Grünewald’s great violin

I had a lot of help and encouragement from other instrument makers and performers of the previous generation. These folks are often eager to share their skills and build a warm community around the topic. It’s not cut-throat competition, it’s a very open community.

TC: Perhaps you would briefly explain to our readers about the rich history of the violin and viola da gamba. There seem to have been almost as many types of violins or fiddles in the Renaissance as there were violin makers, yet Spanish, Italian, and Southern German violin families can be distinguished.

JM: I think there is still a lot of research to be done on regional differences. I am dealing with a time when very few instruments have actually survived, so we get our information mostly from iconography. It is difficult to obtain reliable facts from this area. We can talk about trends. In general, I see familiar stylistic elements emerging in the Italian illustrations of the lira da braccio, which are carried over to the violin and viola da gamba families. North of the Alps there is a greater variety, with many forms and styles (which may derive directly from the medieval fiddle culture), which to some extent withered away in the 16th century. Eventually, a general Italian style prevailed, with evidence of all this curious experimentation coming from the German-speaking world around 1500.

TC: The ReRenaissance concert in April will enjoy a premiere – the famous viola da gamba of the Isenheim Altar in Colmar, played by an angel, has been recreated by you and completed in March this year. The altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald must irritate the musicians only in view of the puzzling bowing of the kneeling interpreter. However, I am much more surprised by the strikingly strong lateral indentations of all three violas shown. Are these Grünewaldian fantasies, which in form and color rather emphasize the elegance of the angel, or are they actually historically relevant models?

JM: First of all, the secret is that I didn’t recreate or copy anything – I worked towards a model that would satisfy our ReRenaissance players by “taking” aesthetic elements from the painting. The goal was for viewers to see the instrument and immediately recognize Grünewald’s style, but also say, “Wait a minute, they changed this part … and then this part …” recognizing that nothing was mechanically copied. We first followed ergonomics and acoustics, and spent a lot of time studying image understanding, image interpretation. In my opinion, the depressions in the instruments in the painting follow the gestures of the “angels” – Venus, Lucifer (Mercury) and Apollo – the humanoid forms and gestures take precedence over the (functional) forms of the instruments. The outlines and indentations (waist) merely follow these (strange) gestures. That being said, our iconographic sources seem to have many gambentailles and external forms that seem bizarre at first glance, and these should be questioned as possible clues to actual trends that are now lost. There is also the question of depth-graded iconography within iconography – as is the case with some medieval instruments that attempt to convey an ancient concept, such as the horned lyre, within the contours of a completely different form and technology.

TC: In your replica, you have hit the light basswood color well, but in the soundbox you depart strongly from the “two-partness” of the painted instrument. Have they been able to use any other sources from the time? Have violin varnishes already been developed at that time?

JM: I tried to match the color of the painting and the assumptions of the types of wood used. There is very little varnish – only enough to protect the wood, and only very simple ingredients that were readily available throughout Europe. There are no secrets here (and no plastics!). We must also remember that the color of the wood changes significantly over the years. At the moment, the wood is still quite fresh. I hope that in a short time this viol will take on a honey tone, perhaps closer to the color nuances of the painting.

TC: The great popularity of Baroque music that has been observed in recent decades seems, with our concert series, perhaps to become a theme for the largely undiscovered music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Do you think that the richness and rediscovery of the still unknown wind and string instruments will contribute to this?

JM: Absolutely. Our ideas about performing medieval and Renaissance music were often guided by the skills we had already developed through familiarity with Baroque models. This mindset and the basic assumptions associated with it often influenced our approach to earlier music and instruments; the result is that many historical instruments and practices were continually overlooked, and others (which contributed greatly to the Baroque) were undeservedly celebrated and presented as central to the music of previous eras. The success of the Baroque in early music performance threatens to shape our conceptions of earlier periods into something that does not correspond to historical reality – this is a constant danger for new medieval and Renaissance projects; on the other hand, the success of the Baroque has paved the way for a movement that shows a greater interest in detail and variety, and perhaps increasingly craves the unknown (the strangeness) that comes with exploring earlier sources on their own terms. The ReRenaissance series may be part of this differentiating movement, evidence that early music communities are not satisfied with a singular and generic approach that does not adequately address the eras it purports to represent. When we throw out our assumptions about aesthetics and performance, we are confronted with a wealth of interesting and challenging details and models. I have always wished to build first, in the hope that new musical possibilities will arise as soon as we have a different set of instruments, however strange this may seem at first. The Grünewald viol project follows this way of thinking and will show that both performers and audience will rise to the occasion!

Many of my first playing experiences with this repertoire came from the Buxheim organ book (since a neighbor had a house organ at home). And one of my first big investments was the modern edition of the Glogau Songbook. Of course, I wouldn’t miss performances from these collections for the world. And at the end of the program there is a selection of pieces from another of my favorite sources, the personal collection compiled by Johannes Heer of Glarus during his stay in Paris. There is something for everyone.

(Translation: Marc Lewon)