Three violas, one musician, one composer, one curator.

Peter Sheppard Skærved, with Bradley Strauchen-Scherer and Michael Alec Rose

Dr. Bradley Strauchen-Scherer Associate curator in the Department of Musical Instruments, with composer Michael Alec Rose, Metropolitan Museum 24 10 22

In the  Metropolitan Museum’s extraordinary collection of musical instruments are three special stringed instruments,  made in three different centuries, three countries and two continents. There their differences might suggest that they are different instruments: but these are all what for the past century, have been called ‘viola’.

Bass side ribs and soundhole of the Jakob Stainer Viola at the Metropolitan Museum August 2022

Playing, discussing,  and scrutinising these violas in the community of musicians, scholars, technicians, and luthiers gathered at the Metropolitan illuminates their characteristics and histories. Bringing a living composer into the conversations shines yet more light on the instruments and the ideas.

So, what are the violas in question? In chronological order they are: Jacob Stainer 1660, Robert Horne 1757 , Benjamin Banks 1791, representing almost 150 years of making, in Austria, America and the United Kingdom.

The word for ‘viola’ in Nordic and German languages is ‘Bratsch’(Danish), ‘Bratsj’(Norwegian), ‘Bratsche’ (German) – adaptations of the Italian ‘Braccio’ – ‘Arm’ – simply put ‘holding with the arm instrument’! This odd name results from a historic muddle between the viol and violin families of instruments. ‘Viols’ are divided, between those held between the knees – ‘da gamba’ – and those small enough to be held up with the hand, ‘arm viols’ – ‘viole da braccio’. This little language game encapsulates the question around viola size: at what point does an instrument become too unwieldy to be held with the arm and on the shoulder, and be played (cello-fashion) at the knee – ‘da gamba’?

By  chance, the size of each of these instrument decreases chronologically. The back of the 1660 Stainer  is 43.7 cm, that of the 1757 Horne 41.8 cm and the Banks 38.8 cm. The global dimensions of most string instruments generally increase and decrease proportionally. So, the ‘depth’ of the ribs of the instruments, which separate the back and the front of their resonating boxes, stretches from 4.7 cm (Stainer) to 3.5 cm (Banks). More prosaically, the largest instrument is more challenging to hold on the collarbone – requiring more space between clavicle and mandible, and it is heavier. A smaller, shorter, shallower instrument is lighter, and generally easier to hold.

The 1660 Jacob Stainer viola marks the top end of what is comfortable to be held ‘up’, because of its 4.7cm rib depth. This does not mean that it marks the upper limit of 17th century string instruments made to fit under the chin. A Barak Norman viola, made in London ca. 1695, with a back length of 18 ¾ inches (475mm). The instrument is only playable under the chin, because that end of the viola is cut away to around 3.5 cm.

Playing the 17 3/4 ” Barak Norman (1695-1700) at home 29 3 17

This has sonic outcomes. A larger resonating airspace within the body of the bigger instrument  usually means that the sound will be ‘deeper’: lower-frequency fundamentals, harmonics and subtones will be forward in the sound picture. Conversely, the sound of the smallest instrument is  ‘lighter’: higher pitches dominate. But the characteristics of any instrument are far less predictable than might be supposed: and that is where the exploration with a composer can be enlightening.

I have worked with Nashville-based Michael Alec Rose since the great composer Geoge Rochberg introduced us in 2004. Michael  has written many pieces for the specific instruments I explore. These include an ornamented Stradivari violin at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, an Amati at the Library of Congress, and  Niccolò Paganini’s famous Guarneri del Gesù in Genoa. He was inspired to write pieces for the Metropolitan Museum violas, beginning with the 1660 Stainer.

Michael’s manuscript of Metonymy explicitly locates it, like this viola, at the Metropolitan. On the last page, of the score, in the middle of the music, there is a sketch: a grand viola, stands at the main entrance to the museum, atop its famous steps opposite East 82nd Street. This piece, and this viola have become metonyms for the Met- museum itself’: it is really ‘Met-onymy’!

The beginning of the last page of Michael Alec Rose’s piece inspired by the Metropolitan Museum’s astonishing 1660 Stainer Viola. 22 8 22

I ‘met’ this wonderful viola in the summer of 2022. However, it was not until the day of filming, in October 2022, that Rose encountered Stainer for the first time. This meeting of music, viola, player, composer, and the curatorial team was in-public, on camera. The result is electrifying: The living instrument took over the piece which inspired it, and transformed it.

