Stradivari and Music in Cremona, Italy

Cremona has been important in Italy’s cultural life since Roman times as it was a major junction for trade and commerce, located as it is on the banks of the Po River (now a major source of summer water activities).  The narrow streets of the city are rich in history, the red brick medieval towers and the Renaissance buildings offering shade to the grateful Cremonese during the heat of summer and glowing red in the sunset of an autumn evening. 

In the streets and piazzas you will find links to both its commercial and its cultural past, whether it’s the statues of the great Antonio Stradivari  in the Piazza of the same name, the house in Corso Garibaldi where he lived and worked from 1667 to 1680, the replica of his tombstone in the Piazza Roma, or the statue to the equally famous Claudio Monteverdi in Piazza Lodi.    Moneverdi who was born in Cremona in 1576, wrote one of the world’s first full-scale operas, L’Orfeo, in 1607 and it is generally accepted that he received his first musical training at the Cremona Cathedral. 

Opened in 2013 this wonderful exhibition venue and concert hall offers the international community a world of riches.   For those who know little of the making of the instrument the magic and mystique is revealed in a walk through the display sections of the museum, from the history through to the manufacturing process.   And in the Museo Civico is a world-renowned collection of more than 60 stringed instruments, early guitars, mandolins and lutes.  Being able to gaze on such a rich collection of stringed instruments, the beautifully decorated violins of Andrea Amati and the inlaid masterpieces of Antonio Stradivari, some on loan from private owners, is an experience that can only be had in Cremona.

Visitors are led through ten rooms, each one dedicated to a specific period, and in this way the origins of violin making becomes clear through the instruments, historic documents, materials and woods that are displayed.  

Most days it is possible to hear, for a small fee, a short performance on one of the collection’s violins played by one of the young musicians from the Foundation.  In my case I was overwhelmed by the playing of the very talented young musician, Lena Yokuyama, who played Meditation from Thais by Massinet and Paganini’s 24th caprice on a 1727 Vesuvius Stradivarius.   I do not exaggerate when I say that the playing brought tears to my eyes and I know, beyond doubt, that my emotion stemmed from the lush, rich sounds that came from the Stradivarius, a sound that violinists today call The Baroque Sound, and one that only comes from an old violin.  

Cremonese violin making has a history ranging over five centuries and it has no equal.  The heirs to the great masters are today alive and well and working in Cremona in any one of nearly 200 Luthier workshops/studios in the city.   I was lucky enough to be invited to visit the studio of one, Stefano Conia, a 42 year old master violin maker as was his father and grandfather before him, and I watched as he shaved the wood, varnished the violins and mixed the glues for ongoing pieces he was working on. 

His studio, evocative with smells from the pots of glue, wax and resin, is hung with violin parts awaiting varnishing or waxing, and the workbench is littered with tools of every description. 

Over the course of our conversation I learned that the wood for the front of the violin comes from the spruce trees found in the Dolomites (Stefano often goes himself to choose the tree to be cut but more often he leaves it to the experts who know exactly what he is looking for), and the wood for the back is Maple and has to be imported from the Balkans.