ALL ROUND LEARNING

The international landscape for teaching lutherie has changed in recent years, with new institutions starting up and younger tutors coming in. Peter Somerford speaks to teachers from seven violin making schools to find out the options for young aspiring luthiers

Students at France’s National Lutherie School in Mirecourt

Carving a scroll in Mirecort

PHOTOS COURTESY ÉCOLE NATIONALE DE LUTHERIE DE MIRECOURT

For students choosing between different violin making schools in Europe and the US, there are plenty of factors to consider. There are basics such as fee levels and whether the institution is public or private. There’s location: do you want to study in a major music city like Chicago, or in a place steeped in violin making tradition like Mirecourt or Cremona, or somewhere surrounded by lakes and mountains such as Brienz or Salt Lake City? And then there’s size: while 20 to 30 students spread over three years is common, the Swiss Violin Making School in Brienz offers only three places a year, whereas the International Violin Making School in Cremona currently has 165 students across eight classes. Given the time constraints, just how much can a school teach in the way of acoustics, materials science, restoration, varnish making, business skills and the application of technology such as CAD (computeraided design) programs and CNC (computerised numerical control) machines? And then there’s the character of the learning, the atmosphere in the workshop between teachers and students, whether the teachers are active professional makers or full-time instructors, and how much time is given to the development of critical thinking, questioning and reflection.

Location can be a big draw for some schools. Charles Woolf, director of the Violin Making School of America (VMSA) in Salt Lake City, Utah, says that many students are attracted to the school because of its geography, and the opportunities for hiking, cycling and skiing in the nearby mountains and National Parks. ‘Our location also means that every year we go up into the mountains and cut down an Engelmann spruce,’ says Woolf. ‘We feel it’s important for students to understand what’s involved in finding a tree, tapping it, then cutting it, splitting it, processing and examining it.’ The Brienz school has to balance the beauty of its location, in a small village on the shore of an Alpine lake, with its inherent isolation. ‘Brienz is a remote location, with a calm atmosphere that is good for students to concentrate on their studies,’ says the school’s culture manager Birgit Steinfels. ‘But we realise that it’s very important to have regular contact with professional makers and performers. So we have our own concert series and, for example, for some months we had Stefan-Peter Greiner as a violin maker-in-residence ‒ we could look over his shoulder, and he gave weekly lectures on his work.’

Being in a major city with big violin shops can mean more work and internship opportunities for students. Antoine Nédélec, executive director of the Chicago School of Violin Making, says: ‘Some students have part-time jobs already while they’re at the school. Being in Chicago makes that possible.

There’s a shop down the street from us that’s run by one of our alumni, and he hires graduates from the school and sometimes even students.’ In Cremona, the Museo del Violino offers students at the International Violin Making School access both to historical instruments and also to advanced scientific research. Angelo Sperzaga, a professional maker and a teacher at the school, points to collaborations with the acoustics laboratory of the Politecnico di Milano and the Arvedi noninvasive diagnostics laboratory of the University of Pavia, both of which are based at the museum (see August 2022 issue). He says: ‘There is a lot of information available to us, but we have to select and organise it for our students, to target it to each individual and their ability.’

The teaching of acoustics is a hallmark of the Basque School of Violin Making in Bilbao, Spain, which was founded in 1986 by a physicist and acoustics researcher. Teacher Ander Arroitajauregi says: ‘The theoretical teaching of acoustics feeds into workshop practice, so when students make instruments they make modal analyses of the free plates first, and then measure the finished instrument as well. They also measure the sound radiation of the instrument. We try to use measurements very much as a tool.’ Modal analysis is a common part of the practical application of acoustics in schools, with most institutions acknowledging that scientific understanding has to be workshop-friendly and not completely research-centred. ‘My philosophy with acoustics,’ says Woolf, ‘is that I want our testing equipment to be limited to what a student could use, so we don’t have a fancy lab that no one would be able to replicate outside the school.’ Violin maker Erik Buys, who teaches at the International Lutherie School Antwerp (ILSA), says that the subject of acoustics is often discussed at the school in the context of how to select wood, in terms of speed of sound, stiffness and density. ‘It’s important to distinguish myths from real scientific understanding,’ he adds. ‘The first thing I have to do as a teacher is to get rid of the many dogmas and theories that people start to believe.For example, the exact shape of a bass-bar and how it influences the sound. You need to learn that the amount of influence the bass-bar shape has is tiny compared with something like the density and stiffness of the wood used in the violin body.’

Drawing often features as an important part of the curriculum, with the VMSA, ILSA and the National Lutherie School in Mirecourt among the schools offering instrument design classes based on the drawing methods of luthier François Denis. Mirecourt teacher Étienne Bellanger says: ‘We give students a deep insight into this kind of technical drawing. We want them to be able to draw the entire instrument. It’s also important that the students learn to use CAD to help with technical drawing.’

