What's New:

Well, we are already in our fifth summer in the “Tin Can”! I guess I have finally grown used to the lively acoustics!…. Seriously, it makes a great summer workspace. The winter season is a bit more problematic, as our house was never really designed to contain a music studio; however, I am studying the issue, and am trying to come up with a viable solution. But, to push along with more news….

My thanks to Dr. Probir Bondyopadhyay of Houston, Texas, who contacted me in the early spring in order to point out the possible Indian origin of the violin. Dr. Bondy referred me to a book written by Sara Chapman Bull, wife of Ole Bull, the renowned Norwegian virtuoso of the nineteenth century. I was unaware that Ole Bull’s wife had written a biography of her husband; neither was I aware that she was instrumental in introducing some aspects of Indian culture to the Eastern seaboard of North America, where she eventually settled. Well, it is a small world, and an interesting one, too! I have secured a copy of Sara Bull’s book and am currently studying the origin of the violin in more depth, and will report back at a future time.

In January Marie-Helene and I decided to celebrate my birthday in Italy, more specifically in Cremona, a smallish city in Lombardy, and the locality in which the modern violin was brought to its current form. I have included a brief account of our trip here: Our Trip To Cremona

Now that summer has finally arrived (and what a summer! Redefine heat), I have time to reflect on the past year and my activities in the studio. As always, September-June passed in kind of a blur.….well, maybe I remember toasting in the New Year with friends in a remote part of Northumberland, but that’s about it. The high point of my year, and I suppose of the year for all dedicated music teachers, is the spring recital. This year was no exception, and I was very proud of all of my soloists and of both of my groups. Once again we premiered a new Canadian work, this time three short string quartets by Brett Vachon of Montreal (www.naftee.com), who has the good fortune of being an excellent composer, along with the misfortune of being my son. If you would like to see pictures from this and other recitals, please visit my photo stream at: www.flickr.com/photos/richardtweney and open up the set titled “Concerning Music Only”.

My thanks to all for visiting my site, and I hope everyone has a great summer and fall.

- Richard

On the home front, the main news is that we held our Annual Recital on June 23rd, in St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. The event was well attended, and I hope everybody had a great time. As usual, the strings played in two orchestras, a “junior” one for those under fifteen, and a “senior” one for adolescents and adults. Again as usual, we tried to mix up older music with classical and popular tunes. Here are a few photos of the musicians, taken just before the proceedings got under way: 

Another bit of news in Northumberland is that the Northumberland Orchestra and Choir is hiring a new music director for the upcoming season. Details should be available shortly, and will appear on the orchestra website: www.norchestra.ca. 

My daughter Emma, who wrote the Violin or Viola article for this web site, continues to do astoundingly well at violin performance. We recently attended a recital she gave in Toronto, which included the Saint Saëns Concerto number three and the Sixth Violin Sonata by Beethoven, She was kind enough to dedicate the recital to me, in my role as her first violin teacher. Well… it was on father’s day, but all the same..…my son Brett Roland, who lives in Montreal, continues to do well as a composer, and has recently completed a work for viola (an instrument which he actually plays, although you didn’t hear it from me).

And finally, as anybody who has studied violin with me knows, I place a great deal of value on the tape recorder as a teaching aid. Even though most of us don’t like to listen to our own playing, nothing equals a recording to help us avoid errors, rhythmic errors in particular. So I have decided to upgrade my primitive recording equipment, and have ordered a high quality digital recording device for the Steel Practice Hall (a.k.a. “The Tin Can”). This equipment should be installed and running by the fall, and while I can’t promise that it will make our playing any better, I hope that it will at least make it sound better!

From the world at large, there is so much to report. The violin becomes ever more popular, especially in the Celtic universe. (Those of us who can remember thirty years ago will remember a time when the violin seemed to be dying out. That was before the Celtic Revolution that turned the violin-playing world on its head). Concurrent with the huge rise in the number of young violin players in the world has gone a huge upswing in the number of violins available, most of them from China, and most of terrible quality! So perhaps I will close this section with a visit to Cremona, in the north of Italy, the homeland of violin making since, well, since the very beginning. From the BBC’s European division (pinched from the Internet and reproduced here without permission):

Cremona Violins thrill Virtuosos

By Christian Fraser
BBC News, Cremona, Italy

The great Maxim Vengerov once said of his Stradivarius violin: “It is my musical soul mate.”

