NOVEMBER 1992 VOL.103 NO.1231
DENNES ROONEY WENT TO CHICACO TO MEET CARL F. BECKER, THE MIDPOINT OF A VIOLIN DYASTY.
If you go to Chicago to visit Carl Becker and Son. don’t expect to find a quietly elegant showroom where master instruments are displayed amid antique furnishings and reverent voices. In Fact. if you reach their headquarters, chances are you’ll think you’ve come to the wrong address. Located in a drab, blue-collar part of town, the building is, to say the least, unprepossessing, a simple balloon-Frame two storey double house indistinguishable from its neighbours.
Climb the steps from the kerb to a front porch with a slight sag and ring the upstairs bell. That was what I did one morning Last spring. In a moment. Paul Becker. Carl’s son and one of the new generation of Becker luthiers, came downstairs to let me in. I followed him up a steep flight of stairs that opens onto a combined workshop and sales floor.
Some of the accoutrements may belong to the 20th century, but the ambience of the place would no doubt be Familiar to any successful artisan from medieval times. Under this roof the Becker’s work upstairs and live down. the two spheres interacting at midday with a plentiful meal served downstairs by Mrs. Carl Becker. This has been the family’s home since 1951 and headquarters of the family firm after 1974.
On several days prior to our meeting, I had talked with some of that city’s leading violin dealers and makers, all of whom unanimously lauded both the quality of Becker instruments and the integrity of their makers. As one of them said: “Their instruments have a consistent quality that is the mark if true genius”. Becker instruments, according to one reference source, have a fame that has become ‘universal in America’. In The New Grore, Charles Beare states that Carl Becker and Son ‘developed that art of violin restoration to a high level, introducing a number of important innovations and technical improvements’.
Nearing his 73rd birthday, Carl F. Becker is now the patriarch of the firm that he founded with his father, Carl G. Becker, in 1969. This followed their decision to leave their long-time employer, William Lewis & Son, after that house, one of the city’s most respected dealers, chose to cease operations in downtown Chicago. Until then, Carl G. Becker had headed Lewis’ repair department from 1923 while making instruments under his own name and, after 1947, jointly with his son. It was Carl G. (1887-1975), sometimes referred to as ‘Carl(I)’ who made the name of Becker one to reckon with among U.S. makers, Carl F. notes that the family’s work began even earlier: ‘My great-grandfather, Hermann Macklett, produced fine instruments here in Chicago. How he learned we have no idea. So there was a talent present, at least in my father’s maternal ancestry. Unfortunately there was no direct contact between Macklett and my father because Macklett died in 1884, three years before Dad was born. However, it means that the family has been established as makers in Chicago since at least the Civil War.
Macklett’s son-in-law. Carl J. Becker, was an accomplished performer and teacher, rather than a maker, but his grandson began to display the family talent as a youth. ‘My father started at 14. When he first started. be worked for a man by the name of Lane, who would frequently send him on errands downtown to Lyon & Healy, and I remember him telling me how fascinated he was by the display of instruments in their windows. At that time. Lyon & Healy was a major American violin dealer, and Dad loved to spend time looking at their wonderful Italian instruments. Eventually he went to work for Lyon & Healy, working under John Hornsteiner, a Mittenwald man.
‘Dad’s strong curiosity led him to study instruments intently and learn directly from them. This fascination with instruments- how and why they were made – is the foundation of our business. He always studied fine repair work. especially the work of Hill’s. It seems clear that Hornsteiner must soon have come to have great confidence in the boy. ‘In 1906, when my Dad was 18, Hornsteiner gave him the responsibility of restoring a severely damaged Amati that belonged to Bruno Steindel, then Principal Cello of that Chicago Symphony, who had had an accident with it. As he restored the cello, Dad copied it and later showed his new copy to another member of that Orchestra, Carl Klammsteiner. Shortly afterward, Steindel happened to be playing his restored Amati at the shop when Klammsteiner walked in. “It sounds awfully good,” he told Steindel, “but you can hear that it’s new”!
A funny story, but also a typical expression of that prejudice against new instruments that has long been a bete noire among the Beckers, “This has been an important struggle from my father’s day to this. There are two camps: those who don’t like Beckers and those who do. I would say that a person who will play a new instrument is one who has confidence in his convictions and is not too much swayed by others’ opinions, those who might otherwise talk him out of the idea. Some of our supporters have really been strong-minded people in that respect. They are convinced of that merits of these instruments and they aren’t afraid to use them. Besides, if you make an instrument for someone, they are usually thrilled to have it because it was made for them. It is our preference not to make an instrument look old. Dad and I always believed in makng an instrument straight and then letting it wear naturally so that it develops its own pattern.’
