Munich: Bow makers exhibit at violin days in the National Museum – Munich

Three point five million. In numbers: David Garrett recently put 3,500,000 euros on the table of a Paris auction house for a violin as a birthday present to himself. Although: Perhaps the nation’s violinist also transferred money via online banking because he didn’t have that much cash at the moment had with me for the rare. Of course it wasn’t just any fiddle, but a very special piece from 1736, made by Guarneri del Gesu. The man from Cremona is considered the Michelangelo of violin making, whose instruments are among the most coveted in the world. In 2010, one of his violins sold for $18 million.

So did Garrett get a bargain, even if he “had to sell an apartment in New York” to do it, as he lamented to the Bild newspaper? “It’s an investment,” says Eva Lämmle, and she should know, since the violin maker has been making stringed instruments almost her entire life. When the 7th Munich Violin Days begin this Thursday in the Mars-Venus Hall of the Bavarian National Museum, the master violin maker from the lion’s den will again be represented with a violin, a viola and a cello.

What people with no connection to classical music don’t know: After Cremona, the city of the Stradivarius, Amatis and Guarneris, Munich is the world capital of violin making, with a terrific high density of workshops. Lämmle has 40, 50 colleagues in the S-Bahn area, as she says, there are around 300 violin makers throughout Germany, 28 of them and five bow makers present their unique pieces at the violin days.

This summit meeting takes place every three years, so it is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Patron is Anne-Sophie Mutter, another first violinist. For 17 days there are lectures, sound samples and concerts in which the musicians change instruments and bows several times so that the audience can hear the instruments in comparison. However, the guest is not condemned to passivity: 25 violins, 20 violas, 16 cellos and 16 bows can be played by expert visitors during the exhibition.

It takes at least 150 work steps and many hours to finish an instrument.

(Photo: Robert Haas)

But how do you build such a fragile structure that people are still paying an incredible amount of money for 300 years later? On the Geigentage homepage, the rather vague answer is: “We Munich violin and bow makers make instruments and bows that belong to the same family, and we do it a little differently, each one of us. As different as the personalities behind it. A little like the famous example of the five chefs using the same ingredients to prepare five completely different ratatouilles.” Let’s take a look – to stay with the image – at Eva Lämmle’s pot.

Born in Swabia, she has her workshop in an inconspicuous building in the Löwengrube, opposite the police headquarters. If you turned 360 degrees up here on the fifth floor with outstretched arms, you would pluck instrument art in the full five-digit range from its anchorages, it’s that narrow. A small work surface and plenty of tools are enough for the craftswoman. Every violin, every viola, every cello that is neatly lined up here was made by hand.

Exhibition in the Bavarian National Museum: Violin making follows precise ideas and is nevertheless extremely individual.

Violin making follows precise ideas and is nevertheless extremely individual.

(Photo: Robert Haas)

Work processes and tools have not changed over the centuries. It still takes around 150 work steps to build a violin, which takes a good 200 hours, but of course it doesn’t work in one go, for a cello you have to estimate twice as much time. Eva Lämmle, who says: “I create about one instrument a year.” Because, in addition to the new buildings, she also offers repairs and sound adjustments for amateur players and all the many orchestra members who come to her in need: “There is a market here. And then it’s like at the dentist: once you’ve found a good one, don’t change anymore.”

The wood has to lie for ten years before it is dry enough

Anyone who listens to the woman in her late forties when she talks about the craftsmanship she learned in Mittenwald, England and Saxony will be taken into a strange world full of enigmatic terms such as tonewood, pusher iron, bass bar, jointer, arching plane and rabbit glue. One thing quickly becomes clear: Anyone who gets restless when it comes to threading a piece of string through the eye of a needle is wrong in violin making. Nothing is needed in this job more than patience. It starts with the wood: “It has to lie for ten years before it’s really dry,” explains Lämmle. ten years? A fly shit compared to the wood that she was allowed to process a few years ago: spruce wood from the roof of the Frauenkirche, 500 years old. “All brown and soft,” enthuses the expert. In 1945, when Munich lay in ruins, the roof structure of the cathedral had been replaced, and a tonewood dealer had saved the treasure from being used as firewood. Lämmle came across this very special work material through his son: from the immediate vicinity, but from a completely different time. It must have been very special planing and carving.

Exhibition in the Bavarian National Museum: None sounds like the other: violins on the shelf at Eva Lämmle.

None sounds like the other: violins on the shelves at Eva Lämmle.

(Photo: Robert Haas)

Normally she uses light spruce wood for the tops of the instruments from altitudes of around 1300 to 2000 meters, from the Bavarian Alps or South Tyrol, north slope, felled according to the optimal phase of the moon, no kidding. Sycamore maple from Bosnia is popular for backs, sides and necks, and oil varnishes made from natural resins are used for the finish. As far as the orientation of the violin is concerned, Eva Lämmle uses a model from 1733 by her colleague Guarneri del Gesu, whom the reader has already met, as a guide. “Radiant in the highs and very full at the bottom”, characterizes Lämmle. She is not concerned with the most exact copies of antique masterpieces, but with interpretations of the old models, into which her own ideas of sound flow.

She has been playing the cello since she was eight, currently in the Siemens Orchestra Munich, soon in the Herkulessaal of the Residenz. She still finds the development process of an instrument exciting: “Old instruments already have a solid sound character, new ones sound different again after six months because the wood has to settle in.” Planed down to three millimeters, every tenth of a millimeter makes a difference in the sound, at least for experienced ears.

The sound is a science in itself

Then the most exciting moment: the allusion. How does my work sound? A very anxious question after all the hours and work steps. What if the customer doesn’t like the sound? All work for nothing? No, Eva Lämmle has advice when it comes to sound adjustments: tuning and optimizing the voice and bridge, changing the stringing or the handle string in terms of material or length, changing the lower or upper saddle or replacing the endpin: aluminium, carbon or rather titanium ? A science in itself. But one that makes listening a pleasure.

The Munich Violin Days will take place from October 6th to 23rd in the Bavarian National Museum, the exhibition is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The entrance fee is seven euros (including the museum). More information is available online at www.muenchner-geigentage.de

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