How To Make The Most Expensive Violin By A Living Maker - Samuel Zygmuntowicz I Short Documentary

foreign people have asked me how do you make a great violin and really the question is not how you make a great violin the challenge is to understand what have you done and how could it be better everything could be better my name is Sam sigmundovich I'm a violin maker I went to violin making School in Salt Lake City Utah during that time I also worked with Carl Becker one of the greatest American makers of the last generation to finish your work in school you have to make two violins one varnished and one unvarnished so I made my two violins and then I graduated and I was very fortunate to get an invitation to work for jaffron say and Renee Morel in New York I found out shortly after I came that there was going to be a violin competition one of the funny things about it my new teacher Renee Morrell was one of the judges but when they judge they don't know the names but when he found out that my violin had won two gold medals that he had given an award to he said now that I know what you can do I'm really going to push you hard and he did it was a quite a difficult five years I spent in that Workshop so for me winning those gold medals was was was just the start one of my most important projects early in my career was making violins for Mr Isaac Stern who was a hero really a culture hero in a way in my family so to actually work directly with Mr stern was a great honor and so I made a copy of his quenery the Isaiah guanari of 1740 and later a copy of his other Del J suit eventually when Mr Stern passed away his his collection went to auction the first violin sold for 85 000 which was already a record for a contemporary violin and then right after that the second violin sold for 130 000 which was five times the previous record for a contemporary violin and the highest price at that time for a 20th century violin of any sort I was shocked and everybody else was shocked the auction of my own instruments it was it was flattering of course but what was more important it was that a contemporary violin was treated with the same respect foreign it's not that stradivari was a genius or that there's a secret it's that the system is very powerful and by copying you learn the system in detail I worked with some of the greatest Craftsman of the last generation who themselves were highly trained in Traditions that go back many generations and I feel tremendous respect for my teachers one of the reasons I was attracted to the violin is because of the strength of the tradition because there is something that accumulates over time in in traditional crafts which is a it's almost like you could say that the craft is group sourced over many generations I keep quite a variety of wood here and I store it for a long time and I've been buying it for my whole career it's a little bit like a a wine cellar you pick the wine according to the meal you want so for some projects I want wood that's a little harder and that maybe will make a slightly more brilliant sound for another project I want something that's a little more flexible so I can choose that as well and then the next step is to decide on the model the physical size of the body and then the rest builds from there I look back at the instruments I've made over time and there's almost 300 now it's quite a body of work and it will definitely Outlast my own lifetime I keep very careful notes on every violin I made so I know the wood source and the wood density and the stiffness is exact thicknesses exact Arch shapes sizes as much as I can every one of my violins that is still in circulation is being judged every day it's performed so I spend a lot of time working not only to make new violence but to maintain the violence I've already made and to work directly with musicians and I feel that it is my duty to help them I meet my clients here in in my music room I have it set up like like a little concert hall they play for me they tell me what they think I'm listening and trying to understand it's very difficult to put words to Sensations and sounds but they say something and then I I'll play the violin myself and I say they'll say well it just seems like it's it's just not firm and then I play it I see so like you mean like these couple of notes Here the CC sharp or just a little fuzzier I think and it says yes then we begin to understand each other we find a Common Language and that is actually maybe the most important part of my work is directly encountering a musician and finding the language with them one of the things I realized about my work is that I'm not creating an object well the object is created but what I'm really creating is the experience of the player the better I help them the better my instrument is and the better for me there is no end point with a violin you know people don't play one concert and retire and it's also it's very satisfying and moving to be involved with artists of that level of talent sometimes I can't believe that I'm in the same room with artists of that level that they're playing here in my my salon in my in my music room and they will take my violin and play a concert it seems almost surreal to me but on the other hand it is real it's really happening it's a real responsibility

Channel: Magnifissance - Joy In the Making

Views: 73,949

Keywords: Violin, expensive violin, violin maker documentary, violin maker, Luthier, luthier violin making, making violin, violin making process, Handcrafted violin, stringed instrument making, Samuel Zygmuntowicz, samuel zygmuntowicz violin, Isaac Stern, Classical music, handmade, craft, arts and crafts, joy in the making, magnifissance, Guarneri violin, Brooklyn life, fine art, musician life, instrument making, violin making

Id: 9sT6owUeSxQ

Length: 6min 7sec (367 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 08 2023