Four Generations of Spidlens, the legendary Czech Violin Makers

In the Czech case, distinguished lines or schools emerged not only in large urban centres, but also (and in this respect we may be unique), in remote villages of the Kingdom of Bohemia where especially in the 18th and 19th century men as well as women (for example Johanna Metelkova (1843-1866) in Podkrkonosi region) engaged in violin making. It is from these rural roots that one of the most illustrious of Czech violin-making dynasties has sprung; today the fourth generation of Spidlens still produces violins.

FRANTISEK SPIDLEN

The first of them was Frantisek Spidlen (1867-1916), born under the Krkonose Mountains in Sklenarice, a small place where he made his early instruments. He learnt the craft with local masters as a livelihood, just as other boys trained to be a baker, weaver or carpenter. Only Frantisek Spidlen was lucky, and found a way to a world where music lived a much more sophisticated life than in his native village. This was Kiev, and later Tsarist Moscow, a city where in the late 19th century music was still considered the essential daily bread of aristocratic and patrician society. Otakar Sevcik told Frantisek Spidlen about a competition announced by the conservatory in Moscow to fill the position left by the deceased French violinmaker Ernest Andre Salzard. Spidlen won it, and at the age of thirty became violinmaker to the prestigious conservatory in the Russian metropolis. At the time he was already the father of a nine-month-old boy, in 1896 in Kiev and named Otakar Frantisek, who was to grow up to be the second violinmaker of the Spidlen dynasty.

As violin maker to the Tsarist Conservatory, Spidlen's duties consisted of mending and collecting old instruments, but otherwise he was free to ply his own trade, including selling. Frantisek initially made a name for himself as an outstanding restorer and repairer of old instruments, and while he did not have much time to make new instruments, he learned a great deal from dismantling the old instruments before repairing them, since here he had a chance to work with some of the most valuable violins of the day. As time went by he was able to devote more time to creating his own instruments. He was already producing exquisite violins as far as form, proportions and choice of the best wood was concerned. He still did not know much about sound, however, and at the beginning did not worry too much about varnishes either, buying them readymade.

One of his violins from his Moscow period remains in the family collection to this day. It shows how much he had already learned from repairing classical instruments and how he kept seeking to improve his skills. It is a beautiful violin modelled on the Guarneri of 1740 that Eugene Ysaye has used for his concerts in Moscow. Frantisek Spidlen's instruments of this period are excellent in terms of craft and aesthetic appearance, but as far as sound was concerned they were sometimes problematic. He had almost no knowledge of soundboard tuning or acoustics.

Some of the first ideas on how to tune the violin soundboards came from another native of Sklenarice, Frantisek's nephew Jindrich Vitacek (1880-1946), whom Frantisek had taken on as assistant in the Kiev period. At that time neither of them guessed that the fifteen-year-old lad would grow into a very talented violinmaker, one with a tremendous enthusiasm for uncovering the unknown techniques of the old masters and at the same time a scientific passion for making his own experiments and discoveries in the field of varnishes, acoustics and soundboard tuning. In Moscow a large quantity of old instruments that he repaired with his uncle had passed through his hands. He obsessively studied them in disassembled form, exploring every detail of their construction and the individual wooden parts, as well as all the techniques then used to finish them. Working with physicists and chemists (which was unusual for violin makers of the time) he sought to establish the basis of the strength and colour of the sound. He then told Frantisek that both soundboards--the top and bottom of the violin--needed to be tuned in a certain interval (according to Vitacek, a perfect fourth), and later told Otakar and his son Premysl, with guidelines as to how this could be achieved. Vitacek kept detailed records of every item of his research, experiment and result. In Russia, the boy from the Krkonose foothills who had never even finished his weaving apprenticeship became the saviour of hundreds of precious stringed instruments, which after the Russian Revolution became the basis for the Tsarist Collection of Musical Instruments (today the world famous Glinka Museum in Moscow, the largest of its kind).

As far as design of the instruments was concerned, the Czech violinmakers of the Fr. Spidlen's were traditionally linked to the German school and so preferred thicker soundboards. When repairing old instruments, however, they found the soundboards unusually thin. Their only explanation was that the wood must have dried out and so "thinned" considerably. Thus when violinmakers had dismantled a Stradivarius, for example, which had a top soundboard 2.5 millimetres thick, they believed that the two-hundred-year-old instrument's soundboard might originally--before the supposed drying out--have been about 3 millimetres thick, and so supplied soundboards of this thickness for the instruments. In doing so, however, they ruined the instrument, because in fact the soundboards had originally been only 2.5 millimetres and had not subsequently altered or thinned (Logically, if the thickness of the soundboards had diminished, then drying should have affected their breadth and length as well and the violin would have completely changed in shape, which it had not ... The theory was simply wrong. Stradivari had made his violins in just the form that we know them today ...)