‘THERE IS A LOT OF INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO US, BUT WE HAVE TO SELECT AND ORGANISE IT FOR OUR STUDENTS’ – ANGELO SPERZAGA, CREMONA INTERNATIONAL VIOLIN MAKING SCHOOL

Jeff Phillips, associate director at the Chicago School, testing a student’s violin

At the VMSA, Woolf says: ‘The purpose of the drawing class is not to create some kind of model using a CAD program, but to focus on the details of the instrument. It’s about eye training, and studying closely the corners, scroll shapes and f-holes.’

Training in repair and restoration varies considerably, with three-year courses more limited in what they can cover than longer programmes such as ILSA’s, which includes an optional but well-subscribed fourth year dedicated to restoration, and Cremona, where students specialise for their final two years in either maintenance and restoration or new making. That said, some three-year programmes do include an intense block of restoration training, such as in Chicago, where a full trimester in the third year is dedicated to set-up, repair and restoration.

In Brienz, Steinfels says: ‘Our restoration classes are quite intense and are an important and compulsory part of the training. During the third year our restoration teacher Jean-Jacques Fasnacht teaches different techniques in five one-week blocks, from surface cleaning and repairing cracks to repairing corners and purfling, and varnish retouching.

We are also starting to explore the use of CNC machining in the context of restoration.’ The school in Bilbao includes repair and adjustment in the first year, then goes further into restoration in the second and third years. ILSA’s Erik Buys says: ‘The one-year restoration course is very important, not only because of the demand for repair and restoration from musicians, but also because it sharpens the students’ precision and their ethical attitude.’

In the context of materials science and wood technology, and learning about wood selection and the impact of wood on the tone of an instrument, one area that is beginning to be talked about more in schools is the issue of sustainability of materials and the environmental pressures on woods used in violin and bow making. The International Alliance of Violin and Bow Makers for Endangered Species began working with the International Violin Making School in Cremona in 2019 to develop a conservation course that could be used and shared in violin making schools around the world. The Covid-19 pandemic paused this project but the Alliance has restarted work to create an online educational programme. In the meantime, the environmental and commercial pressures on pernambuco, ebony and maple are discussed in schools, and schools are exploring ebony substitutes for fingerboards.

Brienz teacher Simon Glaus (right) takes a viola da gamba making class

‘WE’VE TALKED A LOT ABOUT THE COMPLEX ISSUES OF ALTERNATIVE WOODS, ENDANGERED SPECIES, WOOD PROVENANCE AND SUSTAINABILITY’ – BIRGIT STEINFELS, SWISS VIOLIN MAKING SCHOOL

Arroitajauregi in Bilbao says: ‘We talk about CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) and the issues facing different species, and we experiment with a range of fingerboard materials. Students are conscious of the environment and climate change, so they should be able to realise the issues with certain woods. In any case, they will do soon, because ebony is likely to face restrictions.’ Students in Brienz had a practical insight into orchestras’ CITES documentation requirements when the school worked on a project with the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich in 2021. ‘The orchestra needed materials certification for a tour,’ says Steinfels, ‘so we examined all the orchestra’s instruments and bows, checking what materials they were made of. In this context we talked a lot about the complex issues of alternative woods, endangered species, wood provenance and sustainability. We’re exploring ebony alternatives too, such as the products developed by Swiss Wood Solutions.’

ILSA student Bob Van Geffen inlays a Baroque violin tailpiece

TOP PHOTO MARKUS FLUECK. BOTTOM PHOTO COURTESY ILSA

Teachers talk about the day-to-day atmosphere in the classroom or workshop as collegial, warm and open, owing to the small groups of students per teacher. Group teaching does not mean that individual progress is not prioritised, says Woolf.

‘Students start out doing the same things but they all have their own pace, their own skills,’ he says. ‘They’re in design class and lectures together, but at the bench they’re working at their own speed and it’s much more of an individual progression, rather than a cohesive group moving along together.’

In Chicago, Nédélec, who teaches with his colleague Jeff Phillips, says: ‘We set up like a big violin making workshop, where the instructors are also making their own instruments, not just teaching. That provides the students with a strong connection to what’s involved in the professional world of making. We don’t teach antiquing, because in school it’s important to make straight violins. But the students do see us antique our own instruments, so they get to see some trade secrets that few outside the school get to see.’ Sperzaga stresses the importance of the Cremona school’s teaching faculty being mostly active professionals: ‘We have twelve makers in the school and nine or ten are also professional makers. This is very important for the school. In the past it was 50/50. We need to be giving our students information about what’s going on in the world now, with musicians, with research, with contemporary making. If you’re not directly in touch with musicians, if you don’t go to international fairs, you won’t know how the trade is now, what the favoured models are, or what kind of set-up players are looking for.’

At other schools, such as those in Brienz and Bilbao, the instructors are full-time teachers, but the schools regularly bring in professional makers to work with the students. Schools also encourage or require students to do internships or work placements with external professional makers. At Mirecourt, for example, students work a minimum of ten weeks in different workshops over three years. Such external workshop experience is complemented in some schools with business management classes covering topics like insurance and taxes, but more so by encouraging and organising visits to competitions, museums, concerts, wood shops, dealers and auctions ‒ activities that can widen students’ knowledge but also increase their future network.

