The Template

The Luthier's Apprentice

Chapter 7: The Template

The templates hung on the wall of the workshop's back room like masks in a theater, flat wooden silhouettes shaped to the outline of the violin's body, each template representing a different pattern, a different maker's ideal of what the violin should be, and the should was the thing, because the should carried the weight of three centuries of acoustic and aesthetic judgment, three centuries of hands carving and ears listening and minds deciding that this curve was right and that curve was wrong and the rightness and the wrongness were matters not of opinion but of physics, the physics of vibration, the physics of sound propagation, the physics that governs the relationship between the shape of a resonating body and the quality of the sound it produces, and the physics does not care about opinion, the physics cares about shape, and the shape is the template, and the template is the beginning.

Giovanni had five templates. Five forms. Five patterns that he had accumulated over his fifty years of making, each acquired at a different stage of his career, each representing a different period of his development as a maker, and the five templates on the wall were a chronology of his artistic evolution, from the first template he had made as a young man under his father Carlo's supervision to the most recent, which he had carved fifteen years ago after a visit to the Museo del Violino where he had been permitted to measure a Stradivari from 1715, the measurements taken with calipers and rulers and the focused attention of a maker who understood that the instrument before him was not merely an object to be measured but a teacher to be studied, a master whose lessons were encoded in the proportions and the curves and the arching and the f-holes and every other element that the measuring could capture and the hands could remember and the template could preserve.

He stood before the wall and he looked at the templates and Nadia stood beside him and she looked at the templates and the looking was a ritual, the daily practice of beginning, the maker standing before the forms the way a painter stands before the blank canvas, the standing not a hesitation but a gathering, a collecting of intention, the maker deciding not what to do — the what was decided, the what was the last violin — but how to do it, which template to use, which form to follow, which pattern to build upon, and the building-upon was the tradition, because no luthier invents the violin, every luthier interprets the violin, and the interpretation begins with the template.

The Stradivari patterns. Giovanni's collection included two templates based on Stradivari's work. One was based on the "P" form, the pattern that Stradivari used for his middle-period instruments, the instruments made between approximately 1700 and 1720 that are considered by most experts and most players and most listeners to be the finest violins ever made, the instruments whose sound has defined what a violin should sound like, the standard against which all violins are measured, the Platonic ideal of the violin made physical in wood and varnish and gut. The "P" form is named for a letter that Stradivari scratched into the template itself, a letter whose meaning is debated — pattern, perhaps, or primo, or something else entirely, something private, something known only to Stradivari and to the wood that received the shape and to the instruments that carried the shape into the future and to the future that is still listening.

The other Stradivari template was based on the "G" form, which Stradivari used for a broader, slightly longer body, a form that produced a different voice, darker, rounder, less brilliant but deeper, and the difference between the P and the G was the difference between a soprano and a mezzo-soprano, the same instrument family but a different register of expressiveness, and the choice between them was not a choice between good and bad but a choice between two kinds of good, and the kind of good was a matter of the maker's intention, the maker's ear, the maker's understanding of what the particular combination of spruce and maple and arching and graduation would produce when shaped to this form rather than that form.

The Guarneri template. Wider than the Stradivari, less symmetrical, more individual, the curves of the outline following a logic that was not the logic of mathematical perfection but the logic of acoustic intuition, Guarneri del Gesu having been a maker who worked more by instinct than by calculation, more by ear than by rule, and the result was instruments that were rougher in their finish and wilder in their sound, instruments that produced a darker, more powerful, more operatic voice, the voice that Paganini preferred, the voice that many soloists still prefer, the voice that is to the Stradivari voice what a cello is to a violin, not better, not worse, but different in its fundamental character, and the fundamental character begins in the template, in the shape, in the outline that the maker traces on the wood before the first cut.

Giovanni chose the modified Stradivari. The "P" form, adapted. He took the template from the wall and he carried it to the workbench and he laid it flat and the shape of it filled the bench, the outline of the violin's body drawn in wood, the curves of the upper bout and the lower bout and the narrow waist between them, the C-bouts, the inward curves that give the violin its distinctive silhouette, the silhouette that is recognized everywhere in the world, the shape that needs no label, no caption, no explanation, the shape that says violin the way the shape of a cross says faith and the shape of a heart says love, the shape become symbol, the symbol become universal.