Frantisek Spidlen made an excellent name for himself in Russia and elsewhere in the world, where his instruments were successful against tough competition at exhibitions and in contests. He made a total of around 400 violins, among other awards winning a silver medal in Frankfurt, a Diploma of Honour and Exhibition Medal in Prague (1895), a Grand Silver Medal in Kiev (1897), an Exhibition Medal in Paris (1900), First Prize and Grand Gold Medal in Peterburg (1906-7), and the Grand Silver Medal in Lille (1909).

In 1907, however, poor health forced him to return to Bohemia. After a short period in the country he was able to open a shop and workshop in Prague in Krizovnicka Street not far from the conservatory. For a while he also had a shop on hired premises in what is today Karlova Street. As a violinmaker almost unknown in Prague, however, he could not establish himself there until after the death of the established Prague violinmaker and instrument dealer Karel B. Dvorak, whose unassailable position had deterred competition. Once the eldest Spidlen had settled in Prague and hung a sign with his name over the new workshop in Krizovnicka in the Old Town, all the other bearers of his name and inheritors of his craft--his son, grandson and great-grandson--were to be domiciled in Prague, despite the origins of the dynasty in the Krkonose School of violin making. At the beginning Frantisek and Otakar had simply to establish a place among the existing local violinmakers, but soon they would be considered equal partners with the others, and as stalwart supports of the Prague Violinmakers Guild. Finally the name of Spidlen would become the first, the most frequently pronounced, the most famous. The name that attracted celebrated string virtuosos from Bohemia and abroad.

OTAKAR FRANTISEK SPIDLEN

The founder's son Otakar Frantisek Spidlen (1896 - 1958) was a talented and clever entrepreneur. He could do business just as well as he could make new instruments and repair the old, and he was extraordinarily hard-working. Despite this, his first independent steps in Prague were difficult. The violinmakers makers organised in the Prague Association of Musical Instrument Makers already had the city strategically "occupied". While for some time they had grudgingly accepted the existence of competition from the Spidlens as represented by the doyen of the family Frantisek, when the young Otakar Frantisek conjoined the guild after his father's death as a mere nineteen-year-old lad (and what was worse a lad born in Russia), his determination to make his way struck the established Prague masters as impudence. Their resistance was considerable.

He would repair instruments all night, on holidays and Sundays, and produce new ones during the day. But mainly he looked after the shop. Twenty hours a day. Fortunately the times themselves smiled on him. This was the era of the first free Czechoslovak Republic, which at least as far back as the nation could recall was the most favourable period ever for Czech business and businessmen.

"My father," his son Premysl recalls "lived for the business. He enjoyed it. He was lord and master in that shop. He loved standing behind the counter and he loved the way it kept him in continual contact with people from the world of music ... He had a lot of outstanding, rare instruments there and a tremendously interesting clientele. Naturally the people who came to us included esteemed figures like Frantisek Ondricek, Josef Suk, Jan Kubelik, Vasa Prihoda, and later David Oistrakh and a whole range of other important violinists. Simply the elite ..."

Otakar F. Spidlen managed to create an enthralling environment for instruments and their admirers. He took part in exhibitions in Bohemia and a number of competitions at the conservatories in Prague's Emauze and the Rudolfinum and usually won first prize (in most cases) or second prize. He made a violin for the president T. G. Masaryk in 1936, and on its bottom had a painter from the neighbourhood Diblik paint a large version of the state emblem and the initials T.G.M. Today it is the depositary of the Prague Music Conservatory. (The newspapers reported it on the 12th of January 1936 under the headline "Rare Violin. Who will play on it?" The press wrote that "The violin the master violinmaker Otakar Spidlen has presented to the President T.G.Masaryk. (...) a copy of a famous violin by Ant. Stradivari, is one of the most beautiful works of modern Czech violinmaking, and in craftsmanship and sound is the equal of the very valuable instruments of the Old Italian School.")

