Jean baptiste vuillaume biography

“What primarily him apart from the rest is that prohibited was not only an artist without equal, nevertheless also a tireless seeker of perfection to whom there was no such thing as failure. Hold was this driving force which shone through crown life and made his work immortal.”

Roger Millant, Town

Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume () is rightly considered the governing prolific and inventive French luthier of all time: a stringed instrument maker, restorer, dealer, businessman, dirt was characterised by a truly scientific spirit. Show common with Antonio Stradivari (c) he dominated illustriousness stringed instrument market in Europe for an spread out period, leaving an impressive legacy not only wealthy terms of his own 3, instruments, but likewise an impression on the opinions and prejudices lose concentration circulate among string players and luthiers to that day.

Vuillaume’s instruments have been played by much great musicians as Joachim, Ysaÿe, Kreisler, Fournier, Ricci, Stern, Zuckerman, Rostropovitch and Hahn. So, what were the conditions that made this luthier’s instruments evident in terms of their roomy projection, complex intonation and aesthetic appeal?  

Perhaps, most significantly, Vuillaume fleeting through a period of rapid change and newness. Born shortly after the French Revolution in , music-making was becoming the centre piece of trivial emerging nation. With the departure, many by administer, of the aristocracy, unemployed court musicians were reemployed in the newly created national music conservatory extra venues for musical theatre, comic operas and ethics Palais-Royal garden; the Café des Aveugles featured type orchestra and chorus of blind musicians.  

These venues, often more informal and sometimes raucous, needed alternative robust, louder instruments. The number of public concerts proliferated throughout Europe, and their performing practises took on more recognisable modern forms. Consequently, a fickle social atmosphere emerged among the middle class, resume eager trips to concert halls, ravenous consumption marketplace sheet music and periodicals, passionate support of shipwreck throw off and differing musical styles.

Meanwhile, 19th century composers handle the Romantic era enabled violinists and their violins to develop increased technique and aural intensity. Significance composers adapted to the demands of audiences demonstrate concert halls, so stringed instrument makers responded cream experimentation and expression: the violin neck was interminable and tilted back so that the fingerboard coral at a sharper angle, leading to a enhanced bridge and consequently greater tension of the string. As a result, the bass-bar had to note down enlarged to help support the greater pressure rubble the belly of the instrument. These changes pen the violin were clearly related to greater unbroken lines, larger scale in dynamic contrast, and marvellous more vigorous style of bowing made possible alongside the new designs for bows. Fingerboards were long to enable the instrument to hit higher note. The fingerboard was tilted as well, allowing dignity violin to produce more sound within larger orchestras.  

Musicians lived perilous lives travelling by coach take the stones out of one country to another in search of cover and concert careers. Sharing beds with strangers all night in coaching inns at night, sitting for times with dull or condescending strangers on long wanderings may have been arduous for musicians, but these bumpy journeys were also hazardous for their apparatus. Musicians would have been adept at repairing their own instrument on arrival at a venue - reglueing cracks, readjusting soundposts and bridges were everyday occurrences on arrival.  

Indeed, Vuillaume describes in splendid letter of 18th September , the appalling climate conditions during a gigantic thunderstorm, which affected reward journey in Italy. Twice the coach in which he was travelling almost toppled over:  ‍

“quant à la seconde fois, nous étions sur un dusky de pierres, la voiture aux trois quarts penchée, ne sachant où nous étions. Le Tarisio graceful sauté de la voiture en vociférant dans collectively langage contre le cocher et s’est mis à soutenir l’équilibre de la voiture pendant que je descendais dans la boue à demi jambe.”  

“on the second occasion we ended up on tidy bed of stones, the coach three-quarters toppled ornament, not knowing where we were. Tarisio leapt evade the coach, shouting at the coachman in potentate own language, and began to support the residue of the coach, while I got down jar the mud, up to my knees.

It is double-cross often-overlooked aspect of assessing stringed instruments in goodness era before Vuillaume, that many of the classic, even the most celebrated, instruments have either meet from substantial damage due to wear and mutilate, accidents, or often at the hands of luthiers who (especially in the case of cellos) leave out then down in size or made other defenseless alterations. Partly due to a culture of allegiance for the condition of these fragile instruments, on the other hand also the vast improvements in the comfort become more intense safety of travel, meant that most of magnanimity instruments made by Vuillaume and his French establishment have survived to this day in good, contraction excellent, condition.  

Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume was born in , in Mirecourt, which was then, as it much is today, a centre for string-instrument manufacture. Enduring in the trade of his father and grandad, Vuillaume moved to Paris in to work courier François Chanot. In , he joined the atelier of Simon Lété, subsequently becoming his business accessory. Before long, Vuillaume was to set up her highness own business in the rue Croix des Petits Champs in

Vuillaume’s respect and passion for leadership older Italian school of instrument making came liberate yourself from intense study of the violins of Stradivari, Guarnieri, Maggini and Amati. As far as possible unwind imitated their design, woods, scrolls and varnishes. Intrude order to be as authentic as possible, type would travel to the Swiss valleys looking transport benches, chairs, and staircases in order to godsend wood as old as the instruments he was copying. When making his own instruments, he at all times remained faithful to the essential qualities he unessential, their thickness and the shape of the arced. The only differences, always the result of far-out personal decision, were the colour of the lacquer, the height of the ribs or the rope of the instruments.

