Ep 17. Nicolo Amati, master violin maker

Nicolo finds love, the workshop is full steam ahead and this violin maker has to find creative ways to get family members out of his house so his future bride doesn’t freak out! This is one busy luthier. Follow Nicolo Amati as his family grows and his influence as a violin maker branches throughout Italy and Europe.

In this episode you will also meet a very important family in the story of the violin, the Guarneris, see how their lives overlap with the Amatis as we start to see the beginning of the end of the “house of Amati”

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history.  I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Lutherie, in Mirecourt.

Welcome back to the story of Nicolò Amati, the third in this generation of violin makers.  We now find him in his mid 40s. He has survived the bubonic plague in which he lost many of his family members. He lives in the house his grandfather, Andrea Amati, bought and passed on to his sons. And now Nicolo finds himself with an odd crew of orphaned cousins, nephews, nieces, and siblings to look after post pandemic.

The world in which Nicolo lived was changing dramatically. These were the years that Europeans were arriving in the Americas. There were the Spanish and Portuguese in the south. Up north were the English, Dutch, French, and the Swedes.  In 1644, when Nicolo Amati was entering his late 40s, the young Antonio Stradivari was born.

Most likely in Cremona and not far from the Amati home.  The question, looking at Nicolo Amati this week is, was he just an artisan at the beck and call of musicians and wealthy patrons, looking to have a collection of instruments for musicians coming to their house or court?  Socially speaking, where did Nicolo Amati sit in the greater scheme of things?

And why was it that Luthiers from Cremona had this reputation of producing excellent instruments? Why were they better than any other city in that part of Italy at the time?  Rome, Naples and Venice were all important cultural centres then, so what made this relatively small city stand out?  Well, in the last episode of the Violin Chronicles, we saw Nicolo Amati surviving the plague and getting on with his life.

He gives up depending on family members to help him in the workshop and starts to employ apprentices who come and live and work with him, notably two teenagers. Andrea Guarneri and Giacomo Gennaro.  He also starts to make his grand pattern violin. It is surprising that by making something a few millimetres bigger and slightly changing the outline and archings of the violin, he really does change the potential of this instrument and lay the groundwork for the very well known violin makers to come after him.

Niccolò Amati's clients were often noble families and the church, much like his father and grandfather had.  And he would even sell instruments that were not his, such as a local priest and musician, Don Alessandro Lodi, whose family turned to him when he died to sell his collection.  Here we see Nicolò Amati’s instruments fetching a good price, where others were selling their instruments for 5 ducati Nicolò's violins were going for 15 ducati and 22 for a viola. The double bass he sold from the priest's collection that was not his. It could have been a Brescian instrument, was only 13 Ducati.  From the high prices Nicolo Amati demanded for his instruments, we can clearly see that he was not a lowly craftsman, but was an educated and literate member of his community, having gone to school before learning his trade with his father. It would have been important for him, in dealing with his noble clientele, to have a certain level of learning and a knowledge of business, mathematics, and accounting, as would many of his artisan colleagues.  At this time in Cremona, schools were attended mainly by children of merchants and nobles, but not only. At school, they would learn. In addition to the traditional subjects of Geometry, Arithmetic, and even Astrology, subjects such as Geography, Architecture, Algebra, and Mechanics, both theoretical and applied. 

Carlo Chiesa, violin maker, expert, researcher, and author from Milan.

 It is also worth noting that the Amatis at that point, they were wealthy enough people. This is very important because  It means they, the kids had an education.  They were able to go to school, to be trained properly, not just in the workshop.  And they were artisans of a high level anyway. So the daughters of Andrea who got married, they usually got married with good doweries with the people who were fr