Ep 11.The making of Nicolo Amati with Benjamin Hebbert

The Violin Chronicles Podcast

The Amati Brothers were working and living in a time of musical innovation and discovery. Join me as I discover what influences Monteverdi, music and even fashion had on the instruments the brothers were making.

intertwines the stories of the illustrious Amati brothers, renowned violin makers, with the musical genius of Claudio Monteverdi, one of the greatest composers of the Baroque era. Join us on a captivating journey as we explore the parallel worlds of instrument craftsmanship and musical composition during this remarkable period.

Musicians and Luthiers of the renaissance such as the Amati Brothers had to continue their craft amidst famine, plague and war making these instruments musicians play today objects even more remarkable than we could have previously imagined.

We continue to look at the life of Girolamo Amati the father of the very talented Luthier Nicolo Amati who would in turn change the course of violin making in Italy for ever.

In this episode I speak to Dr Emily Brayshaw fashion historian and Benjamin Hebbert Oxford based Violin expert.

Transcript

  Once upon a time on the northern plains of Italy, there roamed a hero who went by the name of Romulus. You may have heard of him as the legendary founder of Rome, perhaps? But what's a strapping god like young man to do once he's founded one of the world's greatest cities? One day, as he was travelling through the Po Valley, Romulus came upon a group of people who were struggling to defend their village from the fierce Gaelic tribes roaming the region. The people were in need of a strong leader, and Romulus knew just the man for the job, himself. He gathered the people together and said, “I will help you defend your village from these invaders, but we must build a great fortress to protect ourselves”. The people thought this was such a great idea that they set to work building a mighty fortress immediately on the banks of the Po River.

The people began to dream of a great city that could rival the power and glory of Rome itself. Romulus, who had been a beloved leader of the people, heard their dreams and knew that he could help them achieve their goal. He said to them, If we are to build a great city, we must first establish a strong foundation. We must build our city upon the principles of justice, wisdom, and strength. And so the people of the village began to build their city. They laid the foundation stones with great care and constructed a wall around the city to protect it from invaders. Romulus oversaw the construction and he ensured that the city was built to the highest standards possible.

As the city grew, Romulus knew that it needed a name. He looked out over the fertile fields of the Po Valley and saw the bright flames of the forges that dotted the landscape. He turned to the people and said, We shall call this city Cremona, which means to burn, for it is the fires of our forges that will light the way to our greatness. And so the city of Cremona was born. It grew to become a powerful centre of trade and culture in northern Italy and was revered by many as a shining example of the principles of justice, wisdom, and strength that Romulus had taught them.

And this is the legend of how Romulus founded the city of Cremona.

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 Lespets, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthierie au Mircourt.

As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with, and in particular, the lives of those who made them. So often when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect, But here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture. So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, famine, and war, but also of love, artistic genius, revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning, and bravery, that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.

Welcome back to the story of Andrea Amati's two boys, the Amati brothers, Girolamo Amati and Antonio Amati. In the last episode, we left them after they split the workshop and Antonio Amati went off to set up on his own, leaving Girolamo Amati with the house and shop to continue alone. The Amati brothers stopped working together in 1588, but if you remember the episodes on Gasparo Da Salo over in Brescia, you would realize that their Brescian competition was still working away, and in 1580, eight years earlier, a future employee of Da Salo's was born. His name was Gio Paolo Maggini, and he would go on to become a roaring success. Girolamo Amati, however, had other things on his mind. As I mentioned earlier, his first wife, Lucrenzia, had died shortly after having their daughter, Elizabeth, and his new wife, Laura, had a full house to look after and a famine looming on the horizon. Girolamo Amati, in this decade, made some beautiful instruments, including the one played by Ilya Izakovich in the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Baron Knoop violin, and a painted violin for the French King Henry IV, to name a few. Girolamo Amati was now in his late 30s, and Laura was pregnant again. The news wasn't good. The Po River was rising and the plains around Cremona were flooding. The crops would be ruined again, like they had last year. The grain yields were a third of the previous years, and outbreaks of typhus were hitting the rural areas, affecting those who grew the grain, and the disease was even worse in the heavily populated cities.

