Join me as I delve into the world of Gasparo Da Salo once again and discover what guns, Monetverdi and a war in France have to do with his business.
I speak to Violin maker and expert John Dilworth, fashion historian Emily Brayshaw about the influence clothes and style on players of Violins, Violas and cellos and finally Fillipo Fasser a contemporary violin maker in Brescia, explains the importance of the master Luthiers of his city.
Music you have heard in this episode is by
Bach Violin partita No 2, Telemann Sonata in D maj for viola da gamba – Daniel Yeadon, Unfamiliar faces – All good folks, Budapest – Christian Larssen, Bloom by Roo Walker, Brandenburg Concerto No 4 – Kevin Macleod, Frost waltz- Kevin Macleod, Getting to the bottom of it – Fernweh Goldfish
Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I will attempt to bring to life the stories surrounding the famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting, violin makers of history. My name is Linda Lespets. I am a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now.
Welcome back for part two of the life and times of Gasparo de Salo, instrument maker, musician, and man on his way up. In episode one, we looked at what it would have been like to live in Renaissance Brescia in the 1500s. The destruction and subsequent rebuilding of the city after its sacking in 1512.
This led to a flurry of activity amongst artisans and artists. And the role that this played in the rebirthing of the city of Brescia. In this episode, we will look more in depth at instrument making in the city, and how Gasparo Da Salo started to make a name for himself.
The 1560s heralded in the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean. But closer to home, and an event that is more important to the history of the violin, but that I will only come to in a future episode, the then 10-year-old Charles IX of France becomes king after his brother Francis dies of an ear infection!
Not to worry. Catherine de Medici, Charles's mother, is more than happy to act as regent for her son. But what is important to note here is that an Italian born queen, with her love of the arts and music, is wielding her power in the trend setting capital of Paris. But back in Italy, as Gasparro Da Salo grew up, he became an organ builder's apprentice. And then, in his early twenties, disaster struck the family. When his father Francesco died, the decision was made, they would move to Brescia. If Gasparo Da Salo was to become successful in both his musical career and instrument making, Violin making and lutherie, Brescia was the place to be. But how important was Brescia in the role of instrument production at this time?
John Gagne. I'm John Gagne, I'm a senior lecturer in history at the University of Sydney and I work mostly on European history from the 13th to the 18th centuries.
There's a guy named Ugo Ravasio, who wrote a lot of books about Brescian violin making in the 1990s. And he claims in one of his like seminal articles that the word violino first appears in Brescian documents on the 17th of April, 1530.
There are other words before then for sort of other instruments like viola da braccio or lira da braccio, but the actual word like violino is apparently a 1530, you know, invention and he also tells us that the first document to record a maker of violini is the 11th of December, 1558.
Yeah, exactly. It's kind of interesting. And this is the beauty of experts. I mean, this shows us that there's like, I mean, that's, it's more about language, I suppose, because as I, just said, like in the 15th century, there are people in Brescia making instruments of all kinds, but the word violino and the actual identity of the maker of violini seems to be like 1530s to 1560, basically is when they're like, agglomerating as a self-named kind of group of people.
That's what Ugo Ravasio claims, that basically the word violino, yeah, is, is actually Brescian, of Brescian origin.
The period in which Gasparo Da Salo moved from Salo to Brescia to set up his workshop coincided with the end of the Italian wars. These were the series of conflicts we spoke about in the first episode where the city of Brescia was violently sacked by the French army. But now in this time of peace, trade was able to flourish.
The feelings the Brescians had towards the French a few years earlier were quite strong. One inhabitant of the city described the French as “The enemies of God and of humanity. Bloodsuckers and people without laws. Of faith not worthy to be called Christian”. But now these bloodsucking heathens were paying a good price for instruments coming from Italy.
It was a rare moment of relative peace in this part of the world. So commerce prevailed.
Actually, there's a good story that you probably know that relates to Galileo, where Galileo, the scientist, was because he came from a musical family, obviously, his father was a theorist and a composer. And he asked a friend whether he should buy a violin from Cremona or Brescia and the friend asked Monteverdi, who at that point was like Maistro di Capella at St. Mark's in Venice. And Monteverdi supposedly replied “Brescian violins, you can get anywhere. But the ones that are incomparably beautiful are from Cremona.” The answer he received when inquiring about purchasing a violin for his nephew Alberto, was, “I have conferred with the concert master of Saint Marks who told me they're easy found in Brescia but it's in Cremona that the best ones are made. I ordered one through Signor Monteverdi, whose nephew is in Cremona. In the end, he acquired a Cremonese violin, one that would be guaranteed to be singularly successful”, that ended up costing 15 ducats, handling and shipping not included.
The key here is that Monteverdi was from Cremona, so there's a bit of, probably, local pride involved in that too.
But, you know, even if, if Ugo Ravasio is not right, I mean, it gives us a kind of, like window of time, at least in the Brescian documents, where the word and the sort of identity come into shape. It gives us a sort of timeline that, you know, 1530s. 1560s, and then this kind of efflorescence between 1660s, when the Brescian community is really becoming internationally known for producing great, great instruments.
