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Scan 132
The Hawley Collection of violins, 1904
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1Chapter IX
2Jacob Stainer, 1621-1683
3The Hawley Stainer
5Among German violin-makers, there is one great name to conjure with, that of Jacob Stainer. As in the case of Francois Tourte, the bow-maker of Paris, Stainer was so far in advance of his confrères that there was none who even approached him in his art. His position in the violin world is an exceedingly interesting one. He acquired great fame in his lifetime, which, during the century following, was greatly enhanced, so that up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, his prestige was greater in many quarters than that of any other maker, even the greatest Cremonese. Especially was this the case in England, where the quality of tone in his instruments found high favor for many years, even to so late a period as seventy-five years ago. However, it was in the same period that Beethoven's great Concerto in D was disposed of by leading English critics as "not good music." So eminent an authority as Sir John Hawkins in his General History of the Science and Practise of Music, 1776, states that "The violins of Cremona are exceeded only by those of Stainer, a German, whose instruments are remarkable for full and piercing tone." Since that time, however, a decided change in the musical taste of both England and Germany has taken place and the once proud position held by the Stainer violins has been awarded to the creations of Cremona. Violins had been made in Germany long before Stainer's time, but without any well defined system. The models were invariably high and the tone shrill and penetrating in quality. This was in part the result of abortive attempts to copy the works of the earlier Amatis. The prevailing idea seemed to be that the higher the arching, the better the tone; so we find many grotesque productions, following a mode of construction which no doubt was due to the influence of the lute, the instrument which immediately preceded the violin. Violin-making being in fact but the evolution of the lute-maker's art, it is clear that the high model lutes in vogue in the fourteenth, fifteen, and sixteenth centuries must have been ever before the eyes of the German makers. Many of the early German makers signed themselves on their labels Lauten und Geigenmacher, showing that they considered themselves chiefly identified with those forms. It remained for Stainer to introduce into Germany Italian ideas of violin construction. Yet the high model was a favorite among most German makers for many years afterwards, and did not entirely disappear until the first years of the nineteenth century.
7Jacob Stainer was born at Absam, a small village near Innsbruck, Tirol, July 14, 1621. To Herr S. Raff, of Hall Tirol, is due the credit of bringing to light the few facts we have regarding his life. These are embodied in his work published in 1872, "Der Geigenmacher Jacob Stainer von Absom in Tirol." It is said that Stainer was
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