After several years of bad weather, flooding, and storms, the cities were deeply in debt from having to buy grain from abroad. For the next two years, matters only got worse. News was coming from other cities on the Po Plains, Bologna had expelled the so called useless mouths, people without citizenship, beggars, jobless foreigners, and even those who were employed but not highly skilled in a trade. They were saying that it was to reserve the scant food supplies and to prevent overcrowding and outbreaks of epidemics. The governing bodies in the cities were afraid that the poor would revolt and steal the little food that was left in the city's reserves. But the people from rural areas where the crops were spoiled were flocking to the cities where they knew there were grain stores. Four fifths of the population lived in rural areas but would be turned away at the city gates. Bologna was 150km from Cremona. The same could happen here. Already 10, 000 people had died in that city and 30, 000 in the surrounding countryside. In just 10 years, Cremona had gone from a boom to simply struggling to stay afloat.

In 1594 and 1597, there was a famine and an economic downturn in the region. And it was also the year Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was premiered. Throughout these lean years, Girolamo Amati was still making beautiful instruments, violas, violins, and cellos. His choice of materials were of the finest standard and so was his workmanship. The sound quality of his instruments differed as well from that of his competition in Brescia. But he was keeping afloat and even had a recent order for a set of instruments for the chapel of the new king of France, Henry IV, who had managed to survive the religious wars by converting to Catholicism, saying famously that Paris was worth a mass. Paris vaut bien une messe. This new set of instruments were to be decorated with the coat of arms and in Latin gold leaf red. King Henry IV, by the grace of God, King of France and Navarre. I speak to Benjamin Hebbert about the authenticity of the Amati Charles IX instruments and musicians at this time. Which is the end of Catherine de Medici's reign and the beginning of Henry of Navarre's reign.

Well, I think Catherine de Medici is, in France, is just such a huge influence. Charles IX is a child king and really has no power. And then he dies, is sickly. And then his brother who had become king of Poland is brought back and he becomes Henry IV. And then Catherine de Medici dies. I'm going to say 1587, I know I'm wrong, but around about that time there's a wonderful quote about, you know, people would give more regard to a dead goat than they would to Catherine de Medici. There was a point at which her power was over. Henry is assassinated within a year of her death, and Henry of Navarre, who is a Protestant, a Huguenot, comes in and becomes, becomes king. And at that time I think what we have to consider is that, you know, so right up until, right up until the end of the Valois dynasty, you know, it's all Catherine, it's all about Catherine de Medici, it's all about her, it's all about her triumphs and her successes. And then one of the things that happens there's been actually sort of various Musicologists have speculated that the Andrea Amatis aren't, aren't authentic. And one of the reasons is that the earliest French orchestral music is for a completely different orchestration than these Italian instruments offer. And what I think when you look at these things, the propaganda of the painting all over them is very specific to the Valois. The Valois were hated. Uh, they massacred enough Huguenots to be really, really hated. When Henry comes in, he's set, you know, they're played by Italian musicians. They're playing music in every corner of the court. Their eyes and ears, which are open for Catherine de Medici, they're, there's not. A lot of difference between a spy and a musician in the 16th century and there's, you know, right the way through spies and musicians are kind of the same things because they're the people who can pay attention to what other people are doing, they don't have any other agenda. So all of that's expelled. I think these things get, you know, stuck in a cupboard somewhere and from the point that Henry of Navarre comes in. So if we, if we only think of them in, you know, in the perspective of Catherine de Medici, then of course it makes sense.

And then, as things started to look a little better on the famine front, the sun poked its head out from behind the clouds, so to speak. On a cold winter's night in December 1596, Girolamo Amati and Laura had their sixth child, Niccolo Amati. His parents were probably just hoping he would survive the winter and his infancy. But Niccolò Amati would not only survive, he would go on to change the course of violin making history forever. I know that sounds rather dramatic, but he does, he really does.

