Violin making in Turin 1800 - 1860
by Philip Kass
Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, violin making underwent a profound change in direction. Nowhere in Italy is this more clearly illustrated than in Turin. The concepts that propelled the craft after the Restoration of the Monarchy were quite different from those which had dominated the craft in Italy up until that time.
Before discussing the nature of this change, it is important to consider the musical environment in which violins were made in that town.
By the end of the eighteenth century, nobility was the prime sponsor of Italian music, and it prospered to the degree that nobility would pay for it. Musical performance in Turin was dominated by two primary ensembles, both in the pay of the King of Sardinia. These were the Teatro Regio, the great opera house which is still one of the most important in Italy today, and the Cappella Regia, something akin to the King’s Band in Jacobean England or the 24 Violons du Roi in Paris. All of the finest musicians in Turin were members of these groups at one time or another.
Turin had long held a close commercial relationship with France, which was increasingly a leading financial power of its day and the preeminent musical center. It also maintained close political ties with France. Much of the early musical instrument trade revolved around exporting instruments to France, in which the annual spring fair probably played a major role.
The musicians in the Court ensembles may have had fine instruments; little has come down to us to indicate just exactly what they used. What is clear is that the dominant figures in the musical instrument business were the musicians themselves. They came in the form of performer / dealers, such as the Celoniati family, the Giorgis family, and the Rolandos. All three of these families were engaged in some measure of musical instrument making and repairs. Precious little has actually come down to us to represent their work, but what we have shows them to have been deeply influenced by contemporary French traditions.
The exceptions to this pattern were the Guadagninis. Giovanni Battista Guadagnini had held a court position in Parma; a change in the political climate led to a staff reduction that effectively closed the Ducal Theatre. Guadagnini was keen enough to recognize this and to receive a severance before the budget axe fell. He moved to Turin during the summer of 1771 because their Opera House was the biggest and most active remaining in Northern Italy at that time. He remained active as a maker and restorer until his death in 1786. It is unknown just how successful he actually was. Various documents of the period indicate that he represented his success according to the audience of the moment, was not by any measure especially truthful, and no doubt took pains to minimize his wealth when the taxman might take an interest. His children found more to be made from guitars than from violins. These instruments were popular with the middle classes, and the guitars they made were much like those being made in Mirecourt and Paris at the same period. These instruments were smaller than what is made today, with a small body, six strings, and often decorative floral detailing on the tops.
Unlike the native Turinese violin makers, Guadagnini’s style of work bore no resemblance to the French methods at all. His tradition was self-taught, like that of many of his contemporaries, and it was rooted in the Lombard tradition of which Cremona was preeminent. This involved construction of the body using an internal form, with the table and back created to fit the rib structure. The overall design was conceived through some measure of a rudimentary personal geometry, which allowed for a consistent result which still permitted freedom of action and personality.
The moment of change arrived in the form of the French Revolution. The King in Turin was immediately hostile to the French Revolution, a sentiment gladly reciprocated by the revolutionaries in Paris, and his administration was early on targeted for overthrow. Nice and Savoy were both seized in the mid 1790s. In 1798 Napoleon led his army into Piedmont and conquered Turin. Although his army was driven back into France the following year, it returned victorious for the final conquest. Ultimately Piedmont and Turin were annexed into France, becoming another Department, and they were ruled from France until Napoleon’s defeat in 1814.
French rule was devastating to Turin. In every territory that Napoleon conquered, heavy and relentless taxation was needed both for the maintenance of the occupation and for the financing of continued military advances in other parts of Europe. The financial drain on Turin was as great as that on other occupied territories. Trades of all sort were crushed under this burden. The nobility found itself stripped of title, position, and property, so that these traditional supporters of the arts no longer had the means to do so. The French authorities found the theatres potentially subversive and closed all but two smaller popular theatres.
While all of these actions generally impoverished musicians and the like, in one way the French occupation did encourage music. That was through the establishment of a Conservatory. Throughout France, in every major city, musical conservatories had been established to teach the general public. Its program allowed those who had no prior opportunity to study music to learn to play an instrument.
