By James O. Jackson
CHICAGO, ILL. – There is but one way to learn the art of making fine violins – It Is to tear them apart.
For the last 50 years Chicago’s Becker family has torn apart some of and the world’s finest violins, and what they have learned has made their name a legend in the world of stringed instruments.
The three generations of Beckers – Carl, 86, Carl. jr.54. and Jennifer, 18 – have crafted nearly 800 violins. violas, and cellos since the turn of the century, making nearly all of them in their tiny Chicago workshop or at their summer cabin on Pickerel Lake, Wis.
The instruments are of such sweetness and tonal beauty that musical experts have ranked them alongside the rare, famous violins of Stradivari, Guarneri, and Amati.
“It’s entirely possible that some day Becker violins will be prized almost as highly as Strads,” said Dr. Samuel Thaviu, an accomplished violinist and professor of violin at Northwestern University. “I’ve known that Beckers for a long time and I know their violins, I don’t know of anybody who makes consistently better violins than they do. They’re wonderful, wonderful instruments.”
Thaviu said the Beckers’ art in making new violins rests in their ability to restore old ones.
“Repairing them and making them are two sides of the same coin,” he said.
The Beckers, father, son, and granddaughter, could not agree more. Plagiarism, they say, is a virtue among violinmakers.
“We absorbed techniques from other makers, from observing old instruments,” said the older Becker, who still wields his tiny planes and delicate knives with consummate skill. “When we make a violin., we already know what the limits and tolerances should be, and if we stay inside those tolerances, well, it’ll have to be good.”
So it must, nearly 800 Beckers have been crafted since the senior Becker put together his first violin in 1901, at the age of 14. A new Becker violin today fetches a price of $3,000, and it can only go up.
Becker said he did his violin making in his spare time, at first. and spent all his working hours doing repairs and restorations. When he was only 19, he said, his employer entrusted him with the repair of a fine Amati cello that had been smashed in a streetcar accident. Becker painstakingly disassembled it. attended to the scrapes and cracks, and put it back together.
Then, using what he had observed and learned, he made another exactly like it, an inspired replica in every detail.
Becker’s twentieth – century copy was so much like the seventeenth – century original in appearance and sound, that experieced cellists had trouble telling the difference.
From that time, Becker’s reputation and importance grew steadily, and he joined he Chicago firm of William Lewis and Son as a master repairman under a contract that gave him his summers free to fish and make new violins. His son joined him there, and soon the Beckers became a famed and able team.
The elder Becker continues. to this day to be regarded as great American master. But he himself said it is not so.
“This man.” he said, gesturing toward his son, “this man is the greatest repairman and maker of violins who ever lived. I may have been all right in my day, but I never had the patience to spend the time that he does. I did my work well, but I did it fast. Alongside him, I’m a butcher.”
Carl Becker, jr, has indeed, achieved such a reputation for care and craftsmanship that he has been entrusted with the task of taking apart a violin that is thought by many musicians to be the world’s finest – the “‘Lady Blunt,” a Stradivarius that was made in 1721.
“That was the greatest moment in our lives.” Becker recalled, although it took considerably more than a moment to savor it. He said that each time he lifted the Lady Blunt to carry it across his shop he paused and plotted in his mind every step he would take.
“I spent one entire day taking the top off,” he said.“Normally that would take about 15 or 20 minutes, but with this instrument there just couldn’t be any question of anything going wrong, anything at all.?
Everything, of course, went well. So well that the Lady Blunt shortly afterward was taken to London and was sold at auction for $200,000, one of the highest prices ever brought by a violin.
The Beckers said they do most of the actual carving and assembling of their violins at Pickerel Lake.
My son and I used to go up there and fish and make violins.” the elder Becker said. “How many violins we made depended on how the fish were biting.”
He has given up fishing, he said, but the family still prefers the peace of Wisconsin for making the dozen Becker or more Becker violins they turn out every year.
“We only finish them in the white up there,” Becker said, referring to the smooth whiteness of the wood of un varnished violins. They do their varnishing back in Chicago. and the Beckers said that is the most important part.
“The varnish is the chief thing that makes the difference in the quality of a violin,’ the cider Becker explained. “When it’s finished. it’s a combination of wood and varnish, and if the varnish isn’t right, then the violin won’t be right.”
A good varnish is what the Beckers call “tender” neither too hard nor too soft and it must be allowed to dry thoroughly between coats.
AFTER WE FINISH a fiddle in the white, we have a year or more of varnishing and buffing before It’s ready,” Becker said.
“We never string them up and play them until they’re completely finished.” he said. “We’ve made enough of them so that we always fed pretty certain they’ll be right.”
Which is not to say that a mistake has never been made in a Becker instrument.
“When I was younger. I noticed that cello ribs were always getting cracked where the cellists held them with their knees,'” said the elder Becker. “So I made some of my early cellos with ribs that were just one millimeter thicker than the old masters made them.
It didn’t work.
“It had an effect on the tone.” he said. “Now, whenever I get one of those old cellos of mine in here for repair, I take it apart and shave off that extra millimeter, and it makes a great deal of difference.”
Carl Becker, sr., has not stopped making violins even though age has caused him to slow down. He is keenly aware that the twentieth-century Beckers of Chicago share a legacy with the seventeenth-century Stradivaris and Guarneris of Cremona.
I have an ambition.” he said. “It is to live as long as Antonio Stradivari. He kept working until he died at 93.”
Becker could well achieve his ambition. He also can rest with the certainty that the fame of his house will live long.
His granddaughter, Jennie, a tall, pretty, patient girl, began making her first violin at age 11 and today, at the age of 18, she shares fully in the work of the shop.
A few weeks ago, the Beckers showed Jennie’s first violin to a visitor, who listened while Carl Becker, jr., tucked it beneath his chin, tuned it, and began playing.
The delicate, finely varnished instrument filled the room with a rich full-throated song. It proclaimed that there will be yet another generation of Becker violins.