While Niccolò Amati was busy being a baby, 60 kilometres away, a fellow Cremonese citizen, the talented composer, and accomplished viola da gamba player. Claudio Monteverdi was also about to change the history of music in his own way. Monteverdi was working at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, and had been for the last six years. He had had the best musical education, being a student of the wonderful Marc Antonio Ingenieri, the choir master, at the cathedral in Cremona, and was amazing people with his madrigals and other compositions. And so when the current maestro di cappella at the Mantuan court named Gesche de Wecht, (he was Flemish), died in 1596, the same year Niccolo Amati was born, Monteverdi just knew he really, really, really, really wanted that job. The new head of the strings department at the Mantuan court was his. It also paid really, really well. But did he get it? No. Who do you think did? It was Benedetto Pallavicino, the other guy from Cremona. That's who. Okay, so he was like 17 years older than Monteverdi, and in cahoots with the now dead Werth, the old head of the music department, but who was better? Well, Claudio obviously thought he was, and now he had to pretend that this totally didn't bother him. But his time would come. In an age when even royalty can drop dead of an ear infection, only five years later, Palavicino died of a fever. Monteverdi lost no time scratching off a letter to the Duke. He wrote to him, sending his CV via a long winded letter that went something like Blah, blah, blah, blah.

“And finally, the world having seen me persevere in the service of your excellency, with my great eagerness and with the goodwill on your part, after the death of the famous Mr. Strigio, and after that, the excellent Mr Geish And again, for a third time after that, the excellent Mr. Franceschi and No, and again lastly, after the death of the nearly adequate Signor Benedetto Palavicino, and I, who have sought not on the basis of merit, but on the grounds of the faithful and outstanding devotion that I have always displayed in my services of your excellency, the post now vacant in this sacred art.” That was one sentence.

This was an important CV, as you will see, because only a few years later, the most excellent Francesco Gonzaga would ask Montiverdi to write what would soon become a smash hit piece of music. An opera. At the same time I would have a good think about this job that appears to have an alarmingly high mortality rate.

Dr. Emily Haw, fashion historian.

so this is in the Mantuan Gonzaga court and what's interesting with this court is that even though they were very heavily aligned with the Habsburgs. And so essentially the Gonzagas of Mantua, they were kind of only minor players in Europe. And so what these, so they were in like Northern Italy and what these minor players had to do was Habsburgs essentially, like, really depend on big allies and relatives and to bolster their reputation and to protect their borders. And so they kind of aligned themselves with the Habsburgs and in turn they had to show loyalty to the Habsburgs but they couldn't really afford big armies. So what they did, they did it with cultural production, and they spent all their money through cultural production, and we see this in November 1598, and this kind of is almost like the forerunner for these operas of Monteverdi And so Margaret of Austria, who's the Queen of Spain, and so she was a Habsburg Margaret of Austria. She was married to become the Queen of Spain. She passed through Mantua on, for a five day stay on her way to Spain in November 1598. She was 14 years old and off to Spain to get married and Duke Vincenzo of Gonzaga arranged for five days of festivities and amusements and this included a very elaborate performance of Battista Guarani's pastoral play. It's all theatre. And he wanted to, the Duke Vincenzo, wanted to show that Mantua was as magnificent as any other court, but he did that through staging these spectacles. And we've got accounts of the time. These were just amazing apparently.

And it wasn't too far from Cremona, right?

So you know, it's actually, yeah, definitely, definitely, you know, depending where the best ones are. And so we know that, um, you know, he had also at court by 1607, 800 people including writers, artists, musicians, and even a troupe of commedia dell'arte actors, enjoyed Gonzaga patronage. They're also patrons of the Flemish artists Peter Paul Rubens, and so these You know, spectacles held sort of 10 years earlier, you know.

And Monteverdi.

Yeah, Monteverdi is definitely one of these patrons. Yeah, definitely. These lavish costumes and that's the thing with these Medici costumes as well, and then the Monteverdi costumes for these, they're being designed to appeal to contemporary tastes. And so, to give you sort of a sense of these spectacles, the play for Maria of Austria, this big costume, you know, music drama, it's got more than 80 different ones in rich fabrics and colours. And that was used for the inaugural performance of Teatro Olympico. And, in portraits of the era and the shoulders are, we can see in these portraits, the neckline sits right down around the upper forearms part. Off the shoulder dress. Here we've got this here in a Mary Princess Royal portrait, and we've got like this really low down, cut down, and it would have been very, very difficult to raise your arms and your elbows would have been, you know, set right down. And we see this a lot in like the Peter Lely portraits. Yes, so there's a lovely portrait of a woman playing a gamba. You sort of see with that, and she's got one of these gowns on.