Another important import from France was the prevailing aesthetic. The French had seen their Revolution as the triumph of reason, and compared themselves to the ancient Greeks and Romans. In one respect, they resembled the Renaissance Florentines in their view that the great days of mankind were long ago but also, thanks to their good selves, just ahead. The French art from these years borrows particularly heavily from historical sources. This sort of historical introspection breeds a strong case of historical self-consciousness, and I believe that it was this quality that changed so many of the arts, and particularly violin making, into what they are today. It seemingly traveled throughout the continent with the French Army. While violin makers of the 18th century might be aware of the old master’ and even make occasional copies, they were not driven to make replicas, nor did they feel any need to. The post-Revolutionary violin makers, newly aware of their roles as successors to the lost art of Cremona, worked in a much more self-conscious way, following strict models and patterns.
To this we must add the demands of commerce. Throughout France, enterprising merchants began to capitalize upon the demand that new conservatories created for musical instruments, and with Turin now being France, there were no bars to trade to prevent them from opening offices there. This is precisely what the Lete family chose to do. From the 1790s, they opened businesses in several major cities, including Paris, Bruxelles and Turin, all primarily selling general musical instruments. The family member running the operation in Turin was Nicolas Lete, who appended to his name that of his wife Christine Pillement. This was a wise move for several reasons; not only was his father-in-law one of Mirecourt’s preeminent violin makers, he was also its mayor. The Lete-Pillement operation expanded throughout the years of annexation and resulted in a number of French instrument makers settling in Turin.
French violin making was quite different in character than that of Lombardy. The common method used by most French makers to that time had involved cutting the back to a pattern, channeling the back edging, and inlaying the ribs within it. The use of external forms was gradually replacing this method, and ultimately provided even more reliably consistent results. Other traits common to the school were a greater hollowing of the edging than other traditions and a more extensive use of templates for layout and design.
It also was oriented around production. Most of the makers arriving in Turin from Mirecourt were tradesmen, artisans who had no luxuries of time and whose production had to be oriented around a high-volume proficiency. The use of patterns, templates, external forms and such, was also part of a high-volume and highly efficient way of working that owes its debt less to the ancient art than to the rigors of the Industrial Revolution.
Another French import was the competition. The first such competition was an exposition held in Milan in 1805 as part of the celebrations marking the establishment of the Napoleonic Cisalpine Republic. After the fall of Napoleon, international expositions became an increasingly common event, first in Paris and later in other cities. The first in Turin was held in 1829, with other competitions being held in 1832, 1838, 1844, 1850, 1858 and 1871. Genoa held expositions in 1846 and 1854. These events always included instrument making, and the results should be viewed as much as a political statement as an acknowledgment of artistry. Competing in international expositions became an increasingly important part of the marketing strategy of violin makers throughout these years.
So, by 1814, there were two approaches to violin making to be found in Turin - the Lombard approach of the Guadagninis and the French approach of Lete-Pillement’s employees. There was also a third approach, that of the amateur. There had always been essentially self-taught makers who were not primarily engaged in violin making, and Count Cozio’s notes have preserved the identities of a few. Turin’s amateur was a dental surgeon named Alexandre D’Espine, from a prominent noble family in the Savoie. Among his cousins was a former Secretary of State to the King of Sardinia. Cozio recorded D’Espine as making violins in the white and having them varnished by Gaetano Guadagnini II, whose shop was but a few streets away.
It is important not to exaggerate the importance of D’Espine. He was a dentist, in fact served as the Royal Dental Surgeon from 1820 to 1831, and violin making was strictly a hobby. When he entered the Exposition of 1829, he received a copper medal, the same award as Pressenda, which reflects his rank at least as much as his skill. He claimed to have been a student of Pressenda, an interesting statement given Cozio’s earlier observations, written long before Pressenda’s arrival in town, and probably indicates his then-current source of assistance.
It would seem that the end of hostilities would have bode well for the Guadagninis had their situation been better. Cozio noted in 1816 that they were still working but not doing well at it. Both of the brothers who continued the trade, Gaetano and Carlo, had become violin makers when their father was already quite advanced in age. The market in Turin had little interest in new violins, and the scant evidence of their work suggests that they had few opportunities to practice these skills. Lastly, they had little time left; Carlo died very suddenly in late 1816, and his older brother followed in early 1817, and they left the business to Carlo’s eldest son, who we call Gaetano II, a lad of 20.
The future direction of the craft was also decided by Lete-Pillement’s choice to put down roots. After a decade during which he commuted between Mirecourt and Turin, always seeming to leave his wife alone during childbirth, he settled in the city in 1814. By keeping open the workshop, which later moved to the outskirts of Turin, he not only kept his French employees in the town but also provided critical training for some others. One of these happened to be an Italian. By about 1817, a common laborer from the countryside found employment there, and thus finally Giovanni Francesco Pressenda found his niche in the world.