A few months after filming ‘Metonymy’, we were thinking about a viola made a century later, in New York, by Robert Horne, who was born in Britain. The Robert Horne viola is labelled ‘New York 1757’, making it the earliest known American bowed instrument: but in many ways, in terms of its characteristics and sound quality, it is linked to contemporaneous makers in London: it seems likely that Horne came to New York to set up business. Almost nothing is known of his life or training.

A glimpse of the Robert Horne Viola label

I live by the River Thames, a short walk from London’s ‘Square Mile’, bounded by the Fleet River in the West, the Tower of London to the East, with St Paul’s Cathedral at its centre. Following the catastrophic Great Fire of 166s, the narrow streets and alleys between the Wren’s new cathedral and London Bridge became home to many extraordinary instrument makers. By the 1700s, these were joined by a community of luthiers at the other end of the beach road linking the then

Viola by Robert Horne, New York 1757 (Photo Metropolitan Museum)

separate Cities of London and Westminster, ‘The Strand’. They worked around the Covent Garden Market, where the great cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale was based from the 1740s.

In the twenty years between the outbreak of what Americans referred to as ‘King George’s War’ (or the ‘French and Indian War’)( known in Europe as the ‘Seven Years War’) and the signing of the ‘Treaty of Paris’ in 1763 which ended the conflict Manhattan was epicentre to the money and ordnance pouring across the Atlantic for the conflict. Writing in 1756, Benjamin Franklin noted, from Philadelphia:

 ‘New York is growing immensely rich, by Money brought into it from all Quarters from the pay and Subsistence of the Troops’. [i]

For, with weapons and money, came soldiery. The officers brought their families: and they brought home comforts, from furniture to music. Indeed, Frederick the Great’s attack on Saxony, which had begun this ‘Seven Years War’ in Europe, was quite literally accompanied by that musical monarch fluting his way from battlefield to battlefield. His flute, in their campaign travelling-case can be seen at the Library of Congress, in Washington DC. It seems that with the music, came instrument makers, from England, including,  one from the distinctive London school of violinmaking, Robert Horne. He made this instrument on Pearl Street, in 1757. It seems likely that it was used in the American premiere of Handel’s Messiah, 13 years later, on the same thoroughfare.

The Robert Horne 1757 Viola also has uniquely American features. The great historian of string instruments, Ben Hebbert points out that its dark, chocolatey varnish was designed to match that of the fashionable (genuine and imitation), English, Chippendale furniture popular in the ‘colonies’ until the 1776 Revolution . And the dramatic flame of the wood used for the ribs and back is absolutely American: it is Sugar Maple/acer saccharum. This is sometimes called as ‘Rock Maple’, after an 18th Century New England  cabinetmaker called ‘Rock’. He marketed his work  as ‘Rock’s Hard Maple Furniture.’ [ii]

With Bradley Strauchen Scherer and the film team at the Metropolitan Museum (holding violas by Benjamin Banks and Robert Horne) 25 10 23

I began to spend time with this viola in the summer of 2023. I was grateful for the vision and artistry of violinmaker Gabriela Guadalajara, who works regularly with the instruments of the Metropolitan Museum. She made a new bridge for the instrument, releasing a voice that was initially just-about-there, but obscured by the years of neglect prior to the instrument’s acquisition, just a few years ago. I sent composer Michael Alec Rose mobile-phone audio and pictures of the viola: his musical  response was beautiful and witty.

Michael Alec Rose began his musical life as a French Horn player: this is something that he shares with curator Bradley Strauchen Scherer. My conversations with her are particularly fascinating because we come from two different

Left to Right: PSS, Michael Alec Rose (Composer), Bobby Berry (DP), Chris Shurtleff (Sound), Bradley Scherer-Strauchen (Curator) Met Museum. 26 10 22

instrumental species, strings, and brass. But when she and Michael talk, a shared horn-heritage is in the room. Michael often plays with language, in order to open up spaces and ideas around his music. It was, perhaps inevitable, that he would be unable to resist the lure of Robert Horne. His piece is entitled Horne Call. The association between the violin and brass instrumental families runs deep. Early Italian chamber music often partnered the violin with the Sackbut, the early version of the Trombone (Old French saqueboute: ‘pull-push’). Centuries later, Niccolò Paganini’s’ Caprice Op 1 No 9  imitated horns, continuing the tradition.

