First Sound

The Luthier's Apprentice

Chapter 24: First Sound

The strings came in a small cardboard box. The box was white with blue lettering, the brand name Thomastik-Infeld, the Austrian company that had been making strings since 1919, the strings synthetic-core with aluminum and silver winding, the strings that Giovanni used for the initial setup because they were reliable, were consistent, were strings that produced a sound that allowed the maker to hear the instrument rather than the strings, the strings transparent, the strings a window rather than a wall, and the transparency was the point, the point being the hearing, the hearing of the instrument's own voice, the voice that the wood and the arching and the graduation and the f-holes and the bass bar and the sound post and the varnish had combined to produce.

Giovanni opened the box. He removed the strings one at a time, each string coiled in a paper sleeve, the coils tight, the strings wound around themselves, the winding the storage, the storage the waiting, the strings waiting for the instrument the way the wood had waited in the attic, waiting to become the thing they were made to become.

He began with the G string. The lowest string, the thickest string, the string that produced the violin's deepest note, the note that was the foundation, the bottom of the range, the bass. He threaded the string through the hole in the peg, wound it around the peg, tuned it roughly, the pitch rising as the peg turned, the string tightening, the tension increasing, the bridge beginning to feel the pull, the pull that was the string's contribution to the conversation, the string saying: I am here, I am taut, I am ready.

The D string. The A string. The E string. Each string threaded, wound, tuned. The four strings stretched from the tailpiece over the bridge to the pegbox, four parallel lines of silver and aluminum, the lines taut, the lines vibrating slightly in the workshop's air, the vibrations too quiet to hear but visible if you looked closely, the strings trembling with the energy of their tension, the energy that the bow would release, the energy that would become the sound.

Giovanni tuned. He turned the pegs, the pegs turning in their tapered holes, the turning smooth, the peg compound providing the lubrication that prevented sticking, and the pitch rose with each turn, the pitch approaching the correct note, the note that the string was designed to produce at the correct tension, the tension that the instrument was designed to bear. G, D, A, E. The four open strings of the violin, the four notes that every violinist knows as the first sound, the sound of the instrument in its most basic state, four notes, four strings, the foundation of all the music that the violin can produce.

He tuned with a tuning fork. Not an electronic tuner, not a phone application, not any digital device, but a tuning fork, a small steel fork that he struck against the edge of the workbench and that vibrated at 440 hertz, the frequency of A above middle C, the frequency that was the standard, the reference pitch, the pitch to which all the instruments in every orchestra in the world tuned, the pitch that was the agreement, the universal agreement that made ensemble playing possible, and Giovanni used a tuning fork because the tuning fork was the tradition, the tuning fork was analog, the tuning fork was a vibrating object producing a sound that the ear compared to the string's sound, and the comparing was the tuning, the tuning done by the ear, by the human ear, by the ear that heard the difference between the fork's pitch and the string's pitch and that instructed the hand to turn the peg until the difference vanished, until the two pitches merged, until the string and the fork sang the same note.

He tuned the A string first, matching it to the fork, the fork's pure tone and the string's richer tone converging, the beating — the wobbling interference pattern that two nearly-identical frequencies produce — slowing as the pitches approached each other, the beating the audible measure of the distance between the two pitches, the distance narrowing with each turn of the peg, the beating slowing, slowing, stopping, the stopping the unison, the unison the correct pitch.

He tuned the other strings from the A, tuning in fifths, the intervals that defined the violin's tuning, each string a fifth below the one above it, E to A a fifth, A to D a fifth, D to G a fifth, the fifths the architecture, the architecture the instrument, the instrument tuned.

The violin was strung. The violin was tuned. The four strings stretched over the bridge in four precise arcs, the arcs the curve of the strings between the nut at the top of the fingerboard and the bridge at the center of the top plate, the arcs the geometry of tension, the geometry elegant, the geometry functional, the geometry beautiful.

Giovanni picked up the bow. The same bow from the drawer in the front room, the bow that Nadia had used on that Sunday morning in October, the working bow, the testing bow, the bow that was not a performance bow but an honest bow, a bow that produced a clear tone without imposing its own character.

He tightened the bow. He rosined the bow. He stood at the workbench with the violin in his left hand and the bow in his right hand and the workshop was quiet and Marco was at his bench and Nadia was at hers and the three of them were in the room and the room was the workshop and the workshop was the place where the sound would be born.

He tucked the violin under his chin. He adjusted the position. He raised the bow.

He drew the bow across the G string.

The first sound.

The sound entered the workshop and the workshop received it the way a concert hall receives the first note of a performance, the space accepting the sound, the sound filling the space, the filling immediate, the sound expanding from the instrument into the air, the air vibrating, the vibrations reaching the walls and the ceiling and the floor and the tools on the wall and the templates and the workbenches and the wood in the attic above and the cobblestones in the street below, the sound reaching everything, touching everything, the sound the most expansive thing the workshop had contained since the last time Giovanni had played a new instrument, the last first sound, which was two years ago, which was the instrument before this one, the instrument that was now in a concert hall in Zurich, the instrument being played by a violinist whose name Giovanni knew but whose playing Giovanni would never hear.

The sound was raw. This was expected. New instruments are raw, the way new shoes are stiff and new wine is harsh and new relationships are uncertain, the rawness the newness, the newness the state of the not-yet-played, the wood and the varnish and the strings not yet vibrated into their mature voice, the mature voice that would develop over months and years of playing, the playing breaking in the instrument the way use breaks in a tool, the use softening and smoothing and deepening, and the breaking-in was the future, the future that the first sound initiated.