The prime instruments that were being made in the Lete-Pillement workshop were violin and guitar family instruments as well as chamber organs and serinettes. After Lete’s untimely death in 1819, his employees began to go out on their own. A number of Frenchmen turn up in the trade at this time. These included Nicolas Denis and his sons, makers of organs, serinettes and general music vendors; Francois Mulot, a maker of all sorts of instruments, Leopold Noiriel and Francois Calot, the last two makers of violins, basses, and guitars. The business did not close immediately but continued in the hands of his widow for at least another eight years. Their style and method of working would ultimately become the Turin style.
To summarize, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, violin making in Turin had three main directions: the old Lombard manner, to which the young Gaetano Guadagnini II was successor, the amateurs, represented by D’Espine, and the French style, exemplified by the French and French-trained employees of Lete-Pillement. It is the latter whose approach would ultimately win the day, and none more so than Francesco Pressenda.
The story of Francesco Pressenda in vital to the story of Turinese violin making because what he created eventually became the official style. It did not get off to a promising start. Notwithstanding the stories of a Cremonese training, Pressenda, a poor man from a poor family, drifted during his early years, and most of the French annexation period was spent as a laborer in Carmagnola. Once he arrived in Turin and began to work for Lete-Pillement, he learned French violin making and became a trusted associate. Once he had opened his own shop in 1820, he developed his own very personal style, based upon what the French were doing but with his own touch, and this remained constant through a series of employees right up until his workshop closed after 1851. I am certain that several of his old colleagues at the Lete shop worked for him, certainly Calot, who was his neighbor in Turin.
I am less certain that this is also true of Pierre Pacherel. Among the violin makers who left France for the Kingdom of Sardinia, there was also one who went to Nice, the leading Sardinian city on the French side of the Alps. Francois Bastien settled there in 1819 and remained the rest of his life. Pacherel, who married one of the daughters of Nicolas Denis, went to Nice in 1839, apparently to take over Bastien’s shop. He remained there the rest of his career, with the exception of one month when he went to Turin to settle his father-in-law’s estate. The implication, therefore, is that, if he worked for Pressenda, it was by post.
Pressenda did have a very decided and unique style, based upon what he learned in the Lete shop. His instruments, unlike classic violins, are made on an external form. The scrolls and Fs are based upon a template, with variations resulting form the varying hands of assistants. The finish and varnish are based upon his own personal concept but are essentially his own interpretation of Cremona - bits and pieces of Stradivari and Guarneri, an amalgamation, perhaps, of the violins that belonged to his patron, the concertmaster Giovanni Battista Polledro, who owned one of each.
Pressenda was a native of a region known as the Langhe, the mountainous countryside to the south of Turin. The leading city of the Langhe was Alba. All roads in the region led to it before they led elsewhere. Curiously, this region would prove to be the cradle of 19th century Turinese violin making, as virtually every maker of consequence within his tradition came from one of the towns around Alba.
Pressenda entered all the competitions held in Turin and always received the highest honors awarded to instrument makers. Comment was made in the catalogues of his association with Polledro and Giuseppe Ghebart, Polledro’s successor as music director of the Royal ensembles, suggestive of the politics backing him.
Before continuing with Pressenda and his school, we should consider what was happening in the Guadagnini shop. Gaetano Guadagnini II inherited an old family business and transformed it by his own personality. He concentrated on guitar making, with occasional forays into violin making, and along the way made some important contacts. He eventually made a client of many of the top musicians in Turin of that time as well as a number of amateurs, including Count Cessole and the Duke of Genoa, brother to the King.
There was one significant fissure in the business, and that evolved from its origins. Gaetano II had received the shop from his uncle as sole proprietor. While he called the business the Brothers Guadagnini, there was no dispute that it was his and his alone. As his brothers left the business or died, it remained as before, and after his brother Giovanni Battista left to join his wife’s family’s business, it became known as the shop of Gaetano Guadagnini. His younger brother Felice, though, caused trouble, or more accurately his mother did. Gaetano was his father’s son by his first marriage; Felice was his father’s son by his second. Felice’s mother was still alive, and expected more for her son. This led first to a suit between stepmother and stepson which resulted in a confirmation of Gaetano’s ownership, and later to a breach in which Felice’s mother sponsored him to open his own business. This he did in 1835, and the world might have seen two Guadagnini shops and traditions had not Felice died in 1839 at age 28.