He said: this one. He placed his hand on the template, palm flat, fingers spread, the hand covering the upper bout, and the gesture was possessive and tender, the gesture of a man claiming the thing he has chosen, and the claiming was the commitment, and the commitment was the beginning of the last violin, and the beginning was this hand on this template in this workshop on this morning in October.

Nadia looked at the template. She looked at its edges, the smooth curves that Giovanni had cut and sanded and refined over years, the edges polished by the handling, by the tracing, by the hundreds of times the template had been placed on a piece of maple and its outline drawn in pencil and the pencil line followed by the saw and the saw line followed by the knife and the knife line followed by the gouge and the gouge followed by the plane and the plane followed by the hand and the hand followed by the ear and the ear followed by the intention and the intention was the sound, always the sound, the sound that existed in the maker's mind before it existed in the wood, the sound that the template served, the sound that was the purpose of every curve and every proportion and every millimeter of the form.

She traced the template with her fingers. Her left hand. The fingers followed the curves, the index finger and the middle finger leading, the fourth finger and the fifth finger trailing, and the trailing was what it was, the fingers following but not leading, the fingers present but not precise, the fingers touching the wood but not with the sensitivity that they once had, the sensitivity that would have allowed her to feel the grain through the surface, to detect the slight irregularities, to read the wood the way she used to read the fingerboard, with a touch so refined that it was a form of listening. But the touching was happening. The touching was real. The fingers were on the wood and the wood was the template and the template was the shape and the shape was the violin and the violin was the reason she was here.

The shape of the violin has not changed in three hundred years. Giovanni said this, or rather Giovanni said something in Italian that Nadia understood as this, the understanding assembled from the words she knew and the context she inferred and the gesture that accompanied the words, Giovanni's hand moving across the template in a sweeping motion that encompassed the whole form, the whole shape, the whole three centuries of history that the shape contained.

The shape is perfect. Not perfect in the sense of flawless — Giovanni would not have used that word, would not have claimed flawlessness for any human work, not even Stradivari's — but perfect in the sense of complete, in the sense of having arrived at the destination that the maker was seeking, the shape that produces the sound that the violin is capable of producing, and the capability is the potential, and the potential is the thing, and the thing has been achieved, and the achieving took three centuries, not of innovation but of refinement, the same shape refined by hundreds of makers over hundreds of years, each maker adjusting by fractions, each adjustment tested by the ear, each ear confirming or rejecting the adjustment, the process of refinement operating not by revolution but by evolution, the small changes accumulating over generations until the accumulation arrived at the shape, the shape that Giovanni's template preserved, the shape that was the beginning of every violin he made, the shape that was the beginning of the last violin.

The perfection was not innovation. This was the lesson. Nadia, who came from a musical culture that valued novelty, that celebrated the new interpretation, the fresh reading, the individual voice, Nadia understood that the craft operated on different principles, that the luthier's art was not the art of invention but the art of transmission, not the art of creating the new but the art of preserving and refining the old, and the old was not old in the sense of outdated but old in the sense of proven, old in the sense of tested by time, old in the sense of the spruce in the attic, old with the oldness that produces quality, and the quality was the sound, and the sound was the point, and the point was not novelty but fidelity, fidelity to the tradition, fidelity to the form, fidelity to the template that encoded the accumulated wisdom of three centuries of makers who had listened and adjusted and listened again and adjusted again and who had arrived, collectively, at the shape that works, the shape that produces the sound.

She thought about the performers she had known, the violinists in the Cleveland Orchestra and in the conservatory and in the competition circuits, the performers who prized individuality above all, who sought to distinguish their interpretations from all other interpretations, who measured their worth by their difference from others, and she thought about the makers, about Giovanni and Marco and the generations of Ferraros before them, who measured their worth by their sameness to the tradition, by their fidelity to the form, by their ability to reproduce the shape and the arching and the proportions that the tradition had established, and the two measurements were opposites, the performer's metric and the maker's metric, and the opposition was not a contradiction but a complementarity, the performer needing the instrument to be consistent so that the performance could be individual, the maker providing the consistency that the performer's individuality required, the maker's sameness enabling the performer's difference, the template enabling the improvisation, the form enabling the freedom.