Experts have found in surveys of lutei, or luthiers, or violin makers from 1550 to 1600, the number working in most of the Italian cities, which gives us a sense of like where the hubs of making was. And from 1550 to 1600, there were 26 violin makers in Venice, 21 in Brescia, 17 in Ferrara, 11 in Rome, 10 in Bologna, 10 in Padua and down the list and down the list. So it gives you a sense Venice, Brescia, I mean that that what hour less than an hour ride between Venice and Brescia shows you that I mean, and interestingly Cremona is not on that list, right? Cremona seems to grow a little bit after 1600 in terms of the number of violin makers.
The comparison between Brescia and Cremona keeps coming up in the story of Gasparo da Salo because the city of Cremona, which is 40 kilometers from Brescia, is the other great hub of violin making in Italy. But you will have to wait until the next series to hear about that.
Brescian instruments were extremely popular and sought after in the Renaissance period. In 1500, there were 14 instrument makers registered in the city, as time went on, that number kept growing. Well, after the sacking of the city a generation earlier. Musicians and instrument makers had bounced back and by the time Gasparo da Salo moved with his family, the city was once again a bustling centre of trade and craftsmanship.
Walking down the colourful streets one could admire the many palaces in the Venetian style being constructed. The boulevards aligned with bright picturesque frescoes adorning the walls, and many art loving Brescians would have the exterior of their houses painted by local artists in vibrant colours. Looking out past the city walls were fertile lands and rolling hills making up the Lombard plain. Brescia was once again famous for its wool, silks and arms manufacture.
There's an instrument maker in Brescia called Giovanni Giacomo della Corona, and he was a lute maker in around, around 1500 but he also sold anvils and meat. Yep. And he sold land, if you're looking to buy a place. And also he was selling off a stock of weapons. Okay, so a bit of everything.
Dr. Emily Brayshaw is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney School of Design.
Because by the time Gasparo De Salo's working in Brescia, that's like almost sort of 50 years later and a lot happens and a lot shifts you know, we've had that big sack of the city, you know, which I think you talk about earlier on. And of course, that's going to have like a huge impact on, you know, who walks where. So, by the time Gasparo Da Salo moves, Brescia's kind of starting to get itself back on its feet and reestablish its, its industry as well. Particularly as what's been happening it was known for wool as well, like very fine wool. But of course, what's starting to happen is Venice is starting to tax the living daylights out of it.
By the end of the 16th century, beginning of the 17th century, the merchants started to buy their wool from elsewhere because the quality had dipped because Venice is starting to tax it. And they're also starting to tax other industries as well really, really heavily. Also, you get a plague in Brescia between 1575 and 1577, like this two-year plague, and it took the lives of about 10, 000 people.
Things like these extreme events also had like a really interesting impact on the clothing of Brescia because what's happening with clothing at the time and what these guys are wearing is, there are all kinds of exchanges. So the rich, of course, are just mind bogglingly wealthy and you know, can afford to just get all the very finest made. But because it's so expensive, they're also quite thrifty. So there's a lot of a sale in second hand clothes. A lot of clothes are reused. The wealthy, if they were kind of a bit hard up for cash, they'd have private buyers coming to their houses to buy garments, to buy accessories. shoes, gloves, furs, you know, these things. But of course, and you know, you also have garments being made, remade, like it's the ultimate economy because clothing is so labor intensive to make and so expensive. But then also with events like plagues and a lot of people dying and moving, things like that, there's a lot of stuff left over. So that's also going to shape what people are wearing, the access that they have to clothes and to fabrics.
That's really interesting because Gasparo da Salo, so when Gasparo's in his, he's around in his thirties, he, his sister and brother-in-law die in the plague, and he has his three nephews living with him. He also has, ends up having about seven children, so lots of people in the house. And also he has a niece, a niece and a nephew from another sibling whose parents die in the plague and that, and the nephew they, find him a trade as a glove maker and perfumer.
Ah, that is interesting too. So, you know, as, as part of the, the plague as well, it is entirely possible that he inherited a lot of their textiles too and their clothing, so as to be able to again repurpose, refashion, remake, to be able to clothe this huge family that he's got. But of course, what also happens during plagues is that, you know, again, in Brescia, 10, 000 people dying, these cities weren't that big, and suddenly a lot of opportunities open up to move because, you know, people die. So, you know, you've got opportunities to move into these trades, and so people can perhaps move up socially, people can get opportunities, you know, maybe the apprenticeship had been promised to Giovanni blogs and Giovanni blogs Children have all died. So here's the opening for someone else.
All your competition's dead. You can just go on. Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly what happened. There's also access to property and interestingly to gloves and perfumes, dare I say, often worked hand in hand because a lot of the time too, leathers would be scented. To a delicately perfumed for sale to yeah, I heard it's because they stunk they do so part of the tanning process of course was to use urine and It's disgusting, but by the time, you know, it gets to your fine kid glove The urine's not no longer there, but it still smells Ow,
and I saw that at that point time, a recipe for making your hair like golden and beautiful involve urine?
Oh yeah, yeah. They're chucking that in everywhere. Everything, mate. Everything. Well you know. Add a bit of urine to that?
It’s acidic as well. You know, and it's, it's cheap raw material, you know.
