The core of it all may lay in the symbolic value I give to the violin, further than to its functionality. It has
been the product of a long evolution, made from vital substance, shaped according to physical and
mathematical principles, created for living and singing. I think a violin represents the perfect link of science,
nature, experience and artistic sensitivity. The time of its formal consolidation, through all the XVIIth
century is in this sense an exceptionally blessed moment.
We could rarely find daily objects even in the organologic catalogue, which have remained one and the same
for so many centuries. Any attempts to change the materials, measures, proportions, or aesthetic elements
have ended with the returning to the canons established by the teachers of the classical school of Cremona.
The only consistent modification, due to a trend of that age more than to an improvement in design, was the
turn from a baroque set-up to a modern one. Paradoxically, at present, because of a higher interest in
interpretations with historical criteria, some of those instruments modified at the beginning of the XIXth
century have been sent back to its original set-up.
The maker, as the player will do later, establishes a dialogue, a relationship with the instrument. From my
point of view, this dialogue always turns round four elements, which at different points of the making process
focus our attention:
“What is essential is invisible to the eyes.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - The Little Prince.