But the fundamental character was there. Beneath the rawness, beneath the brightness, beneath the tightness of the new, the character was there, the character that the wood and the arching and the graduation and the f-holes and the bass bar and the sound post and the varnish had combined to produce, the character that was this violin's character and no other's, the character that was the voice, the voice that would develop and deepen and darken over the years but that was already present in its essential form, the essential form the product of the making, the making that had occupied nine months of Giovanni's life and that was now sounding in the workshop for the first time.

Giovanni played a scale. G major, the scale that climbed from the open G string through two octaves, the scale that tested the instrument's range, the lower register and the middle register and the upper register, the scale moving through the positions, Giovanni's left hand shifting on the neck, the fingers pressing the strings, the notes climbing, the sound changing as the pitch rose, the character of the instrument different in different registers, the G string dark and rich, the D string warm and full, the A string bright and singing, the E string brilliant and penetrating, the four strings four voices, the four voices one instrument, the one instrument one maker, the one maker Giovanni.

His playing was not a performer's playing. His playing was a maker's playing, the playing that tests rather than performs, the playing that asks questions rather than makes statements, the playing that listens rather than projects. A performer plays to be heard. A maker plays to hear. The distinction was fundamental, was the distinction between the two crafts, the craft of the player and the craft of the maker, the two crafts connected by the instrument, the instrument the bridge between them.

Giovanni played the scale and he listened. He listened for the balance between the strings, the balance between the registers, the evenness of the response, the projection, the sustain, the overtones, the characteristics that told him about the instrument's voice, the voice that he had been building toward for nine months, the voice that he had heard in his mind before the first cut, the voice that the arching had been carved to produce and the graduation had been refined to support and the f-holes had been cut to release and the bass bar had been fitted to transmit and the sound post had been positioned to balance.

He listened and the listening was the assessment, the final assessment, the assessment that only the sound could provide, because the sound was the purpose, the sound was the point, the sound was the thing that all the months of work had been in service of, and the sound was here, was present, was in the room.

He played a passage of Bach. The Sarabande from the Partita No. 2 in D minor, the movement that is a chaconne's quieter cousin, the movement that sings rather than declaims, the movement that requires the instrument to sustain and to sing and to produce the long, flowing line that is Bach's particular gift, the line that seems simple and that contains everything.

The violin sang. The violin sang the Bach and the Bach was beautiful and the beauty was the sound and the sound was the instrument and the instrument was the making and the making was Giovanni's hands and Giovanni's knowledge and Giovanni's patience and Giovanni's fifty years and Giovanni's four generations and Giovanni's Cremona and Cremona's five centuries and the five centuries' accumulated wisdom about how to make a piece of wood sing.

Giovanni played and the workshop listened. Marco listened. Nadia listened. The tools on the wall listened. The templates listened. The wood in the attic listened. The street outside listened, the cobblestones and the buildings and the air, and the listening was the receiving, the receiving of the sound that the workshop had produced, the sound returning to the place that had made it, the sound coming home.

Nadia listened. She listened with the ear of a musician, the trained ear, the ear that could hear the overtones and the balance and the projection and the sustain, the ear that could assess the instrument's voice with the precision that twenty-two years of training had developed, and the ear heard the voice and the voice was good. The voice was raw, was new, was tight, but the voice was good, was rich in the lower register, was warm in the middle register, was bright without harshness in the upper register, the voice was balanced, was even, was the voice of a well-made instrument, the voice that the spruce and the maple and the ebony and the hide glue and the varnish and the arching and the graduation and the bass bar and the sound post had combined to produce.

She listened and the listening was different from any listening she had done. Different from the listening of the performer, the listening that prepares the playing. Different from the listening of the audience member, the listening that receives the performance. This was the listening of the maker, the listening of a person who had participated in the making of the thing she was hearing, the listening that heard not only the sound but the making, not only the voice but the hands, not only the music but the work.

She heard the ribs she had helped hold while they were glued. She heard the f-hole edges she had filed. She heard the varnish coats she had applied. She heard the surfaces she had sanded. She heard the shavings she had swept. She heard herself in the instrument, heard her own participation, her own contribution, her own hands, and the hearing was the thing, the thing that was new, the thing that was the discovery.

The discovery was this: the maker hears the making in the sound. The maker hears the work in the music. The maker hears the wood and the glue and the hands and the hours and the days and the months in the voice of the instrument, and the hearing is different from any other hearing, is the hearing of origin, the hearing of source, the hearing that knows where the sound came from because the hearing was there when the sound was being prepared, was being built, was being made possible.

Giovanni finished the Bach. He lowered the bow. He held the violin in his left hand and the bow in his right hand and he stood at the bench and the last note of the Sarabande hung in the air, the note sustaining in the workshop's acoustics, the note fading, the fading the diminuendo, the diminuendo the ending that is not an ending but a continuation, the sound continuing at a level below hearing, the vibrations continuing in the wood and the air, the continuing the life of the sound, the life that the instrument had been built to contain.

He set the violin on the bench. He set the bow beside it. He looked at the instrument and the instrument lay on the bench in the June light and the light touched the varnish and the varnish glowed and the glow was the amber-red of Giovanni's recipe and the glow was the beauty and the beauty was the surface.

And beneath the surface was the sound.

And the sound was the thing.

And the thing had been born.

The first sound had been made. The instrument had spoken. The voice had emerged from the body that the workshop had built, the voice traveling through the f-holes into the air of the room, the voice filling the workshop, the voice returning to the hands that had made it.

Nadia stood at her bench and the sound was still in her ears, the sound of the Bach Sarabande played on a new violin by the hands of the man who made it, and the sound was in her ears and the sound was the thing she had come to Cremona to find.

Not the craft. Not the tools. Not the wood. Not the patience. Not the tradition.

The sound.

The sound that the making produced.

The sound that was the purpose of the making.

The sound that was the beginning and the end.

The first sound.