There was an Australian violin maker who had this theory that the wood like, seeped in urine was superior for violin making, and so he would come over and pee in a bathtub in his backyard and he'd have this wood and then when he died his stock of wood was bought by another workshop and a friend of mine worked there and every time someone had to cut a piece of this wood someone would yell out I’m cutting the piss wood and then all leave the room because she just said it reeked it just It was in the wood.
Yeah, and it, does, it really absorbs. And so, you know, particularly these big tanneries, which is, you know, let's just say they weren't particularly hygienic. Yeah. And then also he's so that his nephew became a glove maker perfumer, his niece married a shoemaker, and they seem to be quite closely in cahoots with shoemakers.
And there's a lot of violin makers whose parents or siblings are shoemakers.
Another, I mean, the other thing that's interesting that also relates to this. Period around 1530 is that's also when the Beretta firm is founded, which is still in operation, which is producer of handguns. Brescia of course is still today an industrial city. In fact, I mean, my personal story is that I was one Sunday when I was a student, I was trying to go to Verona and I took the wrong train and the conductor said to me, you've got the wrong ticket. You could go to Brescia, but you don't want to go to Brescia because it's an ugly industrial city. I went. And yes, I mean, it's industrial but that's the kind of amazing thing about the city is that it has this 500-year-old history of industry, basically ironworks and like, you know, sort of woodworks and that kind of thing, and they've got this beautiful sort of Roman culture that's still totally on view.
So what's interesting, I suppose, going back to my original point, is that, In the 1530s you get this kind of identity of the violin maker and you also get this, like, firm that's still in operation that's making handguns. So sort of violins and guns, that's what's coming out of Brescia for the rest of the 16th century basically, into the 17th century.
If you were a Brescian, would you have a very close link to Venice more so than any interaction you would have with Cremona? Because Cremona is 40 kilometers south of Brescia and Venice is 180 kilometers to the east of Brescia. Yeah. You know, that's a really good point. I would say politically that the distance is less important because the rectors of the city, basically the people who run the city, as a kind of dependency of Venice, are Venetian. So it's a, it's in a way, it's kind of like a Venetian colony city so your political traffic is coming and going that longer distance to Venice. By comparison, Cremona belongs to the Duchy of Milan. So they're under a different sort of, you know regime. But yeah, I mean, obviously, that, there are no borders. There's no border patrol. It's very easy to travel between the two cities.
Could you go and sell an instrument without having to pay any tax or duty?
No, probably not, because, I mean, that's where the borders do exist, is that you've got each, sort of, duchy, the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Milan had protections against untaxed sales and that kind of thing, so you would probably have to pay some kind of duty if you wanted to.
So it is, I mean, in a way, a kind of an international border that you'd have to cross for sales between those two, two cities as close as they were.
So, Brescian violin makers would, it would be easier for them to go to Venice to sell or people to buy and trade between Venice and them. I mean, you know, obviously there are ways of getting around.
I don't know anything about the black market and instruments. But usually, I mean, I think there would be obstacles that would make it challenging to do massive you know, trade and get around the taxation. There may have been, you know, agreements to make the trade functional and easy. But, you know, from what I know from documents in the 16th century, there's a lot of complaining, obviously on the part of merchants of all wares about the difficulties they have selling across borders. So it wouldn't. Shocked me if there were more, if there were equal difficulties with, you know, instruments.
Violin smuggling. Exactly. I'm sure it happened.
These taxation and border policies would have directly affected Gasparo Da Salo’s business. And it just goes to show that artisans of the day had to be both skilful in their trade and business savvy to make their enterprise a success. Juggling border administrations, currency exchanges, and language communication between different provinces was not given to everyone. It kept you on your toes, and still does today.
Far from the cliche of the struggling artist, Gasparo Da Salo thrived in the music loving Renaissance Brescia. He is cited as being a very talented violone player, so the violone at this time was a double bass sized instrument, not a violin. It's confusing, I know. Gasparo Da Salo immediately rented a house and set up a workshop in the Quadro seconda San Giovanni.
John Dilworth talking about instruments made in Brescia.
I don't know why there wasn't, there doesn't seem to have been a demand for double bases in Cremona, but there clearly was in Brescia and that's another thing we know that Gasparo Da Salo himself did play the double base. And there's records of him that he played at a wedding. But the other thing is hes strict about it, it, they weren't actually double bases. They were violone there. There was definitely a different tradition in Brescia and viols and violas are much more important in Brescia than violins. The emphasis throughout seems to have been on making violas more than violins and I think that comes from the, the viola da braccio tradition, which was strong in Venice and Brescia, but you don't see much of that at all in Cremona. And it's, it's just, yeah, it's just a different musical style and the, and in the early history in the Venetian instrument making, they, there's a predominance of the viola da braccio is the instrument that everybody wanted and you made them in various sizes from, well, the soprano, but it's, it's still bigger than a violin and down to quite a big tenor instrument. So they, they clearly had, you know, consorts or little gangs of Viola da Braccia players.
And the collective noun for a Viola da Braccia is a gang?
No, no, you say it, you said it a little bit.
