Episode 46 Cremona, Italy

Cremona, Italy

The State of Violin-Making in the Historical Birthplace of the Violin

📍Cremona, Italy

Stefano Conia: http://stefanoconia.com/index.php/en/index.html 

Minjeong's Studio: https://www.violincellomaker.com/ 

Violin Museum: https://museodelviolino.org/en/ 

Thanks to Target Turismo: https://www.targetturismo.com/ 

Thoughts and Reflections

We started Season 3 strong with a trip not to any one particular maker, but a city full of makers. I spent a full day in Cremona, and I ended up visiting the museum, watching a mini-concert, visiting a maker (of the oldest workshop in Cremona) Stefano Conia Jr, having lunch, trying to get a glimpse of violin-making schools, bumping into luthier students to chat with, visiting the workshop of Minjeong Kang, and then watching a special evening concert. 

It was a lot in one day for sure, but I stay hydrated and paced myself. I didn't really want to bring-to-focus that I did all of this in one day, as maybe a more appropriate narrative (especially as my role as a documentarian) could be communicated and explored over the course of a few days. However, I left my pregnant wife in Milan, and I had to get back to her that evening. I didn't feel any experience was particularly rushed; I could have stayed longer at the final evening concert (which I was very fortunate to be able to witness, and was to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the organization "House of Stradivari"). I watched a good portion of it before I had to leave and catch my train back to Milan. Missing that train would have costed me an additional 2 hours. 

In hindsight, there was one element in the middle of the day I could have planned better. Firstly, I had just come off attending my own wedding a few days prior. But secondly, I had imagined, it would be a place that I could just walk into open workshops and introduce myself that way. However, it is summer, so places are closed, but also I was looking for something specific. 

What I had roughly pre-planned going in was indeed visiting the museum, the mini-concert at the museum, visiting Stefano Conia Jr. (which Target Tourismo, the official tourism company, helped organize), and the concert in the evening. What I was hoping to find, which I did get there at the end, was perspectives from some current young students, and an established female luthier. I found these students on accident after trying to visiting the violin-making school. It had just closed for the summer that day, so it was closed, not that I would have been able to easily stroll in and accost some students anyways. Anyways, outside the school I saw Juhwan getting off his bike, carrying a bag of identifiable violin-making tools and parts to visit his friends upstairs (Seungyeon and Beomjoo) and I struck up a conversation with him. It took some convincing and charming on my part, but I was eventually invited up. I didn't stay for too long because I had to get to Minjeong's workshop. I am happy I found her; in the morning while at the museum, realizing I was slightly underprepared, went on a frantic hunt for a female instrument-maker and messaged a lot of people on Whatsapp. Almost all who responded did so positively, but as it was summer, they were either too busy to meet or out of town. Minjeong was free and I'm so gracious that she took the time for me. I didn't mean to mislead her, but she had thought I was just going to check out instruments and ask her simple questions, rather than asking her deeper philosophical violin-questions, no less on camera. She was a good sport about it, and we had a successful chat!

On reflection, not that any of these makers weren't amazing to listen to, but to help share a more inclusive narrative, I would have also wanted to speak to an Italian maker and also students representing other countries (in addition to Stefano originally from Hungary, and the others all from South Korea). But it does paint a picture of the growing Internationalism in Cremona and the violin-making world. 

I came into filming the episode with a few wrong misconceptions about the state of violin and Cremona. I knew that Cremona had a thriving population of violin-makers. Firstly, I had assumed that it had always had this thriving population of violin-makers, while it turned out (I later learned) after the greats of Stradivari, Guaneri, Amati, etc passed on, violin-making essentially died out by the mid/late 1800s. Only in the mid-1900s did it make a comeback, starting with the founding of the violin-making school. So when Stefano Conia Jr. claimed his workshop (started from his grandfather in the 1970s) was the oldest continously operating workshop in town, I was skeptical, until I understood this violin-making revival history.

Secondly, another misconception I had was that the violin-making community was facing increased financial strain from globalization, and a lack of people interested in the craft. I wondered "why would you travel so far and expensively to learn the craft when you can learn from the luthier down the street? And why would a musician do the same to buy an instrument, when they can buy one from Amazon or a nice from your local music consignment shop?"

So I had imagined the community was needing to innovate to stay relevant in this world. And that the financial viability was becoming tougher. I learned quickly that was not the case, and that Cremona is solidifying itself more as the place to go for violin-making and violin-buying. Even back 30 years ago when Minjeong attended school, half the class was already International students; she also mentioned that compared to a few years ago, one of the differences in buying practices was there are now less dealers buying instruments and now more individual buyers. Seungyeon also responded bery well to my question of "what if a student wanted to change up how they make a violin, to add their own personality?" And he responded "of course, you can and you're allowed. But why would you? The students come here specifically to learn and master one particular craft of Cremonese violinmaking". That sentence in itself explained everything I needed to know and understand what was going on in Cremona. 

I would love to spend more time there in the future, there's a lot to explore there, and I'm grateful for the luthiers who opened their doors for me.