Books › The Hawley Collection of violins, 1904 › scan 52
Scan 52
The Hawley Collection of violins, 1904
4 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 34. See the scan on archive.org.
1able to detect the hand of Stradivari in work which came from the shop of Amati. Similarities of one kind or another are found in the instruments of Gasparo da Salò and Maggini, Stradivari and Bergonzi, and Lorenzo Guadagnini, and why should it be altogether different in the case of Guarneri? No suggestion of Guarneri is found in the work of any other maker except the Brescian, nor can any trace of the influence of any other maker or makers, except in the distant cases already cited, be found in any of his violins. The former circumstance may be accounted for in a way, for if he worked for any other maker he would naturally be compelled to follow the directions given him, or to seek employment elsewhere. The fact, however, of there being so little in his work to remind one of any other maker, is of more importance than has ever been realized, as it shows him to have been possessed of far greater originality than any of his contemporaries, Stradivari included. That he had no pupils, as was customary with all other masters, is also a fact worthy of attention and arouses lively speculation as to the characteristics of this remarkable man. It indicates that he "was a prophet without honor" in his own city—that he was a man of very marked individuality, thoroughly convinced of the correctness of his own ideas, and not backward in saying so, and, as is usually the case with such men, surrounded by a host of unbelievers who were not slow to scoff at his ideas. It is not probable that he worked very long in any one place after having spent the three or four years of his apprenticeship, which was the customary period in Cremona. It seems more than likely that a man of his apparent disposition would be fond of moving from one shop to another, to observe the work of different masters. It may be also that his independence of spirit made him difficult to deal with. In the course of these twenty years, he may have worked in the various Italian violin-making centers, all the while observing the methods employed by others, and gradually evolving in his own mind the principles by which he was a few years later to develop a tone quality distinctly his own, a tone quality which was to mark the culminating point in violin construction for all time. The fact that his work exhibits little trace of the influence of other makers is a circumstance tending to show that he had the greatest faith in himself. He dared to differ from all the authorities. The fact that his work has proven so uniformly successful shows that this divergence from the usual models could not have arisen from chance or indifference, but that it was based upon self-taught principles differing radically from those employed by other great makers of the day. As a result of his antagonistic attitude, combined with the difference in tonal quality, his violins in his own day were not popular. His patronage did not come from princes of church or state, as did that of Stradivari, but it was left to time and the evolution of violin playing to demonstrate that Joseph del Gesù, in thus differing from his contemporaries, was working out his ideal upon rational principles, the development of which marks him as having been without a peer in his calling. It has taken generations to arrive at a just estimate of his genius.
3A talented man follows the ideas in vogue. He may indeed improve upon what has gone before, but it will be along the same lines. A genius marks out new ground, and that is just what Joseph del Gesù did in violin tone. All other makers since Maggini endeavored to retain the sweetness of Amati, improved and increased in volume if possible, but retaining the same quality of tone. Not so with Joseph del
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