I'll sign up to that, yeah. Take responsibility for that. And it's also, it's a thing, it was used primarily for vocal accompaniment. It's, you know, the Bracci, you have, it has about seven or eight strings, you know, and they're played as drones, and so it's, and the, I get carried away with this, sorry. But the organ is a very, the church organ is a very significant thing. And I, if you, If you listen to a gang of viola da braccio, it's like hearing an organ because you're hearing sustained drone notes and they're playing chords. So, it's the portable,
Exactly. And, and the thing about double basses as well I've also got this bee in my bonnet about it, people were working hard to get a portable bass instrument, which I think was in order to duplicate the church organs. In a, in a church organ, you can just keep on building the pipes as big as you like. There's no limit really. And you can go right down to, you know, Wagnerian earth shattering. profound bass notes. Perfectly straightforward, there's no difficulty. But if you move out of the church, and you want to start making music in a place that doesn't have an organ, or outdoors, you suddenly, well, we haven't got a bass, how are we gonna, you know, structure the harmony and all that stuff? And in collections of ancient instruments, you constantly see these attempts to make, you know, double bass trumpets and, well, everything.
I saw there's a lot of Venetian civic ceremonies that were held outside. They seem to be very into outside festivals and hence the, the need for the bass instruments, I suppose what you're saying, and it would Cremona, if Cremona's tradition was less outdoor carnival.
Yes. I, I don't know what defines it, but yes, all these images of parades and people on wagons playing violins and viol, whole viol concerts, consorts installed on a wagon and trundling through the town and I can't imagine, you know, the noise of the wagon wheels rumbling on the cobbled streets, you know, and there's a bunch of vial players in the back.
You know, I can't imagine what, what it sounded like, really.
I saw music and it was written for three trumpets, a hurdy gurdy and a violin. And I was like, wow, they really love a good trumpet. And I love how they just aren't afraid of whacking in a bagpipe.
Yes Absolutely. And it's, it's in such a volume and certainly, there's a different culture in Cremona for sure.
And would Brescia have had that sort of outdoor tradition that Venice had as well?
Yes, Yeah, Well, I think, you know, Brescia, you have to think of really as, as part of the Venetian state. It's part of the Veneto and yes, there's a lot of connections and the early Venetian makers, well, there's, in fact, there's Giovanni Maria, who's known as Giovanni Maria da Brescia, who was working in Venice and making these viola braccio and viols, all sorts of things. And they're very stylistically, not that far away from Gasparo Da Salo. I mean, there's this fantastic, it's in the National Gallery in London, but Titian of him, the artist, playing a violone at it's the, the wedding at Cana is the title of the, and, and the artist is prominent in it, playing this huge violone.
Yeah, because Titian was working at the time that Gasparo da Salo was working, he was painting churches.
Yeah, that tradition died out in Venice and Brescia, and the, the Cremonese tradition won. And it's the string playing tradition that we know now.
An interesting observation is that while Brescian musicians liked to play in groups, they often stayed within the Venetian territories. Perhaps there was such an abundance of work that they had no need to travel afar. Whereas the Cremonese musicians tended towards a different model. At the time they were under Spanish rule and their musicians would travel alone and play anywhere they offered work. They would travel to foreign courts, especially to Paris.
So while the Brescian makers were working on instruments to be played in ensemble playing, particularly the medium to large instruments, the Cremonese were concentrating on the solo soprano instrument. As an artisan, Gasparo da Salo quickly got to know his neighbours who worked in other skilled trades. For the past three years, Gasparo da Salo had been working long, hard hours to set up his business and earn a reputation as an instrument maker.
He had family, his mother and siblings, to support. Still, after a hard day's work as he leant against the doorframe of his workshop that led into the cobble lined streets of Brescia, he watched the sun slowly set behind the Lombard hills. Here I would like to have him smoking a cigarette and drinking a coffee, but unfortunately, tobacco and coffee beans had almost, but not quite hit the streets of Northern Italy yet. Well, he thought maybe it was time. He started a family of his own. And then it happened a few doors down on the other side of the Contrata de la cossere a door opened and a vision of loveliness appeared dressed in a simple woollen dress, her hair shimmering in the fading sunlight. It was Isabella Cossetti, the daughter of Giovanni, the artisan potter and glassmaker.
Well, I would like to think it happened like that. In any case, at the ripe old age of 24, Gasparo Da Salo married the 18 year old Isabella. She moved out of home and across the road and became Signora Bertolotti.
Gasparo Da Salo turned 25 and Isabella 19. They had their first child, Francesco. Their good friend, Girolamo Virchi, one of the most prominent craftsmen in the city became godfather to the first of their seven children. Girolamo Virchi belonged to a family of woodcarvers, who at first specialized in clogs, but then moved on to make instruments, notably organs.
You see, Brescia is famous not only for its stringed instruments, but its organ makers as well. Girolamo Virchi’s two brothers were also wood carvers. One made citterns, a cittern is a stringed instrument similar to a lute, but with a flat back. And the other would always refer to himself as a luxury clog maker. Throughout Gasparo Da Salo’s story shoe makers have a tendency to pop up a lot.