A bit of talk about menswear, so this is like a lot of cloth with gold and silver embroidery, and again, that's sort of like a rich flex. Shoes by that period, we're getting like high heeled shoes, and we're starting to see, even before that in the 1600s now, moving forward in that decade, the farthingale, what's happening with the farthingale is the hems are rising. So we're getting these high heeled shoes for the first time with red, heels and, square toes. But yeah, these sloping shoulders that we're seeing in the 1650s would have contributed to that. You know, the elbows being kept closer to the body. You know, keeping your body front on the instrument being held lower against the layers of fabric and then playing like that being everything being held close in.

The classic gamba playing posture would have worked, but.

Oh, would have worked perfectly.

But, uh, having to stick your. elbows out or lift an instrument high just wouldn't have worked.

No, no. So that's why the instruments, you know, we do still have pictures of violins being played quite low and held quite low.

Although Niccolo Amati would have the good fortune to survive plague, pestilence, war and disease, his life would not have been an easy one. He grew up in a particularly turbulent time, even for Cremonese standards. In the marketplace, Girolamo Amati would have participated in discussions about the state of the city and the Spanish governor, Juan Fernandez de Velasco, stated the need to fortify the city's walls, noting that the citizens were “numerous and warlike”.

And if anyone needed a defence wall, they did. If they needed fixing, which they obviously did, who was going to do it? The city's defences and other repair and maintenance appears to have been an ongoing discussion with no one really wanting to fit the bill for the works needed inside the city walls.

But as time would tell, the state of the city's walls would be the least of their problems in the years to come. The Amati household would have definitely been a loud one with 10 children of varying ages, 6 girls and 4 boys. There was Niccolo's eldest half-sister, Elizabeth, who was about 14 years older than him. His oldest brother, Roberto, who was 9 years older than him, had joined the army. His second eldest brother was training to join the clergy, and his parents were probably encouraging some of his sisters to do the same, as dowries for 6 girls were not going to be easy to come by. He also had a little brother who died as a small child and another younger brother Stefano that we know nothing about. All we know for sure is that Niccolo Amati would help his father making instruments and soon would come to be his right hand man. In 1607 Niccolo Amati would have been 11 and most likely helping out his father in the workshop. The Amati family still had their fine reputation and Girolamo Amati had an order for a tenor viola for Pope Paul V.

The painted decorations on the back would be done by a local artist and then returned to the workshop for its final coat of varnish before being sent off. Today this viola has been reduced and the painted griffin on the centre of the instrument has been modified somewhat. I think someone tried to fix it up but it looks like a damp bunyip in between two cherubs unfortunately.

But business was good in these years. Quite a number of instruments left the workshop and a variety of violins of various sizes. Violas and bass instruments were produced. They were at the centre of musical life in Cremona. The workshop had a steady flow of musicians, music dealers, church musicians, clergy and messengers representing the nobility, so that they would have had news early on about the new opera coming to have its debut in town.

What is amazing in Renaissance Italy is that artistically, the area was a shining star, even though politically and economically it was in a free fall. Areas poverty stricken and ravaged by war and heavy taxation. And yet there were amazing motets, madrigals and operas emerging from all of this.

Emily Brayshaw.

So Orfeo, uh, and, and the spectacles in the Mantuan court, the use of the area in front of the stage was also used performance. And there was also an active involvement of the audience and this kind of sought a new balance, scholars have said, in order to connect this fluid continuum of stage and auditorial. And it was kind of this representation of openness peculiar to courtly circles. So, you know, sometimes musicians would have been on the stage or perhaps in front of the stage or don't know that necessarily there was a separate pit all the time. Or, you know, whether they're sort of coming out and playing and then going away, or whether they're coming out on stage performing while some people sing and then there are sort of lots of different. Things that they could be doing. And the Orfeo actually came to Cremona.

Girolamo Amati had just had his sixth child, which was Niccolo Amati. And so he would have been a baby. He would have been about, about two when this had happened. And they'd actually staged this in Cremona. So he could have met, there might have been like a Trip with the, going with them. It could have been local musicians. Um.

So this is something that potentially the Amati family could have gone to and seen.

Oh, look, and you know, if you are making and playing and very much involved in this world, part of keeping up to date is to watch performances, look at performances. Keeps you up to date on trends, tips, techniques. Styles, aesthetics, all of these things are, you know, really crucial to not just like keeping abreast of your skills, but also in a way, you know, the Amatis are part of the tastemakers of this era with their incredible instruments. They're setting quite literally the tone.

