A question of dates

Over the years, there have been many articles in The Strad concerning the master violin maker Jacob Stainer. The very first, published in November 1910, gave a short précis of his life along with a call for more research; this was followed by papers on specific Stainer instruments and his influence on future makers, among other topics. However, the most fundamental details of Stainer’s life have always remained shrouded in mystery: namely the dates of his birth and death. All we have known with any certainty is that he must have died in late October or early November 1683. Stainer’s birthdate is even more mysterious: we have never been able to state the year of his birth with any confidence. These two questions have intrigued researchers for more than two centuries, having been discussed in specialist encyclopaedias, music literature and local history studies since the late 18th century. Recently, however, new evidence has come to light regarding Stainer’s birthdate: we now have a clear upper limit for his year of birth, a terminus ante quem.

In scholarly publications from around 1800 onwards, we find several different dates quoted as Stainer’s birth year: 1621, 1617 (or earlier), 1618, and most recently 1619. This last was the received wisdom just three years ago, when a conference took place in Innsbruck, near the luthier’s birthplace of Absam, to mark his 400th anniversary. Stainer has always been a renowned figure in musical circles: inventories of people’s possessions included references to Stainerische Geige (‘Stainer violin’) just a few years after his death, and his instruments were being copied – and his labels forged – even in his own lifetime. That said, his name seems to have been rapidly forgotten: he left no male heir, and his wife and three daughters died in poverty a few years after his death. This also accounts for the lack of a family grave, which would have been a perfect source for his dates. His name was also neglected by historians; he was mentioned in the late 18th century by Johann Friedrich Primisser in the well-regarded Tirolischen Chronik, but only to say that he lived as a famous violin maker in Absam in 1673.

In 1839 Sebastian Ruf, chaplain at a psychiatric hospital in the nearby town of Hall, undertook the first serious archive-based research into Stainer’s life. He was fortunate in that the Absam parish registers were kept in Hall, a fact apparently unknown to previous researchers. Going through them, he found a record for Stainer’s baptism, which gave the date as 14 July 1621. The baptising cleric had also noted down the names of Stainer’s parents and godparents. For the next 90 years, historians unquestioningly used this record as Stainer’s exact birthdate. Just three years after Ruf’s discovery the local pastor, Ferdinand Lechleitner, had a plaque attached to the north facade of the Absam parish church, honouring Stainer and giving his birthdate as 1621. Two years after that, the Belgian music scholar François-Joseph Fétis published a short biography of Stainer in his Biographie universelle des musiciens. This gave his birthdate as ‘near 1620’ – remarkable in that Fétis’s cautious pronouncement would ultimately prove more accurate than Ruf’s, even though it would only be confirmed a century later.

Ruf published his monograph on Stainer in 1872, five years before his own death. This biography triggered a long-term interest in Stainer’s life and career – helped, of course, by his continued high reputation as a master violin maker. The first large events celebrating his life were held in Innsbruck and Absam in 1880. A plaque was put up on Stainer’s house while a new one, now made of bronze, went up on the parish church’s north facade in 1898. Both plaques gave 14 July 1621 as the date of his baptism. The previous, less weatherproof, church plaque was removed and brought to Vienna in 1893 for a music and theatre exhibition. Last but not least, the birthdate was used by Willibald von Lütgendorff in his 1922 work Violin and Lute Makers from the Middle Ages to the Present, and in the 1936 edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music.

A plaque honouring Stainer, giving 1621 as his birth year, was placed on the local church in 1842

The baptismal record of ‘Jacob Stainer’ – who turned out to be the luthier’s cousin – was discovered in 1839 (highlighted in red)

In 1930 two new documents regarding Stainer’s boyhood and parentage came to light. These were found in the Tyrolean regional archives by Karl Klaar, an archivist who had already published an article on Stainer’s final years. The first one, an inheritance document, was dated 1623 and referred to Jacob as a ‘boy’ and joint heir. The second, from 1653, also pertained to an inheritance case in which Stainer had to prove his direct lineage; it recorded the testimonies of two respectable men, a court juror and a civil servant to the sovereign prince, who confirmed the names of Jacob’s paternal grandfather,his father Hans and his brother Martin, as well as the luthier’s siblings.

Programme from a concert dedicated to Stainer, held in Innsbruck in 1880

The house in Absam where Jacob Stainer spent his final years.