John Gagne, one of the things that's interesting about the sort of situation is there seems to be a, a strong, tradition of decorations for churches, especially organs and the sort of style of Brescian organ design had to do or had a lot to do with woodwork, sort of intarsia, you know, sort of cut wood that you insert into other pieces of wood to make designs that have and you often see it in like choir stalls in churches, you know, you can picture like, the seats that choir boys flip down are often decorated with inlaid wood and, and so one of the interesting facts about violin makers in this mid-16th century is that they work in a kind of triangle of interrelated woodworking jobs, one that's often cited is Benedetto Virchi, who was like the brother of a famous violin maker, Girolamo Virchi, and he was listed on a document as an intarsia master, you know, inlay master an instrument maker, and a shoemaker. We have a lot of Venetian shoes, women's shoes from the mid-16th century, that are sort of platform shoes.
Yeah, and some of them are inlaid as well, so there's actually like, it makes sense in a way if you're a master of kind of inserting small bits of wood into planes of wood, that you can do it, you know, in an organ stall in a church, you can do it for a woman's, you know, special order of shoes, or you can do it on a violin too.
So you go, you buy your violin. You get your pair of Chopin's and off you go and you wobble out of there Because weren't they really tall?
Yes, I mean some of them are, maybe, you know How much were you saying? Yeah, like 10, centimetres or something but some of them, yes, they're kind of like, you know 30 centimetres But I think it shows that there's an interesting, let's say Trajectory in the history of violin making That's not self-evident like they're sort of pulling a lot of related specialisms into a developing school of arts.
There are several violin makers in Venice. Well, in the following century who were, and they belong to the shoemaker’s guild. And they're described as clog makers. It does come up quite often.
Girolamo Virchi was a noted woodcarver in the city. And the fact that Gasparo Da Salo had a close friendship with him shows that he was making it, moving in influential circles already. Brescia was a city of artisans, where one discipline could easily converge into another. For example, a man called Bernardo was a well-known shoemaker in the first half of the 16th century. His son, Bernardo II, became a renowned organ builder. If you can make a shoe, why not try an organ? In Brescia, there are records of three brothers. Two are violinists, and the third is a shoemaker. Again.
In 1568, over in England, whilst Queen Elizabeth was throwing Mary Queen of Scots in prison, Gasparo da Salo was lying on his tax return about his age, shaving off a few years. At the age of 28, Or 26, as he preferred to see it. Things are looking up. Gasparo Da Salo now has two sons, Francesco, three years old, and another little boy, three months old. His 12 year old sister, Ludovica, is also living with them. He has a busy workshop and a warehouse with a stock of instruments ready for sale. He is officially a master violin maker, and he still finds time to play the double bass for a bit of extra income. But what would have been happening in this typical Brescian instrument maker's workshop?
But I think that not only in Brescia, but in all these big workshops, because we have to think that this workshop is not like we made to imagine like the first 20th century in which the violin making, for example, is working on in its own workshop, not. This workshop in the 15th century and 60 and 70 was a big workshop with many people that work as a chef and different people that work, in different level, of responsibility in the, in the workshop and in this big workshop, So till the middle of 18th century, they make different instrument, not only bow instrument, but gamba. But plucked instruments. So in the same workshop, make lutes, make gamba, make it is workshop that make, I think I think also for me today is workshop that makes tools for make music for the musicians
In workshops today we tend to specialize in a certain family of instruments you have people who deal in instruments of the string quartet. You have different people making guitars. If you want a harp, you go to a harp maker, for example. But as Filippo Fasser explained, these workshops made all manner of instruments.
Musicians also would have been able to play a variety of different instruments to ply their trade. So imagine the atmosphere of a workshop, in which harps, viola da gambas, or double basses could be in the process of being constructed simultaneously add to that a network of relationships with musicians, composers, monasteries, and wealthy patrons, it's not hard to imagine the birth of the violin family.
As Filippo Fasser said, it didn't just appear out of thin air, it was more a question of evolving, making an instrument that fit the demands of the Luthier's clients.
It was not an artist, or it was not I don't know, an event, or that today, I don't know, today I invented violin, no, no. It was the musicians that want good tools for make music so it's obvious that the artisan make viol it's not the, not the opposite, no.
The place of the instrument maker was still as a tradesperson making a tool for musicians or wealthy patrons, although it is significant that Gasparo Da Salo, for instance, signed his work by inserting a label into the instrument with his name on.
Artists also started signing their work during the Renaissance. This takes these objects from being not just a luxury item, but a luxury item made by someone. And that someone is important. At the same time, makers are collaborating with musicians, composers, and the nobility to meet their varying needs.
And the second thing that That I, I think, is important to, to know is that in this period, the, instrument was the family was the consort. Today we think we, yes, we think that the violin is 30, 35 and the viola is. 41 and the cello is 75. I don't know, but it's not. So when made the violin is different size and the viola is different size and the cello is different size because there's a few of different kinds of sound in there.
For example, it's late, but for example, the orchestra in France that I don't remember, there's 12 kinds of different type of instrument because maybe you want to. A range of sonorities so different that they wanted this kind of sound.
Today we have more or less standard sizes for violins, violas, and cellos, but as Filippo Fasser explains, at this time it was not so much the case.
Violins could come in a range of sizes and be tuned differently according to their size. Today we might say that they are three quarter or half sized instruments, or the larger ones may have been reduced or cut down in size to meet modern day requirements. But in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was not so strange to have a large range of sizes.
So today if you see a string ensemble, you will see four or five different sized instruments. But walk into a 17th century noble court, and you could see up to 12 different sized violins, violas, or cellos. This was the consort.
