“A craft becomes an art” by Mary Garrahan
A cello pattern is laid out on a piece of thine old wood in the workshop of Zenon Petesh while Petesh himself carved the neck of the instrument. Below, right: A violin in the making. Deft fingers and tiny tools remove just enough wood for a perfect fit.
For more than half a century, the bulk of Chicago’s musical instrument business has centered in a two-square-block area behind Orchestra Hall. Today, although there are many fine companies in every part of the city, the majority are still located along Wabash Avenue between Adams and Van Buren Streets.
To their workshops come the great virtuosos, the gifted amateurs or beginning students. With expert eye and hand, skilled craftsmen apply old world training to the exacting job of caring for all orchestra and band instruments. However, it is the strings that represent the most artistic endeavor—one where a man works with his hands, on wood, a natural material, often with tools he has made himself.
We visited a number of violin craftsmen, and found individual differences but certain things in common : patience, a concern with detail and quality, and the conviction that a superb violin is the ultimate work of art. As a group, most of them were foreign-born, and trained as apprentices under the European guild system. In one instance, the tradition was passed on from father to son.
In each shop we admired glossy members of the violin family, many, of great value. Dozens of violins hang on brackets, and cellos and bass viols lean against the walls. Often a musical firm will shelter its most precious instruments in a fireproof, humidity-controlled vault. This inner sanctum may contain Stradivaris, Guarneris, Amatis, Bergonzis or Guadagninis (the most treasured names in the fiddler’s world) awaiting restoration or repair, and ultimately purchasers.
Amazing as it seems, the men who restore and repair violins today may handle a product worth as much as $4,000 an ounce. A well-preserved Stradivarius, which weighs about 14 ounces, may be valued at $50,000, in some cases even more.
Franz Kinberg speaks lovingly about the instruments he makes and repairs.
Bottom:Restoring a violin is like restoring a painting—you remove only what is necessary
The expert craftsmen who work on the instruments often are the best appraisers of the origin of an instrument. Zenon Petesh, who tends to the valuable stringed instruments that pass through Kenneth Warren & Son Ltd. at 28 East Jackson, explained that there are literally hundreds of details that tell the identity of the maker—the wood, the varnish, the way ornamental details are put on, the curvature of the instrument. “The scroll is almost like a man’s signature,” he pointed out. “It helps to have a good memory. You have to be able to look at the violin, see it, turn your head away and recall every small detail.”
Born in the Ukraine, Petesh learned his profession in Warsaw where he oper¬ated his own business for a time. In 1944, to escape the advancing Russians, he and his wife left Poland taking only what they could carry. They lived in Austria until 1950 when Petesh came to Chicago to work for a firm at 30 East Adams Street. Later he joined Kenneth Warren.
“Here we have so much restoration and repair work we are too busy to make new instruments. I must make violins at home in my spare time,” he told us.
Kenneth Warren pointed out that many fine new instruments are being made today. “A friend of mine,” he said, “has a fine Amati violin, but prefers to play a new instrument he bought from Mr. Petesh. In fact, there’s a school of thought that the new violin made by a fine modern master comes close to the old masters. Of course, that must be proved because it takes time for a violin to develop tonally. It’s an exciting prospect though that violins made by Mr. Petesh and his colleagues will be eloquent 200 years from now.”
Franz Kinberg, another expert repair¬man and violin maker, has his workshop in the offices of Kagan and Gaines Co. Inc. at 228 South Wabash. Typical of violin shops, Kinberg’s surroundings are immaculate. Pieces of 60-year-old, seasoned wood lay waiting to take ‘ shape as violins. An assortment of chisels, drills, gauges, files, clamps and tiny planes hang in neat array.
Kinberg began his apprenticeship at 17 under a master violin maker in his native Yugoslavia. He completed his work in two years and went to work for a large company in Zagreb, moving on to Vienna after the war in 1945. In 1949, he came to Chicago to work for Kagan and Gaines, a company built up around the violin family although today they are in band and orchestra instruments, too.
“Normally, a violin should be adjusted twice a year,” Kinberg told us.“Wood shrinks in winter which means the soundpost inside the instrument becomes too tight and must be replaced. In summer, as the wood expands, the soundpost may become loose. Edges need regluing from time to time, a fingerboard must be replaced or a neck needs to be reset.”
For the new instruments he makes, Kinberg had been using a Guarnerius model because the size is better suited to today’s large concert halls. Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern and Leonid Kogan prefer the Guarnerius, he said. David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein and Yehudi Menuhin favor the Stradivarius. One day, he recalled, Kogan came into the shop. “Before he trusted me to work on his violin, he handed the instrument to me and asked, ‘When was that violin made?’ I examined it and told him the year was 1732. ‘Pretty close,’ he said. Actually, the year was 1731, but I was accurate enough. He left the violin to be repaired.”
Walking north on Wabash we came to the shop of Prager & Ritter Inc. The firm deals in rare old stringed instruments, new violins, and following the trend of the times, handles guitars, both electric and classical. “The guitar is an artist’s instrument, too,” Prager pointed out. “After all, Stradivari made guitars. But you have to sell a lot of guitars to make up the sale of a $15,000 violin.”