Unveiled in 1898, the plaque on Stainer’s house states he was born in 1621

PROGRAMME AND PLAQUE WERNER ZIMMERMANN

These two documents came from the court of Thaur, which administered justice for the people of Absam and other villages. It seems that Sebastian Ruf either had no access to this archive or underestimated its importance, because the informational value of such legal documents is very high – there is no reason to suspect either forgery or perjury on the part of the witnesses. However, Klaar did not discuss the two documents regarding Stainer’s birthdate in detail, and the matter lay unconsidered for a further 20 years until a new biography of Stainer appeared, written by music historian Walter Senn.

It was Senn who clearly explained that the baptismal record discovered by Ruf was in fact the wrong one. It recorded the name of Jacob’s father as Martin Stainer, whereas the 1653 document proved his father was named Hans, and that Martin was his uncle. Thus, the Jacob named in the record was undoubtedly a cousin of the violin maker, who probably died young as no other records pertaining to him have been found. Senn then went through the Absam baptismal records again, very carefully, even checking the neighbouring parishes, but could find no son of Hans Stainer named Jacob.

IT WAS SENN WHO FINALLY REALISED THAT THE BAPTISMAL RECORD DISCOVERED BY RUF WAS IN FACT THE WRONG ONE

So the debate about Stainer’s actual date of birth started all over again. Instead of looking for a definitive birth record, Senn attempted to estimate the date based on his knowledge of violin making at that time. He assumed the luthier would have had five to six years of training; he also knew that Stainer’s mature instruments began in the years after 1640; and he knew that Stainer’s oldest verified violin dates from 1638. From this, he surmised that young Jacob would have attended primary school for around five years from the age of six, probably followed some time at the grammar school of its day. He may also have sung in the church choir during this time. This was followed by his apprenticeship, which would have around 1630 and lasted until about 1635.

In 1981, in a brief English-language biography for a Stainer exhibition in New York, Senn amended the start date of the apprenticeship to ‘around 1633’, possibly with regard to the siege of Tyrol in 1632. This would tally with his earliest known violin being dated 1638 – right at the end of his apprenticeship years.

Finally, Senn combined these speculative details with the dates of birth of Stainer’s brother and two half-siblings. He suspected that in 1638 Jacob’s half-sister Magdalena had given birth when she was 18 (and unmarried), rather than 16. Accordingly, she herself would have been born in 1619 or 1620 instead of after her brother Paul, who was born in 1621. (This argument is not convincing, because Senn ignored the fact that Magdalena is mentioned in the 1653 document as the last of Jacob’s siblings, and hence was probably the youngest.) Based on all of this, Senn hypothesised in 1951 that Stainer was born in ‘1617 or maybe even earlier’. This estimate was widely accepted and treated as fact for the next 50 years, appearing in museum brochures, encyclopaedias, and in technical and scientific texts.

In 2003 a major Stainer exhibition took place at Ambras Castle near Absam, organised by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. This coincided with a sensational discovery by the Tyrolean economic and social historian Helmut Alexander. With the help of the archivist Eduard Scheiber, he uncovered the original records of the Episcopal Inquisition’s investigation against Jacob Stainer. In 1668 a number of books considered heretical had been found in the house of a local tailor named Meringer, who claimed they had been loaned to him by Stainer. Both men were summoned to appear at the ecclesiastical court in Brixen, around 55 miles south of Absam, although Stainer never made it there. While both Ruf and Senn knew about this case, they were unable to locate the records; Alexander finally uncovered them in the archives of the Brixen diocese.

Although the bundle of files discovered by Alexander contained no information about Stainer’s exact date of birth, it did include a letter to the episcopal authorities, in Stainer’s own handwriting, dated 16 September 1668. At the time of the discovery, preparations for the Stainer exhibition were in full flow, and the job of transcribing the letter, as well as several other documents pertaining to the case, was outsourced to a junior worker. In this transcription, as used in the exhibition catalogue, Stainer states that he is an die 50 Jahre meines Alters komme (‘coming to the 50th year of my age’). He goes on to state that he is well read in the Scriptures, has listened to excellent Catholic sermons in many places, has travelled widely, and is well renowned for his work.

Stainer’s letter to the Inquisition, dated 16 September 1668

.LETTER DIÖZESANARCHIV BRIXEN, KA III 1378. SEAL SEIPEL 2003 III.8A

Jacob’ Stainer’s seal taken from a 1668/69 letter to the Inquisition. Rising above the crest is an ibex (Steinbock, similar to ‘Stainer’) holding a violin in its front legs.