In the late 20s and early 30s, however, the elder Becker had experimented with a few ‘aged’ instruments, ‘They were varnished straight and then had some brown colour added for shading and a few marks added- but never to the extent of the more detailed imitations. They were sold as “deluxe” instruments.’
Violin no.736, 1970 by Carl F. Becker with the famous varnish.
CARL BECKER
Visually, a new Becker instrument proclaims its newness almost defiantly with its colour usually a brilliant orange-red. ‘From what we have seen in our study of old instruments there is plenty of evidence to indicate that they were varnished completely, some with a relatively vivid orange-red colour. The business of varnish colour and whether to fake or not to fake has been a big issue in our lives. We’ve felt very strongly about it. People will look at a new instrument and then an old one that has been worn, and say: “Why don’t you varnish them like they used to?”, It is hard for them to believe that this newness mellows into a shaded pattern that Shows age.’ Their varnish is a family secret. ‘We’re adamant on that subject. Many people in this business don’t believe that varnish makes any difference, but we believe that it has to make a difference because it becomes part of’ the instrument, and all the constituents of that instrument contribute to its tone quality.’
In 1908, John Hornsteiner left Lyon & Healy to start his own shop and Carl G. Becker followed him. ‘By then.’ says his son. ‘he had already developed a following for his repair work. At that time, instruments were frequently misattributed. Dad’s interest and study led him to become quite an expert. He told me that a violin came into Hornsteiner’s shop and was offered for sale as a Guadagnini. Dad looked at it and told Hornsteiner to buy it. But there was something questionable about it -apparently it had made the rounds of the Chicago dealers – and Hornsteiner refused. So Dad said:”We’ll, if you won’t buy it, I will,” and borrowed money to do so. For a while the word went around that Carl Becker had been taken in by this “Take Guadagnini”. Then Emil Heermann came to town and let it be known that it was unquestionably a Guadagnini. Dad told me that that experience did a lot to strengthen his confidence.’
No word would seem more incongruous when applied to the Becker tradition than ‘fashion’, to which it is simply oblivious. In a world of foxes, the Beckers are unashamed hedgehogs.
In 1921. Carl Becker joined William Lewis under an arrangement that allowed him a three month leave of absence each summer. It was then when he established the Becker tradition of spending those months at the Family’s summer home in Pickerel, Wisconsin, where instrument making alternated with fishing. Before then. Becker’s instruments had been made at night or over weekends. He lost no time in setting up this new establishment, remembers his son: “That April. he bought the Pickerel Lake property from a cellist he knew. He had to get there by boat because there was no road. He had a cottage built that spring and then took some instruments with him that summer.” Ever since, de Beckers have worked and played in such Fashion. In that way, each generation has had an easy introduction to the tasks of the workshop and the nature of the work. Carl F. Becker recalls that it was that first summer in Pickerel that he began to frequent his father’s shop.
“I was in there From the age of 6, making wooden toys and then model airplanes. I started my First violin at 13 but had trouble with the purfling and put it on the shelf. never to be completed. By the summer of my 16th year. I was helping my father with cellos. I made my first set of cello ribs without a form. It was an exercise to show what could be done if every-thing was worked on the square. He deliberately had me do it the hard way as a test of workmanship, but I was pleased with the results even if it did take me a good part of that summer.
By then, the younger Carl was at a crossroads. ‘I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I didn’t feel strongly about going to college. So my father suggested that I join him at Lewis’. All he said was: “Why don’t you try it and see if you like it?” He didn’t pressure me in the least, just left everything very open-ended. I started in the repair department, setting up commercial instruments and gradually learning something about repairs. About 1939 I was allowed to join in the restoration of a Nicholas Amati. It involved inlaying about 21 pieces in the top and a Full-length patch about two inches wide down the middle of the instrument. Part of the top was down to about 1/4mm thick. While reconstructing the ribs on a form. I learned my lesson about taking my Father’s advice. I had these ribs fastened to the form at the corners and I had the ends free. My father cautioned me: “You’d better fasten those ends down or you’re liable to have an accident”: Wall, I didn’t take his advice seriously enough and, before you know it. one of the ribs snapped off right near the corner. I had to repair it, put the ribs on the form again and then the same thing happened all over again. That was a bitter lesson! But I learned something from it and the fiddle did turn out well.’
During World War II, young Carl Becker saw service as an infantryman and later became an Air Corps fight instructor. It was then that the Becker dynasty might have been broken. ‘I met some fellows in the service who had been civilian pilots and were qualified to give a test for obtaining a commercial licence. I took the test and acquired it. All I needed to become an airline pilot was a little more might training. The thing that made the difference for me, however, was not whether I should go back to Lewis’ but being able to go to Pickerel Lake in the summertime to make violins; that’s what turned that tide as far as I was concerned!’
