Having completed his training at the Violin School of America, Zygmuntowicz apprenticed for five years in the New York studio of the mercurial master Rene Morel, where the world’s most valuable instruments were sent for work or restoration. Zygmuntowicz told Marchese, “I used to sit at lunch with a $2 million violin open on my work table, and just stare at it, trying to understand it, trying to take it in.” By the time he had moved to his own Brooklyn workshop, this intimacy with the great violins, and his aspiration to understand them, enabled Zygmuntowicz to become adept at making remarkable copies—copies so perfect they got him noticed in the violin world. And with the exhaustive measurements, notes and photos he kept and studied, and with his curiosity and ambition, Zygmuntowicz was able to experiment. He could choose particular characteristics from a Guarneri or a Strad, and mix them up, or add minute changes of his own, in order to mold a particular sound, or physical feature that would satisfy the requirements of his clients. And he began producing his own extraordinary instruments.
Marchese describes violinist Eugene Drucker as “very smart, with a quick and subtle sense of humor.” He’s “slim and handsome in a way that seems old-fashioned, like someone out of the Roaring Twenties, with curly black hair and soulful, dark eyes.” He’s also extremely sensitive and exacting (in agreeing to cooperate in the book project, he makes one request of Marchese: “Try not to make me seem as neurotic as I really am”). Drucker, used to a nearly perfect instrument, knows instinctively what sound he wants to hear emitting below his left ear as he plays. He holds to a high standard, not to mention, a hefty financial commitment, and he has some reservations as to whether Zygmuntowicz will be able to get it right. For his part, Zygmuntowicz feels “Gene could be tricky.” “There was goodwill on both sides,” Marchese writes. “Of course, both men wanted a great violin. But there seemed to be a huge potential for blank misunderstanding.”
For most of a year, Marchese observes the luthier in his Brooklyn studio. Zygmuntowicz is “a middle-aged man of average height and medium build” with a friendly, open face, “no suspenders, no leather apron, no knickers,” just “cotton chinos and a plaid shirt.” Marchese asks him the questions we want to know, and watches as the violin takes shape. At every stage, it seems there is a crucial choice. Zygmuntowicz starts with the character of the wood. There’s maple for the back and spruce for the front. For the rest, various others—pear, willow and ebony—are chosen for their own unique properties, which “will definitely predispose the character of the sound.” Marchese distills the process for us: the carving, the chiseling, the arching. We learn that there is such a thing as rabbit-hide glue and varied, historic and mysterious varnishing theories, and the importance of the essential “ground” or base coat. You can almost smell wood-and-varnish-scented air emitting from the pages.
While the violin is being created in Zygmuntowicz’s Brooklyn workshop, Marchese conducts some field trips—to a summer luthiers’ conference in Ohio, where he sits “outside in the chirpy and muggy night, sprawled on a loading dock behind the art studio, hoping to catch a breeze,” and to Cremona, where the railroad station speaks “more of Mussolini than Stradivari.” I especially appreciate that, in this rarified world of multimillion-dollar instruments, with all the conceit and pretension that can ensue, there’s never a hint of condescension to the violin-ignorant reader I was at the beginning of the book. Since then, Marchese has passed along some relevant 17th-century history and the basics of how one of our oldest and most beloved instruments is made. I now know that there are at least 68 different pieces in a violin (usually 70) and that a distinctive Stradivari characteristic is a trick of joinery called the “bumblebee stingerette” (a term, that remarkably, at the time I’m writing this, is not yet found on Google).
Marchese is engaging and funny and he uses his substantial skill to tell a story worthy of his subjects. They, in turn, are generous collaborators, allowing us a close look at the passion that drives their lives. So in the end, Drucker gets his fine Zygmuntowicz violin. Will it replace the Strad? Hard to say: that’s a new relationship that may evolve over time. But as a reader, anyway, I’m satisfied. I’ve moved through a world of acoustic geeks and passionate artists, and I emerge feeling smarter and pleased to have been treated to a story so well told.
