About this episode
In this episode we look at the mysterious years following Del Gesu's departure from his fathers workshop and his early independent work. This is a period in his life when our hero is in his prime and the instruments are all his own. The army is back in town and Giuseppe is putting new labels in his violins that today have all but disappeared, what statement is he trying to make here? Transcript Welcome back to the Violin Chronicles podcast. A show dedicated to the stories of history's greatest violin makers. My name is Linda Lespets, and if you haven't already done so, I would encourage you to sign up to Patreon, that's Patreon.com/the violin chronicles, where you can get extra episodes and extra content and to support the podcast if you felt that it has been useful and that you've learned so It would be very much appreciated. But here in this third episode, we're gonna jump in and have a look at what our violin maker is up to. So picture this, it's the early 1730s in Cremona. Our hero, the young Giuseppe Guarneri, is standing before the altar in the Church of San Pantaleone By special decree with the usual bands of marriage conveniently skipped. He weds Katarina, a German woman from Vienna, right under the watchful eyes of the Church's Vicar General. The witnesses are nobles and neighbours and the ceremony formal and blessed. Yet beneath her there is a hint of scandal because this wasn't just any marriage. Giuseppe Guarneri had married a foreigner from among what many locals saw as the occupying forces, and as if that weren't enough to raise eyebrows in Cremonas narrow streets he wasn't about to settle down at the family home on Piazza San Domenico, no Guarneri Del Gesu and his new bride were leaving. His brother had written from Venice boasting of steady work and success making instruments. Meanwhile, back home, Del Gesu’s father, the elder, Giuseppe, was drowning in debt and dragging the family workshop down with him. The house was falling apart, the business barely alive, and Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesu knew that if he stayed, he'd sink with it. So he packed up his tools, took his young wife, and vanished from Cremona for a while. Or at least vanished from records. Where did he go? Honestly, no one's quite sure. These are what I like to call the wilderness years. A time when the trail goes cold and speculation begins and yeah, I like to speculate. Now remember this was the same era as Antonio Stradivari's Golden Period when Stradivari's instruments were gracing the salons of princes and patrons across Europe. But while Stradivari's clients were wealthy and insulated from the region's economic troubles, the rest of Cremona was in deep depression. The market for fine instruments had shrunk, and the city's famed liutaio were competing for a handful of buyers. Del Gesu must have wondered, what's the point of making violins here when no one's buying? So he didn't stop entirely. He continued to make the occasional instrument, but this time he refused to put his father's label inside. He wanted no association with the elder Giuseppe Guarneri, whose reputation was well, less than spotless. The old man owed money to half the city. His health was failing and his name wasn't one to build a future on, Guarneri Del Gesu’s new labels read. Giuseppe Guarneri Andrea Nepos (Giuseppe Guarneri, grandson of Andrea). He deliberately skipped his father's name, linking himself instead to his grandfather, the revered student of the great Nicolo Amati. It was a bold move, a quiet act of rebellion, and a statement of identity. I'm my own maker and I belong to the legacy of excellence, not the shadow of debt. He probably knew people would talk that it wasn't proper to make violins under a new name while his father still lived. But Del Gesu wasn't one to bow to convention. He had a new life, a new wife, and he had plans even if that meant wandering into obscurity for a while. And so began the lost years of Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesu. For the next six years, our violin maker drops off the radar. He and Katarina may have left Cremona to try their luck elsewhere as for his father, Giuseppe, well, not much is done in his workshop for the next few years. He's unwell his sons have left him, and it's hard these days to get any clients. I mean, he didn't stop completely. Things had just slowed down a lot. In 1724 alone in his workshop, Giuseppe Guarneri Filius Andrea made a violin. The wood for the belly was from the same tree that Stradivari was making some of his violins from. Of course, the wood merchant would've passed at Stradivari’s workshop first, so he could get the best pieces before leaving him what was left over typical. Or did Antonio Stradivari have pity on his ailing neighbour, abandoned by his sons, and, and give him some wood to make an instrument and pay off some outstanding debts? A few years later, our Liutaio Guarneri Del Gesu reappears in town archives, but this time as a property developer. In 1728, Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesu and his wife are now living in cramped quarters in the parish of San Nazario but in the mind of Del Gesu, this would not be for long because he had a plan. He was going to make some money, and not by making instruments, but on a much larger scale. He would renovate an old building, an inn called the Austeria del Mori Mori's Inn, just around the corner from where he and his wife are now living. Finally, the couple would have a place of their own. Okay. It was a bit of a fixer upperer but compared to living in an overcrowded house with a bunch of other families, the idea of this inn was a luxury. Through old friends from his days growing up in the Piazza San Dominico, Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesu learnt of this establishment coming onto the market. And the owners were a well-known noble family in Cremona. The Mellelupe de Soragna, this noble family who