The Neck

The Luthier's Apprentice

Chapter 21: The Neck

The scroll emerges from the block the way a face emerges from stone in a sculptor's hands. Not added but revealed. The surplus removed to expose the form that was always inside the wood, the form that the maker sees before the maker carves, the form that exists in the maker's mind as a complete object waiting to be uncovered, and the uncovering is the carving, and the carving is the removal, and the removal is the art.

May. The workshop was warm, the spring that had been threatening since March finally arriving in full, the warmth entering the workshop through the open windows and settling on the workbenches and the tools and the wood and the bodies of the three people who worked there, the warmth a comfort after the long winter, the comfort visible in the looseness of the movements, the hands working with a fluidity that the cold had constrained, the cold having tightened the muscles and stiffened the joints and slowed the blood, and the warmth undid all of that, the warmth releasing the body into its full capacity.

Giovanni selected the maple block. The block was large, a solid piece of figured maple, the same Bosnian maple that had provided the back plate and the ribs, the figure visible even in the rough-sawn surface, the flame that would glow beneath the varnish when the neck was finished, the flame continuous with the flame of the back and the ribs, the visual unity of the instrument maintained by the material unity of the wood.

The block was roughly the shape of the neck and scroll combined, the shape that Giovanni had sawn on the band saw, following a template that traced the outline of the neck in profile, the profile showing the pegbox — the narrow channel at the top of the neck where the tuning pegs would be inserted — and the scroll — the decorative spiral that crowned the instrument, that was the instrument's visual terminus, the last thing the eye saw when it followed the violin's line from bridge to fingerboard to pegbox to scroll.

He began with the scroll. He began at the top, at the outermost turn of the spiral, and he worked inward, the gouge removing the maple in controlled cuts, each cut following the pencil lines he had drawn on the block's surface, the lines mapping the spiral's path, the path that the gouge would follow, the gouge and the line in conversation, the conversation the same conversation as always, the conversation between the tool and the plan, between the hand and the intention, between the doing and the knowing.

The maple was hard. Harder than the spruce that Giovanni had been working with for the past months, the maple resisting the gouge with a density that the spruce did not have, the density the property of the species, the density that made the maple suitable for the back plate (reflecting the sound) and for the neck (supporting the strings' tension) and for the scroll (holding the pegs and withstanding the constant turning that tuning required). The gouge entered the maple with a sound that was different from the sound it made in spruce, a higher, drier sound, the sound of dense wood being cut, the sound of resistance being overcome.

Giovanni carved. The scroll appeared. The first turn of the volute, the outermost curve, the beginning of the spiral that would wind inward through three and a half turns to the center, the eye, the small circular depression at the spiral's innermost point, the eye that was the focal point, the destination, the place where the spiral ended and the looking rested. The first turn was the largest, the broadest, the turn that set the scale of the scroll, and the setting was the commitment, the first turn determining the proportions of all subsequent turns, the proportions fixed by the first cut, the first cut determining the scroll the way the first note of a melody determines the melody, the beginning containing the whole.

Nadia watched. She watched from the position she always watched from, standing at Giovanni's left shoulder, close enough to see the gouge in the wood, close enough to see the shavings curl, close enough to smell the maple, and the watching was different now, seven months in, the watching informed by seven months of doing, the watching carrying the weight of experience, the experience of her own hands, and the weight made the watching deeper, made it more comprehending, made it the watching of a person who understood, partially, what she was watching, the understanding increasing with each month, the increase asymptotic, approaching but never reaching the full understanding that Giovanni embodied.

He carved the second turn. The spiral tightened. The volute deepened. The gouge moved with the controlled force that the maple required, the force greater than what spruce required, Giovanni's right arm bearing the effort, the arm that was seventy-eight years old and that still produced the force that the maple demanded, the arm's strength not the strength of youth but the strength of technique, the efficiency of a motion refined over fifty years, the efficient motion producing maximum effect with minimum effort, and the efficiency was the mastery, and the mastery was visible in the ease with which the gouge moved through the dense wood.

The chamfer. The flat border around the edge of the scroll, the chamfer was the element that distinguished the refined scroll from the crude one, the chamfer requiring a steadiness of hand that was the highest expression of the carving skill, the chisel moving along the edge of the volute at a precise angle, the angle producing a flat surface that caught the light differently from the curved surface of the volute itself, the flat and the curved creating a visual contrast that was the scroll's aesthetic signature, the contrast between the flat chamfer and the curved volute the contrast between order and flow, between the geometric and the organic, the contrast that made the scroll beautiful.