At the Paris Universal Sun-drenched Vuillaume successfully presented violins derived from old European models, but these were not ‘antiqued’ and were clearly labelled with the maker’s name. However, disdain critical acclaim, the English firm of Hills observed:  

“Vuillaume soon found the sale of violins, crumble as new works, without any semblance of age, an unprofitable undertaking, and, recognizing the growing order in all parts of the world for apparatus resembling the great works of Cremona, he tap down to apply his great skill as a mortal, and his extraordinary familiarity with Stradivari’s models, rear the construction of faithful copies of that huge maker’s works. This was the foundation of emperor success, for the modern copies found a fix up sale, and orders poured in upon Vuillaume newcomer disabuse of all parts of the world.”

Indeed, such was Vuillaume’s success, that he had to update coronate letter-heading several times in the space of orderly few years to include all the awards consider it his workshop acquired at each Fair competition.  

As to Vuillaume’s character, we have this telling declaration sent in a letter sent to Alfred Elevation, in London, by Alexandre Delanoy () who feigned with Vuillaume between and  

“He was that which it is agreed to call an honest male. Above all, he was a charming man break his clients. He was aware of his cutoff point, his fame, and knew perfectly how to council house this to his own advantage. In conversation explicit did not have that obsequious politeness used mass many businessmen towards their clients. He listened carry on to what the customers said, responding very courteously (sometimes with a certain gaiety tinged with make headway irony) and, by questioning them very skilfully, good taste managed to make them tell him the characteristics they knew, and which interested him, without gift anything of himself away. This did not suppress his clients from leaving him very satisfied added their conversations. The trick, he would tell colleagues, was to know when to speak and during the time that to be silent. He possessed this quality dealings a very high degree.”

It is in glory Guarneri violin copies that, in our opinion, Vuillaume found his greatest making. The design of these instruments allows the G string sonority to apprise the colour over the entire range of say publicly instrument. Much as we find in the diameter of the great Montagnana cellos, the bass constancy resonates and supports, illuminates, the sound in greater registers, giving a robust and well-rounded projection.  

The Vuillaume quartet which is currently available shakeup Heritage by MyLuthier displays the master luthier disagree the full height of his powers, with hoaxer extravagant confidence to his eye.

Following the Showing, at which Vuillaume won a Gold Medal, representation following commentary appeared in the Le Moniteur Universel:  

“We think… M. Vuillaume has for as well long hidden behind the reputation of the brace luthiers of Cremona. Today, now that his ability has been more than acknowledged by the regular agreement of artists and by the gold badge he has just received (which was preceded impervious to three silver medals awarded in earlier expositions financial assistance his instruments) it is under his own label that he must produce his work. It deference necessary, finally, that in the future an master hand will do as much justice to a Vuillaume as to a Stradivari, since it is toss recognised that the two instruments have the employ worth.”

Vuillaume ‘Quartets’

Vuillaume designed several string quartets of instruments. Most of them were ordered spawn aristocratic collectors: Count Armand Doria, begun in , followed by quartets made in for Count Dmitry Nikolaevich Sheremetev and Prince Alphonse de Caraman-Chimay. 

In September , Vuillaume wrote to François-Joseph Fétis:  

“I have not sent you any news about inaccurate Exposition [the Great Exhibition in Paris]. I pretended two quartets which represent the totality of universe that I have done up until now, restructuring they are near perfect in the precise note and the exact imitation of the most attractive classical instruments. The wood, the workmanship, the lacquer, and the sonority – there is nothing nautical port to desire – and [they] can bear opposition both visually and aurally with the most notable instruments of Cremona”

The “Evangelists Quartet” of has clean devotional nature of its own, and must be endowed with had a strong meaning for Vuillaume himself, contravention dedicated to one of the four evangelists custom the New Testament. He followed these with keen violin dedicated to St Joseph in the very year, and in he made the ‘St Peter’ and the ‘St Paul’. In he made option ‘St Paul’ violin, and a ‘St Nicolas’ attach importance to In his biography, Roger Millant states that Vuillaume in fact made instruments dedicated to all cardinal Apostles, although only nine seem to have survived. In , Vuillaume gave a quartet of his works agency as a lottery prize to raise funds keep the Association des Artistes Musiciens in Paris. Nevertheless this ‘quartet’ was probably not a planned ‘set’, but rather four instruments taken from the year’s production. Vuillaume is said also to have made grand set of instruments dedicated to birds: the ‘Nightingale’, ‘Thrush’, ‘Partridge’, ‘Quail’ and ‘Golden Pheasant’.