lived in a town northwest of Cremona called Ludi, came down one evening and struck a deal with the young Guarneri couple. In October 1728, on the night of the 14th, after the hour of Vespers and with three lamps lit to illuminate the room, pretty fancy, they granted Giuseppe Guarneri Junour a letter of investiture. He would now have a perpetual lease for the sum of 100 lire per year. He was now the master of a large three story building with front and back exits and a centre courtyard or garden with the front of the inn facing the street. The inn belonged to Countess Victoria Meleloupe, after she inherited it from her father. It was a bit of a hot potato, really, because her sister was also laying claim to the property. So there was a family dispute going on, but in the meantime, why not lease it out to a young man willing to fix up the old place? It was falling down as it was at the moment. What could possibly go wrong? So Del Gesu takes on this dilapidated inn that needs a lot of TLC and funds, the repairs that, that he has to pay out of his own pocket. He can't move into the building just yet with his wife, and so they move into a house not far. When Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesu has signed this lease just a few days ago, the agreement was perpetual and that meant he could renew it every year. He could really see himself here and to secure the bargain. There were clauses that included his and Katerina's future children and heirs. They were still not blessed with children, but they would come and they would all live in this comfortable home together. Here we are at a stage in this young couple's life where they are youthful, optimistic, and hopeful for a family. And to be able to run this inn as a business, if only they could fix it up enough, or were they thinking of having a workshop and living in the in themselves. The Guarneris will never have children or they, they may have planned to run the Inn. There is no evidence that they ended up doing this. Del Gesu is not a member of the Innkeepers Corporation. Even after he took on the lease, and this would have been compulsory if he wanted to open the austeria del Mauri as an inn. For the next year, Guarneri Del Gesu started to work renovating the building, but after months of toiling away, he realized that this was indeed hard work and he had to pay for the repairs himself. He just didn't have the cash for this to work. The dreams of renovating the Inn were short-lived, but he did know someone who could be interested in taking over the project. His current landlord, Giacomo Ciao, Ciao was a wealthy wood merchant originally from Milan, but he also dealt in property. Now you see wood was an essential material at the time in making well, almost anything. There was not an enormous choice of materials in a world where plastic did not exist, and metals were in short supply and far more costly than timber. So if you were dealing in timber, it was a sure thing why he had recently bought himself a house with the proceeds of a large supply of wood. So Giuseppe sells his lease to his landlord, and as we still don't know what our violin maker was up to in the next few years, perhaps he stayed on renovating the inn in the employ of his landlord Ciao. Guarneri was paid 300 Lira for the work he had already done on the building. And now Ciao saw an opportunity for a bit of property development himself. He buys the Inn outright from the feuding family, the Meleloupe, for 2,400 lira, and three years later, he flips the property selling the Austeria as a house for 4,170 liter. He would've been able to supply all the timber necessary for the works, and this would account for Del Gesus's whereabouts in this period. Here is Giuseppe, a young man full of energy, having a break from his father's disorganized finances and earning a salary for himself. And although he is out making an independent living for himself, unlike his father who was spiralling further into debt. He would've seen that renovating buildings was not the most effective way of earning a living. Well, for him anyway, for the years of work he did on the Inn, he was paid 300 lira. And to put this into perspective, Stradivari was selling his violins for 150 Lyra a piece. He was nonetheless still making the occasional instrument to make ends meet. Or was this the work of his wife Katerina? You know, just putting that out there. During these wilderness years in which we don't quite know what Guarneri Del Gesu was up to, we believe he used the label, Giuseppe Guarneri, Andrea Nepos. Today, only one genuine example of this label is known to us in the Kubler violin of 1728, both the early 19th century musicologist and biographer Francois Joseph Fetis, and found in the meticulous notes of Count Cosio instrument connoisseur of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Both mentioned these labels found in dozes instruments. The young Giuseppe that is Del Gesu’s relationship with his father was a complicated one. He mused as he glued his label into yet another violin. In a town this size, it was almost impossible to distance yourself from family, but he did not want to be confused with his father. The older Giuseppe. These were his instruments and as an act of independence, he had had printed at the local, printed his very own labels. Did he want to be connected to his father by stating that he was his son? No, not really. How did he feel about his father running the family business into the ground? Only just this year, he sold off a part of the house to settle debts that he was never going to fully repay. No, he would not be confused with his father or even mention him, but Andrea, his grandfather, well, there was a man who had made something of himself building up the family fortune and learning from the very best there was, Nicolo Amati, he would gladly advertise that he was the grandson of this man, Giuseppe Guarneri Andrea nepos, (Giuseppe Guarneri, grandson of