The composer notes:

‘My love of wordplay is implacable. For the name of a viola’s maker to be “Horne” is too good to be true. The challenge is to make good on the true and venerable tradition of shaping the sound of bowed strings into an illusion of blown horns (Handel’s Musette, Mozart’s “Hunt,” Bartok passim).’[iii]

Michael’s wordplay continued, as he imagined  the instrument in the rich acoustic of the [musical instrument gallery]. He knew from the experience with the Stainer viola, filming in the gallery a year earlier, that the piece would reshape itself, in that room. So, the first performance instructions on Horne Call are ‘Ruminating’ and then ‘Roomier’. Indeed: the viola filled the room.

Discussing a Grancino instrument with Met Conservator, Manu Frederickx and luthier Gabriela Guadalajara 11 8 22

The practicalities of filming meant that we decided that to leave the Horne until last. Consequently, Michael’s new viola piece was first played on the 1791 Viola by Benjamin Banks

Benjamin Banks (1727-1795)  lived and worked in the cathedral city of Salisbury, in the county of Wiltshire. By his death, he was the most celebrated living English maker. In 1864 William Sandys wrote:

‘Too much cannot be said in praise of this justly celebrated maker of violins, violas and violoncellos.’[iv]

At the time of his death, Banks’ instruments sold for twelve guineas, and at the beginning of the 1800s, upwards of £50. By way of comparison, in 1799,  William Forster advertised a cello by Nicolo Amati, ‘with case and bow’, for £17. [v]  All this had changed by the 1860s. Sandys wrote:

‘Fashion, however, has now declared against these excellent instruments of the Banks family, and all English manufacturers must give place to those with foreign names.’[vi]

The appellation ‘viola’ is a modern catchall. Until the end of the 1800s, it was common to refer to these instruments as either ‘Altos’ or ‘Tenors’. Mid-18th century orchestras split ‘violas’ into high and low, ‘altos’ and ‘tenors’, spatially separated. Most of Mozart’s symphonies call for this configuration. Remember the violas, chattering away in thirds at the beginning of his G minor Symphony No 40 K 550? That is exactly what we are listening to. The Metropolitan Museum viola, made four years before Banks’ death, is one of the smallest I have played. He  made a high, ‘alto’ viola’; the enormous Stainer is a tenor.

But as became clear on camera, the instrument did not give anything away in richness of tone, or lyricism. Michael Rose notes:

‘The Banks viola inspired Peter to transform Horne Call into a sustained song, more vocal than anything else. It may be the most lyrical thing he and I have ever done together.’[vii]

I also recorded a short piece by British composer David Hackbridge Johnson on this instrument. This piece  was originally inspired by the earliest surviving British viola, (a tenor) made by Jacob Rayman in London in 1641. The composer writes:

‘What is fascinating to hear is how the mood of a piece can change with a different instrument and venue. The Banks viola is lighter-toned and the playing of it in the room of the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City affords an intimacy – as if a work that resonated to an exaltation of high roof beams is now something confided in a domestic chamber. Such, I believe, is the importance of setting in how music is perceived.’[viii]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78Z4u939CiA&list=PLa6jLsEuw6Uk-pDSTw-Sehx6Mti9yTmS0&index=42

Michael Alec Rose’s reaction to finally hearing his ‘Horne Call’ on the instrument for which it was intended, and which inspired it, was profound:

‘When Peter took up the Horne viola, something happened I could never have expected: a universe of contrasting timbres unfolds in this performance, replacing the lyricism of the Banks recording with what I can only call a stunningly modernist account.’

This was a thoroughly American meeting, albeit in the hands of a Brit. In the hallowed halls of the great American museum of art and history, the first American viola rang out with the tones of a new American piece: they had all come home.

Podcast about the project with some materials from above

[i] Quoted in Burrows & Morris, Gotham , P,168

[ii] Wood Magazine, Guide to Wood, May 02, 2017
[iii] Michael Alec Rose, 23 January 2023
[iv] Sandys, History of the Violin, 1864, Dover Reprint. P. 360
[v] Ibid. P.208
[vi] Ibid. P362
[vii] Email to PSS 23rd January
[viii] Hackbridge to PSS 22=1=24