Books › Grove's dictionary of music and musicians;, 1904 › scan 677
Scan 677
Grove's dictionary of music and musicians;, 1904
14 lines. Read by computer on 10 September 2026. Printed page 669. See the scan on archive.org.
1cut; the top and bottom volutes of the f's are rounder and more nearly of a size than in the Cremona instruments, but the wood is of the finest quality; the finish, though varying in the different classes of instruments, invariably indicates a rapid and masterly hand; and the varnish is always rich and lustrous. It is of all colours, from a deep thick brown to a fine golden amber, equal to that of Cremona; and in his best works the exterior alone would justify the celebrity of the maker. But to understand the secret of Stainer's success the violin must be opened, and it then appears that the thicknesses of the wood and the disposition of the blocks and linings are identical with those of the Cremona makers. The difference will become more obvious when an old German viol is examined. It will be found that the older German makers, though they finished their instruments with great care and sometimes with laborious ornament, settled their dimensions and thicknesses by guess, and used no linings at all. Stainer's instruments are poor in respect of tone. The combination of height and flatness in the model diminishes the intensity of the tone, though it produces a certain sweetness and flexibility. Popular as the model once was, the verdict of musicians is now unanimous against it, and the Stainer instruments are now valued less for practical use than as curiosities. The violins, which are found of three different sizes, are the best worth having; the tenors are good for little. The violins are abundant enough, even after allowing for the vast number of spurious instruments which pass under the maker's name; but they vary greatly in value, according to their class, and the condition in which they are. Their value greatly decreased during the 19th century. A fine specimen that would have brought £100 a century ago will now scarcely produce £20, and the inferior instruments have depreciated in proportion. Small instruments of the common sort, which may be bought very cheap, are useful for children. Stainer's best instruments have written labels: some of the common ones have in very small Roman letterpress in the middle of a large slip of paper, 'Jacobus Stainer in Absom prope Oenipontum Anno (1678).' It is not impossible that some of these may have been made by other hands under his direction.
3E. J. P.
5[On the authority of Herr S. Rüf, whose narrative of Stainer's life the above account follows, Stainer's father—Martin Stainer—married Sabina Gräfingher, by whom he had three sons: (1) Paul, who became a master-joiner and married Ursula Dankler; (2) Mark, who migrated to Austria where he established himself as a violin-maker but attained no celebrity; (3) Jacobus, the subject of this biography. This last, by his marriage with Margaret Holzhammer, left eight daughters, two of whom died, single and in poverty, shortly after their mother in 1689. It must be borne in mind that the generally accepted date of Stainer's death, 1683, is only approximate. This date appears on the tablet attached to his house, and also on the handsome monumental stone erected to his memory in Absam Church in 1842 by the Pastor Herr Lechlatner. The sole evidence that goes to prove that Stainer no longer existed in 1684 is the purchase of his house by his brother-in-law Blasius Kiel, after which Stainer's widow and eight daughters became homeless wanderers. This house is to-day 'a well-to-do picturesque chalet, standing in its own garden and courtyard, half overgrown by a flourishing plum-tree that springs from the south-east corner.' It was bought by Stainer from his brother-in-law, Paul Holzhammer, on Nov. 12, 1666, and Blasius Kiel, as already mentioned, bought it for seven hundred florins in 1684. On a tablet affixed to the front of the house is the following inscription—
7In diesem Hause lebte seiner Kunst Jakob Stainer, der Vater der deutschen Geige, Geboren zu Absam 14 Juli 1621, hier gestorben 1683.
9Although this house was restored, and to some extent reconstructed in 1820, the balcony on which Stainer was known to store his wood still remains and is employed by its present owners for the like purpose. Within, the house is bereft of all relics of the great violin-maker, save the actual bench at which Stainer laboured.
11No attempt to gather any record of Stainer's life was made for over one hundred years after his death; but the deficiency was filled in with numberless romances about 'the father of the German fiddle,' from 1825, when the Orangenbluter published a story entitled 'Jacob Stainer,' to 1878, when a version of Dr. Schuler's novel was published at Innsbruck in the form of a play from the pen of Josef Erler, which adaptation was entitled Des Kaisers Geigenmacher in Tirol. Other fanciful versions of Stainer's life have appeared from time to time in various German newspapers and periodicals; a full list of these, together with the earliest trustworthy account of Stainer, is given by Herr S. Rüf in his biography of the maker.
13Rüf, Der Geigenmacher Jacobus Stainer von Absam in Tirol, Innsbruck, 1872; Oka, F., J. S. der erste deutsche Meister in Geigenbau published in the Neue Berliner Musikzeitung Nos. 22, 23, 31, May 7, June 1854; Otto, A Treatise on the Structure and Preservation of the Violin (first edition (German), 1817; three English editions translated by John Bishop); Stoeving, Von der Violine; Wasielewski, Die Violine; Von Lutgendorff, Die Geigen- und Lautenmacher; Hawkins, History of Music; Vidal, Les Instruments à Archet; Grillet, Les Ancêtres du Violon; Pearce, Violins and Violin-Making; Reade, A Lost Art Revived; Racster, Chats on Violins (containing an English transla-
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