Andrea). This was his own independent work in these years without the influence of his father over his shoulder. Fun fact, in the past, people had believed that there was a second Giuseppe Guarneri because of these labels. In Italian, the word nepos can mean either nephew or grandson. I mean, how confusing is that? And so these instruments with the Giuseppe Guarneri Andrea Nepos label were thought to be by yet another maker, but were in fact the grandson, not the nephew of Andrea. Now to get a feel for the musical environment Del Gesu was finding himself in we have to consider a few things. Yes, we have left the Renaissance and we are well into the baroque With composers pulling on emotions and experimenting with contrast and tonal harmony, you have to think of your everyday Giovanni Smith, he was not basking in classical music on a day-to-day basis. There were so many other avenues for music in daily life. Down at the local tavern, you would have heard ballads of love loss and local gossip played to, well-known tunes passed on orally from musician to musician. There was dance music, not like dance music, but music for dancing. Simple versions of jigs and bourres for festivals and celebrations. And then you had your military and professional music that a town such as Cremona would've been all over what with all the soldiers garrison there on and off over the years. And it would've been also to all these people that the Guarneri workshop would've catered for. Then his father fell ill again. His health had been a fragile thing these last few years, but now it looked really serious. He had been sent to the hospital and, and everyone knew what that meant. His chances of coming out alive were very slim to non-existent, but miracle of miracles. The man survived. Perhaps his family had prayed to the Saint Teresa, who the family for years have printed on their instrument labels. She is the patron saint of headaches and illness. The elder Giuseppe Guarneri came home in a much weakened state and the shock of seeing his parents in this vulnerable position saw the younger youthful Giuseppe Del Gesu back in San Domenico helping out his parents. The year is 1730 and Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesu has come to a turning point in his life. He has been married to Katherina for eight years now, and they still have no children. Perhaps they will just have to accept that this is the way things will be. They will never have a brood of little ones buzzing around them as they work as Innkeepers. Katerina in particular, must have felt somewhat isolated, not having a family of her own. The relationship with her mother in-law appears strained at the best of times from the beginning. They had never lived with Giuseppe's parents like so many families would have done in those days. Perhaps the fact of her being a foreigner had never sat well with the in-laws and now there were no grandchildren in sight throughout the ages infertility has been a source of shame for women, even though it may not have been their own fault. It takes two to tango. Anyway Del Gesu had to do something to support his parents, but still keep a certain distance. So he sets up a workshop in downtown Cremona where he will throw himself into his work like he has never done before. Setting up business in the old family workshop was no longer an option. That space was rented out to a shoemaker now and who knew how much money his father owed to creditors. It was best for everyone that they leave that place alone. In 1731, Katarina was now 30 and Giuseppe her husband 34, they've left their cramped lodgings and moved to the parish of San Bernardo into a building with six other families. Okay, so it was still a bit of a squeeze, but this new accommodation was closer to the centre of town on a main thoroughfare. It was a lively commercial area and quite close to the Casa Guarneri and Del Gesu’s parents. So for the last 10 years, since 1720, Guarneri Del Gesu had been making a few instruments here and there. But now this period from 1730 or 1731 onwards, he was concentrating all his efforts on making instruments. This is the beginning of the future Del Gesu. And so for a while our young violin maker disappears from the records. He has laid down his tools for now, his hands, perhaps busy with timber and plaster instead of maple and spruce. And in those last years I can imagine Giuseppe Guarneri trading the work bench for the dust of renovation, dreaming of stability of a future with Katerina, a home, a family, and maybe even a business of their own. But fate as ever has other plans. The inn he hoped would bring security instead brings well, look, it's, it's a reno and whenever renovation's ever gone well hmm. And when his father's health falters once more, Guarneri Del Gesu finds himself drawn back, back to the bench, to the smell of shavings and the craft he and his brothers were born into. Next time we'll follow him as he rediscovers his true calling. Well, it's really kind of clawing him back. The wilderness ears end and a new chapter begins the one that will forge the legend of Del Gesu. Join me in the next episode where the violins return and so does Giuseppe Guarneri. Thank you for listening to this episode, but for the Patreon members, it's not over. We have extra things coming up. I'll be talking to Antoine about more Del Gesu characteristics to look out for in a violin or to copy. If you're making one, and I have also added some parts of interviews I've had with my lovely guests that I thought was a bit too oh la la to put in the free public version. And if you are not already a Patreon member, head on over to patreon.com/the Violin Chronicles and sign up for extra episodes and no ads. I know. Amazing. And you'll also be supporting me to plough on and make more of these shows for you. I'd like to thank my already patrons because it's all happening because of you. I'm so grateful for the support you have given me. See you next time.