Giovanni carved the chamfer with the chisel. The chisel moved along the edge in a single continuous stroke, the stroke traveling the full length of the volute's outer turn, the stroke unbroken, the chisel maintaining its angle and its depth for the entire length of the cut, and the maintaining was the skill, the skill of the steady hand, the hand that did not waver, the hand that held the chisel at the correct angle for the duration of the stroke, the duration the challenge, the challenge met by the hand that had met it thousands of times before.

Nadia thought about the scroll. She thought about its purpose, which was primarily aesthetic, the scroll serving no acoustic function, producing no sound, contributing nothing to the instrument's voice, the scroll a pure ornament, a decoration, and yet the scroll was essential, was the element that made the violin a violin rather than a box with strings, the scroll the signature of the maker and the signature of the tradition, the Cremonese scroll recognizable across centuries, the same spiral carved by Amati and Stradivari and Guarneri and by every maker who followed them, the same form reproduced with the variations that each maker introduced, the variations subtle, invisible to the untrained eye, the variations that were the maker's individual expression within the tradition's collective form.

She thought about the relationship between function and beauty. In the violin, the relationship was everywhere. The arching was functional (acoustic) and beautiful (visual). The f-holes were functional (letting the sound out) and beautiful (their sinuous shape). The varnish was functional (protecting the wood) and beautiful (the amber-red glow). But the scroll was different. The scroll was beautiful without being functional. The scroll was pure beauty, beauty for its own sake, beauty that served no purpose other than beauty.

And the pure beauty was the thing that made the violin more than an instrument. The scroll made the violin an object of art, a thing to be looked at as well as listened to, a thing that existed in two aesthetic domains simultaneously, the visual and the auditory, the eye and the ear, and the existing in both domains was the violin's particular achievement, the achievement that separated it from the purely functional instrument, the guitar or the piano or the drum, instruments that were beautiful in their way but that did not carry the scroll, did not carry the pure ornament, the decoration that said: this is not merely a tool for making sound, this is a made thing, a crafted thing, a thing that someone carved with a gouge and a chisel over many hours, the hours visible in the scroll, the hours the human cost, the cost the beauty's price.

Giovanni finished the scroll. He set down the gouge. He picked up the chisel for the final refinements, the smoothing of the surfaces, the sharpening of the edges, the perfecting of the chamfer. The chisel moved over the maple and the maple became smooth and the smooth became the finish and the finish was the scroll.

He held the scroll up. He turned it in the light. The figured maple caught the light, the flame visible even without varnish, the figure shifting as the angle changed, the shifting the maple's own beauty, the beauty that the wood contributed to the scroll's beauty, the two beauties combining, the maker's carving and the wood's figure, the human art and the natural art, the combination the object.

He handed the block to Nadia. The scroll at the top, the pegbox below, the neck extending from the pegbox, the neck still rough, still uncarved, the neck waiting for the shaping that would produce the smooth, tapered surface that the player's left hand would slide along, the surface that must be comfortable, must be supportive, must be the right thickness and the right taper and the right finish to allow the left hand to move freely, to shift from position to position without friction, without impediment, the neck the highway of the left hand, the highway that the left hand traveled hundreds of times in a single performance.

Nadia held the block. She held it in her left hand, the hand wrapping around the rough neck, the fingers closing on the uncarved maple, and the holding was a recognition, a recognition that the neck she held was the neck that a player's left hand would hold, the neck that would be the surface against which the player's thumb would press and the player's fingers would fly, the neck that was the interface between the player and the instrument, the boundary where the human met the wooden, and the boundary was in her hand, the hand that had crossed that boundary for twenty-two years, the hand that had lived on the neck of a violin, the hand that knew the neck the way the tongue knows the roof of the mouth, intimately, constantly, the knowledge of continuous contact.

Giovanni pointed to a practice block. A block of maple, the same size as the neck block, the practice block that Nadia would carve, the block on which she would learn to carve the scroll, the learning a new challenge, the scroll being the most difficult element to carve, the most demanding of the gouge and the chisel, the most revealing of the carver's skill or lack of skill, the scroll the test, the test that every apprentice faced.

She picked up the gouge. She set it to the practice block. She carved.

The gouge entered the maple and the maple resisted and the resistance was the material's reply to the tool's demand, the reply that said: I am dense, I am hard, I am not easily shaped, you must earn the shape, you must work for the form, and the working and the earning were the carving. She carved the first turn of the volute and the turn was rough, was uneven, the curve wobbling, the depth inconsistent, the carving the carving of a beginner, the beginner who is not the master, who is not Marco, who is not even the person she will be in six months, the person whose carving will be better, will be smoother, will be closer to Giovanni's carving, the closer-to being the asymptote, the approach that is the apprenticeship.