Creating an instrument with such depth of character relies on centuries of tradition – most of which belongs to the small town of Cremona in northern Italy. It was here that Antonio Stradivari set up his workshop in the early 1700s. It was also the home of Andrea Amati, who designed the first template of the modern-day violin. 

Today the town has 130 luthiers (stringed-instrument makers) who still make violins using the template of the great masters. Stefano Conia, 61, has been making violins in Cremona for forty years. It is a family business. “My father, my bother, my son, they were all violin makers”, he told me. Stefano’s workshop is cluttered with gauges, planers, scrapers and clamps. And on the shelf is stored an exotic collection of ingredients with names such as Black Boy Gum, Juniper Gum, Root of Curcuma: all natural resins that he blends together to make each of the 40 layers of varnish that he applies to his violins.

Obsessed with Wood

But aside from the craftsmanship, it is the wood from which the instrument is made that gives the Cremona violin its unique sound. Stefano owns valuable stocks of old wood, some of it bequeathed by his late father. The wood is dated in pencil on the back, some of it going back to the early years of the last century. “I have been searching for the best wood all my life”, said Stefano. “It’s an obsession. Even when I was a student. I am always buying wood for my violins. The best pine comes from the north Italian alps and the best maple from the mountains of Bosnia- Hercegovina.” Apart from violins, Stradivari made guitars, violas, ‘cellos, and at least one harp – more than 1,100 instruments in all. About 650 of these instruments survive.

Pinpoint Accuracy

Stefano has been crafting a replica of a Stradivari violin made in 1715. The measurements and the thickness of the wood are exact to the nearest millimetre. It is time-consuming work. He makes just twelve instruments a year, all entirely by hand. Each sells for at least 10,000 euros. But pluck the strings of a Cremonese violin and you can instantly recognize the clarity and depth of sound. “A violin maker is a sculptor, an artist and a musician”, says Stefano. “They are three elements that are not easily reproduced.” That is why musicians still flock to Cremona.

Eastern Rivals

Even so, as is the case in most industries, the luthiers of Cremona face intense competition from East Asia. In China violins and ‘cellos are mass-produced for a fraction of the cost of those you can buy in Cremona. And in the town itself, the craftsmen increasingly hail from Asia. Among Italians, violin making is a dying trade. At the town’s International Violin Making School, Professor Massimo Negrosi says 80% of his students are foreigners. “We have Koreans, Japanese and Taiwanese students” he said. “These days a large number of our students come from Asia- very few from Italy.” While most will take their skills abroad, some do stay to continue learning the trade and open their own shops in the town.

One former student who did that is the Dutch master Mathijs Adriaan Heyligers, who attended the school over 30 years ago. 

Good Investment

He says local Italians have always been concerned that foreigners who learn their trade in Cremona will eventually take away the business altogether. He just does not believe it.

“In the time of Stradivari, the world was only as big as Europe – now they come from all over”, he said. “But if the Italians think intelligently about this question, they will quickly come to the conclusion that every foreigner who arrives in this city comes because it IS Cremona. “Once every year we have a huge meeting when thousands of violinmakers from all over the world gather for conferences, exhibitions and concerts. We learn from each other. Cremona is the home of violin making – it always will be.” And there are very few investments that will provide a return like a Cremonese violin. The experts tell me that if you buy well, you can expect to see a 20 to 30% return on your money within three to five years. Few can resist the allure of a Cremonese – particularly an old instrument.

Cremona’s town hall boast a collection of the most ancient instruments – including one dating back to 1556, made by Andrea Amati for Carlo IX of France, and the original ”Cremonese” made by Stradivari in 1715. They may be museum pieces, but they are still tools of the trade, and must be played every day. The lucky man entrusted with this task is Andrea Mosconi. So how does he compare the instruments made today with those of the grand masters? “There’s an enormous difference”, he says. “These violins are like wine – they get better with age. But if the new violins are well made and to the classic templates of Stradivari and Amati, then one day they too could be put into the category of the grand instruments.” And that, say the luthiers, is why violin making in this town will always survive. The name Cremona is to musicians as Ferrari is to car enthusiasts. It is special, it is hallowed and no-one - not even the Chinese – can reproduce that.