BiblioVault - Books about Violin

The Adventures of a Cello: Revised Edition, with a New Epilogue
By Carlos Prieto
University of Texas Press, 2011
Library of Congress ML910.P7513 2011

In 1720, Antonio Stradivari crafted an exquisite work of art—a cello known as the Piatti. Over the next three centuries of its life, the Piatti cello left its birthplace of Cremona, Italy, and resided in Spain, Ireland, England, Italy, Germany, and the United States. In 1978, the Piatti became the musical soul mate of world-renowned cellist Carlos Prieto, with whom it has given concerts around the world.

In this delightful book, Mr. Prieto recounts the adventurous life of his beloved "Cello Prieto," tracing its history through each of its previous owners from Stradivari in 1720 to himself. He then describes his noteworthy experiences of playing the Piatti cello, with which he has premiered some eighty compositions. In this part of their mutual story, Prieto gives a concise summary of his own remarkable career and his relationships with many illustrious personalities, including Igor Stravinsky, Dmitry Shostakovich, Pablo Casals, Mstislav Rostropovich, Yo-Yo Ma, and Gabriel García Márquez. A new epilogue, in which he describes recent concert tours in Moscow, Siberia, and China and briefer visits to South Korea, Taiwan, and Venezuela, as well as recent recitals with Yo-Yo Ma, brings the story up to 2009.

To make the story of his cello complete, Mr. Prieto also provides a brief history of violin making and a succinct review of cello music from Stradivari to the present. He highlights the work of composers from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, for whose music he has long been an advocate and principal performer.

The print edition of this book includes a CD of fourteen recordings by Carlos Prieto, including works by J. S. Bach, Dmitry Shostakovich, Astor Piazzolla, and Eugenio Toussaint.

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American Luthier: Carleen Hutchins—the Art and Science of the Violin
Quincy Whitney
University Press of New England, 2016
Library of Congress ML424.H87W45 2016 | Dewey Decimal 787.19092

From the time of Stradivari, the mysterious craft of violinmaking has been a closely guarded, lucrative, and entirely masculine preserve. In the 1950s Carleen Maley Hutchins was a grade school science teacher, amateur trumpet player, and New Jersey housewife. When musical friends asked her to trade a trumpet for a $75 viola, she decided to try making one, thus setting in motion a surprising career. A self-taught genius who went head to head with a closed and ancient guild, Hutchins carved nearly 500 stringed instruments over the course of half a century and collaborated on more than 100 experiments in violin acoustics. In answer to a challenge from a composer, she built the first violin octet—a family of eight violins ranging in size from an eleven-inch treble to a seven-foot contrabass, and in register across the gamut of the piano keyboard. She wrote more than 100 technical papers—including two benchmark Scientific American cover articles—founded an international society devoted to violin acoustics, and became the only American and the only woman to be honored in Cremona, Italy, the birthplace of Stradivari. Hutchins died in 2009 at the age of ninety-eight. The most innovative violinmaker of the modern age, she set out to explore two worlds she knew virtually nothing about—violins and acoustical physics. American Luthier chronicles the life of this unsung woman who altered everything in a world that had changed little in three centuries.

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The Art of the Violin
Pierre Marie Francois de Sales Baillot
Northwestern University Press, 1991
Library of Congress MT262.B15313 1991 | Dewey Decimal 787.2143

Never before available in English, this classic work is a major contribution to the art and technique of violin playing and an important document in the history of performance practice. A contemporary of Kreutzer and Rode, Pierre Marie Francois de Sales Baillot provides in his treatise many insights into the style of nineteenth-century fingering, bowing, ornamentation, and expressiveness that are not apparent from the directions and markings found in scores of that time. Such information will be invaluable for performers interested in understanding the intentions of composers such as Viotti, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn.

This complete, unabridged translation, which includes an extensive introduction by the translator, Louise Goldberg, and a foreword by Zvi Zeitlin, will be indispensable for musicologists, performers, and lovers of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century classical music.

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Producing Excellence: The Making of Virtuosos
Wagner, Izabela
Rutgers University Press, 2015
Library of Congress MT260.W25 2015 | Dewey Decimal 787.2193071

Driven by a passion for music, for excellence, and for fame, violin soloists are immersed from early childhood in high-pressure competitions, regular public appearances, and arduous daily practice. An in-depth study of nearly one hundred such children, Producing Excellence illuminates the process these young violinists undergo to become elite international soloists.

A musician and a parent of a young violinist, sociologist Izabela Wagner offers an inside look at how her young subjects set out on the long road to becoming a soloist. The remarkable research she conducted—at rehearsals, lessons, and in other educational settings—enabled her to gain deep insight into what distinguishes these talented prodigies and their training. She notes, for instance, the importance of a family culture steeped in the values of the musical world. Indeed, more than half of these students come from a family of professional musicians and were raised in an atmosphere marked by the importance of instrumental practice, the vitality of music as a vocation, and especially the veneration of famous artists. Wagner also highlights the highly structured, rigorous training system of identifying, nurturing, and rewarding talent, even as she underscores the social, economic, and cultural factors that make success in this system possible.

Offering an intimate portrait of the students, their parents, and their instructors, Producing Excellence sheds new light on the development of exceptional musical talent, as well as draw much larger conclusions as to “producing prodigy” in other competition-prone areas, such as sports, sciences, the professions, and other arts. Wagner’s insights make this book valuable for academics interested in the study of occupations, and her clear, lively writing is perfect for general readers curious about the ins and outs of training to be a violin soloist.

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