Details from the letter, with the different renderings of the ‘i’ and ‘a’ characters highlighted

So it seemed clear that Senn had erred in placing his birthdate as ‘1617 or maybe even earlier’. This letter put the date in the months after 16 September 1618 at the earliest, but probably 1619 or at most a little later. The 2003 exhibition catalogue gave this as the new date, as did subsequent publications – based entirely on the transcription of this letter.

Based on this data, as stated earlier, the year 2019 saw several events taking place to mark the 400th anniversary of Jacob Stainer’s birth. The violin making associations of Germany, Austria and Switzerland held a joint conference and exhibition in Innsbruck. As my friend and colleague Helmut Alexander had fallen seriously ill, I was asked to give an introductory lecture at this conference. To help me prepare, Alexander kindly gave me his working materials on Stainer, especially the scans and photocopies of the documents from the heresy case, and the aforementioned transcriptions.

But when I recently examined the transcription of the 1668 letter against the original, I got a big surprise. Having thoroughly compared the letters ‘a’ and ‘i’, particularly in the small word ‘in’, it became clear that the transcriber had definitely made a mistake – probably due to the time pressure of the exhibition. Stainer had not written ‘an die 50 Jahre meines Alters komme’ as per the transcription, but ‘in die 50 Jahr meines alters komen’ – i.e. he is not reaching his fiftieth year, but rather his early fifties. Stainer’s practised, almost calligraphic handwriting had the peculiarity of rendering the ‘i’ sometimes as a double line and sometimes as a small loop – the latter especially for the word ‘in’. Apparently the flowing hand of the master came out not just in the brilliant carving of his instruments but in the delicate, filigree nature of his writing.

In case further evidence is needed: if he had indeed meant he was ‘reaching my fiftieth year’, the articulate Stainer would undoubtedly have used a word like fast or nahe (‘almost’ or ‘nearly’). Just like today, another word would be necessary for proper understanding and the removal of ambiguity; the lack of it makes the sentence somewhat clumsy.

Hence, by changing this one letter, ‘i’ instead of ‘a’, we no longer have a lower limit for his birth year but a clear upper limit instead –a definite terminus ante quem. In other words, Jacob Stainer was not born in 1618 at the earliest, but at the latest. In addition, as Senn discovered, the baptismal record for Jacob’s younger brother Martin is noted down as 25 October 1618. From this we can further narrow down the year of Jacob’s birth: if Martin was born a little earlier than that date, then Jacob would have arrived at the very latest in the last months of 1617, or even a few years earlier.

BY CHANGING ONE LETTER, WE NO LONGER HAVE A LOWER LIMIT FOR STAINER’S BIRTH YEAR BUT A CLEAR UPPER LIMIT INSTEAD

The replacement plaque on Absam’s church, which gives the luthier’s birth year as 1621

HEINZ NOFLATSCHER

So, after a good 200 years of discussion, the year of Stainer’s birth is now only partly unclear. His handwritten letter effectively verified Walter Senn’s assumption, which had never seemed entirely reliable before now, with the terminus ante quem. According to this, Stainer was certainly born in 1617 at the latest. With his statement that he is now either past fifty or is in his fifties – we can determine this upper limit with certainty. Stainer was probably only in his early fifties in 1668, otherwise he would have said he was ‘close to’ or ‘almost’ sixty.

With regard to a lower limit for the year of birth, we can say that Stainer would have begun his five-year apprenticeship between the ages of 12 and 15. But the waves of epidemics and war in the first half of the 1630s may have delayed or interrupted the start of his apprenticeship. Thus Stainer could have been 13 to 16 when he started, and if we assume 1617 as his birthdate, this would tally with Senn’s estimates: ‘around 1630’ if he was 13, and ‘around 1633’ if 16. Then again, if he started in 1630 aged 16, it would give his birthdate a lower limit of 1614.

In any case, there is now a clear upper limit for future mentions of Stainer’s birth year: 1617, as the master himself testified. The years 1618, 1619 and 1621, as mentioned in the literature up to now, can safely be dismissed. So I suggest the following formulation as Jacob Stainer’s date of birth: ‘1617 or a few years earlier’. Or, if this seems too cumbersome, we could simply say ‘1614–17’.

TRANSLATION BY CHRISTIAN LLOYD