Rejoing his father at Lewis’ in 1946, the following year Carl F. Becker began the first violin made entirely by his own hands ‘I began it during the summer of 1949 and finished it the following year. I wanted to have at least one instrument on record that I had made. I still have that violin. I took it to the American Federation meeting in San Francisco in 1991, not having another, and one of the other violin makers came up and said: “That’s your first violin? Were you born with a plane in your hand?”
So — Whose is the best? Jennifer, Carl and Paul Becker
After 1947, Carl Becker violins were the joint creations of father and son. Before that date, the senior Becker had made and sold 488 numbered instruments and about another 100 or so produced before 1925 that carried no numbers. The series reached over 760 before the elder Becker eventually withdrew from the workbench. ‘After Lewis’ closed, we first went to my father’s house and worked there until 1971. By then he was 87 and his health and mind were beginning to fail a bit. He continued to do repairs throughout the spring and during the summer he worked on three violins. The first two had been ordered but the third one, he said, he was making for ”his wife”. I found that curious, since he always referred to my mother as “Mom” in conversation between us. It was really remarkable that he was able to work at all.’
By 1966, Carl Senior had noticed that the family talent was already evident in the next generation. He encouraged his grand-daughter, Jennifer, whose first efforts at violin making began with an instrument made of cardboard and wooden strips. Today, as Jennifer Becker Jurewiez, she has her own repair and instrument business in Minneapolis and has completed 18 violins. Her brother, Paul, who works with their father in Chicago, has by his own admission had to follow a more roundabout path to the family calling. His craftsmanship manifested itself in an alliance between lutherie and the wider realm of woodworking by his establishment and operation of a cabinet shop where he specialized in hand-carving and special shapes. ‘I started the shop to do something different from what I do here, as a place for release, in which I could let loose. I worked with talented people who produced some beautiful things. One is a long-tome friend who teachers at the American Academy of Art. He’d design a piece three dimensionally and I’d make it. We did some pretty unusual pieces, more artwork than cabinetry. ‘Paul is currently devoting himself to the violin shop, sales, repairs and making new instruments with his father.’
The Becker’s reputation for high quality repairs has had a drastic impact on their new instrument output. Says Cal Becker with a sigh: ‘I’m afraid that the bottom has dropped out. But we plan to change that this summer [1991] and put as much repair work as we can “on hold”. If we can get back into making more, maybe I’ll be able to catch up on a considerable number of pending orders for cellos, violas and violins.’
In 1987, a Becker violin cost $12,000; a viola about 20 percent more; a cello (many of which are exceptionally prized) $25,000. No doubt inflation has raised those prices, but if you have placed an order for a Becker instrument you’re probably still waiting for it. Carl Becker explained the procedure. ‘We list the customer’s name and what qualities he wants in an instrument. We don’t take a down payment, and we explain that it will be some years before the instrument is ready, so we’re not under any binding financial agreement and we don’t look in a price.’
No word would seem more incongruous when applied to the Becker tradition than ‘fashion’, to which it is simply oblivious. Underlying my talk with all of them was a sense that in a world of foxes, the Beckers are unashamed hedgehogs. ‘They know a great deal about one big thing making instruments of the highest quality. The tone seems to have been set by Carl Senior, as his son recalls him. ‘He was a real man’s man’, a fine person who had the courage of his convictions. If he felt that something should be done a certain way, he did it with no compromises. When he encountered prejudice against new instruments, he was hurt, but he wasn’t swayed from what he believed in. I grew up with that training and I feel that same way. So do my children. My father had a way of stimulating an interest in a piece of work. His underlying approach was that here was an interesting problem; how can we solve it? By attention to detail and working for the best possible result. We applied this both to new work and to repairs. If we could do something better, then that was the way we did it. It wasn’t so much a technique as an entire approach. When repairing, we have often had to devise a new technique or even a new tool to solve a particular problem.
Alteration of the traditional instrumental shapes, however, he regards with contempt. ‘History has proved that many ideas have been tried and discarded. Traditional shapes persist not because of tradition but because they work, The size of the instrument is current for the player, so you have to make an instrument that people can play. The form cannot be fundamentally improved. As soon as you move away from the form of traditionally excellent instruments you are getting something less good. I’m thoroughly satisfied that violins and cellos are set in their dimensions. Vilas offer a little more room for experimentation and one must still keep an open mind. There is always an opportunity to refine or further your understanding of your work, which you must continue to reflect on and review. There might be little changes in arching, graduation, varnish or other details that would contribute to the fine quality of the instrument.’
Cover photo: by S.E. Fohrman of Chicago master
luthier, Carl F. Becker, and his son Paul in front of Rabbit Lodge’ Pickerel Lake, Wisconsin.
Carl, now nearing 73, started working in the but as a boy, making wooden toys and aeroplanes.