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Scan 51
The Hawley Collection of violins, 1904
6 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 33. See the scan on archive.org.
1GIUSEPPE (JOSEPH) ANTONIO GUARNERI
3cellent grounds for adhering to this belief. In the first place, Guarneri's originality and independence of action made him a law unto himself. He needed but to learn the principles of his art from his master, the details he would work out on his own lines. And again, if there is little to remind one of Joseph Guarneri, son of Andrea, in his work, there is still less to remind one of Stradivari or any other Cremonese maker. In fact, if Guarneri is indebted to others for ideas of model, outline, or sound hole, the credit must be accorded to two makers—one especially who had many years before passed away, Giovanni Paolo Maggini, of Brescia, and to Giovanni Grancino, of Milan, for in certain features of their work, especially outline and edges, a marked resemblance is often noticeable. Environment has a mighty influence on a career. Guarneri was encompassed by the most favorable conditions possible to develop latent genius. The fervent ardor of the world's greatest master builders surcharged the very air he breathed. This electrifying current of inspiration stimulated all who were within its magic influence, and was productive of results such as no other agency could possibly have accomplished. Under such favorable influences, the genius of Guarneri developed even more readily than it could under the instruction of any single master, whoever he might have been. When we consider that during his youth, almost within a stone's throw of one another, flourished so many of the world's greatest makers—men like Stradivari, Andrea Guarneri, Lorenzo Gaudagnini, Joseph Guarneri the son of Andrea, and many others of less note, we are able to appreciate how great was the rivalry and competition, the strenuous strife of one to outshine the other, which must have existed. The spirit of mastery was in the very air. The youth Joseph had the seeing eye, the hearing ear, and the sensitive soul, and the atmosphere of his daily life did the rest. If the musical life of Berlin and Paris is such an important factor in the education of students of music who can but touch its outer edge, how potent must have been that familiar intercourse with the great artisans in Cremona, and how inspiring the oral traditions of that eminent worker and teacher, Nicola Amati, and other masters who had but recently passed away.
5Joseph Antonio Guarneri was born on the 8th day of June, 1683, the year before Nicola Amati died, and two years before the birth of him, to whom, in the words of Schumann, music owes almost as great a debt as a religion to its founder—Johann Sebastian Bach. To the celebrated luthier, M. Jean Baptiste Vuillaume, of Paris, an ardent admirer of the works of the old masters, is due the credit of having established this interesting fact. His father, Giovanni Battista Guarneri, was not a violin-maker, and as far as known was not interested in any way in the art. His mother's name was Angela Maria Locatelli, a name made famous in violin music by that eminent violinist and composer, Pietro Locatelli, 1693-1764. It is unfortunate that no trace of the incidents of the boyhood and apprenticeship of Guarneri can be found. No work of his bearing date prior to 1720 is known. If we are to grant that he made no violins up to that time, when he was thirty-seven years of age, the question arises, what had been his occupation during the preceding twenty years, or from the time when he may be supposed to have entered his apprenticeship? Either he worked during all those years in the shop of another maker, or he did not follow the vocation of violin-making. If the former be true, is it not natural to suppose that certain evidence of the fact would be found in violins bearing the labels of other makers? Genius such as Guarneri's is not easily covered. We are
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