Other instruments by Otakar Frantisek also testify to his outstanding skills as a master violinmaker. He always used the same models, Stradivari and Guarneri, and used an orange oil varnish that he purchased readymade abroad. Like Frantisek Spidlen, he tended to leave the soundboards thicker than in the Italian models. His best era was around the year 1930, a time when he made very fine fiddles, and was still quite young and under the influence of his father. As he got older he concentrated more and more on business.

For his knowledge of theory Otakar F. Spidlen was indebted above all to the untiring assistance of his cousin Vitacek, who in letters from Russia and on visits to Prague systematically passed on all the conclusions he had drawn from his own researches and study of theory in the many countries he visited for the purpose. Otakar F. Spidlen made around 150 instruments. He was the initiator and co-founder of the Circle of Fine Violin-Makers.

PREMYSL OTAKAR SPIDLEN

After the death of Otakar Frantisek Spidlen, the shop with its windows facing the busy Jungmannova Street remained open, but soon after the Communist putsch Premysl Spidlen (* 1920), now himself a master and the third of the violin-making dynasty, was forced to close the shop that had been his father's pride and joy. Only the workshop for repair and production of new instruments was allowed to remain in operation.

"From my father I inherited ingenuity and dexterity in the craft" says Premysl Spidlen. "Without that I couldn't have become a violinmaker. It wasn't just family, but the omnipresence of violins, the music created by all those original people who belonged to us--for me that was an everyday inspiration with a taste of a kind of mystery that I never experienced anywhere else in the families of my friends. All that basically predestined me to my future career. At home it was usual for us to talk about some rare violin that would be coming in for repair ... The doors didn't bang in our shop and they would open (especially the doors to the workshop) to admit great figures who gave an extra respect and dignity to our whole house--something that of course I was to realise fully only later, in the course of the following years. That was all part and parcel of my father's life."

His childhood provided Premysl Spidlen a perfect understanding of wood and the physical laws that determine how it should be treated, and he subsequently kept up with all the new expert findings of the modern age. He knew everything that was to be known about the several ways of tuning the violin soundboards--something about which his grandfather had known very little at all and his father only slightly more. From modern physics and chemistry he soon acquired a great deal of knowledge necessary for the correct varnishing a violin, and he enlarged this body of knowledge with findings of his own. As an active violinist he could try out an instruments himself in any phase of its construction. Heir to a respected workshop, he soon won a reputation in his own right and became versed in all aspects of his craft.

Throughout his life he has had a passionate interest and pioneering desire to decipher the secret formula of varnishes on the instruments of Stradivarius and the effects of varnishes on the acoustics of violins. He tested all the recipes so far known, and added hundreds of his own. He still keeps up with all the new experiments in physical, chemical and mechanical research and takes his passion to absurd lengths--he will only travel to countries where he can find violins or violinmakers. One of the people who has influenced Premysl Spidlen's views on the soundboards tuning since the 1980s is the American physicist C. M. Hutchins, who was the first to conduct research on acoustics using modes produced by a tone generator and loudspeaker.

When he inherited his father's workshop as a young man, Premysl had no idea that one day he would take his own art and inheritance to the topmost summit of world violin making. "It is the rediscovery of Stradivari!" Etienne Vatelot, the top French expert on the violin was to exclaim many years later, when hearing an instrument created by Premysl Otakar Spidlen, and the great expert and at the time the biggest German dealer in musical instrument Walter Hamma pronounced Premysl Spidlen to be the only violinmaker to have succeeded in penetrating the mystery of Stadivari's instruments. "The art of Czech violinmaking has been developed to the very highest standards by Premysl Otakar Spidlen"--declared a television documentary on the Spidlens ... But of course, such tributes had been earned by huge, untiring efforts. Hours and hours at the workbench as the graceful forms of instruments emerged slowly, almost in slow motion, from the slices of wood. Hundreds and hundreds of experiments and tests with the composition and then the application of varnishes to the surface of "white" violins. Hours and hours poring over the pages of expert journals on the qualities of sound, the resonance of wood and so on. Years waiting for the acoustic result of mature and "played in" violins. Constant comparison of disassembled instruments of the Old Baroque violin masters with later instruments. Innumerable consultations and discussions with violin virtuosos. An extraordinary career on the field of international violinmaker competitions, resulting in a whole range of very prestigious awards ...

Premysl Otakar Spidlen made his first violin in 1937, when he was 17 years old. A record of the violin exists, written by his mother Marie who kept notes on his instruments including important technical information. As the years went by the records grew longer, although no longer in his mother's hand. Premysl Spidlen's development as a violinmaker was many sided to a degree almost unparalleled among his contemporaries.