Today we have decided that in this last century, we decided the violin is, is one, the viola is one, and the cell is one. Is the reason that why I think, for example, the Gofriller cello today is cut down. There's not one that is original state because probably is too big. For our idea today.
To explain the abundance of violas made in this period, when we look at strings, we have the violin as the soprano instrument, and the cello as the bass. The double bass is an even lower bass. But in between the violin and the cello, there is a large gap that left room for two voices. The alto and the tenor. And so, two sized violas were made. Today, very few tenor sized violas remain, as most have been cut down to a smaller size. But in the past, four-part ensembles would often have one violin, two violas, and a cello, or a five part ensemble would have three violas as the middle register instrument.
And so, it is not so strange that Gasparo made such a quantity of violas. As Danny Yeadon was explaining in the first episode, a lot of music at the time was played in consort. So, in effect, you had lots of different sized violins, violas, cellos, and basses. Today, we have much more standardized instruments.
And this explains why many of these older instruments have been modified. Sometimes they are enlarged, sometimes reduced to fit the modern standards we have today. There are pros and cons to this, of course. Some people say that it's a shame to transform such an old instrument from its original state. Others would say that because they are modified, they are being played and maintained. Something that might not happen if it stayed in its original size. A great topic to throw at a dinner party of violin makers. It's a bit like asking a vegan if a mushroom is a plant or an animal. Think about it.
In Gasparo Da Salo’s workshop, so much is happening. He and his employees are working on many different types of instruments. He's making double basses for monasteries to accompany the organs, viola da gambas for wealthy families in Verona, Violas for religious processions in Venice. Violins and viols for the French. There are intricate inlays on the more costly pieces. The scrolls are often sculpted or decorated, depending on the client's wishes. Music and the demand for instruments was great. By now there were 18 monasteries in Brescia alone, all centres of art and music.
Gaspar had his son and Giovanni Paolo Maggini working with him. I think the degree in which techniques are passed from father to son and workshops through the generations that stay unique to that family indicate to me that it was all done in house, you know, everything they did. was between the, within the little family circle. It's the Ole Bull Gaspar da Salo in Bergen. But I, I've been to see it a few times now, and I'm absolutely sure it's absolutely right. And it's got this fantastically carved head. And the amazing thing is in Brescia itself, um, there is an organ loft, which was supposedly, built by this chap Gasparo Da Salo was associated with. And that whole organ loft in the church is festooned with these exact same characters.
So, I mean, I'm perfectly willing to concede that Gasparo Da Salo passed that on to his sculptor friend to carve. But there's also the possibility that he was trained in the same way, and he could probably do all that anyway. There is this close link between him and Girolamo Virchi, and there's organ lofts, and there's various other things attributed to Girolamo Virchi, and, and I've seen this organ loft, and it took my breath away, because the little putty, little cherubs carved around it and they were exactly the same, but there were quite possibly a, you know, a whole gang of people in Brescia who, that was their job. They went around carving these things into churches because like, again, like all Italian towns, there is almost literally a church on every street corner, and it was a huge amount of labour going into them all through the period.
I still get this image of these early makers. just in a little cottage with a, with a bench and a little opening shopfront where they could actually deal with customers. But it was very small scale, really, you know, it's not the idea, sort of grand idea that Victorian writers have of a huge workshop with dozens of apprentices and out workers and, you know, so on an industrial scale.
I mean, we know there's an amazing amount of Gasparo Da Salo’s tax records and things still available, and those indicate that he did, he did get quite rich and he had a country house and was selling barrels of olive oil and, and wine. You know, he, made enough to establish himself as a farmer with, you know, a country estate.
And in his tax returns, I think he's, he makes a point that most of his work actually is being sent to France, and that's where his income is from mostly. And there's a period where he's asking for a bit of relief on his taxes, because there's a war going on in France, and his, and business is, you know, not so good. But it's all coming from this very small workshop. Well, not a big, it's, it's not work on an industrial scale as, as we would see it now. And, and the, the essential thing also, the difference between Brescian work and Cremonese work is that Brescian work is clearly done very quickly. It's very spontaneous. It's not, it's not immaculately finished. I think, you know, he was churning these things out. And the other difference is that he was making quite a broad range of things that you find. Double basses, which you never find in Cremona at all. Until well into the 18th century.
Gasparo de Salo is making viols, viola da braccios, citterns, violins, a whole variety of Renaissance instruments.
Viols and citterns are particularly beloved in the Venetian state, and so the orders flow in. Gasparo da Salo is sourcing quality materials and fulfilling commissions for important patrons as his reputation continues to grow.
So, so yeah, there's this cliche of the struggling instrument maker working by the light of a candle just trying to make ends meet but Gasparo De Salo basically from the beginning he had quite a successful workshop and he had he had actually quite good connections he was good friends with a guy called Girolamo Virchi who was come for came from a family of organ builders And organs are really quite important.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you've got to have one in the church too, right? Yeah. And so these famous Brescian organ builders and Girolamo Virchi becomes godfather to Gasparo Da Salo's children. There's also this, uh, these instruments that, that the style of carving from the organs. can be recognized in the style of carving on some of the scrolls of Gasparo De Salo's instruments.