For example, Nédélec says that when planning the Chicago School’s 2022‒23 calendar, he incorporated a one-week break in November so that students can attend the VSA Convention and Competition, this year scheduled to take place in California.

In places with a strong violin making tradition, like Mirecourt and Cremona, students often have direct transmission from teachers who were trained at the same school by teachers who also studied there. But this is just one way in which local tradition permeates into current teaching.

Thomas Crompton, studying at VMSA, starts work on a new instrument

Bellanger says: ‘What’s special at the Mirecourt school is the strong focus on the way of holding tools, working with knives and sharpening them. The knife is an iconic tool in Mirecourt, and we use it for many things. The first thing students do at the school is make a set of knives. It’s important for us that students are skilled at working wood.’ Bellanger’s colleague Dominique Nicosia, who taught Bellanger at Mirecourt, and himself trained at the school under René Morizot, adds: ‘For me, the most important aspect of making in Mirecourt is this idea of a special gesture or technical movement, almost like a choreography with the tool. As makers we also search for the best results in the shortest time ‒ to work efficiently.’ One development to the curriculum since Nicosia’s time as a Mirecourt student is the teaching of varnish making. ‘In the second year, students have all the information and practice to make their own oil varnish,’ he says. ‘When I was at the school, we didn’t learn these things. It was like a mystical dream to make your own oil varnish.’

Angelo Sperzaga (centre) supervises varnish work in Cremona

TOP PHOTO JEREMIAH WATT. CREMONA PHOTO COURTESY CREMONA SCHOOL

The VMSA students’ annual trip to cut down an Engelmann spruce

Students at a workshop in the Bilbao School

Using a tiny camera to examine a violin’s interior

BOTTOM PHOTO AINHOA URGOITIA. OTHER PHOTOS COURTESY BELE

It’s no surprise that students at the International Violin Making School in Cremona are embedded in Cremonese tradition, but Sperzaga says they are also introduced to contemporary making techniques and use CAD to explore different design options. ‘It’s important for students to respect the Cremonese tradition, to understand the lutherie history of Cremona,’ he says. ‘So we use the same tools, the same construction method, the same woods, the same models ‒ at first. But though we teach from the outset the importance of the methods of the great makers of the past, we also open students’ minds to the different methods used today. The ultimate choice is yours when you graduate, but at school it’s important to have a lot of different experience.’

The classical Cremonese tradition led by Stradivari remains the base on which students learn violin making, and although schools can be a good environment for experimentation, no one expects a student to perfect a personal model over the course of their studies. ‘If you have three years to learn to make a violin, there’s really no space for trying to develop your own personal expression,’ says Buys in Antwerp. ‘Three years is only just enough to learn making. There’s a right time for everything, and developing your own style comes much later than school years.

That said, we certainly allow experiments in the workshop, but only for those students who have the time to spend doing that.’ In Chicago, Phillips says: ‘We have several students who make instruments at home on their own, to their own style and design. But at the same time we highly encourage a strong foundation in the tradition of classical Cremonese style.

You’re not doing yourself any favours if you don’t learn from the expertise that’s already there for us to learn from.’ At Mirecourt, final-year students choose a historical instrument to research, measure, photograph and make a model after, which doesn’t have to be Cremonese. ‘It could be an old French model, or English, or Dutch,’ says Bellanger.

‘So they can choose a violin that’s a bit different ‒ as long as it’s a good instrument.’ Nicosia adds: ‘It can be a very interesting project because some students like historical research, and sometimes they find information that’s not been published anywhere before.’

Schools also emphasise the need for reflection, questioning and critical thinking as important preparation for students’ individual development as makers beyond graduation. Arroitajauregi in Bilbao says: ‘We aim to teach students how to learn, how to analyse and question things.

Critical thinking and understanding why an instrument looks or sounds like it does are very important. It is these skills that should give students the tools to be able to do what they want in their violin making.’

With most students going on from schools to start a journeyman path of working in different workshops, learning from other makers and studying more advanced restoration techniques, do teachers measure the success of their institutions by the career progression of graduates? ‘It’s difficult to know who’s going to be successful in the business,’ says Nédélec.

‘But we can gauge the school’s success by the quality of the instruments that are being built at the school, and so far we see that quality increasing all the time.’ Nédélec, who studied under Woolf at the VMSA, adds that standards are high at all three of the full-time violin making schools in the US: ‘Of course I would want prospective students to choose Chicago, but they can’t go wrong if they choose Boston or Salt Lake City.’

And in Europe, with some countries, such as the UK, Belgium, Italy and Germany, having multiple schools, and Cremona itself being home to the private Academia Cremonensis as well as the state-run International Violin Making School, students have a large diversity of established institutions in which to start their journeys as violin makers.