
 Francesco Stradivari viola d’amore bridge original paper pattern

For example, the original paper packets which held the forms (C. M. C. #
602-631) have, in a number of instances, the names of the institutions or
persons for whom the commissions were carried out. Some of these read:
VDG (viola da gamba), GDF 1687, P, T, S, B, FN, + , SL, CV, PG, P 1705
Marchese Carbonelli di Mantova[1] VDM. 12.1716 (viola d’amore) and
mandolino coristo. The envelope for the small Stradivari mandolino, contains
the inscription Per St. Stefano. St. Stefano is one of the parish churches of
Cremona.

Envelope for the sound holes

 Viola d’amore bridge from Andrew Dipper’s translation of Librem Segreti de Buttegha

In the case of the viola d’amore of the corner-less pattern the templates that
exist in Cremona include: (1) the body outline, with indications of the blocks,
ff hole eyes, and rib height; (2) the neck with indications of peg placement
peg-box width and neck width; (3) a model of the bridge indicating the bridge
height and height of the under-stings and bridge width; (4) a small shield
indicating the shape of the scroll finial. I could not get access to the collection
to search for the ff hole patterns but I was able to use copies of the patterns
that were recorded by me in 1977, and which had enough information to
design an appropriate ff hole model. I received a great deal of help from Sig.
Andrea Mosconi who gave me copies of the 1/1 photographs of the relevant
paper patterns.

I started building the instrument in 2001, but because of the restoration

demands of the workshop it was not finished until 2008. The wood for the
instrument came from three sources. For the belly I chose a very old piece of
Baltic spruce that came from England. It was once part of a cupboard shelf in
an eighteenth century house. I chose it because of its age and for its perfect
grain. The bird’s-eye maple for the back and ribs came from a fifty year old
board from the USA, donated by the composer Carol Barnett, whose father
had collected it many years ago. The neck was carved in apple wood because
it is strong enough to take the pressure of the peg arrangement in the three
wall peg box of the viola d’amore without cracking between the closely
spaced holes of the central wall. The first step in the whole process was
making the mould and working out the exact procedure that the Stradivari
workshop had used for the assembly of these instruments. To aid in the
making process I remade a tool called a platen, which is an apparatus separate
but integral to the mould. This is used to both facilitate the construction of the
instrument and aid the correct inclination of the neck and its alignment. With
a corner-less form the waist of the instrument has to be pulled tight to the
mould with the aid of a gut string that passes through a hole in the center of
each rib face. The viola d’amore ribs were constructed on the mould and then
placed on the platen once the neck was nailed in place, as was the practice in
the 1700’s. Once the neck was aligned the back was glued in place and fixed
there with the aid of two small fruitwood pins. In this system once the back is
glued in place it fixes everything rigid according to plan. Previous to the back
being glued in place the sound bars were attached to it together with the post
plate. Since the viola was made in the USA I chose a barring scheme used by
Joachim Tielke. This scheme uses an oval spruce post plate whose grain is in
line with the grain of the back of the instrument. It has stiffening tabs that
radiate out from it making it more stable in the North American climate than
the transverse design usually used by viol makers. This ordinary form post
plate tends to block the summer and winter movement of the back, which
leads to instability, distortion and cracking.
 Andrew Dipper Viola D’Amore back

The construction was fairly easy and the only problem was deciding on the
plate thicknesses and their graduations. In the end I chose the early Stradivari
scheme where the center of the belly has a marginally thicker strip running
the uninterrupted length of the belly between the ff holes. The fingerboard
was made from ebony veneered maple and the tailpiece from ebony veneered
apple wood.

I also decided at this point since the neck was wide enough for six strings that
I would reassign the strings so that six playing strings would run over the
fingerboard and four sympathetic would run under the fingerboard. Finally I
analyzed the bridge model that was part of the original set of Stradivari
papers and realized that it too was designed using a proportional scheme that
uses the intersection of a nine division base line with a seven division vertical
line. (See illustration.) I hand-turned the pegs, using an original Italian model
in rosewood with bone rings and pips.

The instrument was displayed in Cremona in 2008 for the exhibition

“E furono liutai in Cremona. Dal Rinascimento al Romanticismo. It was
enthusiastically received by the Cremonese makers who were fascinated by
the possibilities inherent in the design.

The sound of the instrument was very successful. Its playing characteristics
are a full, rich, reedy tone, with the underlying Stradivari sizzle that makes
his instruments so characteristic.

Andrew Dipper