So it could have been a style from Brescia. It could have been Girolamo Virchi, we don't know. Yeah. But in Gasparo De Salo's workshop, he wasn't just, he, he was making viols, viola da braccio, citterns. Citterens are like a lira, a type of flat backed lira. Violones, so a violone is a what we call a double bass today, but maybe with just three strings, right? And that seemed to have been something that he was quite well known for the the violonis, the basses and the violas Which were, the viols and the citterns, they were, a lot of music was written for them. When he was in his late 30s, in around 1578, he had, he had like so much work, he had an, an assistant.
He had a French assistant called Alessandro de Marcellis. Alex from Marseille, Europe. And his son, Francesco, would have been working with him. He would have been 16 around about now, but he probably would have started working with him when he was about 13.
Sure, but also would have been in the workshop growing up as a kid. You know, and so, you know, we fashion and dress scholars, we talk a lot about like haptic knowledge and as a craftsman or crafts person, you know about this as well. You get a feel in your hands for how something should be. And when you're a tiny tucker growing up in this environment, kids suck up so much from their parents, so much knowledge. So even though you might start working officially for your dad at age 13, you're playing with the strings when you're a little kid, you're playing with the offcuts, you're watching dad sand down the wood, you're watching all of these processes and just like really absorbing everything, so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was very kind of family affair. Yeah. And often the workshops were integrated into the house. You'd have the workshop on one level and you would be living behind it or above it. Yeah.
I guess, you know, the, the simpler point is that there clearly interested in sourcing the best wood, sort of no matter where it comes from, and maybe the, the local forests were not always the best.
Sort of like the best resource, you know, the decorative schemes of a lot of these Bressian instruments, which, you know, take advantage on one hand of like intaglio work, which is, you know, you where you scrape into the wood sort of a design or intarsia, which is the, you know, inlay. And then like also sculptural work, which is amazing. I mean, there's one famous cittera in Vienna, which, which culminates at the end of the neck in a figurine of the suicide of Lucretia which is, you know, dramatic, very dramatic thing to put on an instrument. And that was probably ordered specifically by the Archduke of Tyrol, who, if you, you can travel from Brescia up to Innsbruck pretty quickly. And he had a huge palace full of, you know strange oddities, naturalia art armour, and also instruments and so clearly he had an eye, like the Archduke of Tyrol had an eye on the Brescian makers and probably asked for this unusual instrument. But even, I think, some of the ones that we've got in, in Sydney, right, are, they're beautiful, they're beautifully made with, you know, unusual designs that tend then to get flushed away by the 17th century.
In 1578, Gasparo De Salo is in his late 30s. His workshop is bursting with activity. He has so much work. In fact, he has needed to take on an assistant, Alessandro De Marseillis. Francesco, his eldest son is 16 and has been working alongside his father for the last three years already. The French are good clients, always looking for Italian instruments. He's making more and more instruments from the violin family. Sometimes he feels a slight regret that so much of his best work leaves abroad and he will surely never see those pieces again.
There's a, a, a beautiful letters of gas in which he wrote, I, I don't remember exactly, but he wrote that, he don't want that his own arts goes like always in France.
At this point, he was selling a lot of his work to France, uh, as one of his main clients. A lot of his work was being sent via an intermediary. So that's really interesting because Marc Antonio Martineño de Villachara, who we were speaking about before the Bressian military general who wrote the collection of madrigals, he was very, very well connected with the French court as well. And so, you know, we can see this guy almost welcome from Brescia, rocking up. These connections are there. Everybody's traveling around in each other's pockets. And also because of the, the geography. For us today, for example, getting from Brescia to Villa Ciara, it’s, you know, it's a short drive. But if it's there halfway between Brescia and Cremona, it's still 25 kilometers. You go there, you spend the night, you know, maybe two nights, and then you go back, you know. So you have sort of slower time to. build these deep relationships and these deep connections as well. And within that too comes the opportunities really again to study dress, to study fashions, to study what everybody else is wearing, and you see that too with some portraits from the era as well. So, you know, it might be a nobleman from Italy. But he'll be wearing clothes in the French style, which will sort of, you know, show that he's got diplomatic connections with France, or he's spent a lot of time at court. These kinds of things too.
It's not just the instruments that are getting exchanged as well, it's ideas around fashion, it's ideas around dress. One of the really interesting things that comes up time and time again throughout, you know, the Renaissance is this idea of the rough, you know, and you think of the Renaissance and you think of Elizabethan and you think of, you know, the big roughed collar, and that just traveled throughout Europe, even though it was kind of, you know, we do think of it as an Elizabethan thing, an English thing. It was incredibly popular all through Europe and particularly by the aristocracy because they just became larger and larger. They used a lot of fabric. A lot of the time you could only wear them once. It holds up your head and your neck, so you look kind of snooty, and you know, it's like the ultimate fashion prestige thing. If you're wearing a ruff, you can't really do much but wear a ruff and hold important conversations and sign important documents, you know?
Why, why could you only wear them once?
Because they were so delicate. You know, they might have been nothing but lace, they're a mixture of linen and lace, and, and they were just. It's so delicate and so large and they might often kind of just like crush or fall apart. Sometimes they'd, you know, sew jewels and precious metal onto them. And once you apply any kind of weight to these super fine fabrics, it can tear very, very easily.