But her left hand held the block. Her left hand gripped the maple while her right hand drove the gouge, and the gripping was strong, was sure, was the gripping that the left hand could do, the gripping that the focal dystonia had not disrupted because the gripping used different muscles, different neural pathways, different motor circuits from the fingering that the dystonia had disrupted, and the different circuits worked, and the working was the discovery, the discovery that the hand that failed as an instrument could work as a tool.

The hand that failed as an instrument becomes a tool. The transformation was not redemption. Nadia would not have used that word, would not have permitted the neatness that redemption implies, the narrative arc from loss to recovery, from brokenness to wholeness, the arc that stories impose on experience and that experience rarely conforms to. The transformation was not redemption. The transformation was a fact. The hand had found a different use. The different use was not lesser. The different use was different. And the difference was the apprenticeship.

The hand that had played the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto at nineteen was now holding a block of maple while the other hand carved a scroll. The hand that had executed trills and vibrato and shifts to seventh position was now gripping and stabilizing and supporting. The hand that had been the instrument was now the tool. And the tool was not lesser than the instrument. The tool was different from the instrument. The tool served a different purpose, performed a different function, contributed to a different outcome, and the different outcome was not the sound but the thing that made the sound, not the music but the vessel for the music, and the vessel was the violin, and the violin was being made, and the making required the hand, required the grip, required the left hand to do what the left hand could do.

She carved. The scroll on the practice block took shape, slowly, crudely, the shape recognizable but rough, the spiral visible but uneven, the volute present but shallow, the chamfer attempted but wavering, the whole thing the work of a beginner, the work of a person who has never carved a scroll before and who is carving one now and who is learning, through the carving, that the learning is the point, that the scroll on the practice block will never be installed on an instrument, will never be played, will never be seen by anyone other than the people in this workshop, but the scroll is being carved and the carving is the learning and the learning is the skill and the skill is entering the hands.

Both hands. Both hands were learning. The right hand was learning the gouge and the chisel, learning the angles and the pressures and the rhythms of the carving. The left hand was learning the grip, learning the hold, learning the stabilization that the carving required. Both hands were participating. Both hands were contributing. Both hands were engaged in the work, and the engagement was the thing, the engagement of both hands in a task that required both hands, the bilateral requirement of the craft, the craft needing the left hand as much as the right hand, the left hand's contribution different from the right hand's contribution but equal in importance, the grip as important as the cut, the holding as important as the carving, the support as important as the action.

She set down the gouge. She held the practice block in both hands. She looked at the rough scroll she had carved, the crude spiral, the uneven volute, the wavering chamfer. The scroll was not good. The scroll was a beginner's scroll, the first scroll, the scroll that would be followed by a second scroll and a third scroll and a tenth scroll and a fiftieth scroll, each one better than the last, each one closer to the form that Giovanni carved, the form that was the standard, the destination, the place that the carving was going.

She looked at her left hand. The hand was on the block, the fingers wrapped around the maple, the grip firm, the grip comfortable, the grip the thing the hand did well, the thing the hand could do, the thing the hand was doing.

The hand was working.

The hand that could not play was carving. The hand that could not trill was gripping. The hand that could not vibrate was holding. The hand was working, was contributing, was participating in the craft, and the participation was not the participation it had been trained for, was not the participation of the performer, was not the participation of the first violin in the Cleveland Orchestra's young artist program, but the participation was real, was physical, was happening now, in this workshop, on this May morning.

The hand was a tool.

And the tool was enough.

Not enough to replace the instrument. Not enough to undo the loss. Not enough to fill the space that the performing life had left. But enough to work. Enough to hold. Enough to grip the maple while the other hand carved. Enough to participate in the making of the thing she could no longer play.

And the enough was the discovery.

And the discovery was the apprenticeship.

And the apprenticeship was the life.

Giovanni set the finished neck on the bench. The scroll at the top, the pegbox below, the neck extending downward, the neck that would be glued to the body, the neck that would support the fingerboard, the neck that the player's left hand would hold. The neck was smooth, carved and sanded, the maple's figure glowing in the unvarnished surface, the flame visible, the wood beautiful.

He would varnish the neck with the same varnish he had used on the body, the same amber-red, the same recipe, the same brush, the same twenty to thirty coats, the consistency the identity, the identity the instrument, the instrument the last violin.

The neck would be glued to the body. The scroll would crown the instrument. The pegbox would hold the pegs. The pegs would hold the strings. The strings would be tuned. The bow would be drawn. The sound would emerge.

But that was later. That was weeks away. Now was the neck and the scroll and the carving and the practice block and the left hand holding and the right hand carving and the hands working together, both hands, the hands of the apprentice, the hands that were learning, the hands that were finding their way, the hands that were becoming the tools that the craft required.

And the becoming was the thing.

And the thing was the work.

And the work was the hands.

Both hands.