He places special emphasis on the quality of the wood and the quality of the varnish. "Varnish has become his life problem and hobby, he has conducted innumerable varnish tests and believes that he is getting close to his dream of recreating Cremona varnish. His work is truly outstanding. Distinctive for its absolutely unerringly cut soundboards, perfect inlay, profiled cut scrolls. Beautiful spruce and maple wood, browned by natural sunlight, is exploited to full aesthetic effect. The colour composition of the instrument created by the base and his own special varnish enhances the merits of the workmanship and the wood, and so his instruments give the impression of having been composed and imbued with feeling like paintings. There are few violinmakers as knowledgeable about acoustics and the physics of violins. Premysl Otakar Spidlen is one of the most exceptional figures in the whole history of violinmaking in our country. Almost all the world virtuosos who come to play in our capital eventually arrive in his atelier." (Extract from the Czech encylopedia The Art Of Violin-Makers.)

Premysl Spidlen has so far made around 250 violins, violas and cellos, which had served many top performers (Menuhin, Suk, the Smetana Quartet ...). Of his many awards we might mention Best Czech Violin-Maker in the Hague (1947), The Gold Medal in Liege (1960), 1st and 3rd Prize and Gold Medal in Poznan (1962), and 2nd Prize and Gold Medal in Poznan (1967).

JAN BAPTISTA SPIDLEN

The Spidlen dynasty can now boast a violinmaker of the fourth generation in the shape of Jan Spidlen (*1967). Today he is already an acclaimed Master violinmaker. The author of a series of beautiful and successful violins, several violas and as yet one cello. Jan has of course inherited a tremendous amount of experience and a well-equipped workshop, which he is modernising in line with technical advance, but of course these advantages are balanced by the enormous challenge he has faced in living up to the standards of his three predecessors and the exceptionally high quality of their instruments. He has risen to it, and today he too has produced excellent instruments--one of his first violins is the property of Josef Suk, he is a privileged supplier of instruments to Pavel Sporcl and two recent violins won him phenomenal success at the 10th Violinmaking Trienale in Cremona in 2003 - 1st and 2nd Prize and three other awards. Cremona has ensured his membership of the prestigious international association of violinmakers and stringed instrument makers ENTENTE and has opened his path to the elite of his profession.

Today he is master on equal terms with the most distinguished of the world's violin makers. As such he had the chance to attend a congress in Tuscany with a very interesting theme: would it be possible today to create an entirely new model violin that would be equal in quality to the still respected Baroque type, but in allowable respects would introduce new avant-garde elements--form, colour, other proportions, new material ...? It is a question to which no one has yet found an answer, despite many often picturesque experiments.

The young master has a very difficult task in his own family of violinmakers. Perhaps a task more difficult than those that faced any of his predecessors. As he makes his violins he cannot comfort himself, as perhaps his great-grandfather did when he first arrived in Russia, that if he succeeds it will be fine but if he fails it won't be the end of the world. He is the guarantor of the successes of all preceding Spidlens, and faces the challenge of equalling them. From his forbears he has inherited, apart from much else, the responsibility for the name and quality of Spidlen instruments, which is now a famous international brand name.

In his childhood he learned from his father about wood, its properties and refined ways of treating. Then he went away to develop his talent at school and in the wider world. He studied Applied Arts School in Prague in Zizkov. There, specialising in wood carving and modelling he learnt to work with this material in a way different from his father's workshop. Studies at the international violinmaking school in Mittenwald in Germany and a placement in London with the famous violinmaking firm J. & A. Beare, which specialises in repairing and restoring the most expensive stringed instruments, raised his qualifications and broadened his outlook still further, and allowed Jan Spidlen to compare different ways of constructing violins and approaching other tasks associated with the production of master instruments and modern restoration. He returned home with knowledge that has hugely enriched the legacy of the firm of Spidlen.

A word of conclusion: Recently a notable book (in Czech) was published entitled "Spidlenovi, cesti Mistri houslari" [The Spidlens, Czech Master ViolinMakers]. It is the first book of its kind, offering readers not only an insight into the secret chambers where violins are born, but also taking them back to the time and circumstances in which this royal instrument first saw the light of day. It recalls the glorious epoch of the geniuses of Cremona--Amati, Stradivari and Guarneri. And last but not least it explores what have often been neglected aspects of the inheritance of the master art of violinmaking. 

Article by Libuse Hubickova in 'Czech Music'