And so you know, they started originally as an extension of a man's shirt, but you know, they grew larger and larger and of course transitioned into their own separate piece. Wow. Yeah. Crazy. So yeah, the ruff travels through France with the instruments and with, you know, violas, ruffs. It's all, it's all on.
Cool. And I got this feeling that the Italian violinists were quite the thing. The French was sort of like, Oh look, we have Italian violinists because they're the best. And then the, the English who are often wanting to be kind of do whatever the French are doing are like, well, we too have Italian violinists.
Yeah, and that's really interesting too, and I think if you grow up with these instruments, I mean, as you know, as your listeners will know, you start learning the instrument when you're three or four. You grow up with it, right? And so if you're growing up in the environment where these exciting new instruments are going to be made, you're going to be testing them out and playing them from You know, knee high to a grasshopper.
And so unlike perhaps a French or an English musician who will be playing a much older style of instrument, you'll be able to speak to this more, you know, there might be differences between a Rebec and one of these violins that I don't know about, but perhaps technically they're quite different. If you grow up learning the Rebec, and then suddenly you're given one of these new fangled instruments. You're not really going to be as great as an Italian who's grown up fiddling around with this stuff, playing this stuff. You know, so these are the reputations. And what we're also seeing as well with this idea of them being the best, there's this wonderful portrait called Portrait of a Musician by a Cremonese Artist, and it's painted around the time of Gasparo De Salo. And we don't actually know if it's Gasparo Da Salo or Monteverde. We don't know. It looks like it could be a young Monteverde, but there are definitely Gasparo da Salo instruments hanging in the background there. We've got, that looks like the one that Ole Bull famously had with the ornate fingerboard and impression type.
It's very hard to draw a violin. And sometimes you see like artists, you're like, you got it. And then sometimes you're like, Ooh, that's probably what you thought a violin would look like.
It's like those memes you see where you know, it's like man says to medieval artist, can you draw me a picture of horse? Yeah, yeah. I can draw a horse. You know what a horse looks like, don't you? You know how to draw a horse. Yeah, yeah, and then you see it and it's like this wonky half goat thing that's, ha ha ha. So yeah, we do, we sort of see, you know, like in this portrait, the bridge isn't positioned between the F holes, for example.
Right down the bottom. Right down the bottom. And the cut out is like really pronounced, but, you know. Yeah, you get the idea. You still get the idea in general that it's a violin, but what I think is really interesting about this. is this, this musician ain't no starving artist. So, he is quite pale, and yeah, I guess you are, and he's also, his hands are quite fine and pale, suggesting like he spends a lot of time indoors on his craft, you know, on learning the instrument, you know, he doesn't have rough worker's hands.
But, we can see here, he's got really fine lace cuffs and, and ruffley cuffs in the style of the Ruff, and, you know, that tells us you know, there's like this virtue, purity, possibly devotion, this pure devotion to music. Interestingly too, he's not wearing a Ruff. Because he can't actually play the violin in a rough, but he is wearing a collar that we see in other portraits of the time, and it's a big white big collar that's turned over and, you know, trimmed with a fine lace as well. And this is like a really sort of stark contrast against his all black ensemble, his black doublet. You know, this looks to be quite a fine wool. And there are slashes on the arms and we see the lining underneath and that could well be a darker silk. His buttons are also darker. They might be sort of a a darker silk buttons to match the, um, match the trimming. Yeah, they all had lots and lots of buttons. The doublets, you know, obviously some of the super rich could have them all made out of gold or you'd have them, you know, sometimes made out of leather.
I think, you know, I'm not sure if these trimmings are silk or velvet underneath, but they're definitely matching that. And so he's, he's quite. richly dressed, quite richly dressed as well and there's a high degree of realism in Brescian paintings that really does tell us what people wore and doublets were often made in wool and this could also be like, appropriate to his connections to the wool industry, to the sheep industry as well.
You know, so there are these things too. Black was so important at the time too, because it was unchangeable and permanent. And so it kind of represented like this steadfastness, this single mindedness and firmness, that was associated with a masculine virtue and action and strength. And so we really see from this black clothing of this musician as well that he is completely, 100 percent dedicated to the life of being one of the best musicians, a manly, a manly musician, but also like a really dedicated musician, dedicated to the craft as well. Yeah. One of the finest in Europe, you know?
Yeah. It's interesting. Like you, how, how much you can tell by what you're wearing, where your instrument was played. What you're playing, you're telling this whole story of your position in society.
And Gasparo da Salo's position in society was here, amongst the wealthy artisans of Lombardy. He would never be on the level of the nobility, but he would have interacted with them, or at least their agents. And he would have Orbited around the world of the wealthy, he would've known how to hold himself and to speak to them.
Musicians also at this time could be the subject of portraits and what's more, they had the money to commission one in the first place.
I would like to say a very big thank you to my guests, Maxime Bibeau, Dr. John Gane Filippo Fasser. John Dilworth, Dr. Emily Brayshaw. I would also like to thank the Australian Chamber Orchestra's cooperation. I hope you'll join me for the next episode of the Violin Chronicles. And Maxime Bibeau, double bassist in the Australian Chamber Orchestra, will be talking to us about the wonderful Gasparo da Salo instrument he plays on, and its story.
