Barak Norman (1651-1724) is one of the most distinctive and interesting makers of the violoncello, and this is one of the most beautiful examples of his work that I have seen. Norman lived at the same time as Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) and was certainly the leading instrument maker of his time in London. His earliest works are from the mid-1680s, and in 1690 he established his workshop in St Paul’s Churchyard. The rebuilding of the cathedral after the Fire of London had begun in 1675 and continued until 1710 serving as one of the great wonders of the western world, even as it was being built.
Norman’s instruments area influenced by his primary reputation as a maker of the viola da gamba, and as the violoncello evolved with it’s solo repertoire out of the continuo role of the bass violin, this lead to considerable experimentation by the makers of the time, and Norman as much as Stradivari was influenced by these conditions. Unfortunately for Barak Norman’s posthumous reputation, his instruments tend towards the smaller sizes, which is one of the reasons that they have become more of a connoisseur’s choice, and this example from 1704 is amongst the larger specimens that exist. However, experience from viol making led to him using a composite bent method for the back and the belly of the instrument which gives it greater strength and allows it to be thinner. It’s abundantly worth noting that Italian cellos by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi and Giovanni Battista Guadagnini are the same length and also employ the practice of a thinner back to give them more power. Obviously they weren’t, but it is almost as if they were copying Barak Norman!
Norman’s cellos can be divided roughly into three epochs. The last, from 1714-1724 is the period that Nathaniel Cross had completed his apprenticeship and become a journeyman within the workshop. Here it seems as if he may have been solely responsible for making cellos and he worked on developing models of cellos that perpetuated in his work after Barak Norman’s death. There are few cellos from the decade beforehand, but the year 1704 was marked by the arrival of Gaspar Visconti from Cremona, and the introduction of ideas that seem to have come directly from Stradivari’s workshop (a blog on Gaspar Visconti will be forthcoming), but any cellos from before 1714 from the Norman workshop are very rare. Sadly for this cello, the soundholes have been altered to a point that it is unclear how they originally looked. Nevertheless, the scroll and pegbox illustrated below also seems to be a reaction to Brother’s Amati work if only on a very superficial level.
The outline of the pegbox and scroll is vaguely relative to Cremonese work, but the lines are all exaggerated making it a far more curvaceous form, but I think that there are comparisons to be drawn. It is worth bearing in mind that at the time this was made, Robert Cuthbert in nearby Covent Garden was producing the finest emulations of Amati work outside of Italy, so the consciousness of Amati form is evident in English work of the period. Nevertheless, an oblique look at the scroll shows Barak Norman’s characteristic reluctance for undercutting, with very flat planes extending far into the turns of the pegbox.
Despite these homages to Cremona, the double purfling is a standard conceit of Norman’s borrowed from the English viol tradition, and the tulip motif beneath the fingerboard and his monogram purfled in the back make the nature of the instrument perfectly clear as exquisite English workmanship.
Measurements
Length of Back: 750mm
Stop Length: 400mm
Upper Bouts: 362mm
Middle Bouts: 253mm
Lower Bouts: 439mm