And so seeing and hearing how these instruments are then used and engaged with. Because the, Charles IX instruments, they were made, when Catherine and Charles did their grand tour. Right. But I'm, I'd be, I wouldn't be surprised if those same instruments were used, years later in the Ballet de la Reine because they were, you know, they fitted in with all the bling that were covered with gold and decorations and that was. And they were this beautiful, this beautiful consort of instruments that the royal family had. And that's the thing too, like you don't just chuck it away.

All anyone could talk about in musical circles was Cremona's very own Claudio Monteverdi's opera. It was supposed to be an amazing spectacle, mixing singing, dancing and drama. Moving on a few years, as Niccolo was helping his father in the workshop after school, the world of music was being rethought. Where once it was being used to convey the omnipotence of God, his creativity and power. Composers were now using it to convey the human mind and emotions, to feel love, rage, jealousy and passion. Shakespeare was writing plays in England, drawing on classical drama and using Greek and Roman plots to recreate political commentaries of the day. In France, it was Ballet, and in Italy, it was Opera.

It all started in Florence, where a group who called themselves the Camerata met. They were poets, composers, artists, scientists, and philosophers. It was another one of those academies I spoke about earlier. They wanted to recreate ancient Greek theatre, and they believed it was done through song, not the spoken word. The group would meet to discuss what the music of the Greeks would have been and delved into conversations about astrology, literature, philosophy, and of course, singing. One of the members was Vincenzo Galilei, father of the Galileo Galilei.

After years of talking about it, they finally decided to do it. They would create the ultimate art form that would combine music, poetry, drama, dance and design. Things got off to an awkward start in 1600 when they staged a very heavy and somewhat depressing production at a wedding. It was Eurydice's. Totally not reading the room with themes of doomed love and man's arrogance. They were not feeling the vibe at this raucous wedding feast, so that sort of deadpanned. But things really took off when the philandering, hardcore gambling and sometimes murderous Vincenzo Gonzaga, over in Mantua, decided he would like one of these new opera thingies of his own. But the music this time would be written by a young man working at his court, Claudio Monteverdi, a talented composer from Cremona.

This opera was called Orfeo, and like that Poof. Opera. Took off. Fifteen years earlier, the younger Monteverdi had come to the Mantuan court to work for the Gonzagas. Every Friday evening, there would be a musical soiree. Monteverdi would write and perform madrigals, and they would be performed in private concerts above the Duke's own rooms, in a mirrored trapezoidal room. Their reflections would have been reflected into infinity. It must have been psychedelic. When Monteverdi wrote the opera, he wrote about human emotions, drama and passion. It was an immediate success. After being performed at the Gonzaga Court, it went to Cremona, Turin, Florence and Milan. To accompany the singers, Monteverdi had an ensemble of instruments. A harpsichord, a chamber organ, cello, viola da gamba. Harp, and different types of lutes. Normally you would just pick one or two of these instruments, but Monteverdi used all of them. Way to go Claudio.

So here we are in Cremona at the end of the 1500s. The Amati family are in the midst of musically exciting times, and Niccolo is a young boy growing up destined for great things as well.

And this brings us to the end of this episode on the Amati brothers. But stay tuned for the next one as I talk to Timo Vecchio Valve as he tells me all about the fascinating history of the Amati Brothers cello he plays on.

It's a very cool story. James Bond is involved.

This brings us to the end of this Amati Brothers episode. In the next, I will still be talking about Girolamo Amati and his work, but also introducing Niccolo Amati, his son, perhaps the most well known of the Amatis. The father and son's lives and careers overlap, and so do their episodes. I finished this story in the late 1500s, and just a few kilometres away, in Brescia, Gio Paolo Maggini is living and working at the same time as Niccolo Amati, and will be hit with similar catastrophes.

So very soon I will be going sideways and leaving Cremona and the Amati story to fill you in on the Brescian makers before coming back to finish the Amati dynasty. Thank you very much for listening to this episode and I hope you'll join me next time for the Violin Chronicles. Right now, you're listening to a live recording of the Boccherini.

If you would like to support the podcast, please head over to patreon. com forward slash The Violin Chronicles and do that. It would be wonderful to have your support and you will also have access to bonus episodes and the All You Need to Know podcast, where we go through each maker and quickly detail their life and do a rundown of the characteristics in their instruments and how to recognize an instrument from each maker.

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