Giovanni explained the proportions. The upper bout width: 168 millimeters in this template, measured at the widest point of the curve above the waist. The lower bout width: 208 millimeters, measured at the widest point below the waist. The waist width: 110 millimeters, the narrowest point, the inward curve of the C-bouts that gives the bow clearance, that allows the bow to reach the outer strings without hitting the body, a functional requirement that is also an aesthetic requirement, the waist giving the violin its distinctive shape, the shape that is recognized, the shape that is the violin.

The body length: 356 millimeters. The length from the top of the upper bout to the bottom of the lower bout, the fundamental dimension from which all other dimensions derive, the dimension that determines the scale of the instrument, and the scale of the instrument determines the pitch, and the pitch determines the music, and the music is what the template exists to serve.

Nadia wrote the numbers in her notebook. 168. 208. 110. 356. The numbers were precise and the precision was the craft, the precision that distinguishes the luthier from the carpenter, the precision that is measured not in centimeters but in millimeters and in fractions of millimeters, the precision that the hand must learn and that the eye must verify and that the ear must confirm, because the numbers are not abstract, the numbers are acoustic, each millimeter of width producing a measurable change in the frequency response of the body, each millimeter of length shifting the resonance, and the resonance is the voice, and the voice is the violin, and the violin is the template made physical.

Giovanni placed the template on a piece of maple. The maple for the back plate, the figured maple from Bosnia, the flame visible in the rough surface, the flame that would glow beneath the varnish in the finished instrument. He traced the outline with a pencil, the pencil following the template's edge, and the tracing was slow and deliberate, the pencil pressing firmly enough to leave a clear line but not so firmly as to indent the wood, the pressure calibrated by decades of practice, the calibration invisible, automatic, the hand knowing the right pressure the way the lungs know the right breath, without thought, without effort, the knowledge residing in the body rather than the mind.

The pencil line appeared on the maple. The outline of the violin. The shape. The shape that had not changed in three hundred years. The shape that was the beginning of the last violin. The shape that Nadia watched emerge on the wood with the attention she had once given to a score, the printed page that encoded the music in symbols, the symbols that the performer decoded with eyes and hands and translated into sound, and the template was a different kind of score, a score that encoded not music but the vessel for music, not the sound but the shape that would produce the sound, and the decoding required not fingers on a fingerboard but hands on a plane, hands on a gouge, hands on a knife, hands on the wood that the shape would be carved from, and the carving was a performance, and the performance was the craft.

Giovanni finished tracing. He lifted the template from the maple. The pencil line remained, a thin dark outline on the pale figured wood, the shape of the violin inscribed on the surface, waiting for the saw, waiting for the knife, waiting for the hands that would follow the line and cut the wood and transform the plank into the plate, the plate into the body, the body into the instrument, the instrument into the sound.

He hung the template back on the wall. The template returned to its place among the other templates, the five forms that represented the five patterns that Giovanni had used over his career, and the hanging was a small act, a domestic act, the putting-away that follows the using, but the hanging was also a closing, a completion, the template having done its work for the last time, having been traced for the last time, having been lifted from the wood for the last time, because this was the last violin, and the last violin would be the last tracing, and after the last tracing the template would hang on the wall permanently, no longer a tool but a relic, no longer a working object but a memorial to the work it had made possible.

Nadia watched the template settle on its hook. She watched it hang. She watched it become still on the wall, among the other templates, among the tools, among the wood shavings and the dust motes and the northern light that filled the workshop with its even, gentle, truthful illumination. The template was still. The pencil line on the maple was still. The workshop was still.

And in the stillness was the shape. The shape that was three hundred years old and that was, today, new. The shape that was the tradition and that was, today, the beginning. The shape that was perfect and that was, today, being made again, for the last time, by the hands of a man who had spent his life inside the shape, who had carved it and traced it and followed it and refined it and who was now, at seventy-eight, making it one more time, one last time, the last time being not a diminishment but a completion, the final iteration of a pattern that had been iterated by hundreds of makers over hundreds of years and that would be iterated by hundreds more after Giovanni set down his tools, because the template endures, the shape endures, the tradition endures, and the enduring is not the maker's achievement but the craft's achievement, and the craft is larger than any maker, and the largeness is the consolation, and the consolation is the shape on the wall, hanging in the northern light, waiting for the next hand that will take it down and place it on the wood and trace the outline and begin again.

The shape that has not changed in three hundred years.

The shape that is perfect.

The shape.