For my next project, I will be making a baroque violin. What exactly does that mean?
As instruments evolved through the centuries, various modifications became standard practice. As concert halls grew, so did the need for instruments that could play louder and be heard over large ensembles. The culmination of these changes is what we consider the “modern” violin. When we talk about baroque violins or violins with baroque or period setup, what we really mean is instruments with their original setup, before these modifications. By our standards, every instrument made by the Stradivari, Amati, and Guarneri families was “baroque” when it left the shop.
Why would we want to abandon these modifications? In time I will write a full post about this topic since this is beyond the scope of this article, but for now I will just say this: the modifications that made instruments louder also made them less natural to play in the rhetorical style of the Baroque, removing a layer of subtlety from the music in favor of projection. Much of this subtlety can be regained by using gut strings and a period bow (check out ours here!), but many musicians feel that having an instrument that is fully in period setup gives the optimal experience.
As I am building this instrument, the first difference I come across is the way that the neck is attached to the body. While later necks are morticed into the body, instruments made in the 17th century were attached to the neck with a nail (or later a screw). The neck attaches directly to the outside of the rib garland.
The next change is the bass bar. There is some debate as to the “typical” dimensions of bass bars on baroque instruments. Conventional wisdom says that baroque bass bars were significantly smaller than modern ones, though there are exceptions and historical examples of bass bars that are larger or the same as their modern counterparts. I decided to go a little shorter, and with a little less mass than I would typically for a modern instrument, though the change is subtle.
The final change to the body of the instrument is the fingerboard. Because the neck is set at a shallower angle to the body, the fingerboard must be elevated by a wedge. This means that there is a large change in the thickness of the neck as the player shifts to higher positions. For the top surface of the wedge, I’m recycling an old fingerboard that was too worn down to be used on a modern instrument. Maple was sometimes used as a top surface for fingerboards (often with intricate inlay patterns) but ebony is more durable and won’t wear as quickly. Maple is used for the sides of the wedge and spruce fills the inside to reduce the overall weight.
In the second part of this article, I discuss the aspects of the setup including the bridge, tailpiece, and strings. For a discussion of the baroque bow and why to use one, check out this article from a colleague https://adbowsllc.com/2020/08/02/a-case-for-the-baroque-bow-a-specialists-perspective/