The other half of the partnership, Wolfgang Ritter, learned his profession at the renowned violin school in Mittenwald, Germany. In the 19th century, the small Bavarian town became a great violin center and has continued to attract students from all over the world. The seasoned wood used in violin making comes from Mittenwald, too. The old wood is more stable and won’t shrink or warp. Maple is used for the back, ribs, neck, scroll and bridge; spruce or pine for the top, linings, blocks, bass bar and soundpost. Usually, the fingerboard, pegs, tailpiece and chinrest are made of ebony.
Although Ritter speaks glowingly of the; Mittenwald school, he believes it is more important that the violin maker have a natural sensitivity to working with wood. “If you find precisely the right counterparts of hard and soft woods, the instrument will produce a fine sound.” On a lighter note, Ritter recalled an amusing story for us. One day, the concert master of the Grant Park Symphony brought in a violin which required a $600 restoration because he had sat on it. Laughing, Ritter said, “He was lucky Frank Miller hadn’t sat on it,” Miller being the Chicago Symphony’s portly first cellist.
Three generations of Beckers work on th repair of this cello. From left, Carl, Sr., Carl, Jr., and his daughter, Jennifer who plans to make a career f violin repair.
Leaving the heart of the music district we drove mid-north to the home and workshop of the Carl Beckers, Sr. and Jr. When we arrived, Carl, Jr., had just finished work on a Stradivarius cello. He told us it was commissioned in 1732 by Frederik William I of Prussia, and that Beethoven wrote two cello sonatas that were first played on it in the Berlin court. It was breathtaking to see such a famous instrument up close.
The American-born Beckers have worked for the finest virtuosos in the world—Milstein, Stern, Piatigorsky. “Dad started in 1901 at 14 years old, and he’s still doing remarkable work,” Becker said. “He learned his craft from John Hornsteiner who was recognized as one of the best violin experts in the country. The Hornsteiner family came from Mittenwald, and enjoyed an international reputation.
“In the’30’s Dad was head of the workshop and appraiser for William Lewis & Son, the biggest violin company in Chicago. When he went to work for Lewis it was with the understanding that he could take three months off in the summer to make violins. We still follow the same schedule. We do our repair work nine months of the year. And in the summer we go to our northern Wisconsin home where we make our new instruments. We feel strongly that they should look new, not like simulated antiques. It takes us 85 to 100 hours to make a violin; 180 to 220 to make a cello.
“I started in the repair business at Lewis’s in 1937, and two years later (when I was 19) Dad gave me a fine Amati violin to restore. That was really a milestone in my career to work on an instrument worth several thousand dollars.“When Lewis moved to Lincolnwood we decided to go into business for ourselves, doing our restorations and repairs here in our own shop. Fine restoration depends to a great extent on knowing how to work with the varnish. We’ve developed a soft orangered varnish resembling that used on the old instruments. The job is similar to restoring a fine old painting. You only remove the varnish that you have to to restore the instrument.”
Recently, Becker said he worked on one of the best Stradivarius violins he’s ever seen. Due to the owner’s health, Becker flew to California to deliver the instrument in person. “The owner, an amateur violinist, has one of the world’s finest collections of instruments and bows. We felt honored that he brought the instrument to us,” he said.
Continuing our tour of violin shops, we drove north to Lincolnwood, home of William Lewis & Son, a division of Chicago Musical Instrument Co. Lewis is one of the nation’s largest distributors of stringed instruments; the parent company, CMI, also sells reeds, trumpets, guitars, accordions and organs.
Henri Vallon reigns as chief violin craftsman in the Lewis organization. “Each instrument that comes to our shop is taken through a step-by-step program involving the bridge, sound-post, pegs, fingerboard, tailpiece, strings, chinrest and bow,” he explained.
Born in France, Vallon learned the violin maker’s art in Paris. On the day we talked with him, he was celebrating his 20th anniversary with Lewis. Since the company deals in rare old instruments as well as quantities of new ones, Vallon must be able to appraise an instrument’s origin and see to its reconditioning.
Vallon told us that, contrary to popular belief, the chances of finding a valuable Stradivarius or Guarnerius in an attic or antique shop are slim. For one thing, the ownership of famous instruments is known to all the important dealers. Any expert worth his title can, at least in theory, examine an instrument and know immediately what he holds in his hand. To the connoisseur, each violin has an individual face. “Many people,” he said, “have been misled by a Stradivarius label that was probably attached just to say ‘in the style of Stradivarius.’ There have been many, though, that have been fraudulently labeled.”
Vallon has discovered, too, that the daily demands of repairing and restoring leave little time for violin making. Like his colleagues, he must devote weekends in his home workshop to this aspect of the art.
Chicago’s master violin makers not only are helping to preserve the legacy of the great Italian school of Amati, Stradivari and Guarneri, they are creating one of their own.
Carl Becker, Sr., now 85, has been repairing and making stringed instruments all his life. He still prides himself on his steady hand.
Photo by Stef Leinwohl