Balkan maple is particularly prized for violin making, but it’s reputation ultimately relies on violin makers regarding it as a good and logical match for the wood that we find on Italian violins from the Cremonese Golden-Period. As far as I know, we don’t have documentary support for this idea, simply the experience and observations of generations of violin makers. However, a travel diary from around 1669 changes a great deal of this, providing not only evidence of Italian use, but further indications of how wood from this source may have ended up further-afield in the workshops beyond Italy including those of some English makers.
In 1667 the medical doctor, Edward Brown, was admitted to the Royal Society, at a time when the two Roberts; Hook & Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn were amongst it’s leading lights (I have written about John Evelyn’s account of instrument making elsewhere in this blog). Following his admission to the society he set about a series of travels into the Hapsburg lands in order to learn more about the scientific and natural phenomenon from that part of the world. His travels lasted from 1668 through 1669. In 1673 he published in London a small quarto volume called A Brief Account of some Travels in Hungaria, Styria, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thesssaly, Austria, Serbia, Caynthia, Carniola, and Friuli. Another volume appeared in 1677, and in 1685 he produced a collection of all his travels (a really good example in historical research of not relying on one single edition to find everything he had to say). His efforts gave him a significant reputation, and in 1675 he was admitted to the College of Physicians leading to his appointment as physician to King Charles II.
He is also a helpful source on pernambuco trade in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. You can read about this here.
That neat kind of Acer whereof Violins and Musical Instruments are made, prospers well in these parts, as also in Carniola and Saltzburglandt, where they make Trenchers and Tables of it, and at an easier rate; I bought some of the fair Broad Leaves from thence.
It was during his travels through the Italian province of Friuli (charmingly he called it Friulana) that Brown came across a people that made trenchers and tables out of a neat kind of Acer (what a wonderful way to put it). I want to focus on this for a second, because one of the perverse pleasures I take in life is to ask museum curators to tell me what they have in their collections that is made out of maple. After looking at me strangely and assuming a reasonable proportion of things are made of it, they turn up blankly… my theory (as I will get around to writing) is that the reality of maple is that it was too hard for the average woodworking tools of the time which is why poplar and beech and fruitwoods dominated Italian woodworking, and thus it was out of the ordinary and therefore remarkable for Brown to encounter domestic furniture and utensils made out of maple. In summary, we should not take the use of maple for granted even where it is an indigenous wood. The explanation for this eccentricity of the people of Friuli is probably better explained because maple was the only available hardwood in these mountainous regions, forcing them to find techniques for working with it: It is unclear how we can understand Brown’s comment “at an easie rate” but it could seem to suggest that the artisans of Friuli had developed specialised techniques around problems that they faced from their indigenous wood supply.
Whist we think of 1669, when Brown witnessed this as a full century after the first violins by Andrea Amati, we also need to understand that the violin was much scarcer during the first hundred years. For most of that time the Amati family was the only makers of note in Cremona, and making in Brescia was more-or-less extinct after 1630. The explosion of popularity in the violin that really defines both the history of making and playing really came about in the 1650-1660s period, whereupon we see the rise of the Ruggeri, Rogeri, Guarneri and Stradivari families supporting the Cremona trade, and the emergence of violin makers in every significant city in Italy and in every capital city across Europe, so it is quite interesting to see Violins singled out from Musical Instruments in general. We see maple used in Brescian citterns, for example the Girolamo Virchi instruments of the 1570s, and lutes go back as far as Laux Maler (active 1518-1552) in the early part of the sixteenth century, whilst viols and violins have had a parallel history including choices for materials. In English parlance at the time “Musical Instrument” referenced singly can often mean the harpsichord, but here again, Italian harpsichords of this period tend to be made from poplar because of the ease of working.
Friuli was the last region that Brown visited on this leg of his journey, as he came through the eastern-most part of the Dolomite mountains and towards the Adriatic ocean. Friuli is the Italian side, and Carniola is in what we call Slovenia.
This region constitutes the Adriatic trade that was domniated by the Venetians – you can see Venice on the left of the map which had ruled Trieste from 1508 when they occupied it in the War of the League of Cambrai, and this Venetian control gives rise to the trade including maple. (Contrary to belief, the piles upon which Venice was built are of alder, larch, oak, pine, elm and spruce, but not maple – see what I’ve said above about the difficulty of working with it and where it doesn’t appear where you expect it to). In turn it is also important to remember that Brescia, a centre of instrument making was also under Venetian rule… so the appearance of That neat Kind of Acer for Brescian stringed instruments and Venetian lutes and recorders is not too surprising.
We finally see comparison to the maple of Saltzburglandt. This is a little too far east to account for the wood of Mittenwald or Füssen, and there isn’t really the instrument making tradition in this region to think of this in greater terms than a footnote in history.
If wood came from Friuli or thereabouts, it adds considerable questions to some of the orthodox ideas surrounding Cremonese wood for the city of Aquilla sits at one end of the ancient Roman Via Postumia which goes from Aquilla in the east to Genoa in the west, remaining through the medieval and early-modern times as one of the most important overland routes through Italy. The Via Postumia meets the Via Aemilia, by now part of the Spanish Road at Piacenza on the southern bank of the river Po, but for practical reasons the optimal crossing point of the great river for any kind of cargo or army was 30 miles east at Cremona where a pontoon bridge across the river gave access to flatlands unencumbered by the many tributaries flowing into the main river. Hence, this throws the idea that wood was ponded on it’s way from Venice (or Turin) cannot be the automatic assumption that some have come to. It was Cremona’s strategic location on the Spanish Road that resulted in the French invasion of Lombardy during the thirty-years war, causing the plague in 1630.
There is a final footnote for making in England. In 1677 Thomas Mace commented in Musick’s Monument that: “Next, what Wood is Best for the Ribbs. The Air-wood is absolutely the Best. And next to that, Our English Maple. But there are very Good Lutes of several Woods; as Plum-Tree, Pear-Tree, Yew, Rosemary-Air, Ash, Ebony and Ivory &c. The two last (though most Costly, and Taking to a common Eye) are the worst.” Here the implication must be that the “Air-wood” (think of how the Germans pronounce Ahorn, and additionally the furniture trade calls figured maple veneers hair-wood), is imported. I will write about this presently, and about what we know of spruce being imported down the Rhine via the markets in Cologne for English use, but it seems that we should not be surprised when we see the kind of maple we associate with Italian instruments on some early English viols and violins. Edward Brown had written the book for the advancement of science, knowledge and commerce, so the intention of writing even the smallest passing comment came with the intention of passing this information to the entities that could use it. We get appreciably closer in understanding that the work was published by Benjamin Tooke, at the sign of the Ship in St Paul’s Churchyard, a prolific publisher of theatre and song in the Restoration period. The tantalising possibility of a physical connection to the instrument makers of St Paul’s Churchyard including Barak Norman and Edward Lewis is something we can simply dwell upon. It is certain however that some of the viols with dense backs and sides of highly figured wood that compares to Italian, especially in Barak Norman’s works, also have very plain necks and scrolls of a less dense English maple, and this seems to be on purpose to keep the instruments as light as possible and yet as visually (and perhaps acoustically) optimal as they could be. Whilst we can’t be certain whether they were finding wood from the Italian or German sides of the alps, both seem to be a possibility, and within the understanding of English makers during this period. With this in mind, we can equally ask these questions of Dutch makers, and others outside of Northern Italy who seem to consistently find wood that neat kind of acer that is so typical for Cremonese work.
